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General Exalted Thread

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Kiriel said:
Clarification on some things. Cecylene surround Malfeas. Does that mean she also surrounds Kimbery, and that there is no way for a sailboat to travel Malfeas? Or can I just say that sailboats have to traverse a Dead Sea before reaching Malfeas proper or am I stuck to what Captain Jack Sparrow did in Pirates of the Caribbean?
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There are lifeless spots in water too, IIRC, mentioned in Transcendent Desert Creature (again, IIRC). Those should probably count as entrances.
 
Interest check in this thread, then an OOC thread for people to make their characters and for the task of selecting players.
 
Aleph said:
Because one of the fundamental themes that Exalted was founded upon was No Takebacks.
This isn't just a base element of Hell, or even of the magic, this is literally one of the foundational-level conceits that the line began with, before anything else, right down in the bedrock the rest of the game is built on. No Takebacks. Period. It was intended from Day One, Page One that this was not like DnD. If you die, there is no resurrection to bring you back. If you kill someone, there is no way to undo it. If you fuck up and your empire falls, you can't travel back in time and avert the catastrophe. If you lose everything you love, you can't set up a stable time loop so that it just appeared that way and actually your loved ones are fine.

No Takebacks. Ever. This is inherent to the line; to the backstory, the themes of usurpation and decay of the shining eras of old, the magnificence of the lost wonders of the High First Age made so because they are lost and will take thousands of years of work to rebuild.

No Takebacks.

And so anything that violates that - and anything that lets you get from Malfeas to Cecelyne in less than five days does violate that, because it lets you causally propagate messages backwards in time and lets your future self "undo" things that have happened by warning themselves five days in the past that it's going to happen - is in violation of this base-level setting fact, and should be purged. I do not hold the writers as sacred. I do not care if they put evidence of causality violations in the book, because there have been many writers and a lot of them were, bluntly, shit at their jobs - see Scroll of the Monk - and so if that evidence is there then all it means is that they didn't read Page One, Line One; No Takebacks and think hard about what that meant. It means that they saw an opportunity for a cool effect - hey, skip this annoying travel time! - and didn't put in the double-checking necessary to see that it resulted in time travel, which is banned.

It means, in essence, that they made a mistake. This is hardly news. Exalted is full of writers not thinking through the knock-on effects and implications of what they've written. That's where paranoia combat comes from. That's where lethality comes from. That's where crap like Cobra Styles and the various utterly broken stuff in Scroll of the Monk comes from.

But the fluff all the way back to the roots of the line has been very clear on No Takebacks. It's one of the most sacred parts of the setting, and what gives the actions in it such weight. There is no Resurrection spell waiting to bring you back if you screw up and die; there is no Wish that lets you undo your greatest mistake and change things so you never betrayed your brothers for a moment's greed, there is no Undo Button that can fix things after you break them. You have to build them anew, and hope nobody else breaks them once you're finished. That is why Creation is in the state it is in.

So yeah. No Takebacks. Rule One. Anything that violates it should be scoured away with fire, and causality violations that break the 5-day light cone qualify. If you want to talk about removing the 5-day light cone entirely, that's another argument, and one that @Aaron Peori has already addressed, but as long as it stands, it's absolute.
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This got me thinking: both you and I are using the 'No Takebacks' argument in different discussions. However, now that I think of it, I'm not able to recall where I read this as an explicit principle of the setting? It doesn't seem to be the literal first statement of principles in the Introduction. Is it somewhere in the Storytelling chapter or the like?

You also made me wonder about the concept of top-down postulate-based worldbuilding vs. emergent bottom-up worldbuilding. That is, whether this or that setting's in-world phenomena are bound by meta-principles vs. the in-world following certain trends so as to mostly hover around a meta-principle, yet being capable of individual phenomena that are exceptions. E.g. it is a heavily implied meta-principle of oWoD that all the splats about a Descent of one sort or another, and yet there is Mage which is about Ascension, because that's what makes MtA special and interesting and worth having in the first place. Or take WH40K's meta-principle is grimdarkness, and when the shiny Tau showed up, later fluff started retroactively adding grimdark dystopian phenomena to the Tau, trying to enforce the meta-principle. Leaning too far in the direction of independence from meta-principles can make a setting hard to comprehend in a handful of short sweeps, but leaning too far in the direction of strictly following all such meta-principles makes suspension of disbelief much harder because such uniformity underlines the setting's artificialness.

And I don't consider authors sacred. But at least until now, I've been inclined towards holistic reading of settings instead of declaring personal headcanons regarding things I don't like; even stuff I really don't like, or that I consider illogical from my point of view. For instance, in Transhuman Space, the European Union is generally considered a place where the rights of AIs and bioroids are about as good as human rights . . . except that they heavily restrict the reproductive rights of both these types of entities, and enforce nasty restrictions on body swapping. I don't like it. I see it as an extremely arbitrary, unfair, illogical, superstitious, discriminatory exception to the largely good laws of THS' EU jurisdiction. But life is all too often illogical, unfair, superstitious, arbitrary and discriminatory, and very often without a clear reason too! But it's a part of the setting, and my character doesn't have an option to deny it - he can only try to either adapt to it, or deal with it by going elsewhere, or starting a movement for repealing those restrictive laws.

Speaking of THS, I noticed a trend that seems to apply both to Exalted and to THS as settings:
People seems very, very eager to rage at this or that bit of setting, wishing to tear it down.
But once you tear down the Realm, the Malfeas, the Guild, the North, the East, the Yu-Shan etc. -as-written-by-authors, I'm not sure what remains of the setting? What is the remaining unifying vision of a world that can be shared by different players and GMs across our world, such that when one says 'And then we forced the Bull of the North to pledge allegiance to our empire!' the other can go 'Ah, cool, I get all what that implies'.

Aleph said:
Edit: You also appear to be confusing causality violation in the sense of "Fate says one thing should happen, I say differently" with causality violation in the sense of "I can send a message back in time to my past self telling her not to go to Nexus because my family will be killed in my absence". The former is fine, because Fate - and the Broken Winged Crane, and working out where someone's going to dodge when you shoot arrows at them from 900 yards away - are predictions. Very powerful predictions that are enforced by magic in some cases, but nonetheless predictions that can be proven wrong, especially if the subject has magic on their side too. The latter, though, is actively retconning the past, and that is just a flat No; period.
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I'm using causality as shorthand for 'cause-predates-consequence', though I'm kinda expecting 'an event has at least one cause and normally has consequences, and cause-and-effect chains hold' to also be true if the former is true. If the former is true, the only way to predict events with a high degree of chaos in their systems is to perform enormously complicated calculations based enormous amounts of data taken in the past/present. But there are no indication that such a method is used by any of the predictive abilities in Exalted (maybe except for Autochthon and She Who Lives in Her Name, dunno... not the ones I mentioned, anyway). If you shoot an arrow at a target that moves unpredictably, and it flies for 9-18 seconds and hits successfully (and this is not a rare odd occurrance), then the cause (target being in position X, for which you need to aim) happens after the effect (you targetting position X).
 
Kiriel said:
Clarification on some things. Cecylene surround Malfeas. Does that mean she also surrounds Kimbery, and that there is no way for a sailboat to travel Malfeas? Or can I just say that sailboats have to traverse a Dead Sea before reaching Malfeas proper or am I stuck to what Captain Jack Sparrow did in Pirates of the Caribbean?

Also, since I threw out the stupid Scarlet Empress being married to TED plotline, I need a new act of villainy. Is a version Chronic Backstabbing Disorder (name pending), where you betray someone for the lulz, an acceptable alternative to Exquisite Bride Obsession?
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Seems reasonable to me, but I'd try to phrase it more as "doom something you love" rather than "lulz betrayal" - the effect would be similar, but comes across more as tragic (self-)destruction and less "Snidely Whiplash"
 
Broken25 said:
I will quote Aleph for this. This is from her guide to writing Plot-hooks:

Be possible to ignore if you don't want to use them. This? This is the biggest thing that separates a plot point from a setting conceit. It should not be possible to ignore the Wyld Hunt - or at least the potential threat they pose - if you are in the inner Threshold or the Blessed Isle. They are a setting conceit; the Dragonblooded are opposed to you, and you are a hero alone in a setting that largely hates and fears you, on a quest to reclaim your place in it. But a plot point, you should not be forced to deal with or else. The Deathlords, who will destroy Creation yesterday if you don't drop everything to stop them. The Bull of the North, whose six-person circle of Solars craps over any other stories told in the North [1], because you have to deal with them before you can do anything else there. The Ebon Dragon breaking out of Malfeas by marrying the Scarlet Empress, the Unconquered Sun who everything in the bloody setting revolves around... these are not plot hooks, these are railroads that characters are forced to deal with or they annihilate the setting. This is not good storytelling. This is boring and aggravating, and after a while it starts to feel more like a chore than anything fun. I don't think anything in the setting is on the level where being forced to deal with it is a setting conceit, and so this sort of framing of supposed plot hooks needs to stop.
[..]
The difference between a plot hook and a setting conceit fundamentally comes down to how vital it is to the basic precepts of the game. The theme of the Celestial Exalted being outcastes in the Age of Sorrows is one of the most basic parts about their characterisation, and pretty much can't be ignored. Likewise, the theme of "no takebacks" is crucial to the very backbone of the game; you shouldn't be able to ignore things like "no resurrection" without houseruling.

Most things, however, are not on this level. The Deathlords should be antagonistic on the broad scale, yes, but they need not be a vast and immediate threat in the short term [3]. The Yozis should definitely be pushed back into the background and made setting fluff rather than plot hooks, and Lunar elders (who have the exact same problems as the Deathlords, though not quite as bad) shouldn't be one-dimensional monsters who you murder out of common sense [4]. Plot hooks, as a general thing, should be set up such that you can get both candy or grenades if you decide to yank on them this way or that. But they should notbe set up to fire a nuke at your face if you do neither. Being able to take a plot hook or leave it is the most important thing about one, and writers trying to force their pet hooks into the metaplot by sensationalising them with "this is the most important thing of all the things, and it will destroy the whole of the West if YOU don't stop it now!" are a major cause of the toxic scale inflation currently ailing the setting as a whole.

Basically, the Realm being hostile to the returning Solars, or Autochton dying, are setting conceits, and as such, they can be allowed to be un-ignorable parts of the narrative.

The reclamation is a Plot-hook, not a setting central point. Something that GM's can ignore if they want. But since you can hardly ignore a world-ending threat, it warps the setting and takes a central place that doesn't belong to a mere plot-hook.
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(@Aleph tagged due to spolier-quote attribution.)
That's an interesting dichotomy, and adds some interesting stuff to think about. Tough I'm not sure I understand where the line is drawn.
For instance, for people (characters) in a campaign covering the 1930s-1950s period of Europe, is WWII a setting conceit or a plot hook? It's something that's gonna happen through causal chains of earlier events; it doesn't aim a nuke at anyone specific's face, but it does cause huge numbers of dead, wounded or otherwise harmed, and it definitely has a major impact on the lives of others. Accusing real-life events of being railroads feels kinda odd to me, so that option seems to be out; plus accepting the 'railroad' as an answer would automatically imply considering historical campaigns to be a bad thing in itself.

Also, an observations: it seems like Storyteller-derived campaigns and GMs tend closer towards railroading than sandboxing. Not sure why. Is it just me, or is this trend observed by others too?
 
vicky_molokh said:
But I don't get why the fight against the Realm being the big overshadowing heart of Exalted is okay, but fighting against the Reclamation isn't.
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Well, certainly it's at least in part that you don't technically have to deal with the Realm. Are you in the Inner Threshold? If no (Outer Threshold, Malfeas, Underworld, Wyld, Heaven, etc), then Realm presence is low to non-existent. Assuming you are in the Inner Threshold, are you in a Realm satrapy? If no, then Realm presence is a strong influence on the local culture (though not necessarily an allied one), but you're not going to get a Wyld Hunt showing up to kill you unless you make yourself really obvious. Even if you're in a Realm satrapy like Keris and Sasi are, you can still operate just fine as long as you're careful about where and how you make it obvious that you're a Celestial Exalt. It's only in major satrapies like Cherak or the Lap and on the Blessed Isle itself that the entire game revolves around avoiding the attentions of the Dragonblooded, and if you're playing there you're presumably doing so intentionally.
vicky_molokh said:
If you shoot an arrow at a target that moves unpredictably, and it flies for 9-18 seconds and hits successfully (and this is not a rare odd occurrance), then the cause (target being in position X, for which you need to aim) happens after the effect (you targetting position X).
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... it kind of doesn't? I mean, I'll accept that it's really fucking hard to do that, but it's not explicitly causality-breaking. Yes, it's difficult to imagine the kind of skill it would take to aim that well and predict your target's movements in that much detail, but "peerless skill" is kind of the point of the Exalted. Autochthon and SWLIHN might fluff it as intensive calculations of all possible probability states while the Solar fluffs it as just knowing by instinct where his quarry will try to dodge and the Lunar fires a bullshit homing arrow that alters course as it flies to strike true, but this is not a violation of cause and event; merely one of probability, for which magic is available as an explicitly possible explanation both in-setting and out.
vicky_molokh said:
For instance, for people (characters) in a campaign covering the 1930s-1950s period of Europe, is WWII a setting conceit or a plot hook?
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It depends on the game. Seriously, what's a setting conceit and what's a plot hook are key elements in the "personality" of a game, and conveying which is which is part of skilful writing and ties into things like theming and genre. One type of 1930s game might have WWII be inevitable, and be very WoD-esque and all about trying to stave off the oncoming terrible war for as long as possible while desperately preparing for it, while another might be going for a Bond-esque superspy feel where you can avert the looming disaster and save the world if you're clever and bold and witty. It's something the authors should decide beforehand and then write and edit extensively to get the message across to the players without distortion or misunderstanding. This ties back into your first question - why is the Realm a setting conceit and the Reclamation a plot hook? Because the writers chose to have the game be more about taking back Creation from the descendants of those who felled your past incarnations in a world that now hates and fears you than about the hordes of Hell escaping and wrecking havoc on the lands of those who locked them away in aeons past. Late 2e altered that with RotSE, yes, but I feel that it was a bad choice and that the original writers' reasoning holds, so I choose to go with their view rather than the late 2e one (whose writers I have had sometimes-public disagreements with on their vision of the line in various regards).
 
vicky_molokh said:
This got me thinking: both you and I are using the 'No Takebacks' argument in different discussions. However, now that I think of it, I'm not able to recall where I read this as an explicit principle of the setting? It doesn't seem to be the literal first statement of principles in the Introduction. Is it somewhere in the Storytelling chapter or the like?
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So far as I know, it's not explicit in the rulebooks, but it was explicit in developer statements in the times when people like Grabowski through Holden actively engaged with the community forums. Personally, I like that the game doesn't feel the need to beat players over the head with this rule.

Unfortunately, then 2e happened, and almost no developer oversight happened because John Chambers A Shit, and Bad Writing happened.
 
Aleph said:
... it kind of doesn't? I mean, I'll accept that it's really fucking hard to do that, but it's not explicitly causality-breaking. Yes, it's difficult to imagine the kind of skill it would take to aim that well and predict your target's movements in that much detail, but "peerless skill" is kind of the point of the Exalted. Autochthon and SWLIHN might fluff it as intensive calculations of all possible probability states while the Solar fluffs it as just knowing by instinct where his quarry will try to dodge, but this is not a violation of cause and event; merely one of probability, for which magic is available as an explicit explanation.
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So, instinct knows the future, not through some subconscious calculation, but essentially through the magic of the UCS.

And the major problem is that the target merely looking at the incoming arrow and slowly walking 5 yards to any other spot should be sufficient to make a hit impossible, because s/he can adjust to the arrow's trajectory, but the shooter cannot adjust the trajectory after the arrow has been launched. And this is even without bringing in Excellencies - a half-dozen dice already produces better-than-chance results. Whether against a target that slowly walks away from the seen vector of attack, or against a target that randomly shifts a number of yards (without knowing the vector of attack).

Yes, I know it's actually a bug resulting from the way attacks are resolved, but if we hold that in 2e/2½e the system says the truth about what happens in the world . . .
 
vicky_molokh said:
Yes, I know it's actually a bug resulting from the way attacks are resolved, but if we hold that in 2e/2½e the system says the truth about what happens in the world . . .
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Nonono. You don't want to do that, believe me. Treating the game engine as the in-setting laws of physics leads to bad places. It's an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

But if we are to resolve it mechanically, then this is easier than it sounds. Does the attack miss? Then yeah, someone did exactly that - dodged the arrow by seeing it coming and moving out of the way.

Did the attack hit? Then they failed to. Why? Fluff a reason. Perhaps they misjudged exactly where the arrow was going, and moved into it - it's harder than it sounds to guess the trajectory of a rapidly moving projectile headed towards you. Perhaps they just didn't see it at all. Perhaps magic kept it on-course, if a Charm was used. Perhaps the arrow travelled so quickly there wasn't time to dodge; fired from a powerbow that launched it at speeds more befitting a railgun. Perhaps the single mechanical attack represented several different shots that left them nowhere to dodge to without being perforated by another arrow. Etc.

Ultimately, this particular bug comes from the fact that bow ranges are fucking stupid and more akin to sniper rifles than actual bows, leading to long flight times and plenty of dodging time. This is a problem in the system that should not be extrapolated into "omg causality violation", but rather patched by, you know, making bow ranges not fucking stupid.
 
I'm not sure, but I think I've been a victim of a stealth-edit. So . . .
Aleph said:
It depends on the game. Seriously, what's a setting conceit and what's a plot hook are key elements in the "personality" of a game, and conveying which is which is part of skilful writing and ties into things like theming and genre. One type of 1930s game might have WWII be inevitable, and be very WoD-esque and all about trying to stave off the oncoming terrible war for as long as possible while desperately preparing for it, while another might be going for a Bond-esque superspy feel where you can avert the looming disaster and save the world if you're clever and bold and witty. It's something the authors should decide beforehand and then write and edit extensively to get the message across to the players without distortion or misunderstanding. This ties back into your first question - why is the Realm a setting conceit and the Reclamation a plot hook? Because the writers chose to have the game be more about taking back Creation from the descendants of those who felled your past incarnations in a world that now hates and fears you than about the hordes of Hell escaping and wrecking havoc on the lands of those who locked them away in aeons past. Late 2e altered that with RotSE, yes, but I feel that it was a bad choice and that the original writers' reasoning holds, so I choose to go with their view rather than the late 2e one (whose writers I have had sometimes-public disagreements with on their vision of the line in various regards).
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Ah, the issue of genre adjustments. I was trying to bring up the example without genre adjustments, which is why I quoted WWII in Europe, and not an event in some setting that already has a baked-in genre.
I suppose if I had to explain the genre assumptions, I'd go like this: the camaign is a realistic sandbox. The world as a whole does not care about the PCs any more than it does about anybody else. If the PCs manage to predict the rise to power and become élite assassins (which will require them getting SEAL-equivalent training but oriented in a different sphere one way or another), that is one way they can prevent the war, and the world will shrug and move on. If they do not predict it, they may be caught up in the events that occur in their region. If they smell the smoke early and become refugees to, say, Canada, then of course the impact of the war will largely pass them by. If they stay and are conscripted, they will risk death or injury just like all the other recruits. The world doesn't have a metagame agenda. The world follows cause and effect, and doesn't care. So what is WWII in that case?

Now, getting back to Realm Matters vs. Yozis' Matters:
Core Introduction page 14 and 15 said:
Just beyond the edges of the world, the Fair Folk bide their time, waiting for another opportunity to march forth from the formless Wyld to undo shaped reality. Just beneath the skin of the world, the necrotic lords of the Underworld plot to share the gift of Oblivion with all living things. And imprisoned within the infi nite body of the Yozi known as Malfeas, the Demon Princes strive to escape their prison to wreak vengeance on the gods and the gods' champions.
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It seems like the threat of Yozis was mentioned from the very beginning (of 2e, anyway), but quite logically, in accordance with the escalation principle, the details of the threat were disclosed later.

Also, I find it interesting that you seem to be against the later-2e focus on the Infernal threat, and yet are so happy playing a game whose premise seems to be heavily based around the Broken Bird Winged Crane's idea of proto-Yozification.

Aleph said:
Nonono. You don't want to do that, believe me. Treating the game engine as the in-setting laws of physics leads to bad places. It's an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

But if we are to resolve it mechanically, then this is easier than it sounds. Does the attack miss? Then yeah, someone did exactly that - dodged the arrow by seeing it coming and moving out of the way.

Did the attack hit? Then they failed to. Why? Fluff a reason. Perhaps they misjudged exactly where the arrow was going, and moved into it - it's harder than it sounds to guess the trajectory of a rapidly moving projectile headed towards you. Perhaps they just didn't see it at all. Perhaps magic kept it on-course, if a Charm was used. Perhaps the arrow travelled so quickly there wasn't time to dodge; fired from a powerbow that launched it at speeds more befitting a railgun. Perhaps the single mechanical attack represented several different shots that left them nowhere to dodge to without being perforated by another arrow. Etc.

Ultimately, this particular bug comes from the fact that bow ranges are fucking stupid and more akin to sniper rifles than actual bows, leading to long flight times and plenty of dodging time. This is a problem in the system that should not be extrapolated into "omg causality violation", but rather patched by, you know, making bow ranges not fucking stupid.
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Yeah, I know excessive literalism of mechanics can lead to scary places.

Oh, I disagree that the cause of the bug is the range of bows itself. The cause of the bug is the inability to handle slowly-moving projectiles. I've seen this same bug show up for rifles in a different system, and I'll tell you this: the existing patch is ugly to implement in a combat system (only to be used by the most high-Conviction followers of realism and little-s simulationism*).

* == No relation to GNS Simulationism.[/quote]
 
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vicky_molokh said:
So what is WWII in that case?
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Well, bluntly, it's a setting conceit, because if they get SEAL-level training and become elite assassins there is precisely dick and shit they can do to prevent some form of major conflict breaking out by murdering people. If you're going with "realistic sandbox" then, at least as I see it, Hitler was just the tip of the boil. The causes were things like the ruinous reparations demanded by the Treaty of Versailles, the growing fear of communism that the Nazi party played off to become so powerful, et cetera. Murdering one guy - heck, murdering an entire political party - won't solve those. Become a politician and try to change the system and you might have a shot, but even then it'll take a lot.

Overall, given that, I would say that the threat of another world war - the looming tensions and old rivalries and bitterness and wounds left over from the last one in both winners and losers, the growing tensions between the two major superpowers of the USSR and the USA/Europe, the race of advancing technology that would prove devastating if conflict broke out again - those are a setting conceit. The war itself is therefore an implicit setting conceit; not in its presence, but in the threat of its beginning.
vicky_molokh said:
Also, I find it interesting that you seem to be against the later-2e focus on the Infernal threat, and yet are so happy playing a game whose premise seems to be heavily based around the Broken Bird Winged Crane's idea of proto-Yozification.
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Really? Because it's a perfectly consistent position. I love Infernals, and the themes of them becoming tiny infant Primordials; stumbling and blinking in the harsh light of their new metabiology and cosmic power. And the reason I love those themes is precisely because they emphasise that the Yozis don't really matter. They've made these things; these fumbling titans that are starting to awaken to their world-shaking potential, and in doing so they've made the same mistake as the Deathlords by creating their own replacements. The Reclamation won't free them, not realistically. At best, it will enrich the Unquestionable and enact some measure of spite on Creation from their prison. Far more likely, it will be a nursery for newborn titans as they find their feet, before they gather themselves and stride off on their own; shucking the demands of their cosmic parents as they go their own way.

The main flaw of the Reclamation is that it depends on Infernals staying loyal to it. And Exalted being Exalted, that's not going to happen. Keris is already straying. Sasi only needs a push. It's not a threat to Creation, really. It's a birthplace of a new set of pieces on the board. And some of them will be monsters, and others will be heroes, but you can bet this much - the Yozis aren't going to get what they want out of it, no matter what course it takes.
 
Aleph said:
The main flaw of the Reclamation is that it depends on Infernals staying loyal to it. And Exalted being Exalted, that's not going to happen. Keris is already straying. Sasi only needs a push. It's not a threat to Creation, really. It's a birthplace of a new set of pieces on the board. And some of them will be monsters, and others will be heroes, but you can bet this much - the Yozis aren't going to get what they want out of it, no matter what course it takes.
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See, it's things like this that always make me want to make an actually loyal Infernal out of spite. Just my inherent contrariness I suppose, but it seems as much a conceit to say 'Everyone will Betray' as it is to say 'Everyone will stay loyal.'
 
vicky_molokh said:
It seems like the threat of Yozis was mentioned from the very beginning (of 2e, anyway), but quite logically, in accordance with the escalation principle, the details of the threat were disclosed later.
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Well, there's a few obvious differences between the threat of the Yozis and the threat of the Realm, but first and foremost is the sheer scope. The Realm is extremely dangerous and powerful, but must marshal its strength across a great distance, and is comprised of fallible (super)human parts. It does not move with one will, and its greatest might is in the sheer numbers it can marshal, given time and opportunity. It is a disease-ridden giant, who PCs might nurses back to health or strangled in its sheets, but either way can and will destroy whole nations with its fever-wracked flailing.

You can play a great many games where the Realm exists, but is not a threat, is not present, or is not relevant. They work just fine. Outside of the most Realm-antagonistic kind of game possible - let's say you Exalt in an Immaculate Temple on the Blessed Isle, kill a few monks, escape, and set up shop as a Solar warlord in the Inner Threshold - the Realm can be a setting element rather than an actively and constantly dangerous force.

The Yozis, on the other hand, will end the world if they escape. They are a binary threat - either they cannot get out, in which case Creation as a whole doesn't need to seriously worry about them, or they can get out, in which case they are the highest and absolute most all-consuming priority of everything that breathes. If Isidoros escapes, on his own, then the entire world is fucked, no two ways about it. If all 20+ Yozis escape, the cosmos itself will be rendered unrecognizable. There's no scale here.

Of course, an even more striking issue is that the Realm's existence is an antagonistic, powerful setting element that lends itself to the sort of stories and themes the game wants to put forward - both with regard to the management and morality of power, and with regard to being Sailor Moon meets A Song Of Ice And Fire. The Yozis being a big looming threat - as opposed to a weird and alien presence that's invoked by sorcerers and mad cults - screws with that.

These aren't problems for individual games, because if you want the Yozis to be a big looming threat, you won't mind the ways this warps the game. They are problems as general setting ideas, as we saw in late 2e - and I expect 3e will be handling them pretty differently (if at all).
 
Aleph said:
Really? Because it's a perfectly consistent position. I love Infernals, and the themes of them becoming tiny infant Primordials; stumbling and blinking in the harsh light of their new metabiology and cosmic power. And the reason I love those themes is precisely because they emphasise that the Yozis don't really matter. They've made these things; these fumbling titans that are starting to awaken to their world-shaking potential, and in doing so they've made the same mistake as the Deathlords by creating their own replacements. The Reclamation won't free them, not realistically. At best, it will enrich the Unquestionable and enact some measure of spite on Creation from their prison. Far more likely, it will be a nursery for newborn titans as they find their feet, before they gather themselves and stride off on their own; shucking the demands of their cosmic parents as they go their own way.

The main flaw of the Reclamation is that it depends on Infernals staying loyal to it. And Exalted being Exalted, that's not going to happen. Keris is already straying. Sasi only needs a push. It's not a threat to Creation, really. It's a birthplace of a new set of pieces on the board. And some of them will be monsters, and others will be heroes, but you can bet this much - the Yozis aren't going to get what they want out of it, no matter what course it takes.
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Really, because you're playing a young Yozi yourself, yet insist on Yozis as a category not mattering. Reclamation may not go as planned, but nothing really goes as planned.
Looking a bit deeper, one might say that this is how Yozis procreate*. And they're not the only species where they young can cannibalize their weakened parents. The fact remains: a bunch of Yozis are coming back to Creation, and this time they might be more numerous and ultimately more powerful than the last bunch.

(And yes, I too am fascinated by all the titan-metabiology and soul structure, to the point that I'm currently trying to make up something similar to/inspired by these things, but without going into outright copycatting, for a totally unrelated homebrew setting. But I'm more interested in overarching design advice as opposed to specific chronicled examples; sorry about that.)

* == This also reminds me of how the Fair Folk in Changeling the Lost (not Dreaming) procreate, actually. Complete with the the obligatory 'Nooo, we are not them, you do not understand, we are a different sort of entity!' belief.
 
vicky_molokh said:
Really, because you're playing a young Yozi yourself, yet insist on Yozis as a category not mattering.
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Primordial =/= Yozi
The Yozi are a specific group of Primordials who were imprisoned in Malfeas at the end of the Primordial War, who long for freedom (and revenge, but mostly freedom). This is very important to remember, because there are two Primordials who are very much not in the same boat: Gaia and Autochthon.

Broadly speaking, the Yozi want to go back to Creation, fuck up the Exalted and the rebellious gods, fuck up Creation, then go back to ruling Creation and doing whatever they want with no regard for anyone but the other Yozi (there are, of course, exceptions; Adorjan is perfectly content). A Yozi coming to Creation is a Very Bad Thing, because they will fuck things up. An Infernal becoming a new Primordial is a Big Fucking Deal, but it being good or bad is entirely dependent on the Infernal's inclinations.
 
TheLastOne said:
See, it's things like this that always make me want to make an actually loyal Infernal out of spite. Just my inherent contrariness I suppose, but it seems as much a conceit to say 'Everyone will Betray' as it is to say 'Everyone will stay loyal.'
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Well, it's more like... Infernals are ultimately human, regardless of what alien gunk they've riveted onto themselves, and their bosses aren't. The more and more independently powerful an Infernal becomes, the less and less attractive it is to remain under the thumb of a superior who a) fundamentally does not understand you, b) only cares about you insofar as you serve their needs, as is the natural order of things, c) is kind of a dick, and d) cannot effectively punish you for fucking off to drink pina coladas in the South-West with a harem of prettyboy neomah.

Especially as time goes on and whatever line of Yozi-edifying bullshit you were initially fed starts to wear a little thin. At the end of the day, Hell is Hell because the Yozis make it so.

Sure, there will be True Believers. They won't actually be really true believers, because someone who genuinely dedicated themselves to the philosophies and laws of the Yozi would find themselves encouraged to tell their bosses to sit and swivel with a cheery grin, before going to eat firedust-stuffed prostitutes in Nexus or whatever else floats their boat, because they have the power to do that and the Yozis don't have the power to punish them. But there will be Infernals who genuinely idolize the Yozis and consider them their True Gods and give them their all no matter what. They're just going to be few and far between, and might not last as long as a more pragmatic personality.

In a nutshell, it might be better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven, but it takes a special kind of devoted to prefer serving in Hell.
 
TheLastOne said:
See, it's things like this that always make me want to make an actually loyal Infernal out of spite. Just my inherent contrariness I suppose, but it seems as much a conceit to say 'Everyone will Betray' as it is to say 'Everyone will stay loyal.'
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Oh, kerisgame has already had one Infernal who's totally going to stay loyal. Well, loyal to SWLIHN, at least. To a first approximation, Deveh thinks the rest of the Yozis can go jog off. They're insufficiently spherical and filled with colourless fire to be his perfect waifu.

Maybe it's her perfect curves in all the right places, but he's going to put everything into freeing SWLIHN-chan and failing that, becoming exactly like her in every way that matters.
 
azoicennead said:
Primordial =/= Yozi
The Yozi are a specific group of Primordials who were imprisoned in Malfeas at the end of the Primordial War, who long for freedom (and revenge, but mostly freedom). This is very important to remember, because there are two Primordials who are very much not in the same boat: Gaia and Autochthon.

Broadly speaking, the Yozi want to go back to Creation, fuck up the Exalted and the rebellious gods, fuck up Creation, then go back to ruling Creation and doing whatever they want with no regard for anyone but the other Yozi (there are, of course, exceptions; Adorjan is perfectly content). A Yozi coming to Creation is a Very Bad Thing, because they will fuck things up. An Infernal becoming a new Primordial is a Big Fucking Deal, but it being good or bad is entirely dependent on the Infernal's inclinations.
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I'm pretty sure I've heard 'Infernals are Proto-Yozis', probably due to being so warped by Yozi charms by the time they get strong enough.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Oh, kerisgame has already had one Infernal who's totally going to stay loyal. Well, loyal to SWLIHN, at least. To a first approximation, Deveh thinks the rest of the Yozis can go jog off. They're insufficiently spherical and filled with colourless fire to be his perfect waifu.

Maybe it's her perfect curves in all the right places, but he's going to put everything into freeing SWLIHN-chan and failing that, becoming exactly like her in every way that matters.
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So, you invited Aiden to your game?
 
vicky_molokh said:
I'm pretty sure I've heard 'Infernals are Proto-Yozis', probably due to being so warped by Yozi charms by the time they get strong enough.
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... well... yeah, I guess, if you also consider Solars to be "warped" by Solar Charms. That still doesn't mean that Infernals will become Yozis, though, because a Yozi is by definition one of the ones trapped in Malfeas. And, you know, a Charmset doesn't force behaviour, only incentivise it. Those imprisoned Primordials? They don't matter. And the Infernals that succeed them... well, they do, but they won't have anything like the same goals for Creation - or the power to enforce them in the same way that a fullblown Primordial could. Even at Enlightenment 10 and with a full contingent of souls; Keris can't do a fraction of the damage that Adorjan could if freed, and more importantly, she wouldn't want to. Most Infernals won't. An Infernal gone Devil-Tiger has a very different impact on the setting than a freed Yozi - they're a big deal, yeah, but not much more so than an elder Solar. Which is to say "world-shaking, but killable".
 
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