Because automatic method is more efficient in many situations and doesn't have the same fail states like Lytek being killed? It does not require active involvement of Incarnae, which is a big bonus.
It's canon that the exalted died a lot and spent significant time in training once exalted. Any lead up to reduce that would be valuable. More than that, it cannot be a system answerable to anyone because the gods couldn't stop the primordials from subverting any system answerable to them. That is the reason mortals were required in the first place.
Even if you take the very stupid 3E lore there was nothing stopping the primordials from forcing their way into the holdings of any of the gods, killing scrub exalts all the while, and doing whatever they wanted to the unresisting divinities to get what they wanted out of them for a vast majority of the war.
For the lack of exalted v exalted combat to make sense two things must be true
1) The gods cannot have control of the system of exaltation in a material way after it has started operating.
2) The exaltations must be tamper resistant when not deactivated. Otherwise the primordials would not have waited till they were murdered or mutilated to do what they did.
Please provide citation. I wasn't able to find any text saying this, or even implying this. The gods cannot command exalted, that's the point. Nothing is said about not being able to select their chosen.
Not being able to command them but being able to choose them specifically is a loophole so large as to render the rule irrelevant.
After an Exalt dies, they are not exalted anymore, and no, it is not ridiculous, because it's still manipulating an exaltation's selection criteria
What's the difference between you encrypting your hard drive and someone trying to slip ransomware on it from the other side of the planet? They both do basically the same thing after all. The exalted doing things to themselves, or their exaltations, starts from a position of privileged access.
Which people? Maidens were in Rebellion. And who said they didn't?
Yes. Primordials perceive the universe through their themes.
They made the thing in the first place, the gods were a convenience not a necessity.
You can write whatever you want into the blanks but I think an infernal/Abyssal equivalent showing up during the primordial war, which is the natural result of what you're suggesting is the sort of thing that would show up on the lore and shouldn't be something we can treat as random background stuff.
The assumption here should be that very powerful and intelligent people spent nearly incalculable time and resources on this problem. Anything easier than the Great Curse itself to implement that lets you pick who gains fantastic cosmic power without getting one that's been locked in maintenance mode by special authorized tools should be assumed to have been attempted and failed.
Otherwise they would have just done that instead, and someone down the ages would have done the same.
By the time solar exaltations escaped their prisons, the state of Creation was bad enough that Sidereals couldn't reliably predict next Sidereal exaltations, simply due to overwork
It never came up in their deliberations though. The debate was basically to guide the solars as they were or kill them, not to try hardening the candidate pool or what have you.
1) Thats where I think you're wrong
Your example demonstrates the crippling issues with the Denarians as an organization.
Almost all of the "profit" he made was his own nominal group failing and what seems like clear cope on his part. I mean really? "Trust me bro, 'introducing'
The Archive to our faction in a way that makes her hate some of my nominal coworkers more than others is a win ". Setting aside how Ivy is basically Sabrina the preteen Skynet and largely knows more about everyone else than they know about her, that puts all of them in at more risk of hostile attention for no other gain.
He also didn't get the sword, he got punched in the face. He's good at rolling with it when it happens but I wouldn't take Nicodemus at his word, especially when talking about his fucked up family or trying to put up a front of being unstoppable.
Thats why when Dresden asked Uriel why they let the Denarians cost them a warrior, Uriel laughed
Clearly being a knight still matters too or they wouldn't have them. Unless the thing with Shiro's health was arranged by heaven in the first place it was a loss of some kind. His post knight work may have been valuable, but this isn't exactly a grand victory.
What you are missing, because its not really expanded on in the primary books, is that the battle between Heaven and Hell is only marginally fought on the level of the Swords. And because of that, I think you are making fundamental errors with regards to threat-assessment regarding the Coins, and what their role is in the setting.
I'm aware, but it still matters. I also think you're being dismissive of the role of exalted in the fused setting and not presenting a solution. We're committed to this, which means we need to make it happen and get as much out of it as possible. There's a reason DP described our involvement here as Molly walking up to Uriel and Satan's Poker table to play Yahtzee with them. Exaltations give you enough leverage and weird reach to always have at least some sort of seat at the table.
So far all I've heard from you is that we should sit down and cry or something, because we can't ultimately effect this level of the game because we don't meet the power requirement.
Edit: Error
