Eh, I never said that Lookshy would trust or rely on Anathama. Just that they would be willing to work with some of them against other enemies as a temporary measure.
A Green Sun Illuminates the Void (ZnT/Exalted)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
So, what does this make Louise?
Girlycard?
... That actually makes more sense than it should, by any rights, do. And it also means that the Reconquista is going to come back using some sort of abominable and flawed copy of true exaltations in fifty or so years to burn Londonium to the ground, aren't they?
Girlycard?
... That actually makes more sense than it should, by any rights, do. And it also means that the Reconquista is going to come back using some sort of abominable and flawed copy of true exaltations in fifty or so years to burn Londonium to the ground, aren't they?
That's a shame, I was hoping to see PIO on that list, so she could kill the Pope with faith in the Founder.EarthScorpion said:
Avoidance Kata!Alratan said:
Well... Tristain is sort of a Belgium/Netherlands equivalent, geographically, but it's French in names. Unfortunately, the Belgian monarchy is a recent one, relatively speaking, and so is of the wrong era for the names taken for this thing, and moreover they've all been part of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.Jonen C said:
Interestingly, the first Belgian king married first Princess Charlotte of Wales, who died in childbirth, then Louise of Orléans.
Arthur Hansen
Author of no Authority.
- Location
- Utah, behind the Zion Curtain.
They are not the friends of the Anathema, that is quite true. The thing you are forgetting is that the Immaculate Order *is* the mouthpiece of the Realm and part of its way of controlling people, which Lookshy knows.EarthScorpion said:
You basically just stated that the Church of England and that they actually call upon their members to enact crusades and inquisitions according to your Lookshy=Church of England and the Realm=Catholicism.
Which is so left-field its not even funny.
No. What I said is that both the Realm and Lookshy are followers of the Immaculate religion, which equates to Christianity in this metaphor. The Immaculate Order of the Realm (the Catholic Church), and the Immaculate Faith of Lookshy (the Church of England) are still both Immaculate. Their split is political at heart, and any doctrinal differences have grown up from their separation, not a fundamental theological difference.arthurh3535 said:
I think you're forgetting that the Wyld Hunt pre-dates the Realm. The Shogunate started it, and, frankly, it doesn't just hunt Solars. Most of the time, it goes after Rogue Gods and Fae and Demons, with Lunars more common than Solars Celestial prey for almost all of its history.
So, yes, Lookshy will have its own Wyld Hunts, because they're both in line with its ideology, and because beating the fuck out of Gods who get uppity is a vital tool in keeping Creation working properly. The Immaculate religions are actually a pretty damn good thing for most people in Creation, because, run properly, they keep gods under control and doing their damn jobs, they prevent ancestor cults, they maintain social order (including keeping an eye out for corruption in secular authority), and they keep most people happy, giving social escape vents of the priesthood. They are actually a good, well-designed religion, and much better for people in their areas, with a strict prayer cycle and people who beat up gods who break the rules, than the standard "gods extort stuff from you in return for actually letting it rain". They're basically human collective bargaining, and gods dislike it for the same reason that robber barons don't like unions.
Lookshy would trust and rely on an Anathama, if that Anathma hit Lookshy's government with Halo of Ministerial Dominion and stayed far enough in the shadows to give them plausible deniability.Robotninja said:
Unfortunately, Louise doesn't have any Bureaucracy charms. It's actually kind of funny that the King of Everything doesn't have any charms that help him actually govern anything.
It's hard to develop charms to manipulate other people when you don't believe they have independent existence.hyzmarca said:
To the She Who Lives In Her Name tree! We'll get rid of that messy oversight of "independence"!Alratan said:
Unlike Malfeas, SWLiHN believes that others have independent existence, but she knows they shouldn't.EarthScorpion said:
I wonder how much of that is due to a desire to make her master's view of existence correct.
As long as you don't mind giving tribute to the Realm and kowtowing to Dragonblooded. Plus dealing with the occasional figure like Peleps Delad, or a member of the Chenow family branch of the Sesus.EarthScorpion said:
Plus the fact that short of becoming a priest, there is little to no social advancement. As well as the fact that about half of it is a lie.
It still beats most of the alternatives, but that's just a sign of screwed up Creation is right now in the absence of Solar leadership. You would think that 90% of the world dying would be a hint that the Sidereals missed something, but. . . .
Corrected it for you.Robotninja said:It still beats most of the alternatives, but that's just a sign of screwed up Creation is right now in the absence of Primordial rulership. You would think that 90% of the world dying would be a hint that the Exalted missed something, but. . . .
Malfeas knows very well that other people exist. He also has a fairly effective and time-tested method of manipulating them: beat them up until their too scared of your awesome power to do anything but love you.
This works fairly well on individuals and small groups. The only problem was that Creation became so large and unwieldy that he had to delegate, which is what Bureaucracy is all about. It is there where is decision-making process is terminally flawed. He chose to delegate to The Dragon's Shadow.
"The Sun, you say? He can't possibly betray us? Great work, Shadow!"
And then a second time.
"Infernal Exalted, you say? They can't possibly betray us? Great work, Ebon!"
The unfortunate truth is that the Malfeas really isn't suited to running an organization the size of Creation, and he wasn't much better than.
This works fairly well on individuals and small groups. The only problem was that Creation became so large and unwieldy that he had to delegate, which is what Bureaucracy is all about. It is there where is decision-making process is terminally flawed. He chose to delegate to The Dragon's Shadow.
"The Sun, you say? He can't possibly betray us? Great work, Shadow!"
And then a second time.
"Infernal Exalted, you say? They can't possibly betray us? Great work, Ebon!"
The unfortunate truth is that the Malfeas really isn't suited to running an organization the size of Creation, and he wasn't much better than.
Winged Knight
Still just a crazy man with a wolf on his head
- Location
- Texas
Robotninja said:As long as you don't mind giving tribute to the Realm and kowtowing to Dragonblooded. Plus dealing with the occasional figure like Peleps Delad, or a member of the Chenow family branch of the Sesus.
Plus the fact that short of becoming a priest, there is little to no social advancement. As well as the fact that about half of it is a lie.
It still beats most of the alternatives, but that's just a sign of screwed up Creation is right now in the absence of Solar leadership. You would think that 90% of the world dying would be a hint that the Sidereals missed something, but. . . .
Eh, both the Primordials and the Solars don't sit well with me. One practically squishes us without realizing we're there, and the other goes fucking insane.EarthScorpion said:Corrected it for you.
I'm cool with the Terrestrials, for the most part. Yes, some things would be nicer if they were different, but they're not so freaking removed from humanity as everything else.
Arthur Hansen
Author of no Authority.
- Location
- Utah, behind the Zion Curtain.
Hence my comment about the Church of England declaring the Inquisition and Crusades.EarthScorpion said:
Not going to happen.
I did not forget at all. If it served Lookshy's interests, they'd look the other way when a Wyld Hunt came in and dealt with an Anathema. But they are not *inimical* to Anathema like the Realm and its Immaculate Order is.EarthScorpion said:
They are much more pragmatic and don't think everything that the Realm's IO espouses is totally gospel.
The Wyld Hunt and the Realm's Immaculate Order are actually over-kill for the most part. The basically took the spiritual police part of their job too far, from what I understand. A lot of the gods are very upset at this, but they don't have any recourse.EarthScorpion said:
The Immaculate Order (under the control of the Realm) is part of the Bronze Faction's program for controlling Creation.
And Lookshy has figured out that is what it is for (even if they don't know who is behind the curtain.)
So no, they would not call up their own Wyld Hunt. If an Anathema is being a threat (military or otherwise) they'll just deal with it themselves with a legion or two or negotiate for the Wyld Hunt to be allowed within their confines.
Terrestials are less human than Solars. Solars earn their power. Their power is humanity writ large. The First Age was mostly Utopian, although it began to degrade before the Usurpation. Even so, it was better than the Shogunate. The Shogunate was so bad for mortals overall that there were vast numbers of people so bitter that they sided with the Fae, knowing full well that they wanted to destroy Creation.Winged Knight said:
From a human quality of life perspective, the Solar Exalted have the best track record by far.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
I agree that Lookshy won't lightly work with an Anathema, they do have the barebones of the Immaculate Faith going around there. But keep in mind that they split off Before the Immaculate Faith became more then an odd sect. They'll still certainly try to kill any Anathema that gets too close to their sphere of influence (Because they're fucking dangerous, that's an objective fact), but the key difference between them and the Realm?arthurh3535 said:
The Realm sends out elite forces en masse, and actively seeks out Celestial Exalts to kill, while rogue spirits get largely ignored, as long as they pay lip service to the Order's dogma and don't rock the boat.. Lookshy has it's Sohei to handle rogue gods, elementals, demons that cause trouble, and Anathema falls into that definition. That said, they don't have roving bands of elite warrior monks kicking over anthills and searching brick by brick for them.
It's an 'Active' versus 'Passive' approach largely. They won't risk overextending themselves from their primary interests just to kill an Anathema, especially if it's not causing any trouble (Relatively speaking). They'll certainly prioritizing keeping an eye on it, and gathering information to make the inevitable elimination go smoothly, but they won't risk an operation just to kill one that crops up on the spot.
At least based on what I know.
Winged Knight
Still just a crazy man with a wolf on his head
- Location
- Texas
Until the Solars thought they could do no wrong. Things started going to hell pretty fast, then.Robotninja said:
The Church of England burnt plenty of people at the stake.arthurh3535 said:
Yes, they are. One of the sore tenets of both factions of the Immaculates is that the Anathema are soul eating Yozi worshippers who if allowed to run free will damn Creation to barely imaginable horrors.arthurh3535 said:
Exactly. They have rejected the Immaculate Order's post-Contagion innovations that glorify the Realm. The status and nature of the Anathema are not amongst them, they are the fundamentals of the faith and in large part justification for the Terrestrials status.arthurh3535 said:
That's one way of looking at it. The other was that by the time of the Usurpation Creation was a living nightmare where solars warped people into living instruments and wrung symphonies of screams from their tortured flesh.Robotninja said:
Edit: It's notable that one of the reasons that the Yozi are OK with their GSPs having their intact Past Life memories is because the conduct of the solars by the end was so horrific that Lytek has to whitewash the memories he leaves behind when he cleans them, and the Yozi think that having the GSPs remembering and being influenced by them is likely to encourage them to make Creation into Hell.
That's not high praise.
The Solars were hardly a monolithic entity. Some of them were horrific near the end, but some of them were also still heroic figures of virtue. At the least, Solars have a track record of several thousand years before things went bad. The Terrestials. . . Do not.Winged Knight said:
No. It was never that bad. It would have gotten that bad if the Sidereals hadn't done something. There may have been a handful of Solars like that, but they were far from the majority or even a large minority even in the last years of the First Age. Only 13 of them were evil enough to take the deal to become a Deathlord, and this is after they were betrayed, abandoned and murdered.Alratan said:
The First Age was mostly utopian. The Second has people routinely getting soulforged, sold to the Fae, extorted by gods, etc. . .
I know what age I would rather live in.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
"Ah! So what is your infinite space filled with?"Valiran said:
"Empty space."
"... is that all? You could at least make it a literally Endless Desert that stretches out in all directions. More properly it should be the limitless layers of the Primordial King, growing larger and larger as he sheds them from his heart and they expand in all directions, until at their periperhy the gaps between plates are large enough for sun to pass through unheeded. If all else fails you could just fill it with formless chaos at the very least. Empty space? Urg. I suppose the Ebon Dragon, may his gaze fall on someone else, would find it fitting, however..."
In other words, things in Creation are big. Creation itself is roughly the size of Earth, but has the ratio of landmass to water reversed so it ends up having about three times as much liveable land. In the First Age it was about three times that big. In the Time of Glory when the Primordials ruled it was ten times as big as that.
Cecelyne, which seperates Malfeas from Creation is literally infinite in size. You could walk forever and never find the end of you (though she can allow you to get to anywhere she touches in just five days time, she's capricious like that). Malfeas is also effectively infinite. At his heart is the Green Sun, and from this heart stretching out in all directions are layers and layers of his body, which he sheds outward and these layers constantly expand and push outward until at their furthest edges they are made up of massive objects that put Dyson Spheres to shame. The Wyld has no border, but that's because at a certain point distance becomes meaningless.
Eh. At the very worst the Dragonblooded have gotten in their rule of Creation (and its still bad, make no mistake, the Realm is an Empire and no Empire is good) they probably still haven't achieved anything like Operation Wyldhand or the Time of Cascading Years.Robotninja said:
The most stable and human of the Exalted, and the ones I would like to live under, are the Alchemical Exalted.
The problem is that you are Earthscorpion are basically arguing a 1E versus 2E mindset here. In early 1E Lookshy was just "the Dragonblooded who objected to the Realm and had enough magitech to make that stick". Other than that, they were often dealt with as Realm Lite, right down to having Wyld Hunts and so on and so forth. This wasn't really based on anything written about Lookshy in specific, but based on the fact that the oly information about Dragonblooded society that was available was in the Dragonblooded book which dealt solely with Dynastic Dragonbloods.Alectai said:
Later in 1Es run the authors began to moderate Lookshy. This was because they expanded Lookshy's capabilities in a large way in the Outcaste book, giving them enough magical infrastructure that they can use modern military deployment strategies (ie, they had the ability to fly in troops, deploy in a few days notice and so on). So it was decided that Lookshy was not as fervent in their deaings with Anathema as the Realm. When 2E came along, they further cemented this idea into the canon.
The reason to make Lookshy less openly hostile to the Solars is because of where they are and what they do. Lookshy is the reason that the Scavenger Lands are free from the Realms iron grip, seeing as how they keep the Realm from interfering in local affairs. The Scavenger Lands is the default location for a Solar game, primarily because the Realm has no control over it and thus a Solar can afford to flare their anima now and then within the area and not have an immediate Wyld Hunt on his ass (which would happen almost immediately anywhere else in the Threshold states). At first it was assumed that Lookshy was mainly focused at the edge of the Scavenger Lands, busy either trying to repulse the Realm or the Mask of Winters. When it was decided that the Seventh Legion had far more mobility and had redoubts and bases scattered throughout the Scavenger Lands as part of its logistic/strategic doctrine they needed to come up with some other reason why Lookshy isn't going to fall on any Solar who flares their anima banner in Nexus like the wrath of the Elemental Dragons. They came up with Lookshy's passive "wait and see" idea when it comes to Anathema. That is, they wait until the anathema is a direct threat or shows an obvious weakness. The justification for this doctrine is that Lookshy has no desire to expend valuable Dragonblooded resources (which can take decades to replace) on a single anathema, much less a Circle. They're simply stretched too thin to deal with you.
In 2E the position of Lookshy re the anathema is not "neutral". They hate you. They hate you in the way that the modern US does North Korea. But, much like the US and North Korea, they can't afford to expend the manpower and political capital to stomp you into the dust. Not to mention there is a very good chance that the anathema has nukes (ie, a min-maxed Dawn Caste able to buthcer a dozen Dragonblooded in the process of taking him down and probably lay waste to the countryside in the process).
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