HolySeraph said:
I would point out that the Mountain Folk were not enslaved and their status was chosen by Autochon, admittly after the Solar put forth their issue to him(I don't remember in what manner. Autochon just agrees, geas the Mountain Folk and then leaves without a word.
The Solars informed Autochthon that they had no intention of sharing the world with the Mountain Folk, and that unless he crippled them, they would slaughter them down to the last being. Autochthon loved his Mountain Folk, and so he reduced them as commanded, and then fled Creation to wait out the inevitable breakdown of everything.
I'd like to emphasise that last part. Autochthon was the Primordial embodiment of the mad-but-generally-well-meaning scientist. He was
this guy, with an Excellency. He was a master of engineering things, perfecting ideas, but when it came to consequences he was utterly blind. He made the First, and just left him alone. He was like "Well, made that, he's good, time to move on." It took a
Moses-esque megaquest on the part of the First to actually get him to
consider that he couldn't just create sentient life and then leave it there without a purpose. Autochthon created
seven-hundred respawning indestructible superweapons for the
express purpose of fighting his siblings, purely to get back at them, and then was
genuinely horrified when they actually killed one of them.
And yet he
still had enough foresight to see that something bad was on the horizon in the First Age.
HolySeraph said:
As for the many wars, I will point out the many centuries of peace and even our own history isn't that peaceful if not the same extremes.
The Deliberative waged an eight-hundred year war against itself that scarred the very universe, purely out of competitiveness. The massive loss of life was not considered overly significant, as more mortals could be Wyld-Shaped into existence. The trigger was the realisation that they could die of old age, and might not be able to get one-over their rivals politically.
The Deliberative turned an entire archipelago in the West into a behemoth-ridden Death World, and then dumped trained soldiers, random civilians, and Wyld-Shaped control groups into it with varying amounts of explanation and/or guidance. They then recorded the whole thing. This was a continuous and ongoing experiment to gauge the necessary conditions for a Celestial Exaltation. It was also popular reality TV.
The Deliberative flooded a continent's worth of land in the North with massive amounts of Wyld energy, deliberately breaking the borders of Creation around it to let in behemoths, raksha, and unshaped of all kinds. They did not evacuate or even warn the millions of people currently living there. They also did not bother to account for the massive strain this put on the Loom of Fate. This was a military exercise, designed to keep generals in trim in case another Primordial returned to Creation from the Wyld. It was also considered damn good fun by the participants. The decision to keep the civilians there was lauded as increasing the realism, and preparations were in place for a second run at it when the Usurpation came about.
One Solar used Craft: Genesis to turn an entire town into a living and geiger-esque work of art (it received fairly good reviews). Another used custom artifacts to mentally bind their city-state into complete mind-tearing subservience, and campaigned for similar efficiency-increasing measures to be taken throughout Creation (she had a fair degree of support). Another had her peers repeatedly murdered under suspicion of being akuma, in order to plunder their scientific discoveries (she was regarded as a laudable genius).
Another turned the living carcass of a Primordial into the foundations of their coast-city, and had hidden commands written into its brain. We don't know what they were, but they caused the Dragonblooded officer who discovered them to immediately request a transfer (it was a lovely holiday resort). An entire Circle of Solars tormented their newest member with mind-breaking Charms and constant inhuman bullying, before finally presenting him with the bloody eye of his father in a jeweled case, causing him to commit suicide (a Celestial Exalt, by definition chosen from the greatest, most unbreakable heroes in the world, was driven to suicide).
One Solar created a race of cannibalistic humans that were incredibly sensitive to light and heat, and then kept them in the South. This was to prevent them from ever leaving her shaded pleasure-dome (it was the equivalent of Alton Towers for Solars). The admiral in charge of the entire West passed the time by raping his Dragonblooded subordinates, and binding them into silence regarding his acts, lest he be demoted. When asked why he didn't just rape mortals (since few would care) or use Solar magic to make his victims love him, he asserted that the fun was in the resistance; mortals couldn't resist him, and those who loved him wouldn't.
Laws were passed preventing slavery. A loophole was added allowing the slavery of slave-races. The creation of sentient "artificial races" as anything more than curiosities begins here (there were more than eighty recorded artificial races in existence before the Usurpation). An idealistic Solar attached a minor rider on one of her proposals that, once passed, allowed her to rewrite a fair chunk of reality to the level of a Adamant Circle Spell. It got through, and she cast the Working before anyone could say otherwise (she was regarded as an up-and-coming role model).
Desus.
The high priest of the Solar Deliberative, a man called virtuous and just by all, used an Essence-draining system based on the dragonlines of Creation, that resulted in mass drought, famine and illness for the people of his fiefdom (he used this to water his lawn). An entire political movement existed on the principle that the Solars should utterly collapse Creation into the Wyld and then start again. Sure, the only survivors would be Celestial Exalts, some Terrestrials, and anyone fortunate enough to have contacts in Heaven, but they could remake the world in their image (this was one of the more prominent parties in the Deliberative)!
The only restriction on the morality and humanity of Solars during the First Age was the rule that they would be cut off from Deliberative resources if they chose to act against the majority. This rule was removed when put to a vote, allowing them to do whatever they chose (the decisive speaker in the vote was the high priest of the Deliberative, who used the Unconquered Sun's name in vain).
When the First Age was good, it was
very very good.
When the First Age was bad, It was
very very bad.
The only significant difference between the Time of Glories and the Time of Exalts was that humans were the top race, rather than Dragon Kings, and Solars were the top magical being, rather than Primordials. If there was an improvement there, it existed only because Solar madness came with age, rather than being built-in (though arrogance and entitlement often did the work a Limit Break couldn't), and Solar madness was generally rather more human (or at least, more predictable) than Primordial madness. That was it.
But ultimately, mortals don't care whether Adrian is sweating behemoths out of frustration at the Games of Divinity, or if a Solar has released behemoths in order to film a nature documentary - they're still being eaten.
