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A Vision in Bronze; A Sidereal quest

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[X] "Who is the Lunar who was helping your Circle?"

The first step on the path to having a nemesis is knowing what name to scream while shaking your fist at the sky.
 
Ganurath said:
We've already got one: the Gold Faction Sidereal who taught the deceased Solar the Charms for Violet Bier of Sorrows Style.
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Five qiu says it's Ayesha Ura herself, given Grace's previous incarnation was her circlemate and she has made overtures towards her.

If it is indeed her I am sorely tempted to give the painting back now that we have killed her student but I'm not sure if that level of martial arts movie bitchiness/messyness fits Singular Grace

Anyway, the vote... I personally am tempted to go with the most immediately useful question simply because I don't want the situation to devolve into ''but aha, there was a second bomb in the city'', even if not having the information garnered by the other questions ends up biting us in the ass. Otoh I am extremely curious about the Lunar's identity... though I guess I could sweep Fangs and Strangers to try and logically puzzle it out from the lunars active in the Realm-influenced West... decisions decisions...

[X] "What is the Lunar going to do next?"
[X] "Who is the Lunar who was helping your Circle?"
 
[x] "What is the Lunar going to do next?"

I fear this might be me being blinkered, but I do feel like this is the most immediately pressing and important thing - if we can prevent the Lunar from enacting a contingency plan, or ambush or capture them, that's great, while for the other questions we can investigate them with less of a time crunch.

Gazetteer said:
Flotsam reels back and spits out a mouthful of blood, crazed burn marks fresh and livid on his cheek. "Golden Janissary? I'm not a demon, you idiot."
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I know of Golden Janissary but not a ton about it. I'm surprised it's useful against Flotsam at all? Isn't it for Creatures of Darkness?

Ganurath said:
We've already got one: the Gold Faction Sidereal who taught the deceased Solar the Charms for Violet Bier of Sorrows Style.
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HBInquirer said:
Five qiu says it's Ayesha Ura herself, given Grace's previous incarnation was her circlemate and she has made overtures towards her.
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Flotsam called his sifu "he". Of Sidereals we actually know (in quest(s)), the most plausible candidate seems to me to be that Iselsi ancestor we met in one of Maia's last scenes. Of course, it could be someone we readers haven't met yet at all.

Also, I kind of expect that relationship to be less "nemesis" and more "jackass coworker whose pet projects keep making trouble for you".
 
kamikasei said:
I know of Golden Janissary but not a ton about it. I'm surprised it's useful against Flotsam at all? Isn't it for Creatures of Darkness?
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Golden Janissary is a martial art that specialises in fighting creatures of darkness, but it can still be used to hurt other enemies. Like, obviously their punches and kicks still work, but things like the golden holy fire that GJ techniques generate will still burn a human or another non-CoD, just not nearly as much as they would a ghost or a demon or an Abyssal Exalt etc.

The specific technique he was reacting to was Cleansing Flame Strike. I am not 100% married to the mechanics of Exalted third edition, but I do draw on them quite a bit for inspiration and description. So, this is what I was working with:

Article:
Cleansing Flame Strike
Cost: 3m; Mins: Martial Arts 3, Essence 1
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Decisive-only
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Rotten Leaf Arrested, Where-Is-Doom Inquisition

Answer the abomination with flame. Aureate fire streaks along the stylist's decisive attack, adding one die of damage and ignoring two points of Hardness. Against creatures of darkness, she deals aggravated damage and doubles 10s on the damage roll.
Source: What Fire Has Wrought pg. 300-301


So, it's still a damager adder that ignores hardness even if you're using it to hit a normal guy (or a Solar). Is it worth 3 motes, mechanically, if you're not getting the double 10s? Probably not in most cases, but it's also really cool, and Lew was tossing on Lesser Sign of Saturn here as well, so I wasn't overly concerned. I wanted to communicate what his main fighting style was while I was introducing him.
 
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kamikasei said:
I know of Golden Janissary but not a ton about it. I'm surprised it's useful against Flotsam at all? Isn't it for Creatures of Darkness?
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It's probably better thought of as a generally good spear/staff style that gets bonuses against Creatures of Darkness. You're correct that it gets bonuses against Creatures of Darkness, but the base stuff is also quite good, which is... actually basically what this update featured. A Solar thinking that it wasn't good enough because said Solar target isn't a Creature of Darkness and then discovering the style's pretty good anyway.

For a specific example that doesn't need much game knowledge: the basic offensive Charm of Golden Janissary is Rotten Leaf Arrested, which gives an attack +1 Overwhelming (a useful stat to have, especially against tough foes) that knocks the target flat on their back. If it's an unusually good attack, they are unable to move around (but can attack) for a turn. If the target is a Creature of Darkness, the Overwhelming can be +1 to +3 instead of just +1 (probably be on the high end, and with another small benefit that would take lots of words to explain) and means the target can't move or attack.
 
Gazetteer said:
So, it's still a damager adder that ignores hardness even if you're using it to hit a normal guy (or a Solar). Is it worth 3 motes, mechanically, if you're not getting the double 10s? Probably not in most cases, but it's also really cool, and Lew was tossing on Lesser Sign of Saturn here as well, so I wasn't overly concerned. I wanted to communicate what his main fighting style was while I was introducing him.
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He wasn't just doing it to be extra insulting? Damn.
 
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Year 1, Arc 1, vote 04 New
  • Voting
    • Scheduled vote count started by Gazetteer on Dec 19, 2024 at 8:24 PM, finished with 47 posts and 38 votes.
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    • Gazetteer said:
    So, it's still a damager adder that ignores hardness even if you're using it to hit a normal guy (or a Solar). Is it worth 3 motes, mechanically, if you're not getting the double 10s? Probably not in most cases, but it's also really cool, and Lew was tossing on Lesser Sign of Saturn here as well, so I wasn't overly concerned. I wanted to communicate what his main fighting style was while I was introducing him.
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    I take it as a mix of Lew using every trick he has against a solar much to close to achieving his objective, on top of being an incorrigible show off. Endearing and Annoying indeed.

    It is nice to know what we will be working with later.
     
    Neat. Golden Janissary has always seemed cool to me but tragically underpowered for its fluff (which is the default state of Terrestrial styles in 2e, as I understand it). So I wasn't sure whether it was just more useful now (or just than I thought), or whether maybe Lew had a way of manipulating who counted as a CoD for its purposes (I know that's a thing that could happen sometimes, although it might have been only the Sun himself who could edit the official Enemies List).

    I was also vaguely thinking of GJ strikes as more like paladin smites where depending on game/edition they literally don't work against inappropriate targets.
     
    The Terrestrial/Celestial martial art division doesn't exist within a 3e context, which is what I'm drawing on here for martial arts. Terrestrial level Exalts usually access somewhat weaker versions of the martial arts charms from Celestial level characters, though. The mechanical implementation is currently that there are the base charm effects, and certain character types either use them as is, or apply either Terrestrial or Mastery effects that make them weaker or stronger. There are other considerations as well, but that's basically what you need to know.

    So for our purposes, Golden Janissary is not like, a Terrestrial MA and therefore inherently worse than Violet Bier, it's just a much more niche MA. It's the same style that Ledaal Anay Idelle, a Dragon-Blood, used in the previous quest, but Lew can some things with it that Idelle can't.
     
    Man, I feel really bad about the solars here. Would it really be too bad to let them strike back against the Peleps? Sure a city would be lost, but the Realm has no dearth of hapless citizens.
    And after all the dead citizens would be free from the Dynasty's oppression, so I feel the drowning of the city would a net improvement in the status of the oppressed, given that the Dynasty cant really torment the dead unless they invest into mass necromancy.
     
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    Solar Saiyan said:
    Man, I feel really bad about the solars here. Would it really be too bad to let them strike back against the Peleps? Sure a city would be lost, but the Realm has no dearth of hapless citizens.
    And after all the dead citizens would be free from the Dynasty's oppression, so I feel the drowning of the city would a net improvement in the status of the oppressed, given that the Dynasty cant really torment the dead unless they invest into mass necromancy.
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    Well, it would certainly be incredibly convenient for a person who was planning to kill hundreds of thousands of relatively innocent mortals in order to hurt the Realm, if it were really true that all those people were better off dead than alive. I'm not sure very many of the mortals would agree to that deal themselves, but the Solars were not exactly asking for their input.
     
    Gazetteer said:
    Well, it would certainly be incredibly convenient for a person who was planning to kill hundreds of thousands of relatively innocent mortals in order to hurt the Realm, if it were really true that all those people were better off dead than alive. I'm not sure very many of the mortals would agree to that deal themselves, but the Solars were not exactly asking for their input.
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    I don't know. It kinda feels like Flotsam would be pretty ticked off at the thought of all those life long collaborators getting off lightly. :V
     
    Solar Saiyan said:
    Man, I feel really bad about the solars here. Would it really be too bad to let them strike back against the Peleps? Sure a city would be lost, but the Realm has no dearth of hapless citizens.
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    If I remember Creation's metaphysics correctly, killing the population of a city all at once is liable to create a shadowland.

    Even cute necromancer gals who want to visit the netherworld agree that creating shadowlands is bad.
     
    grommile said:
    If I remember Creation's metaphysics correctly, killing the population of a city all at once is liable to create a shadowland.

    Even cute necromancer gals who want to visit the netherworld agree that creating shadowlands is bad.
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    Bad yes, but a fascinating and academically stimulating conversation piece none the less.
    Gazetteer said:
    "That lecture was fascinating, wasn't it?" she asks. She doesn't actually wait for you to answer before going on: "I didn't realise that there were so many different circumstances that could make a shadowland!"

    "Isn't it mostly just the same circumstance?" you ask. Namely, a great number of people dying in the same spot, most likely in pain and fear.

    "Well, yes," Amiti allows, "but, it's like instructor Sai was saying! It's not always about sheer quantity. There are so many more things that factor into it than just the number of deaths! And you can manipulate those things to make sure that it happens!"

    "Do you mean 'to make sure it doesn't happen?" you ask, casting her a deeply dubious look.

    Amiti blinks, caught up short by the question. "Well... well, aren't those the same thing?" she asks. "If you know how to do one, you can figure out how to do the other. And it's so interesting just academically, specifics aside! It's taking a piece of Creation and forcing it to merge with the Underworld!"
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    And I have to agree, that several hundred thousand mortals falling into an artificial maelstrom to be drowned or crush by smashed together debris, is very liable to create a shadowland, one of particular size and liable to impact nearby shipping lanes, islands, and coastal towns.
     
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