I never got the whole "turning into cities" thing. An Essence 10 Exalt is usually a super-duper-ridiculous person that can casually destroy cities yet is also a character who can talk to people and walk around and everything. But an Alchemical by contrast is practically crippled when reaching high Essence. They can't move around and they have to spend most of their efforts on the whole "being a city" thing. It's especially a bad comparison when you're in a setting where a super city of the future doesn't need an Exalt at the center powering all of it. (If this earth lasts long enough.)I get the thematics they were going for, but on that note why not just allow other high Essence Exalts to turn themselves into cities too? It just makes Alchemicals seem deliberately weaker than everyone else that eventually all of them have to stop adventuring.
-Cities are not crippled. Or immobile.
The city of Loran in the Pole of Oil is explicitly capable of moving around at need:
CoCD Autocthonia pg 97 said:
FLUID AGITATION COMBINES
Two great, arching municipal Charms dominate the fourth and eighth cells of the Nautilus District, pressing against the roof of Loran's dome. These unique wonders were once Ancress's Fluidic Impeller Drive; in the centuries since the city's founding they have been massively expanded and retrofitted by the Prolific Scholars, and their maintenance and operation requires the constant labor of a force of 800 Populat.
After the Respiration Reclamation Systems of the city's second cell, the maintenance of the Fluidic Agita- tion Combines is considered most important to Loran's continued survival. When in operation, these miracles of industry stimulate the Essence flows of the oil around the city, allowing Loran to uproot herself and move through the Pole of Oil, later resettling in more resource-rich environments. Without the Fluidic Agitation Combines, the city could not steer during such migrations,and would be carried away at the whim of the Pole's.
Thing is, Autochtonia doesn't exactly have lots of spare space, and there's little need for mobility. Nor are you encouraged to go crawling around the guy's insides. If an Alchemical city was outside Autochtonia, it probably would have mobility charms installed.
-Thematics.Think of an Alchemical metropolis as basically a more limited Culture ship. Or an anime/scifi ship with an AI. It's basically designed to rely on and involve people in it's functions as a thematic point, instead of the self-contained nature of other Celestials.
It's tradeoff is that an Alchemical city is flatout immortal from natural causes.
All other Celestials die naturally after a couple thousand years, but there are Alchemical cities in Autochtonia who are old enough to remember the first century after Autobot brought humans to his body.
Plus, some charms have discounted installation costs at higher Essence.
For example, Prayer's Hydraulic Musculature Reinforcement charm becomes free to install at E5. And Subcutaneous/Exoskeletal Armor Plating stops costing motes to install at E6, and becomes even more effective armor.
-An E8+ Alchemical metropolis can use the charm Avatar-Launching Silo to deploy multiple E7 Colossus bodies in the field.
Each piloted by a fragment of the Alchemical's mind, each with it's own charms and motepool.
So a city can be it's own Assembly if it needs to be, while the city itself remains in one place and doing it's other business.
Remember that body that Om used to talk to Aisha? He could have deployed several of them, or the big, 15-30 feet versions.
They really are pretty horrifically dangerous. As befitting elder Exalts.
While we're on this subject, Saki's shard-charm caps out earlier than everyone else's at Essence 4 with Multi-Aperture Deployment. Which lets her deploy multiple portals, larger sized portals, and portals that allow her prison to directly throw stuff. Like guns. Or swords. Or copies of the Dragon armor she absorbed. Saki at E4 might be even more dangerous that the other assembly members, even before taking into account how she could possibly capture an Endbringer.
No it doesn't.
You're missing something. A couple somethings.
Submodules:
Eternal Interment Fail-Safes (Essence 3, Stamina 5)
A prison that does not ensure the wholeness of its prisoners will inevitably become a morgue. To counteract this potential waste, Prisoners in stasis are automatically healed of all wounds and ailments over the course of 25 hours, excluding Crippling effects, amputations, mutations, derangements, or any aggravated damage. Additionally, should a Prisoner or Visitor fall unconscious, be reduced to their first Incapacitated health level, or otherwise suffer an existential wound while within the sanctum, the Prison will reflexively place them in stasis, but will not move to imprison, heal, or compile a Prisoner Report on Visitors until the charm's user changes their classification from Visitor to Prisoner.
The charm's user may also mentally request to be placed in stasis while in the Prison; this does not strip them of their possessions or compile a Prisoner Report, but instead heals them over the course of 8 hours instead of 25, after which they are automatically ejected back to the surface. Should the charm's user fall unconscious or reach their first Incapacitated health level while inside the prison, they are automatically subjected to this accelerated treatment.
At Essence 4, one point of aggravated damage may be healed through this method per day. At Essence 5, one Crippling effect or amputation may instead be healed per day in lieu of all other healing. If the Alchemical makes use of these advanced healing abilities, they take the full 25 hours of treatment instead of the accelerated 8 hours.
Repurposed Armament Directives (Essence 3, Dexterity 5 OR Manipulation 5)
Prisons require armed guards, but as the saying goes: "build a better gremlin trap and they'll build a better gremlin." In order to keep its Destroyer-spirit guards equipped with the most up-to-date arms and armor, analytical protocols are brought online, fabrication matrices are updated with each new discovery, and swarms of microscopic machine spirits capable of reprogramming even the most loyal Artifact are awakened from their hibernation.
The charm's user may classify non-living objects as "Armaments" when transporting them into the sanctum, causing them to be immediately transported deep within the Prison's world-body where they are subjected to an Armament Report (a process mimicking Technomorphic Integration Machine's Endodiagnostic Analytical Routines). After reviewing the report (accessible just like a Prisoner Report), the user may tell the charm to repair the object - which restores it to optimal functioning condition and refills any ammunition reserves - or to co-opt it for use by either the user themselves or the charm-spirit itself and its attendants. This conversion process instantly and automatically resizes and recolors any equipment, and converts the loyalty and ownership of any Least Gods or Animating Intelligences (the user must immediately pay attunement costs, if such are needed to wield the new equipment).
At Essence 4, the user may also instruct the charm to make [Essence] copies a day of any mundane Armament currently held in stasis by the Prison, and recreate a copy of any Artifact held in stasis at a rate of 1 dot a day (an Artifact 1 would take one day, an Artifact 3 would take 3 days) up to a maximum Artifact level of [Essence-1]. These copied Armaments may only ever be fielded or attuned to by a member of the Prison-spirit hierarchy (the user, the Prison's attendant Destroyer spirits, etc.), as even copied mundane Armaments will fail spectacularly if wielded by anyone other than a member of the Transcendental Prison.
Finally, as long as the user possesses the Attributes to maintain this submodule, multiply their Strength by their Essence rating when calculating how much weight they can transport at a single time, and add [Essence] dice to the roll when attempting to transport unwilling targets (at Essence 5, this becomes [Essence] automatic successes).
Multi-Aperture Deployment (Essence 4, Wits 5)
With the Alchemical's essence capacitors performing at peak capacity, containment apertures can be deployed far more rapidly than before, as well as enabling multiple, simultaneous transportation fields. Transporting into the sanctum is now Instant, as is the check to pinpoint a new exit portal destination, enabling true point-to-point teleportation. The user may also have open [Essence] portals to the charm's sanctum at any time and may create portals up to [Willpower] yards away (line-of-sight required), though each is still one-way; multiple portals may be combined into a single, larger portal, linearly multiplying the portal's efficacy. In addition, contents of the Prison may be directly extruded from a portal, allowing for Armaments to be deployed directly from stasis onto the field or into the user's hands - armor, however, cannot be directly equipped in this fashion (unless it specifically allows for such deployment). At Essence 5, the difficulty of the exit-portal check is reduced by 1 point for each point of Intelligence the user possesses over 4.
A bunch of those submodules have enhanced effects at E5.This second bit is particularly important.
Saki is E3, Str 5, Athletics 1.
At Essence 3, she can currently teleport (Strength 5 * Essence 3) +1 = Feat of Strength 16 = 2500 Ibs
At Essence 5 with the same stats, she can teleport (Strength 5 * Essence 5)+1 = Feat of Strength 26 = 6 tons.
That's without other charms in play, or channeling WP, mind.
And then Vision of Vengeance went and ate everything in Taylor's elsewhere pocket one chapter later. It might be for the best, in the end - it'd suck outliving your own children by thousands of years. I guess you could cope by loving their children, and their children's children, and so on, but that sort of personal connection might not be a good thing for Champions of Autochthon, especially the for-the-greater-good caste...