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Ascensions and Transgressions: the Tales of Keris Dulmeadokht (Exalted game)

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Peanuckle said:
Neat. It looks like a cross between an Agata and a Firmin.
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Glittering Spearhornet
(Agata heart, farisy, firequill, firmin, szamszerj)
A huge jewelled hornet with a porcupine-like back of burning quills it can fire at people, a huge spear-stinger and dart-quarrels it can spit that can leave living barbs in people that worm tendrils into their brains and turn them into puppets. Her quills grow from flammable ichor, and ignite when they are fired.
 
Aleph said:
And in other Kerisgame-related news, we're introducing a new hack! This one is a fluff hack revolving around akuma - we're repurposing the word to mean metaphysically inhuman things, which are usually but not always the children of Second Circle demons and up. The Four Winds are among the most powerful akuma in Hell. The children of Third and Second Circles are less powerful, but still akuma. That means that as a term, "akuma" means "being native to a Primordial Mythos" or something that's been artificially made such to the point that they no longer have a human soul structure. They are permanently Outside of Fate and Inside (Primordial) Mythos, and a normal being turned into an akuma metaphysically dies for the PoV of things like Exaltations.

That in turn means that means that DB akuma are fucking scary because they're playing in that sort of ballpark - and are also each metaphysically unique. It's not dissimilar, in their case, to oWoD Void Adaptation - they're no longer human, and have been turned into a spirit thing with powers themed around their old abilities (so they can still pretend to be a Dragonblooded or whatever), but which will have potent and dangerous new Panoply abilities as an upgrade.

The reason I mention this is because after a certain point, Infernals start having akuma children. Aiko, the little girl growing inside Sasi? Both her parents are quite powerful Infernals, and her mother has a Mythos Charm and her own soul-world. She's a little devil child; dark-skinned - not dark like a human, but dark like the night - and she can wear many faces. The fires of Malfeas burn in her bright green eyes and drip from her fingers when she wills it. When she dons her dragon form, brassy feathers are revealed, maned over her dark flesh - and in that form she breathes fire.
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Very interesting, though I'd be somewhat hesitant about using this: it sounds like the end result would be similar to the issue that Infernals had with spawning a soul hierarchy or the issue with Half Castes with Exalted charms.
 
C.o.S.a.R said:
Very interesting, though I'd be somewhat hesitant about using this: it sounds like the end result would be similar to the issue that Infernals had with spawning a soul hierarchy or the issue with Half Castes with Exalted charms.
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The trick is that "akuma" is a metaphysical term, not a power level term. You can have an Enlightenment 0 akuma that's very hard to tell apart from a mortal. It's just Outside of Fate and metaphysically not human, so doesn't have human souls and can't Exalt. The akuma-children of Second Circles are... uh, about as powerful as First Circles. So are the children of Third Circles whose parents didn't put much effort into them (obviously, if the mother is the Third Circle they'll be more powerful if the parent just does the minimum work, because the demon's put a year into gestating them as opposed to... like, five minutes).

Powerful akuma require about as much effort to be put into them as it would take for an Abyssal to make an equally powerful necrotech construct, or for a Solar to forge an equally powerful sorcerous seige-breaker construct made from the spirit of a volcano bound to an golden skeleton. The fact that the Infernal mother is constructing it within herself while the Solar needs a workshop to cast the golden bones is an advantage, but they're both going to need "exotic ingredients" (which in the case of the Infernal, might take the form of 'studying the Four Winds and seeing how their essence flows work' or 'the child's father is also an Infernal).

...

Essentially, it is fully our intent that Infernal demon-making, Abyssal undead-making and Solar minon-making be roughly comparable. A Solar's steam-powered brass men fuelled by fire essence tokens should be roughly equivalent to an Abyssal's Resident Evil-esque zombie horrors should be roughly equivalent to an Infernal's 1CDs, and they should all be makable at the same level as you'd get Emerald Circle magic because they're roughly balanced against summoning demons and spawning elementals. The Solar's brass men should probably be a more powerful because they have to be fed fuel from a Fire Aspected Manse and the undead horrors are faster to make, but rot so have a limited lifespan, but they're all in a similar ballpark.
 
Aleph said:
Glittering Spearhornet
(Agata heart, farisy, firequill, firmin, szamszerj)
A huge jewelled hornet with a porcupine-like back of burning quills it can fire at people, a huge spear-stinger and dart-quarrels it can spit that can leave living barbs in people that worm tendrils into their brains and turn them into puppets. Her quills grow from flammable ichor, and ignite when they are fired.
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Well that's just horrifying.

Considering that it's born rather than built, would it be more appropriate to call it a behemoth rather than an "independent sapient hellstrider?" Or is it that Keris needs to consume/copulate with the required first-circles to birth one?

I'm also curious about your custom serfs. As I understand it, demons are demons because of the mutilation of the Yozis, and this carries through their mythos. So shouldn't the serfs that Keris' souls create also be demons, since she doesn't have her own unmutilated mythos (yet)?
 
EarthScorpion said:
Essentially, it is fully our intent that Infernal demon-making, Abyssal undead-making and Solar minon-making be roughly comparable. A Solar's steam-powered brass men fuelled by fire essence tokens should be roughly equivalent to an Abyssal's Resident Evil-esque zombie horrors should be roughly equivalent to an Infernal's 1CDs, and they should all be makable at the same level as you'd get Emerald Circle magic because they're roughly balanced against summoning demons and spawning elementals. The Solar's brass men should probably be a more powerful because they have to be fed fuel from a Fire Aspected Manse and the undead horrors are faster to make, but rot so have a limited lifespan, but they're all in a similar ballpark.
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Is this mandatory for infernals, or could they have human children with human souls (capable of exalting) if they really wanted to?
 
Datakim said:
Is this mandatory for infernals, or could they have human children with human souls (capable of exalting) if they really wanted to?
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By intent? No. Beyond a certain point, your children will never be human. You are drunk on primordial glory. You have left humanity behind. Your progeny are part of your legend. If you don't want to leave humanity behind, don't grow in power that much.

The normal children of Celestials are "god-blooded" - Golden Children aren't technically the god-blooded of the Sun, but they're god-blooded of Solar Essence and thus are very hard to tell apart from the Sun's children. The only exception there is Infernals, who before they start having akuma have demon-bloods of their coadjutor species instead.

Notably under these rules, all non-Dragonblooded Exalts count as being 100% pure human for the purposes of DB Exaltation of their children. A Dragonblooded having a child with a Celestial has a lower child Exaltation rate than they'd have if they did it with a generic Creation mortal, who on average has some Dragonblood. We intend to kill the "I'm a Celestial, but I was a Dynast and thus my children can be DBs" stone dead. If you are a Celestial and breed with Dragonblooded in the hope that you'll have DB children, you're selfishly weakening the DB breeding lines and polluting their bloodlines in your hubris.
 
Man, if only kids in the real world could grow up to be beautiful alien-wasp-helicopter-gunships. Career day would be forever changed in an amazing way.
 
Peanuckle said:
Well that's just horrifying.

Considering that it's born rather than built, would it be more appropriate to call it a behemoth rather than an "independent sapient hellstrider?" Or is it that Keris needs to consume/copulate with the required first-circles to birth one?
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Mechanically she's a hellstrider, and Keris will probably drink five doses of chalcanth to get the exotic ingredients to make her simply because it's easier that way. In-setting, she's a decidedly inhuman akuma-child who's probably about the level of a sublimatus - that is to say, "better than a First Circle but not on par with a Second Circle focused in the same area".

And she's a she! She has a little humanoid avatar-torso in her head (the bone and cartilage plates slide aside) which looks like the upper body of a teenage girl, so that Keris can give her proper hugs and she can talk to people and read books when she's in the hangar for maintenance.

It is possible that it will have twintails, because she is very tsundere.
Peanuckle said:
I'm also curious about your custom serfs. As I understand it, demons are demons because of the mutilation of the Yozis, and this carries through their mythos. So shouldn't the serfs that Keris' souls create also be demons, since she doesn't have her own unmutilated mythos (yet)?
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Nope. Demons are demons because the Yozis were forced to swear the Surrender Oaths and bind their lesser souls and created races to the whims and service of the Exalted. Keris has sworn no oaths and been subject to no bindings. She's given Sasi permission to summon her children, but she can rescind it if she wants to. Sorcery by others cannot bind or summon her First Circles.

They can be Banished, but that's because Keris is running on a hybrid-Yozi Mythos that's Beyond Fate and thus Banishment boots her devas out of Creation and back into her Devil Domain.
NonSequtur said:
Man, if only kids in the real world could grow up to be beautiful alien-wasp-helicopter-gunships. Career day would be forever changed in an amazing way.
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Alien wasp-mantis-porcupine helicopter gunships. With chin guns. And incendiary missiles.

... and possibly the ability to spawn little 1CD alt-agatae babies who are about the size of a large dog and are basically Rapture Security Bots to her Jigibachi gunship.
 
Aleph said:
And she's a she! She has a little humanoid avatar-torso in her head (the bone and cartilage plates slide aside) which looks like the upper body of a teenage girl, so that Keris can give her proper hugs and she can talk to people and read books when she's in the hangar for maintenance.
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My little Hellstrider can't possibly be this cute!

So this is looking like a pretty extensive reworking of Exalted. Is there a document where you explain the changes?
 
I love the anima changeup and agree with the rationale behind it. Makes much more sense for the giant flaring soul-banner to indicate an exalt in fight-mode, rather than one on his last legs.

Titanic Heart Overweening... it's very cool, but I'd be concerned about the devas dying when you lose the intimacy. Especially with charms like FLG, it'd be trivial to accidentally murder your own souls. Having intimacies destroyed/altered by outside forces is also a possibility. Perhaps the fact that the intimacy exists as its own soul could provide it some kind of protection?
 
Peanuckle said:
I love the anima changeup and agree with the rationale behind it. Makes much more sense for the giant flaring soul-banner to indicate an exalt in fight-mode, rather than one on his last legs.

Titanic Heart Overweening... it's very cool, but I'd be concerned about the devas dying when you lose the intimacy. Especially with charms like FLG, it'd be trivial to accidentally murder your own souls. Having intimacies destroyed/altered by outside forces is also a possibility. Perhaps the fact that the intimacy exists as its own soul could provide it some kind of protection?
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Nope! That's exactly what happens!

Don't FLG the defining principles of your own souls if you care about them. Adorjan does, and that's because Adorjan is fucking insane by Primordial standards who will create a Third Circle because she LOVES THIS GUY SO MUCH and then murder it a few days later when she moves on and forgets. If you're a Primordial and you discard your feelings like that, you murder the demons who embody it.

"I didn't mean to FLG them!" is precisely equivalent to "I didn't mean to hit that mortal in the head with a grandgoremaul". You might not have meant it, but they're dead either way. :p
 
EarthScorpion said:
Nope! That's exactly what happens!

Don't FLG the defining principles of your own souls if you care about them. Adorjan does, and that's because Adorjan is fucking insane by Primordial standards who will create a Third Circle because she LOVES THIS GUY SO MUCH and then murder it a few days later when she moves on and forgets. If you're a Primordial and you discard your feelings like that, you murder the demons who embody it.

"I didn't mean to FLG them!" is precisely equivalent to "I didn't mean to hit that mortal in the head with a grandgoremaul". You might not have meant it, but they're dead either way. :p
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That works for FLG, but what about opponents affecting you? It doesn't make sense to me that you can kill (or drastically alter) a Second-Circle by charming (literally) the Infernal.

Say for instance the Infernal sleeps with someone he doesn't know is a Sidereal, then said Siddy uses magic to wipe the Infernal's intimacies. That Siddy just slaughtered multiple 2CDs.

It just feels too vulnerable, is what I'm saying. Intimacies can change really easily.
 
Peanuckle said:
That works for FLG, but what about opponents affecting you? It doesn't make sense to me that you can kill (or drastically alter) a Second-Circle by charming (literally) the Infernal.

Say for instance the Infernal sleeps with someone he doesn't know is a Sidereal, then said Siddy uses magic to wipe the Infernal's intimacies. That Siddy just slaughtered multiple 2CDs.

It just feels too vulnerable, is what I'm saying. Intimacies can change really easily.
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Firstly, we use the Principle hack, which makes it a lot harder to mess with Principles than Intimacies. And secondly, the Siddy's magic has to contend with the Infernal going "hee hee hee, you're so funny" to parry their attempt and then repeatedly stabbing them in the kidney, because if you have any sense at all you'll have something that lets you detect and block hostile mental influence - and in fact that's part of the core for-free powerset in some of the variant future hacks that Jon and ES have been tossing around.
 
Aleph said:
Firstly, we use the Principle hack, which makes it a lot harder to mess with Principles than Intimacies. And secondly, the Siddy's magic has to contend with the Infernal going "hee hee hee, you're so funny" to parry their attempt and then repeatedly stabbing them in the kidney, because if you have any sense at all you'll have something that lets you detect and block hostile mental influence - and in fact that's part of the core for-free powerset in some of the variant future hacks that Jon and ES have been tossing around.
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Just went through and looked at the Principles thing. Seems the 2CDs are fairly safe unless you want them gone. Still risky to be one, though I suppose it's no more dangerous than being an Anathema.
 
Peanuckle said:
Considering that it's born rather than built, would it be more appropriate to call it a behemoth rather than an "independent sapient hellstrider?"
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Essentially, since "behemoth" is basically just a grab-bag term, "akuma" essentially assimilates all the things which would have previously been called behemoths which have a Yozi origin. So the Four Winds are now akuma, old-style akuma are akuma, the non-demon monsters in Malfeas which get mentioned occasionally are akuma. In terms of power, akuma go all the way from The Things Which Live In Corners, which are chittering Enlightenment 0-1 things that basically exist to make scenes more creepy and do minor jump scares on mortals, up to the Four Winds who are pretty potent (but non-sapient) Enlightenment 6-7 behemoths who reflect Adorjan's glory and things like Dukthanka, who is a bloody high priest of the Lintha, their false saviour who exists to scourge them.

And then there's the spike of power up to ex-Celestial things. Like Gorol. Who was the Infernal Monster. The Style that exists emulates his horrifying glory. He was a behemoth of "powerful Exalt" levels, made with the self-sacrifice of a Solar which killed him and let his Exaltation flit on and left a Yozi-slave monster-god in its wake. No Exalt Charms for these ex-Exalt akuma, no - just custom things balanced around their new nature which, yes, may resemble Exalt charms and may use the same mechanics, but only for ease of GM generation.

Gorol. Such a fool.

(To put it another way, akuma means "behemoth made by Primordial/Yozi stuff")
 
Noctum said:
This is intriguing. Tell meus more
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Essentially, stuff purchased with experience points should be cool, not required. Mandatory purchases to survive and perform basic functions should be folded into basic capabilities and given away for free. This is the default set of Solar(/Exalt in general) powers. Or to put it another way, there are certain things that you cannot (in the fluff) fight the Primordial War without or (in the mechanics) reliably survive without. Therefore, these things are given for free as part of the standard Exalt package.

The current list is:
  • Boring standard dice adding/magical competency function.
    • Solar Essence Overwhelming
      • Essence Triumphant
      • Essence Resurgent
  • Boring standard toughness and health enhancement functions.
    • Ox Body Technique
  • Reconstruction and recovery function.
    • Body Mending Meditation
  • Defense against mental intrusion functions.
    • Righteous Lion Defense
  • Defense against magical transmutation function.
    • Integrity Protecting Prana
  • Essence perception and immaterial interaction function.
    • Temple-Self Enlightenment
  • Ability to hurt and permanently kill spiritual entities.
    • Ghost Eating Technique
Or in other words, basic boring Excellency stuff, basic "I'm tough enough not to get instagibbed and to heal up after a fight" stuff, basic "you can't no-sell me via Shaping or Mind Control" stuff and basic "I can see and kill spirit things that try to kill me" stuff. Note that this doesn't include a paranoia combo - it's not what makes you invincible, merely what makes you able to survive at all and prevents you from just being instantly mind-crushed into talking to a tree while someone lines up an alpha strike on the back of your head or splattered across the floor by the first hit or turned into a duck with no roll to resist, etc.

There's also some fluff stuff that stems from this, since you cannot change an Exalt's mind through force (or at all, if they're really stubborn about it and keep paying motes every time you even open your mouth), which... really explains quite a lot about the High First Age, to be honest. It's also part of why they scare gods - all Exalted, without exception, can kill them permanently. Sidereals are divine boogiemen.
 
Aleph said:
Sidereals are divine boogiemen.
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Sidereals are terrifying if you do them right and have the right houserules. My Endings is basically unkillable. VBoS and Air Dragon Master, Sid Bureaucracy, Earth and Sky Bargain, Sid Resistance. With all his Charms up, he's got 28L/28B/15A soak, regens an HL per turn, and under VBoS has crazy overwhelming, and under Air Dragon has crazy DDV. I love it.
 
Personally, I like to ditch Charms along the lines of Spirit-Detecting Glance and just allow all Essence-wielding characters to see spirits. If you're a monk sat up on a mountain and you achieve enlightenment, you can now bear witness to the god of your temple even when he doesn't anchor himself to the material plane. If you're a ghost-blood, you might well grow up being able to see dead people. On the day you Exalt as a Dragon-blood, your aunt's cadre of bound demons are suddenly and terrifyingly laid bare.

Not sure if that should outright extend to "Essence-wielders can interact with immaterial things", but it has a certain Bleach-y resonance to it, and it supports Abdul Alhazred being torn apart by immaterial demons in the middle of the street, and it means you can't lol your way through a manse's defences by having your immaterial spirits walk through its walls - magical structures are presumably just as solid.
 
So Aleph the above package applies even to Infernals?
Wow such a bad idea in tye making.

Lets make Exalted who jave taken in Titanic essence yet arent Akuma but still have the ability to kill Spirits.


Classic Step 3: ???? but who cares if we get to step 4s profit.


Speaking of hacks have you gone through the Lightbringers system hack?
 
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