Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
I take it you're not familiar with your World of Darkness lore?
Hint: Do not take this whatever-it-is anywhere close to Ligier or Malfeas.
Ascensions and Transgressions: the Tales of Keris Dulmeadokht (Exalted game)
- Thread starter Aleph
- Start date
I take it you're not familiar with your World of Darkness lore?
Hint: Do not take this whatever-it-is anywhere close to Ligier or Malfeas.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
... no. I am not. What am I missing, and why is ES rating your post as Funny?
<paranoia>
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
Might be refferring to the Anthelios one of the apocalypse signs in WoD.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
... the Red Star.
I see.
I am going to assume that means that beneath the plug is a facility with lots of tubes of red liquid and a Russian dude in a green uniform. Presumably, he will be very happy to be let out.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
Well i might also be a reference to the aging process of suns, how they get bigger and turn red when they are reaching the end of their life, so it might be an anti-solar or anti UCS weapon.
... The first thing I thought of was "red mercury," but I've been playing too much Tom Clancy.
The 'Red Sun' was also referred in Glories to the Most High, were it's the theoretical excercise used by the Sidereals to train for handling the death of the Unconquered Sun. Because should that happen the Daystar is going to grow red and a lot more prominent in the sky as it approaches Creation in a bid to remind all Creation of why, exactly, they had an Unconquered Sun in the first place.
Yes. The secret about the Devil Tiger path is that it is for suckers.
Oh, it promises you the world. It promises you getting lots of shiny things uniquely shaped around your personality and style and blah blah blah.
Yeah, you know what? You are an Essence 6 Infernal. Unless you power-levelled Essence and bought no extra charms, you already have a style which you've made your own by mixing and remixing your personal blend of Yozi Charms. And if you RPed and bought Charms as appropriate for your own personality, then you have Charms based around your personality. Yozi Charms will have incentivised your actions and you will be somewhat twisted by them, but unless you've surrendered entirely to what your Charmset "wants" you to do you'll still be you. And if you did surrender to it... well, duh, no wonder you don't act like yourself any more. You gave into a demonic force which wanted you to do something in return for power, and didn't try to hold onto yourself. Of course you lose yourself.
And what do you get out of the Devil Tiger path? Oh, yay, you, an Essence 6 Infernal, get to start buying Charms again from E1. Yay. So you get to spend your XP on E1 and E2 Charms when your compatriots who didn't take the sucker's path are buying E6 Charms. Well-designed Devil Tiger Charms are still chaining you with precisely the same chains as Yozi Charms, and as you're an E6 Infernal you have long since internalised your own Yozi root charm chains. So you're buying into new limitations.
And what do you get out of that? Well, you're having to write a whole new Charmset, so that means that homebrew is in play. And - and this is the kicker - if homebrew is in play you could just have written new effects for the Yozis you actually use. Like a Malfeas Charm tree which actually respects that he's the devil tyrant and really should have had the Zenith Exaltations, not the Dawn ones.
...
Also, the thing I find hilarious is how if you just take a more sensible approach to design, not only do you not have the stupid-high Essence of Devil Tiger things with their poor designs, but you can get more balanced versions of Devil Tiger Charms at playable essence levels.
For example, a moment's thought should reveal that it's perfectly valid Charm tech for Infernals to be making First Circle demons at E3, if they have to do a dramatic action lasting four hours and can only do it once a day. Why? Because it's mechanically basically a reskinned Summon Elemental/Dot1C. Likewise, Infernals totally can spawn their own souls at E4, externalising them from their own mind on the night of the new moon, and these souls will be about as powerful as a Second Circle Demon and if they're hit by Sapphire Circle Banishment, they'll vanish back into the Infernal's mind. Why? Because the opportunity cost of using that effect is not using Dot2C. Now, of course, some might say it's unfair that the Infernal gets some friendly 2nd Circles around while the Solar has to bind them, but... well, you know, the Solar can get friendly 2nd Circles around too.
They just have to go make friends with them. You know, with their superlative social charms and effects which let them know people's heart's desires and the like. And then they, too, can have friendly 2nd Circles running around with them without having to bind them. The Solar doesn't have to bind the Second Circles, in fact, at all. They just usually do it because it's easier than treating the Second Circle like a person. Meanwhile, the Infernal has to negotiate with their own souls, and even though they'll usually be well-inclined to them by default, they're still demons based around one of their Principles. The demon who's a very cheerful wind who scourges people with hate or fear in their heart and who's an expression of the Infernal's "Be Free" isn't going to want to go and sit down and help run a city. Or to stop scourging people with hate and fear in their hearts.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Keris's reaction in particular - while sitting in her Heretical soul-world playing with two of her Pantheon souls, creating a type of First Circle deva crafted to tend to and care for children and metastasising a normal-play-Essence tree of Heretical Charms out from her po soul's thematics as an lurking unseen predator that hoards wealth in the mist and fog - would be to laugh hysterically at anyone who took that route.
Sasi just wouldn't see the point, especially when such things are likely to get you the attention of the All-Makers and the courts of Cecelyne, which is not a terribly safe position to be in even if they decide not to punish you for stepping above your station.
Or stop stealing things and pouncemurdering serfs and wrecking bits of scenery in her greater self's Devil Domain and goddammit Echo would it kill you to sit down and behave for five minutes?
¬_¬
Session 8
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Kerisgame! In which we spent a fair amount of the session having an in-character discussion about how different Infernals conceptualise and implement the development of Heretical charms, and I found it highly amusing that Sasi basically uses a Silurian/Devonian paradigm for her Sorcery despite her Past Life literally being Salina, whereas Keris uses a weird instinctive Salinian-Kimberian mashup that she's largely figured out on her own. Or if you like oMage terms better; Sasi is a very precise Hermetic who needs to account for every variable and plot out the structure of a spell in minute detail and Keris is a Verbana/CoXer who throws in "blood sacrifice" whenever a Sorcerous recipe seems like it could use some spicing up [1].
... and then Sasi probably violated some sort of human rights treaty by siccing a bored Keris (who is prone to finding or making her own entertainment) on a bunch of comparatively innocent mortal smugglers, who she found in the space of one morning and then committed arson and possibly murder against. Which apparently wasn't interesting enough to satisfy her, because then she went and did some public vandalism. Tch. Kids these days, honestly. Can you believe them? I blame the par-oh right, yes, never mind then.
[1] Keris: *smacks lips* "Hmm. Needs more souls of the guilty. Hang on, lemme go get a slaver."
... and then Sasi probably violated some sort of human rights treaty by siccing a bored Keris (who is prone to finding or making her own entertainment) on a bunch of comparatively innocent mortal smugglers, who she found in the space of one morning and then committed arson and possibly murder against. Which apparently wasn't interesting enough to satisfy her, because then she went and did some public vandalism. Tch. Kids these days, honestly. Can you believe them? I blame the par-oh right, yes, never mind then.
[1] Keris: *smacks lips* "Hmm. Needs more souls of the guilty. Hang on, lemme go get a slaver."
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Wait, wait, wait. Sasi has Salina as her Past Life? Has this been relevant yet? Because it's kind of important to the setting.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
How is it important to the setting?
Salina is dead, yo. Who has Sasi's Exaltation before her isn't important to the setting.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Nope. WoG only. Keris certainly doesn't know - heck, I'm not sure Sasi knows, for that matter. Keris hasn't really talked to her about Yamal Icewind or Arumoh, and probably won't until one or both bite her in the ass again and she has another hilarious Past Life flashback.
But yes, Kerisgame canon is that Sasimana's Past Life was Salina. She is, uh. Rather dismissive and critical of the woman, who she does not hold a particularly high opinion of. Keris, on the other hand, rather appreciates how helpful she was in letting anyone learn Sorcery by just listening to the currents of rivers and tasting the entrails of birds and so on.
Kinda hard not to be.
Salina was batshit crazy.
Which seems to be an opinion held by.....uh...every character I've seen who has "Has Salina's Exaltation" as part of their story.
Conceptually, I've always felt that Salina's Exaltation works best when it goes to an Infernal or an Abyssal. The Infernal use is clear - that makes them a Malefactor, and hence the LAAAAAAAW clashes with her memories. The Abyssal use is more... mmm, twisted. Because when an Abyssal has it, a Loyalist can interpret her beliefs with "the only way for true equality is the equality of Oblivion, where all things are equally non-existent". And then you have a crazy Midnight who plans to destroy this corrupt, unequal world and is spouting correct Salinian justifications for why the only moral thing to do in this corrupt, unfair world is to destroy it.
Compared to those two, it's kind of dull in the hands of a Solar.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Indeed.
Because in Sane Exalted doing something like the Salinian Working requires someone to organize all the meta-sorcerous muscle of the entire Solar Deliberative, rather than just using a single Essence 10 Lore Charm. Thus, she was a social monster, not a sorcerous prodigy.
It's also a statement about reasons for the Working- a Twilight may have attempted the Working to preserve knowledge, while Salina performed it as a deliberate blow against the Principle of Heirachy.
Remember, she wanted to outright remove restrictions on who could learn the various Circles of Sorcery.
Remember, she wanted to outright remove restrictions on who could learn the various Circles of Sorcery.
earthboy
(verified ape)
- Location
- NYC
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Salina: "My great Working is done! The hands of the proletariat are now clearly grasping the means of destruction!"
Kejak: "The book says they should grasp the means of production."
Salina: "Well ... uh... I'll just have to change the book!"
Kejak: "Not again."
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No single place, no. Uh... we use quite a few Infernal Charm hacks and homebrew, including Pantheon Heresy and the Fourth Soul rewrite, plus a heavily altered Reclamation with a very different Lilunu that style Infernals more as Sidereal foils than Solar ones. We use a chopped-up and condensed Attribute/Ability system, as well as replacing Martial Arts with the Style system and Intimacies/Motivations with Principles. We also have lesser magical materials and demythologised Artifacts and use Revlid's elementals. Uh... hmm. Oh, we also use the sublimati, a bit of oMage "paradigm" stuff has wormed its way in to describe different approaches to Charm-learning at a fluff level, and we cleave quite closely to the "hunter-seeker murder weapon" view of Exaltations, though ironically the actual gameplay is mostly fairly low-key.
And holy shit, this is link and reference city, so I'll just remember this post for if I ever need to find stuff. @EarthScorpion, anything you can think of that I've missed, off the top of your head?
Well, she actually had to be both, because she needed a theory of where to start from that she could lead the Deliberative into making functional. Just having the basic summary of it we get, which is all a non-sorceror could figure out, would not be enough to catch the interest if a skilled enough Twilight to get it working.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
She needed to be a sorceress, but not the sorceress, if you get my meaning.
Basically, she's the Richard Dawkins of the Exalted cosmos. Brilliant scientists, mainly skilled at communicating their expertise to laymen, huge chips on their shoulders, kind of an asshole.
Yes. Entirely so. Everything is Styles - there's no specific Charms for "being a really good martial artist" that isn't (Exalt) Melee trees. Your Solar practices Snake Style not because it gets him Charms, but because it gets him a fast-moving aggressive fighting style which works with two blades which he can use as stunt fodder. Removing Martial Arts Charms removes combinatorial explosion and prevents cross-splat balancing issues which 3E tries to crudely patch with the Celestial keyword. Instead, Exalts fight with their native Charms and then stunt them with their Styles.
The way a someone becomes more powerful by mastering a Style? Because they're getting at least 3 extra dice by doing so. That's a big deal when mortals are capped at 3 dots in an Ability. You don't fuck with a master, because he is simply a better fighter than you, all things remaining equal. And that applies to everyone, whether mortal, Terrestrial or Celestial.
The Style system makes everyone into a mandatory martial artist regardless of how they fight, if they want to fight at the high end. It actually emulates wuxia rather better in a lot of ways. Yes, it does mean that your "Eagle-Eats-Snake" technique is just a stunt you use when you're using Eagle Style and your opponent is using Snake Style, but if you use your opponent's style against them in your stunting, that's an instant 2 dot stunt.