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[Exalted, ?] Most High

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Orm Embar said:
Hm, with the victory of Fury and the prelude drawing to a close, I suppose I was viewing the decision point through the lens of what would be most beneficial in the Age of Sorrows, having temporarily turned my mind to considerations other than Odyssial's glory. It's certainly not set in stone; something like this deserves careful consideration.
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Hm, the Best Friend is the personally weakest of the three options, being more or less uninterested in power for power's sake alone. She's still really strong, of course, but I don't think she would be Lealope the Invincible. With complication, after all, comes power.
 
Orm Embar said:
Hm, with the victory of Fury and the prelude drawing to a close, I suppose I was viewing the decision point through the lens of what would be most beneficial in the Age of Sorrows, having temporarily turned my mind to considerations other than Odyssial's glory.
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In other words, you were wearing your shipping goggles?

[X] The Obliterator
[X] Mortal Foe

What can I say, I'm a sucker determinators and people of mass destruction. Also, sweet yandere goodness.
 
[x] The Field Commander
[X] Masked Queen

A queen for the dawn king general to keep him sharp as he fights with his army.

I wonder if Odyssial taking a long trip through the Wyld came upon a sorely wounded Primordial, would he take the chance to twist its souls to his aims or would he just kill it? Of course maybe that explains Rametheus in past versions of the Odyssey.
 
It's amazing how that works out, isn't it.

The first ray of sunlight that dawns on this world, the very first, sees the immediate death of a Second Circle Daeva. It shines upon a hero who is already convinced and driven to fight the Titans.

The Unconquered Sun probably couldn't have asked for a more fitting and appropriate thematic, eh. Some already fully willing to commit to a Titanomachy.

-- And for Odyssial himself, too -- grace. Grace where none was expected nor hoped for. What... what kind of world is that, where something like that just happens to you? You're surviving in a fucking death world and yet out of nowhere somebody decides to grant you a miracle. Who would, who could, dare do something like that in such an unfair world...

Yes, I imagine that Sol Invictus probably saw here the origin of a very devoted man; as well-fitting the man was to the oncoming war, so was the deity fitting for the man. How grateful would you be, to be in your final moment, to be railing the harshness of the world, only to hear somebody agree with you...
Rihaku said:
Yes, really. He never gives up, ever.

Well, one doesn't Exalt by taking half-measures! Not in the Age of Glory.
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Yeah, but, it's just... how the hell can he survive for hours, given how the early parts of the fight went? Especially as the Daeva probably got serious at some point?

Willpower is nice and all, but that was still a fuckmothering Second Circle Daeva...
Even a general can be alone. When there is truly no one above you, that is its own form of loneliness. That said, it's definitely more prosocial (for a given value of social) than the Obliterator, though that is not necessarily always the case. It depends a lot on what interpretation you guys want to argue. Merely commanding others does not always bring one closer to them. Often, it can only widen the distance.
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Yes, that was my thought. Even a general can be alone.
That said, it's definitely more prosocial (for a given value of social)
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Again, heh, yeah. That was also my thought: "Eh, neither of these look terribly social... but this one looks like it might be easiest to interpret or be guided into being more social, potentially!"

You can wind up being an Iskander, or an Arturia. Let's try to have the best of both worlds, though, of course.
 
[x] The Field Commander
[x] Mortal Foe

I can see Leolope stealing Moon away from Ody and having her for herself. Mandatory Genre Change: Romantic Comedy!
 
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What is the attraction of a psychotic yandere with millennia more knowledge and training, personal experience with the best you can personally achieve, and a desire to overturn and destroy all of your accomplishments? I honestly don't understand the appeal, especially when you've already denied the ultimate determinator path for Odyssial.

Moon is fun for what she is, but shipping is in no way worth such a horribly self-defeating decision. Not that shipping is ever worth anything.

It's almost as if the voters have forgotten that Odyssial's (and thus Ulyssian's) ambition is to make things better.

As sub-optimal and personally unappealing as Best Friend is (I'm tired of the nice options always winning in these quests lately; leave Odyssial/Ulyssian with at least some determinator edge if you please), at the very least it doesn't establish a vastly more powerful and experienced end boss with personal reason to interfere as soon as she learns of our existence.
 
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[X] The Obliterator
Odyssial has a bit of a reputation among the other Exalted, he knows. They call him Foebreaker, and Godslayer, and Daevakiller, and The Walking Titanomachy. They know he is death to their foes, and that if he chose to stand against them, they would be inevitably doomed. And that is all they know, for he walks alone. When Odyssial wages war, entire Primordials are slain with apparent ease. His peers see this, and stand in awe of his unsurpassed glory. They do not see the truth.
The see the warrior. They do not see that he spends hours every night poring over sorcerous communiqués regarding even the least dangerous of daevas, from Third to First Circle, and spends hours memorizing their strengths and weaknesses, that he might clean the world of their stain ever more quickly. They do not know that he eats only when he must, to maintain his body- for his body, too is but another weapon, meant only to slay the God-Beings who claim false dominion over a world that should have never been theirs. They do not know that he does not sleep for fear of what he sees at night, Nio's face asking why he failed to save her. Why he left them to die. The way she tells him that for her sake, he must shed the blood of the Titans, and forge a new world of humanity for her, in fire and blood. They do not see him jerk awake, covered in sweat, and exhausted in a fashion no enemy has been abl to match. They know not what he dreams.
Instead, they see an invincible paragon of mankind. When the Harbinger of a Thousand Storms found the secret fortress of the Paradoxical Forge, the creators of weapons meant to slay the very concepts of the Primordials, and unleashed upon them tempestii beyond camping, they only see that Odyssial took the field against them alone, hiding all from sight with a sorcerous fog impenetrable to all the senses of even the greatest Twilights within. They find later the corpses of every storm-spirit, a thousand blades piercing the forms of each one, and the Harbinger itself impaled on a spear made of its fallen children, and marvel at his strength. They do not know that to accomplish this feat, he gave up the last memories of his mother-her smile, and the sound of her voice, and the way she held him as she rocked him to sleep when he was naught but a babe. When the King Who Crawls poisoned half a world with his very presence, all know that Odyssial sought him out within the depths of the Earth and dragged him into the light, before sacrificing him to the Unconquered Sun before the horrified eyes of a thousand thousand lesser daeva, who followed the Mad Lord into the Abyss. None of them know how Odyssial struggled with him for five days and five nights, and was victorious only because he told the King every story he had ever known, and gave them up to slew the immortal's perfect regeneration even slightly, before ending his life with a blade made of the shattered dreams of his brother.
None of them know that Odyssial hates war, and hates the Titans even more for forcing this war upon mankind. They know only that he is the greatest warrior of their age, and laud his achievements with a billion voices in a million tongues. They do not know the price he paid to rise to such heights, and he knows that they never will.
[X] Best Friend
Odyssial's first meeting with Lealope is distinctly underwhelming. He hunts yet another Daeva, as he seems to do so very often, and finds that it has already been engaged in combat by what appears to be a young Lunar, and that she is losing. Badly. So, being the gentleman that he is, naturally, he steps in and proceeds to horrifically murder the thing with his bare hands, as the Lunar gawps. When she asks him for his name, as he walks dramatically into the sunset, he only glances over his shoulder, and tells her to find out herself, before continuing his dramatic exit. (Okay, so maybe he has a fondness for acting like he's in some play or folktale-it's certainly a healthier hobby than trying to unwrite the universe, like Kaleai keeps trying to do. He keeps trying to tell her that resurrecting the dead is a bad idea, but does she listen?)
He next sees her at a conference of the Exalted Host when all the Exalted first come together as a massive army. He is lurking quietly in a corner-not sulking, he's Odyssial, he doesn't sulk- and trying to avoid the crowds, because 10,700 Exalted is a lot of people, and they've only got the one valley to fit them all in. Then, to his annoyance, a Lunar sidles up to him-and can't she tell that he's lurking because he wants to avoid interacting with people?-and proceeds to thank him profusely for his assistance. It doesn't help that he has no idea what she's thanking him for, so he just nods and makes vaguely assenting noises, and hopes that she will go away soon enough, especially when she realizes that he's got no idea why she's prattling at him.
She doesn't. Instead, she somehow manages to get it into her head that he's lonely, and that he is in need of a friend. She takes to following him around, and takes every opportunity to interact with him socially, in one form or another, to his great annoyance. Not even hi best glares can make her stop talking, and when he tells her that he doesn't want others dragging him down, she proceeds to beat up and drag back a Daeva as proof that she can be helpful. At that point, he just gives up and tells her that if she gets them in trouble, he's feeding her to a blood ape. In pieces. (And if his lips are twitching ever so slightly upwards when he says this, and the glares he gives her afterwards are tinged with amusement and exasperation, and just a hint of fondness, well, no one ever comments on it.)
The war gets worse of course, as wars are wont to do, and Odyssial fights ever harder. He soaks himself in an ocean of blood, single-handedly amassing as many kills as any three circles put together, and only manages to hold the Primordials to a stalemate. Without him, the rest of the Host, knows, there would be far less hope of victory, and they marvel that he has not snapped yet. He just ignores them every time he returns to the Host and goes to sulk lurk in his tent. During one of his rare visits. Lealope finds out and visits him. Rumors abound, and they are all incorrect, for he and Lealope do nothing but talk. For the entire night. And when he leaves the next morning, with a new list of targets, and perhaps slightly less bowed shoulders that no longer carry the weight of the world, no one is stupid enough to comment. And if Lealope spends the next three days humming happily to herself, and muttering to herself about ways to sheer up her new best friend, well, she's almost as terrifying as Odyssial himself by this point, and no one wants to piss her off.
There's still a betting pool, though.
Lealope thinks its hilarious that no one has figured out that she's the one running the pool yet. Odyssial just shrugs and reminds her that even smart people can be really stupid at times.

First time actually writing things, other than poetry, so suggestions would be appreciated.
 
Rihaku said:
It stopped because Nio was stabbing it in the heel, half-finished talisman burning across her neck. A thaumaturgical disguise of false death, strong enough to fool a daeva of the Second?

Odyssial completed his jump, bodily pulling his blade out through the creature's side, hewing through a full chunk of its half-divine flesh. He turned with utmost speed, hope and desperation stirring in his breast, striking with abandon, hoping to pull its attention away from his little sister-

It ignored him.

Even as he carved a great furrow into its back, it twisted around and cut Nio down, sliced through her as if she were dust and air. For a moment, Odyssial dared to hope that it had been another trick, that Nio, who was so clever, had pulled through again-

But she hadn't.

Twice she'd saved him. Despite himself, this time Odyssial could not stop the tears. They tracked down his face even as his expression remained frozen.
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So if we'd had better tactics, we could have saved her? Darn. Not that I had come up with anything, but it's still sad.

[X] The Field Commander
[X] Masked Queen


I really don't want the Mortal Foe: she is "his utter nemesis in purpose, nature, and name". She would have done her best to make the world as anti-Oddyssial as possible, making Ullysian's job so much harder.

In the real world, a leader can do so much more than a single man. In Exalted, this might not be true, but then again, a Solar leader could eclipse all others, such that the Oddisial way of thinking and training could have been passed down as a legacy. Certainly, if the Masked Queen supported it, in her long lonely years, clinging to the remnants of her love.
 
The general is not necessarily conducive to forming relationships, although I still contend that that is not a desirable end for Odyssial in and of itself. Having his subordinates and soldiers surrounding him, witnessing the full force of his ruthlessness and terrifying ingenuity as he wields it against the Primordials and their spawn... such things can only widen the rift created by the burden of command.
 
Indrik said:
What is the attraction of a psychotic yandere with millennia more knowledge and training, personal experience with the best you can personally achieve, and a desire to overturn and destroy all of your accomplishments? I honestly don't understand the appeal, especially when you've already denied the ultimate determinator path for Odyssial.

Moon is fun for what she is, but shipping is in no way worth such a horribly self-defeating decision. Not that shipping is ever worth anything.
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Just because they're rivals in the First age doesn't mean Ullysian will be an enemy with Leolope in the Second age. The same goes for Best Friends. People change, especially if they reincarnated. So best friends can become enemies while enemies can become friends.
 
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Reckless_Sun said:
Just because they're rivals in the First age doesn't mean Odyssesus will be an enemy with Leolope in the Second age. The same goes for Best Friends. People change, especially if they reincarnated. So best friends can become enemies while enemies can become friends.
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While this is a possibility, it is a remote one at best. Ulyssian will be fighting against a body of shared experience the breadth and depth of which he can scarcely conceive, and isolation and Wyld-born madness will only have exacerbated the worst aspects of her nature.
 
Reckless_Sun said:
Just because they're rivals in the First age doesn't mean Ullysian will be an enemy with Leolope in the Second age. The same goes for Best Friends. People change, especially if they reincarnated. So best friends can become enemies while enemies can become friends.
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Except that we know Lealope survives the First Age, i.e., if she has changed it will only be a result of grief, bitterness, isolation, and Wyld exposure (none of which are typically good things) - and thus your argument fails entirely. A yandere is a yandere is a yandere, in other words.
 
trekbook said:
So if we'd had better tactics, we could have saved her? Darn. Not that I had come up with anything, but it's still sad.
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It was possible, but extremely improbable, yeah.

In the real world, a leader can do so much more than a single man. In Exalted, this might not be true, but then again, a Solar leader could eclipse all others, such that the Oddisial way of thinking and training could have been passed down as a legacy. Certainly, if the Masked Queen supported it, in her long lonely years, clinging to the remnants of her love.
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I think in 3E they're going to downplay the individual strength of Solars, though Odyssial is something of an exception.
 
Orm Embar said:
While this is a possibility, it is a remote one at best. Ulyssian will be fighting against a body of shared experience the breadth and depth of which he can scarcely conceive, and isolation and Wyld-born madness will only have exacerbated the worst aspects of her nature.
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But if we can swing that, we'll have an impossibly powerful ally...the single most powerful being in Creation bar the Incarni.
 
Walker said:
[X] The Obliterator
Odyssial has a bit of a reputation among the other Exalted, he knows. They call him Foebreaker, and Godslayer, and Daevakiller, and The Walking Titanomachy. They know he is death to their foes, and that if he chose to stand against them, they would be inevitably doomed. And that is all they know, for he walks alone. When Odyssial wages war, entire Primordials are slain with apparent ease. His peers see this, and stand in awe of his unsurpassed glory. They do not see the truth.
The see the warrior. They do not see that he spends hours every night poring over sorcerous communiqués regarding even the least dangerous of daevas, from Third to First Circle, and spends hours memorizing their strengths and weaknesses, that he might clean the world of their stain ever more quickly. They do not know that he eats only when he must, to maintain his body- for his body, too is but another weapon, meant only to slay the God-Beings who claim false dominion over a world that should have never been theirs. They do not know that he does not sleep for fear of what he sees at night, Nio's face asking why he failed to save her. Why he left them to die. The way she tells him that for her sake, he must shed the blood of the Titans, and forge a new world of humanity for her, in fire and blood. They do not see him jerk awake, covered in sweat, and exhausted in a fashion no enemy has been abl to match. They know not what he dreams.
Instead, they see an invincible paragon of mankind. When the Harbinger of a Thousand Storms found the secret fortress of the Paradoxical Forge, the creators of weapons meant to slay the very concepts of the Primordials, and unleashed upon them tempestii beyond camping, they only see that Odyssial took the field against them alone, hiding all from sight with a sorcerous fog impenetrable to all the senses of even the greatest Twilights within. They find later the corpses of every storm-spirit, a thousand blades piercing the forms of each one, and the Harbinger itself impaled on a spear made of its fallen children, and marvel at his strength. They do not know that to accomplish this feat, he gave up the last memories of his mother-her smile, and the sound of her voice, and the way she held him as she rocked him to sleep when he was naught but a babe. When the King Who Crawls poisoned half a world with his very presence, all know that Odyssial sought him out within the depths of the Earth and dragged him into the light, before sacrificing him to the Unconquered Sun before the horrified eyes of a thousand thousand lesser daeva, who followed the Mad Lord into the Abyss. None of them know how Odyssial struggled with him for five days and five nights, and was victorious only because he told the King every story he had ever known, and gave them up to slew the immortal's perfect regeneration even slightly, before ending his life with a blade made of the shattered dreams of his brother.
None of them know that Odyssial hates war, and hates the Titans even more for forcing this war upon mankind. They know only that he is the greatest warrior of their age, and laud his achievements with a billion voices in a million tongues. They do not know the price he paid to rise to such heights, and he knows that they never will.
[X] Best Friend
Odyssial's first meeting with Lealope is distinctly underwhelming. He hunts yet another Daeva, as he seems to do so very often, and finds that it has already been engaged in combat by what appears to be a young Lunar, and that she is losing. Badly. So, being the gentleman that he is, naturally, he steps in and proceeds to horrifically murder the thing with his bare hands, as the Lunar gawps. When she asks him for his name, as he walks dramatically into the sunset, he only glances over his shoulder, and tells her to find out herself, before continuing his dramatic exit. (Okay, so maybe he has a fondness for acting like he's in some play or folktale-it's certainly a healthier hobby than trying to unwrite the universe, like Kaleai keeps trying to do. He keeps trying to tell her that resurrecting the dead is a bad idea, but does she listen?)
He next sees her at a conference of the Exalted Host when all the Exalted first come together as a massive army. He is lurking quietly in a corner-not sulking, he's Odyssial, he doesn't sulk- and trying to avoid the crowds, because 10,700 Exalted is a lot of people, and they've only got the one valley to fit them all in. Then, to his annoyance, a Lunar sidles up to him-and can't she tell that he's lurking because he wants to avoid interacting with people?-and proceeds to thank him profusely for his assistance. It doesn't help that he has no idea what she's thanking him for, so he just nods and makes vaguely assenting noises, and hopes that she will go away soon enough, especially when she realizes that he's got no idea why she's prattling at him.
She doesn't. Instead, she somehow manages to get it into her head that he's lonely, and that he is in need of a friend. She takes to following him around, and takes every opportunity to interact with him socially, in one form or another, to his great annoyance. Not even hi best glares can make her stop talking, and when he tells her that he doesn't want others dragging him down, she proceeds to beat up and drag back a Daeva as proof that she can be helpful. At that point, he just gives up and tells her that if she gets them in trouble, he's feeding her to a blood ape. In pieces. (And if his lips are twitching ever so slightly upwards when he says this, and the glares he gives her afterwards are tinged with amusement and exasperation, and just a hint of fondness, well, no one ever comments on it.)
The war gets worse of course, as wars are wont to do, and Odyssial fights ever harder. He soaks himself in an ocean of blood, single-handedly amassing as many kills as any three circles put together, and only manages to hold the Primordials to a stalemate. Without him, the rest of the Host, knows, there would be far less hope of victory, and they marvel that he has not snapped yet. He just ignores them every time he returns to the Host and goes to sulk lurk in his tent. During one of his rare visits. Lealope finds out and visits him. Rumors abound, and they are all incorrect, for he and Lealope do nothing but talk. For the entire night. And when he leaves the next morning, with a new list of targets, and perhaps slightly less bowed shoulders that no longer carry the weight of the world, no one is stupid enough to comment. And if Lealope spends the next three days humming happily to herself, and muttering to herself about ways to sheer up her new best friend, well, she's almost as terrifying as Odyssial himself by this point, and no one wants to piss her off.
There's still a betting pool, though.
Lealope thinks its hilarious that no one has figured out that she's the one running the pool yet. Odyssial just shrugs and reminds her that even smart people can be really stupid at times.

First time actually writing things, other than poetry, so suggestions would be appreciated.
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It's fine not to put fanworks in spoiler tags, even if they're long. What's the wordcount on these?
 
Indrik said:
Except that we know Lealope survives the First Age, i.e., if she has changed it will only be a result of grief, bitterness, isolation, and Wyld exposure (none of which are typically good things) - and thus your argument fails entirely. A yandere is a yandere is a yandere, in other words.
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I mean Odyssesial changed. He changed to Ullysian which going by character we have established thus far is sufficiently different from Odyssial.
 
Reckless_Sun said:
But if we can swing that, we'll have an impossibly powerful ally...the single most powerful being in Creation bar the Incarni.
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What can Ulyssian do, if Odyssial himself could not change her nature? She is anathema in truth, at least where he's concerned. If you want a powerful Lunar ally, the Masked Queen is an option. Almost all the power, none of the destructive tendencies.
 
Rihaku said:
I'm surprised you would choose the option that is an ameliorating influence on Odyssial! Have you given up on making him as glorious and terrible as possible, or do you plan to argue that the Best Friend will accomplish this goal?
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Yeah, this is why I'm voting for the Obliterator and Foe. I don't actually like the idea of Yanderes that much, but completely maximizing personal power and having an equal to strive against is great. Why lead others when you can be a perfect singularity of power?
 
Reckless_Sun said:
But Ulyssian is not Odyssial, our play through already determined that their personalities are sufficiently different.
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Rihaku said:
If they think of themselves as separate people, then perhaps Odyssial has already failed!
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Except he kind of is the same person, to a greater degree than any other Solar Exalt. It's possible there are shenanigans at play here, with Odyssial having ensured his actual reincarnation receives his Exaltation.
Dark Lord Bob said:
Yeah, this is why I'm voting for the Obliterator and Foe. I don't actually like the idea of Yanderes that much, but completely maximizing personal power and having an equal to strive against is great. Why lead others when you can be a perfect singularity of power?
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Rihaku said:
Huh, I'm surprised Mortal Foe is so relatively popular. You guys know it will hinder Odyssial's efforts to perform epic First Age feats, right?
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The issue here is that while it's true she'll inspire him, at least to an extent, she'll also cramp his style and tear down his great works.
 
Orm Embar said:
Except he kind of is the same person, to a greater degree than any other Solar Exalt. It's possible there are shenanigans at play here, with Odyssial having ensured his actual reincarnation receives his Exaltation.
The issue here is that while it's true she'll inspire him, at least to an extent, she'll also cramp his style and tear down his great works.
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I would take that as a given with if Fury haven't won. Uly was all about saving the world but got hindered by his love of Moon. Ody is just RAR REVENGE!
 
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