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Fiend: Thread Three, Thread Harder. [Exalted/Worm]

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How does Cult work in exalt? Help Respawn Motes faster?

Mechanically do they just need to be in "awe" of her or do they need to know more information on her?

Defiler did just burn Noelle to death with help from Legend visible probably over most of the city. I'd imagine huge shambling beast eating people even capes and then spawning clones with cape powers which kills thousands probably makes it newscoverage on every channel.

The Juxtaposition of her next to Legend would improve her reputation immensely, not to mention her killing that thing.
 
megrisvernin said:
What's TED refer to? Exalt related? I get the feeling it's...whoever originally contracted Taylor.
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It's The Ebon Dragon who is ...
Actually, now that I think about it non-Exalted fans don't get what we are all so excited about seeing a would-be hero use TED's powers. Let me explain.

Each Primordial, like TED, has a thematic which defines it. They can use magic to empower any action they take which fall in line with this thematic, and Taylor can do that too. In fact it is so important that absolutely all of their magical power fit in that thematic ; simply put if a magical power does fit it they can learn it and if it doesn't they can't. The Primordials themselves are not even able to attempt to act outside this definition (unlike Taylor who can do it since she's still human).
And The Ebon Dragon's thematic ... does not lend itself well to heroics, not even remotely. Here's how it goes:
The Ophidian thematic said:
The Shadow of All Things is Other, not wholly of the world nor fully alien to its precepts like the Neverborn. He is self-indulgent and without conscience but can be trusted to act with enlightened self-interest at all times, making him the most dependable and trustworthy of the Yozis so long as those dealing with him don't forget his nature. He corrupts and seduces others away from virtue and honor because these concepts are poisonous to him rather than because he wants to enlighten or enslave. He genuinely believes the universe should be darkened until it approaches his unholy perfection, but his warped magnanimity hides a deeper and greater hatred of all light—literal or metaphoric. The Ebon Dragon is hollow, assembling his semblance of identity from lies, copied mannerisms and observed vices, constantly recreating himself in the image of whatever offends and frightens his adversaries the most. Moreover, he is The Nemesis, finding greater joy in thwarting the dreams of others than advancing his own agenda. Whereas the Silent Wind brings agonizing freedom to others, the Ebon Dragon can't abide his own restraint, whether by prison walls or social mores.

[His power] enhances actions that attack morality, break established moral codes or cheat in lieu of playing fair. This includes most criminal acts, except in societies where crime functions with the knowledge and quiet approval of the reigning government. Direct and intentional violations of the laws of [Heaven] or the dictates of [Hell] always offer chances for antagonism. The Shadow of All Things gleefully turns heroes into villains or reveals to a self-styled heroine how her actions were actually villainous all along. While a character with [his power] experiences confinement or restraint, the Charm can only enhance actions that help him break free from that immediate imprisonment until he has done so. [His power] also can't assist actions that knowingly help anyone else more than they help the Infernal, even when he still stands to profit a great deal. A third limitation is [his power cannot be used] when being honest, unless revealing a horrid truth that will hurt or debase the listener. Finally, all actions must show subtlety, if not outright guile. Choosing a brazen course of action over a subtle one forfeits any opportunity to use [his power]. In these restrictions, the Ebon Dragon's [power] offers the most and least freedom of any Yozi.
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megrisvernin said:
How does Cult work in exalt? Help Respawn Motes faster?

Mechanically do they just need to be in "awe" of her or do they need to know more information on her?

Defiler did just burn Noelle to death with help from Legend visible probably over most of the city. I'd imagine huge shambling beast eating people even capes and then spawning clones with cape powers which kills thousands probably makes it newscoverage on every channel.

The Juxtaposition of her next to Legend would improve her reputation immensely, not to mention her killing that thing.
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You regain motes faster, and without a need for rest even if its far slower then resting and you also have a low increase in the return of your willpower which leads you fight onwards or push yourself harder. And as Willpower is a scarer resource depending on your build that is quite worth is as many utility or strong charm have it also as a additional cost.
They have to pray/talk about her. And a prayer of not being visited by her also counts for that or fan discusions.
 
Scya said:
You regain motes faster, and without a need for rest even if its far slower then resting and you also have a low increase in the return of your willpower which leads you fight onwards or push yourself harder. And as Willpower is a scarer resource depending on your build that is quite worth is as many utility or strong charm have it also as a additional cost.
They have to pray/talk about her. And a prayer of not being visited by her also counts for that or fan discusions.
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Prayer of not being visited yes. Fan discussions? Cult is written under the assumption of a literal full time cult with churches etc making sacrifices to you. (Human or otherwise.) Given that there are a lot of popularity backgrounds that don't guarantee cult, it seems odd to say "I like you" means you have a cult, or follower would come with free dots. Remember that praying to gods successfully is an actual skill in Exalted. It takes effort and practice to get right.
 
Shadell said:
Prayer of not being visited yes. Fan discussions? Cult is written under the assumption of a literal full time cult with churches etc making sacrifices to you. (Human or otherwise.) Given that there are a lot of popularity backgrounds that don't guarantee cult, it seems odd to say "I like you" means you have a cult, or follower would come with free dots. Remember that praying to gods successfully is an actual skill in Exalted. It takes effort and practice to get right.
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I think it was stated somewhere in shard that this would work but I don`t remember the book to clearly and people that where deeper into the E2 mechanics made it appear so, and well the last time I used prayers was when it was still a performance roll.

That reminds me does Taylor counts as a Priest of Eby or Malp?
 
So let's see how Taylor managed to use that power to convince Dancer in the Sun to become a hero.
Getting a new ally minion works toward her enlightened self-interest and she profits more than anyone else.
She is seducing her into her service and away from proper atonement by surrendering to the authorities and working as a registered hero (which would be the virtuous course of action) by dangling the key to freeing her from her guilt right in front of her and making herself look like the only option.
She helped her when she was broken on the ground and didn't know what to do ... by showing her the sort of warped magnanimity that lead her to kill her friend.
Taylor's confident front is a lie, she recreated herself into this self-assured leader persona which is actually a hollow shell fooling others into believing she know what she is doing ; one that she is building from the copied mannerism of her bullies and their observed vices.
Dancer's motivation in life is actually to live peacefully as a normal person, so by convincing her to become a cape Taylor is thwarting her dreams, and by convincing her to become an outlaw vigilante she is making her violate the laws.
She is convincing her she needs to do it by telling her that her actions were villainous all along and not simply an unwise show of friendship and loyalty. Which is not a lie, something Taylor can say because it is a horrid truth that hurts Dancer deeply.


(the emphasized words in the description are particularly important in and of themselves and can be taken somewhat out of context, usually a good rule of thumb to see if the power can be used is how many of these keywords can describe what you are attempting to do, so I highlighted them here too)
 
Scya said:
I think it was stated somewhere in shard that this would work but I don`t remember the book to clearly and people that where deeper into the E2 mechanics made it appear so, and well the last tiem I used prayers was when it was still a performance roll.

That reminds me does Taylor counts as a Priest of Eby or Malp?
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Not finding any sidebar like that after searching through the book for cult. Also nothing noted at all about cult in the changed character creation rules for the modern age.


As for Taylor, was that an excellency or did she pick up Golden Years Tarnished Black and Everything Gets Worse while no one was looking?
 
megrisvernin said:
Overall? I'd say the PRT is dealing with what they think is a powerful cape that they'd probably rank on par with any member of the Triumphant powerwise, who has powerful allies of her own & cannot be predicted, cannot be captured or contained or likely threatened. Someone whose only saving grace for not being another S class threat with her allies is that she seems to target gangs & rogue capes on her own, only attacking the PRT when they interfere.
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Her allies don't have great defenses or transport, however, so if I was the PRT I'd see about trying to lock them down and force Defiler to stand and fight or escape without the two of them.

Actually, it'll be quite interesting to see (assuming Damsel and Dancer in the Sun survive) how they're getting out of New York in the aftermath. Would the PRT just let them walk, assuming they contributed significantly to defeating/driving off the Endbringer?
 
megrisvernin said:
How does Cult work in exalt? Help Respawn Motes faster?

Mechanically do they just need to be in "awe" of her or do they need to know more information on her?
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Exalted Core 2E said:
CULT
Gods know that worship gives them power. Your character also learned this lesson and has worshipers who honor her as their patron goddess. It doesn't matter if the character's worshipers love or fear her. What matters is that they make regular offerings and prayers to her.
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Thoughts of "I wished Defiler would save me" are prayers, as they bequeath her for favors. Thoughts of "Defiler's power is awe-inspiring" are prayers because they praise her glory. Spending time making webpages about her or improving her wiki entries would probably count as offerings, since it is work done to spread her glory. Debating her awesomeness on forums would help if one admired her and wanted to share the feeling, for much the same reason. People meeting to sing her praise or rejoice from her presence (like a PRT debrief on the recent events saying that Defiler rocked and that they're happy she was there) would also count as worship, as a sort of festival in her honor.


Now for what Cult does ... it has a number of benefits, most of them only for spirits. The basic is that it helps resplenish willpower, which is what is lost to mental fatigue and fuel heroics as well as certain magics which requires a strong effort of will ; this is much more important to spirits who are unable to recover it naturally through sleep and rest like humans do, but it's useful nonetheless. Then if it is strong enough it'll start channeling magic power, refueling Taylor's pool at all times ; this is not very fast since a single hour of sleep would recover as much as 4 hours of a basic cult, and sleep is still significantly better than a full time Cult of millions of devoted worshippers with multiple temples and festivals in your honor.
Spirits can actually hear the prayers, giving them a chance to fulfill them ... or just gather information and communicate at distances. Powerful demons are concepts more than simple creatures and therefore cannot be killed, weak ones do not enjoy from this benefit unless they have a cult. Gods have powers based on their Domain, their function in the universe, and they cannot learn more by training or learning as it is not a matter of skill but expressing their nature, and Cult strengthen the metaphysical weight of their Domain thus granting them additional powers. Worships toward the divinities of Heaven (or those of Earth who have a Sanctum beyond the world) crystalizes into ambrosia, a wondrous material that is not only incredibly delicious and fulfilling to consume but can be turned into almost anything, mostly magical Jade but it can be used to shape jewels or other luxurious commodities ; in Heaven ambrosia is money, they wrap discs of it in gold foil for preservation and stamp the seal of the Unconquered Sun on it to signify it has the government-approved weight allowing people to use it to trade like coins rather than raw material (yes, money in Heaven are actually delicious chocolate coins).

Those are (most of) the uses of Cult.
 
Simply being famous or talked about doesn't give Cult, otherwise all rulers would automatically have it, and they don't. People have to be actively worshipping and praying to you. Thoughts don't count as prayers at all. It requires deliberate action.

We can see this as Reputation/Followers/Backing doens't automatically give a Cult rating at high ranks.
 
Note that effective prayers requires skill, knowledge of the proper forms and such. And leaders don't automatically have Cult because it takes a certain kind of thought to trigger a prayer, it is probably possible to send prayers without meaning to (there are references to that sort of thing in the game). But keep in mind that since in Creation people are aware of prayers and their power, the fact that they have in mind the fact that they are not worshipping might be what keep those thoughts from counting, this is relevant since worship has been controlled by law for thousands of years, and still is in most of Creation.
Then there's the fact that there are many more people on Earth and that news travel far faster in the information age. So this quality degradation could be balanced by quantity.

Or not. It's up to logic to decide, but both would work.
 
On the other hand, humans in Creation were specifically engineered to be the most efficient prayer mils the Primordials could create. Humans on earth weren't.

Thought is pretty explicitly not a valid form of prayer. We can see that in the example of the engineered languages that included embedded prayers that generated cult when spoken, even if the speaker was unaware of what they were doing or even the existance of the target of the prayer. What matters is the correct actions that serve as a ritual, not what the person doing them is thinking. That's why you can compel prayer from people (and ghosts) and people can pray without realising who they're praying to, or having any emotional engagement.

As an example, demons can hire prayer mills of mortals or ghosts in Malfeas to pray to them as commercial transactions.
 
Inverness said:
Ugh, I'd much rather see her recruit the Simurgh and destroy whatever connection she has with Eidolon in the process. Of course it's much too early in the timeline for that.
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Completly agreed. I wanst seriously suggesting she get nilbog, only to complete the bio clusterfuck if you already combine panacea, bonesaw and blasto.
 
Honestly, she ought to just be Changer/trump. Extensive shapeshifting plus constant new tricks and conceptual bullshit. Seriously, they are gonna freak when they realize that her darkness powers each have different fail conditions - light and fire fuck up the sustained transformation, NOTHING counters the dodge-teleport, the AoE darkness is only countered by her own power flaring, Sundancer and Eidolon deliberately looking for a counter. Balrog-mode's fire breath doesn't act like the rest of the fire. Hell, their reaction to VCE and Star-piercing spear of Glory will be hilarious - she's suddenly creating a spear of green fire - now shes upgraded it to a javelin?
 
Cults, in the mechanical, Essence/Ambrosia-granting sense, aren't built on belief. You can have a million people thinking happy thoughts about you, and it won't do jack-all.

What a Cult needs is repeated ritual action in praise of you as a higher power. This is a thaumaturgical process that directs reverent qi your way, with material sacrifice improving the procedure by supplying a ready source of Essence. The more the action is repeated (whether as a result of frequency or the number of people doing it), and the more elaborate and costly it is, the greater the Cult rating.

If a thousand people genuflect to the North at midday in honour of Wan Shin Man, that's a Cult. If a small village offers up their sickliest calf each season to The Lady of Four Bracelets, that's a Cult. If a city undertakes a minute's silence each year to remember a tragedy, that's a Cult. If the exiled survivors of a conquered nation tell horror stories of the red-clad Makadem King who shattered their armies, that's a Cult. If everyone across a country says a little rhyme at the start of each month, that's a Cult. If travellers toss a stone onto the pile by the side of a road, that's a Cult. If a million people raise their voices in choral praise of the Great Father, that's a Cult.

To get a Cult off the internet, you'd have to have people going out of their way to do something that praises (or 'praises') some aspect of you. Messageboard discussion along the lines of "whose stronk?" "defiler" "no wai ediolon" "even legend is scared" "defile her, I barely know her" will barely register. Daily Defiler General Threads might pick you up a Cult 1.
 
Revlid said:
Cults, in the mechanical, Essence/Ambrosia-granting sense, aren't built on belief. You can have a million people thinking happy thoughts about you, and it won't do jack-all.

What a Cult needs is repeated ritual action in praise of you as a higher power. This is a thaumaturgical process that directs reverent qi your way, with material sacrifice improving the procedure by supplying a ready source of Essence. The more the action is repeated (whether as a result of frequency or the number of people doing it), and the more elaborate and costly it is, the greater the Cult rating.

If a thousand people genuflect to the North at midday in honour of Wan Shin Man, that's a Cult. If a small village offers up their sickliest calf each season to The Lady of Four Bracelets, that's a Cult. If a city undertakes a minute's silence each year to remember a tragedy, that's a Cult. If the exiled survivors of a conquered nation tell horror stories of the red-clad Makadem King who shattered their armies, that's a Cult. If everyone across a country says a little rhyme at the start of each month, that's a Cult. If travellers toss a stone onto the pile by the side of a road, that's a Cult. If a million people raise their voices in choral praise of the Great Father, that's a Cult.

To get a Cult off the internet, you'd have to have people going out of their way to do something that praises (or 'praises') some aspect of you. Messageboard discussion along the lines of "whose stronk?" "defiler" "no wai ediolon" "even legend is scared" "defile her, I barely know her" will barely register. Daily Defiler General Threads might pick you up a Cult 1.
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Hmm, considering just how scared the Endbringers have the world, killing one might well actually result in people praying to her. These things are showing up and killing a city every 3 to 4 months - extinction from their actions is projected inside of 20 years. Someone goes and kills a monster like that, one where normally driving it off while there is still something to salvage is a win - that kinda shit may well attract actual worship.
 
By the way, about the power ratings in Worm. Apparently some scales go to 10 while others go to 12? I know that Behemoth is the only confirmed Brute 10 they have, but then you have people like Contessa that are Thinker 12 at least. I suppose they just add levels as necessary.

It makes me wonder what the Triumvirate's ratings are.
 
pheonix89 said:
Honestly, she ought to just be Changer/trump. Extensive shapeshifting plus constant new tricks and conceptual bullshit. Seriously, they are gonna freak when they realize that her darkness powers each have different fail conditions - light and fire fuck up the sustained transformation, NOTHING counters the dodge-teleport, the AoE darkness is only countered by her own power flaring, Sundancer and Eidolon deliberately looking for a counter.
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The AoE darkness isn't fucked by her own power flaring, but the sustained darkness can be (it's a stealth effect active on herself and anima flare shuts it down). The dodge-teleport can be countered by very high level godly conceptual powers like Infinite Catalepsis Macramé, but this wouldn't be surprising if nothing in the Wormverse was capable of such a thing (after all very nearly nothing in the Exalted one can do it either).

And ... I'm not sure what varied fail conditions would upset them so much. It means her powers are a bit more finicky but they still work along the same general rules. On the other hand if she raises her Essence and Dancer in the Sun becomes unable to dispell her AoE*, that could be worrying. Having the weaknesses of her powers progressively disappearing means that what they know has worked may not be relied upon for the next time.
pheonix89 said:
Balrog-mode's fire breath doesn't act like the rest of the fire. Hell, their reaction to VCE and Star-piercing spear of Glory will be hilarious - she's suddenly creating a spear of green fire - now shes upgraded it to a javelin?
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Star-Piercing Spear of Glory doesn't turn it into a javelin, it allows it to shoot lasers. They are described as firing "blasts of cosmic energy", nothing about throwing the spear. And at E4, it lets her shoot eyelasers of hatefire (she could also fire lasers from her crotch if she was that crass, but that's not her sort of sense of humor).


* Noon as Night Evocation can only be dispelled by a source of sunlight by a magic stronger than Taylor's (being equal doesn't cut it) so Taylor growing stronger shrinks the list of effect it's vulnerable to.
 
Inverness said:
By the way, about the power ratings in Worm. Apparently some scales go to 10 while others go to 12? I know that Behemoth is the only confirmed Brute 10 they have, but then you have people like Contessa that are Thinker 12 at least. I suppose they just add levels as necessary.

It makes me wonder what the Triumvirate's ratings are.
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Eidolon is Trump 12 along with Glastig - as of venom her trump rating would have gone up if anyone still cared. She now has eidolon as one of her ghosts. 12 tends to be wtfhax powers - having 3 high-spec powers that are useful for the sitch, whatever the hell precisely Labyrinth does, the Path to Victory, that kind of thing. If it isn't a I win button or a total gamechanger, it isn't 12.
 
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