General Exalted Thread

[notanautomaton]

Have you thought if/how to implement the Great Curse/Limitbreak?

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The Celestial Exalted are great and mighty, but this makes it difficult for them to properly empathize with others. They will often act in ways that can be seen as insane by their lessers. While the paticular insanity is unique to each Exalted, they can be broken down as follows;

Valor: These Exalted will never back down from a challenge, even if not fighting would be much better.
Temperance: Never eating more then rice and drinking more than water, these Exalted refuse to waste resources on trivialities such that they can better accomplish their objectives.
Compassion: These Exalted care, about everyone. If they see an orphan, they will attempt to ensure that they have a good home. If they see a slave, they will attempt to free them.
Conviction: These Exalted have a goal, and will not back down from it. It could be to create their own kingdom, or to end slavery, but they will not stop, no matter how many people are hurt in their way.

So basically, let the players act like PC's, but treat their PC weirdness as having consequences.

 

[EarthScorpion]

Have you thought if/how to implement the Great Curse/Limitbreak?

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Personally, questing opens whole new formats for the manifestation of the Great Curse - much more organic ones than the canonical one.

Consider, for example, if each point of current Limit adds a x0.1 modifier to any option which furthers your curse - or if you want a harsher version, adds an automatic vote for each option. The Great Curse literally weights your actions and twists them towards serving it - and resisting it requires coordinated constant player action to fight it off. Likewise, to avoid people trying to write-in around that, it's explicit that the higher your Limit, the more elements of the write-in may be twisted towards serving the Great Curse.

There's no need for a great dramatic outburst - not when every option that is "Heart of Tears-y" is being weighted favourably and every write-in is warped towards Heart of Tears to some degree.

 

[Elero]

There's no need for a great dramatic outburst - not when every option that is "Heart of Tears-y" is being weighted favourably and every write-in is warped towards Heart of Tears to some degree

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Interesting, my first idea was more offering Excellency recharges for taking the harsh/extreme options. How would you lower/reset limit in your system? Have normal breaks in addition to warping each choice?

 

[Yeangst]

Can I add to the criticisms as someone who liked Alchemicals overall? Because I think that a lot of Shyft's points wrt Bad Design Space are reasonable-especially the Demiurge one and the one about the setting.

The biggest problem I have with Alchemicals is that oftentimes its premises conflict with the conclusions. You have this setting-a hardscrabble industrial socialist setting, an explicitly technological one where everyone has constant political and often martial disagreements. Wars are fought in tight quarters for access to resources, because resources are absolutely precious things. Cities are often incredibly hostile territory, controlled by actual death robots. And yet you have things like masses of untrained militia levies being a thing.

Oftentimes they have this place which is cool and alien-and then they don't really want to own the setting, and so they take a step back from the premises. You have a setting which can have all the trappings of cyberpunk-augmented, Enlightened mortals as Shadowrunners, working either as mercenaries outside of their caste as one of the few ways of gaining social mobility pre-mortem, would fit the setting they've created, but they back out of it for buff coats and crossbows. It's basically the trireme thing writ large-it seems that they want a gritty realistic setting over which the heroic powers of the Exalted are contrasted, but don't have the political science and economic backing to really write that.

Oh and it'd have fixed the War Charms issue because then Alchemical War would probably look entirely different and weird-it'd be entirely about augmenting tiny units on commando raids rather than leading armies as a champion.

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Exactly. One of my pet peeves was that they made Autochtonia an illiterate society, which doesn't fit with the Communist, or the industrial themes. Nobody in their thousands of years of history thought that it might be useful for normal workers to be able to read instruction manuals, or warning labels more complicated than "fire hazard here"? And given the level of integration Exalted have with mortal society, it's inconceivable that no Starmetal or Jade tried to implement a magical literacy course.

 

[EarthScorpion]

Interesting, my first idea was more offering Excellency recharges for taking the harsh/extreme options. How would you lower/reset limit in your system? Have normal breaks in addition to warping each choice?

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Taking great curse warped voting options reduces built up Limit.

Hmm. Actually, hmm, for the "build up" option, points of limit might well just be "votes" that the curse can spend to influence the character. At lower levels of build up, the curse can win a close vote for one option or another. At higher levels, it can just force through a "write-up", especially if the exalt is feeling split... ie, if the players are spreading their votes thin.

 

[Dif]

Exactly. One of my pet peeves was that they made Autochtonia an illiterate society, which doesn't fit with the Communist, or the industrial themes. Nobody in their thousands of years of history thought that it might be useful for normal workers to be able to read instruction manuals, or warning labels more complicated than "fire hazard here"? And given the level of integration Exalted have with mortal society, it's inconceivable that no Starmetal or Jade tried to implement a magical literacy course.

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Not defending it, but it always seemed to me that Autochthonia was never really meant to embody Communist themes anything but vaguely, given how they have a staunchly religious, class-based society with some but never total social mobility between the tiers which separate the workers from the elites. Doesn't even embody the stereotypical boogyman negatives of a Communist state, such as poor worker-treatment, rampant internal assassination/disappearing of political enemies, or mass famines/food-lines despite booming prosperity due to extreme rationing. At best you get something close to a collectivist welfare state, but even that is tenuous when political leaders are drawn out of the elites exclusively, and resources are split among supposed social-merit rather than need, to the point that their society still includes "luxury/prestige jobs" (such as professional chefs) who live to service these elites and increase their quality of life.

Now that said, the illiterate elements of Autochthonia are really just the Populat, and the labors of the Populat rarely go above the "lever pulling" stage, given how one of the most common references made is that the average worker is trained not for a particular Job but in meditative trances and sing-song "rounds" designed to keep time with their work, so the output is consistent, but the repetitive tasks themselves are mentally bearable for hours at a time. They are base-level unskilled labor, interchangeable between jobs and don't thus really deal with complex rote instructions which need a lengthy reference text, since the physical roles that would require more than good diagrams and a strong mentor-student oral tradition are handed over to the Sodalities, who manage all the electrical, medical, plumbing, food-preparation, recycling/waste-disposal, mining, salvaging and manufacturing jobs.

A Populat worker isn't the one hammering out the specs of new pre-fab construction project or the inventory of a fully-supplied warehouse, but more of a line worker at a canning factory, a bricklayer, or even food-delivery, where despite the huge machinery they operate and work alongside everyday, its not their Job to manage those machines in ways outside of "press this button for 5 seconds and keep your hands clear until it finishes, eject the mold, reset the arm, then repeat."

 

[Yeangst]

Not defending it, but it always seemed to me that Autochthonia was never really meant to embody Communist themes anything but vaguely, given how they have a staunchly religious, class-based society with some but never total social mobility between the tiers which separate the workers from the elites. Doesn't even embody the stereotypical boogyman negatives of a Communist state, such as poor worker-treatment, rampant internal assassination/disappearing of political enemies, or mass famines/food-lines despite booming prosperity due to extreme rationing. At best you get something close to a collectivist welfare state, but even that is tenuous when political leaders are drawn out of the elites exclusively, and resources are split among supposed social-merit rather than need, to the point that their society still includes "luxury/prestige jobs" (such as professional chefs) who live to service these elites and increase their quality of life.

Now that said, the illiterate elements of Autochthonia are really just the Populat, and the labors of the Populat rarely go above the "lever pulling" stage, given how one of the most common references made is that the average worker is trained not for a particular Job but in meditative trances and sing-song "rounds" designed to keep time with their work, so the output is consistent, but the repetitive tasks themselves are mentally bearable for hours at a time. They are base-level unskilled labor, interchangeable between jobs and don't thus really deal with complex rote instructions which need a lengthy reference text, since the physical roles that would require more than good diagrams and a strong mentor-student oral tradition are handed over to the Sodalities, who manage all the electrical, medical, plumbing, food-preparation, recycling/waste-disposal, mining, salvaging and manufacturing jobs.

A Populat worker isn't the one hammering out the specs of new pre-fab construction project or the inventory of a fully-supplied warehouse, but more of a line worker at a canning factory, a bricklayer, or even food-delivery, where despite the huge machinery they operate and work alongside everyday, its not their Job to manage those machines in ways outside of "press this button for 5 seconds and keep your hands clear until it finishes, eject the mold, reset the arm, then repeat."

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Yeah, but basic developmental economics holds that the productivity of even those jobs is vastly improved with basic literacy. What if that guy gets injured and dies, but they need a replacement RIGHT NOW? What if one of them gets promoted to shift supervisor? What if there's a change in machinery that necessitates a minor change to the procedures that thousands of workers use?

The first thing any developing country needs is (near) universal literacy.

 

[RemoteScholar]

Did it ever strike anyone else as odd that Autochthon didn't take the Mountain Folk with him when he left to Elsewhere? I don't recall them being mentioned as part of Autochthonia at all, though it has been a while since I read the Alchemical manual of power.
Maybe he wasn't prepared to depart Creation when the Solar Deliberative showed up making the demands that lead to the Great Geas- (i.e. he couldn't just pick up camp overnight and leave with them) I remember reading that having to apply the Geas was a major factor in the decision to leave. Must be the "Mountain Folk aren't allowed to leave the Imperial Mountain" part of the Geas that kept him from breaking them out. I can't imagine he would have felt very good having to leave them behind.

Semi-related sidenote, I stumbled on this delightful thread in which the original poster gave the Jadeborn a greater role in Gunstar Autochthonia.

Spoiler

Gunstar Autochthonia expansion: The Jadeborn and the Maker - Exalted - White Wolf - White Wolf Publishing

 

[MJ12 Commando]

A Populat worker isn't the one hammering out the specs of new pre-fab construction project or the inventory of a fully-supplied warehouse, but more of a line worker at a canning factory, a bricklayer, or even food-delivery, where despite the huge machinery they operate and work alongside everyday, its not their Job to manage those machines in ways outside of "press this button for 5 seconds and keep your hands clear until it finishes, eject the mold, reset the arm, then repeat."

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There's a lot of knock-on benefits from literacy which are very useful in a regimented society like Autochthonia. For example, mass literacy is one of the easiest ways to propgandize a population efficiently. When you're worried about "Void Cults" and need to engage in constant prayer to keep your god alive this might be helpful.

And then you have what @Yeangst said about how literacy improves productivity.

 

[Giygas]

Did it ever strike anyone else as odd that Autochthon didn't take the Mountain Folk with him when he left to Elsewhere?

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I faintly remember a write up of questionable quality that said that the Mountain Folk would weaken and die or something, because Metaphysic reasons.

But yes, Mountain Folks in Autochthonia would make for something interesting. Maybe you can leave some of them in Creation, and the meeting between the two cultures could be something interesting to explore.

 

[Dif]

Maybe he wasn't prepared to depart Creation when the Solar Deliberative showed up making the demands that lead to the Great Geas- (i.e. he couldn't just pick up camp overnight and leave with them) I remember reading that having to apply the Geas was a major factor in the decision to leave. Must be the "Mountain Folk aren't allowed to leave the Imperial Mountain" part of the Geas that kept him from breaking them out. I can't imagine he would have felt very good having to leave them behind.

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Yeah, actually it was applying the Geas which inspired Autochthon to leave, because now he saw just how much value former-allies held to the Exalted in the wake of the War, and considered this hubris a dangerous malfunction with the Solar Exalted.

As for why he didn't take them with him, it would have required relocating all of their souls metaphysically, not just their population, because Jadeborn souls are bound to the natural jade veins lying deep within Creation's surface. When a Jadeborn dies, their soul returns there, waiting to be carved free by one of their artisans and embodied once more. Mass-transplanting those souls into his Own internal jade stockpile wouldn't have been a very easy or subtle feat, given how he knew the Exalted would try to stop his escape if they suspected he was pulling up stakes.

 

[DayDreamer]

But the trick here is there is no fixing the world. You can't actually solve the major problems of Exalted in the long term, only hold them off indefinitely. This isn't the equivalent of Dragonblooded being selfish in the face of a world falling apart due to inevitable forces. This is the equivalent of their being a Save The World button and the Dragonblooded not pushing it because... well, the idiot ball.

Yes, you can houserule it out. But that's stupid and you should never have to do that. The book should offer some explicitly non canon options for perhaps maybe dealing with Autocthon's sickness or it being intractable regardless of what you do. In other words it should have been dealt with exactly like the possibility of the Yozi's escape. "By default no, nobody will ever cure Autocthon. But here are some potential plot hooks if you want to run that plotline anyway with some justifications why some other Assembly hasn't done this before now..."

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You seem to be assuming that somehow curing Autocthon (the primordial) will magically make all the problems of Autocthon (the place) go away. It won't. Resources will continue to be scarce, the terrain will continue to be dangerous, nations will continue to war with each other and weird threats will continue to show up. Autocthonian spirits will continue to be mostly apathetic or hostile to humans, with the consequences thereof. Waking Autocthon up will have consequences, but those are vague, ill-defined, and not required to actually cure him in the first place

There's a reason I proposed the example of killing the Neverborn as the equivalent: they both involve solving a huge problem facing reality as you know it, and issue that future generations would otherwise need to deal with as it gets worse and worse, but there's almost undoubtably still going to be problems for the future.

 

[mothematics]

@Aleph is a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad procrastinator! But she is not without a heart, and so, she decided to, with me, not deprive the thread of Keris and Keris-related content!

Comes in flavors of "Downtime" and "Vacation" and "Part 3"!

Spoiler: Both; continuous text!

17:36 Rook So begins Rook Reads Downtime (coming to AMC never.)
17:36 Aleph As a foreword; remember that I had almost nothing to do with developing Keris's backstory.
17:36 Aleph Apart from the very basics; it's ES-created.
17:36 Rook Yeah, you just gave ES the cliff notes and he did the r-yeah.
17:36 Rook Yeah you told me! It's p impressive.
17:36 Aleph Much like I left "what happened to Rat" open. ¬_¬
17:36 Aleph (grrr)
17:36 Rook that was your fault and you know it
17:36 Rook *patpat*
17:36 Aleph GRRR
17:36 Rook ^_^
17:37 Rook sasi+mind-probing
17:37 Rook ooooohh
17:37 Aleph paaaiiiin
17:37 Aleph heh
17:37 Rook ohhhhhh deeaar
17:37 Rook not the fun kind either
17:37 Aleph she did that to kasseni when they caught her
17:37 Rook
17:37 Rook "you could have avoided this" SOMEONE CALL MJ12 I FEEL THE SPEC OPS JOKES
17:37 Rook I FEEL THEM
17:38 Aleph What do you think of the flashbacks?
17:38 Rook apples and chalcanth waiting oh sure that makes EVERYTHING OKAY
17:38 Rook well I'm not there yet
17:38 Aleph Because, uh
17:38 Rook
17:38 Aleph ... I keep getting caught out by your reading speed.
17:38 Aleph
17:38 Rook "ding" goes the mind needling
17:38 Rook and I read *very* fast, just not this because I'm taking it deliberately slow
17:38 Aleph "shit" goes Keris, "that hurts"
17:39 Rook oh hello flashback
17:39 Rook papa was a smith!
17:39 Rook mama was pretty! other people
17:39 Rook 'Uh. Fail.'
17:39 Rook HAVE SOME TRAUMA
17:40 Aleph So yeah, Keris's dad was Persian/Iranian, and her mother was... like, /far/ southern. Nigerian, maybe.
17:40 Rook "whoops there goes some hair" bruh I feel you
17:40 Aleph I am... kind of interested in how the fuck they met, tbh
17:40 Aleph like
17:40 Aleph there is a story there
17:40 Aleph Possibly a good one.
17:40 Rook well if her papa was a smith perhaps she traveled and came to him for business!
17:40 Rook Which begs the question what she was doing up there.
17:40 Rook But I digress.
17:40 Rook Keris is in [HEAVY BREATHING] mode
17:41 Rook awww Keris...
17:41 Aleph and not the good kind
17:41 Rook lel
17:41 Rook sasi pls
17:41 Rook keris pls
17:42 Rook SHE CAN'T EVEN ENJOY BOOBIES WHAT AWFUL TIMES ARE THESE
17:42 Aleph Hmm?
17:42 Aleph they are truly awful
17:42 Rook these two my heart ;_;
17:42 Aleph Keris /does not like SWLIHN Charms/.
17:42 Rook and then keris ate ALL THE APPLES
17:42 Rook *omnomnomnomnom*
17:42 Rook well that was a quick week
17:43 Rook THANK YOU DICE FAIRIES
17:43 Rook riverrrrrr
17:44 Rook and it was blood ape leather too!
17:44 Aleph chibi!Keris
17:44 Rook welp
17:44 Rook oh god
17:44 Rook that's an image
17:44 Aleph throwin' flowers in the river
17:44 Rook Imagine chibi!Keris with the hair
17:44 Rook going full BLENDERMODE
17:44 Aleph sadly no
17:44 Aleph her hair was normal and brown back then
17:44 Rook just comically high pitched squealing as she rips bloody mayhem
17:44 Aleph she was very cute
17:44 Rook yes but imagine a chibi!Keris that is in the style of present her
17:44 Rook just like
17:44 Rook murdering everything
17:44 Aleph but rook
17:44 Rook the mental image is amazing
17:44 Aleph why would we need to imagine chibi!Keris
17:45 Aleph when her children will have her hair
17:45 Rook ooohhhhhh
17:45 Rook good point!
17:45 Aleph also all of her souls
17:45 Rook THE WORLD IS NOT READY
17:45 Aleph ...
17:45 Aleph seriously keris
17:45 Rook lord have mercy
17:45 Rook nobody is ready for that
17:45 Aleph why is your hair so fundamental a part of your self image
17:45 Rook *nobody*
17:45 Rook Especially not Keris lmao
17:45 Aleph that literally all of your souls have it
17:45 Rook HAVE FUN TRYING TO RAISE THOSE KIDS
17:45 Aleph INCLUDING THE GIANT SNAKE
17:45 Rook Dulmea.
17:45 Rook ...
17:45 Rook Dulmeadokh, is her name
17:45 Rook yes?
17:45 Aleph Yes.
17:45 Aleph dokht
17:45 Rook Aha~
17:45 Rook -dokht, yes.
17:46 Rook What was done here.
17:46 Rook I see it.
17:46 Rook :3
17:46 Aleph Keris is very sweet.
17:46 Aleph She started out Keris of Firewander, but sort of... latched onto Dulmea.
17:46 Rook hopefully servantbro finds it
17:46 Aleph alas, they did not
17:46 Rook ;;
17:46 Rook welp
17:47 Aleph and then VACATION
17:47 Rook VACATION
17:47 Rook lol Sasi
17:47 Aleph
17:47 Aleph Look
17:47 Rook IT WAS JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS PLS NO MULCH ME
17:47 Aleph "we did it on purpose"
17:47 Aleph sounds a lot better than "we accidentally a whole nexus"
17:48 Rook indeed!
17:48 Rook it's also like 20x more psychotic but hey
17:48 Rook bad Keris no tapping the Unquestionable
17:48 Rook baaaaaaaaaad Keris
17:48 Rook bad!
17:48 Aleph look
17:48 Aleph he just
17:48 Aleph he feels /so much/ like Her
17:48 Rook <Keris> "pls gib sorcerery lessons thank"
17:48 Aleph ... and also won't kill her with his touch, which is convenient
17:49 Rook CONGRATULATIONS ON MULTITUDININESS
17:49 Rook that's a word
17:49 Rook
17:49 Aleph
17:49 Rook oh, Keris
17:49 Aleph Lilunu is aware that Keris has been dabbling in Pantheon heresy.
17:49 Aleph ... Keris is in fact at the /cutting edge/ of Pantheon heresy.
17:49 Rook Keris got the whole damn crew up with her and Sasi
17:49 Aleph Like, she may literally be the most soul-developed Infernal in the Reclamation.
17:50 Rook Pantheon heresy?
17:50 Rook I have an idea of what you mean by that
17:50 Aleph The way she's growing souls and making an inner world and becoming a mini-Primordial.
17:50 Rook Do you mean she has too many souls and they're too powerful? or
17:50 Rook Aha.
17:50 Rook Yays!
17:50 Aleph Well, at the moment she thinks she's a mini-Unquestionable
17:50 Rook I was mostly right ^_^
17:50 Aleph because, like, they have seven souls, right?
17:50 Aleph And they're also geography as well as people
17:50 Aleph Right?
17:50 Rook lol
17:50 Aleph Calesco, Keris's eighth soul: "Hi."
17:50 Rook "also geography as well as people"
17:51 Rook #Exalted
17:51 Aleph Ligier is the Green Sun.
17:51 Aleph
17:51 Aleph Why can't Keris be the, uh
17:51 Rook in that case it's astronomy as well as people!
17:51 Aleph pocket realm of Krisity?
17:51 Rook Linthaaaa
17:51 Aleph Shashalme is their gardens, etc
17:51 Rook and then ISLAND TIEM
17:52 Rook Humility, eh
17:52 Aleph The five trials.
17:52 Aleph And yeah. Keris's life has certainly taught her that one.
17:52 Aleph Extensively, and at length.
17:53 Rook To her left, Malfeas.
17:53 Rook To her right, Nexus.
17:53 Rook "Keris-level introduction"
17:54 Rook and we go from touching to lololololol just like that
17:54 Aleph So yeah, her Sacrifice was her identity as a street rat. She self-identifies as a Green Sun Princess now - she's no longer the pauper.
17:54 Aleph She might be, you know
17:54 Aleph still a bit feral
17:54 Rook just a little bit
17:54 Rook a wee tad
17:54 Rook now and again it pops up
17:54 Rook nobody ever notices
17:54 Aleph but she's fundamentally comfortable as someone who Owns Things and Orders People Around and Has A Title.
17:54 Rook (usually, I hazard, because they are dead)
17:54 Aleph
17:55 Aleph Incidentally, that Keris-level introduction was her learning Social Saboteur Style.
17:55 Rook lol
17:55 Rook eye_of_the_tiger.mp4
17:55 Aleph Which is basically "this is how politics and bureaucracies work and how to make them /stop/ working."
17:55 Rook "and then they left a cult behind"
17:55 Rook >Naan
17:55 Rook I read as "Nyan"
17:55 Aleph Sasi tends to do that.
17:55 Aleph Naan is cool.
17:56 Aleph He is Keris's bro.
17:56 Aleph And a hulking slab of muscle who is smarter than he looks.
17:56 Aleph And about as combat-focused as she is.
17:56 Rook More piercings!
17:56 Aleph
17:56 Rook GLITTERY SHINY SHINIES
17:56 Aleph razor wire hair!
17:56 Aleph ^_^
17:56 Rook omg yessss
17:56 Rook AND THEY SPARKLE
17:57 Aleph SPARKLY RAZOR WIRE HAIR
17:57 Rook Show YouTube video ()
17:57 Rook
17:57 Aleph Keris's hair has an impressive kill-count all on its own.
17:57 Aleph That's what killed Rat, you know.
17:57 Rook lol
17:57 Rook somehow, I'm not surprised
17:57 Rook
17:57 Aleph He was blocking her first few shots, but decided to Perfect her weapon and tank the hair whip.
17:57 Rook aaaand then Sasi
17:57 Aleph Which turned out to a) have the stats of a tiger claw and b) be poisoned.
17:58 Rook and then Kasseni!
17:58 Aleph things went downhill for him from there
17:58 Aleph Ah yes.
17:58 Aleph Kasseni
17:58 Rook ...
17:58 Rook Kasseni
17:58 Aleph Don't feel too sorry for her.
17:59 Aleph She was not a nice woman.
17:59 Aleph But yes, Keris is... scary, around people she hates
17:59 Aleph in fact, hang on
17:59 Rook ... for a second I thought she was someone else
17:59 Rook Isn't this--yeah this bitch
17:59 Rook Nevermind lmao
17:59 Aleph Let me just grab a bit from the Nexus arc
17:59 Aleph to show you /how/ scary
17:59 Aleph She snuck into Kasseni's place first thing, but decided to drag it out and ruin the woman instead of just killing her quick and clean
17:59 Aleph and, uh
18:00 Rook >The dead old woman, her chest torn open, is thrown to the kennels later. The hunting dogs tear the corpse apart with relish. They haven't had human before.
18:00 Rook welp
18:00 Rook and oh man
18:00 Rook aaaand stopped at Lady Sareh's Mistress!
18:00 Aleph So just to remind you, Kasseni was in charge of the Guild slavery trade in Nexus
18:00 Aleph And... hang on...
18:00 Rook mhm!
18:01 Aleph She picked Keris up for one of the places she owned. There's a reason Keris knows who she is - Kasseni (well, probably one of Kasseni's senior servants, tbh) picked her and a few others out of the group she reached Nexus in, to fill out a few vacancies. And because yeah, getting slaves young means that they're well-trained and obedient by the time they grow up.
18:01 Aleph Keris barely remembers how horrible it was coming off the drugs they gave the children - and added the cost of the drugs to their indenture, costing more than one day's labour per day's doses.
18:01 Aleph So she was eager to see her again.
18:02 Aleph Fair warning: textdump coming
18:02 Rook hit me
18:02 Aleph The probably-a-study opens without fuss, but sadly there are no shiny things in it. Keris closes and relocks the door - Sasi will be able to get in regardless - and moves on. Towards the bedroom, where she can hear the sound of the woman breathing. Opening the door with a lock of hair, her knives slip instinctively into her hands as she takes in the face woman nestled under warm, beautifully...
18:02 Aleph ...embroidered blankets.
18:02 Aleph She knows this face. Oh, does she know this face. It's in some of her earliest memories; always from a distance, always accompanied by lectures on what to do, how to act, how to sit and stand and kneel and bow. Little children are good for... little things. Cleaning hard-to-reach spaces. Polishing. And of course, if you get them young enough, they grow up never knowing any other life. It...
18:02 Aleph ...cuts down on... rebelliousness.
18:02 Aleph It hadn't worked with Keris. There's pain in those early memories, too. And shouting. A lot of shouting. For a small child, an angry adult's yell can be as scary as a physical blow. They'd managed to install meek compliance on the outside, but she'd never stopped looking for a way to escape the hard work and cramped conditions and constant, ever-present fear of punishment. A way to get back...
18:02 Aleph ...to a home that wasn't there anymore.
18:02 Aleph All because of this woman.
18:02 Aleph 'Patience, child,' Dulmea intervenes, possibly a little concerned at where this thought process is going. 'You wish to hurt her first, do you not? And you promised Sasi you would not act rashly.'
18:02 Aleph Keris nods once, dismissing one of the knives. The other stays conspicuously present. She ghosts over to the bed, deep pink and rich red whorls and swirls appearing across her palm. Gently - very, very gently - the ex-slave-turned-street-rat-turned-Exalt traces a line across Makoa Kasseni's brow. The passionate colours stain her brow for a moment, then sink into the skin and are gone.
18:02 Aleph Keris doesn't straighten up, though. "I could kill you now," she murmurs, almost in the tone of a lover. "I could kill you right now, right here. Nobody would even hear you screaming. I could take my time. Use poisons and my knives. Mutate you, make you last longer. I could make it go on for /hours/ and /hours/ and /hours/." She smiles dreamily. "I could. But I won't. Not yet. I'm going to...
18:02 Aleph ...drag this out first. I'm going to do to you what you did to me. I'm going to take /everything/ from you." She brushes a feather-light kiss across a sleeping cheek, lips blushing pink for a moment as she does so. "And until then - until the very end - I'm not going to hurt you. And neither is anyone else. You don't get to die before I'm through with you."
18:02 Aleph One more dose, a finger trailing down Kasseni's neck. The woman shivers in her sleep, perhaps sensing the hatred being focused on her.
18:02 Aleph "I'll be back," Keris whispers, and is gone.
18:02 Aleph Aleph: ((... okay, I did not mean for that to be as creepy-terrifying as it came out.))
18:03 Aleph ... Keris is /very scary/ around people she hates.
18:03 Rook I see.
18:04 Rook That's some p nasty stuff there
18:04 Aleph This is what happens when you have "Get Revenge" as a 4-dot Principle.
18:05 Aleph ... well, this and also "whoops i accidentally a whole nexus"
18:05 Rook lol.
18:05 Aleph ¬_¬

 

[Giygas]

You seem to be assuming that somehow curing Autocthon (the primordial) will magically make all the problems of Autocthon (the place) go away. It won't. Resources will continue to be scarce, the terrain will continue to be dangerous, nations will continue to war with each other and weird threats will continue to show up. Autocthonian spirits will continue to be mostly apathetic or hostile to humans, with the consequences thereof. Waking Autocthon up will have consequences, but those are vague, ill-defined, and not required to actually cure him in the first place

Click to shrink...

Well, assuming that the "Cure"/"therapy to threat the illness to not make him as ill" would involve the Wyld, this problem will probably go away.

Of course, every other problem is probably going to worsen(Wyld+dangerous terrain= even more dangerous terrain; wyld+weird threats= weirder and more dangerous threats; wyld+ other problems= they will probably get worse somehow), but the lack of resources will be a thing of the past!

 

[Revlid]

Any thoughts? I feel it's workable but I'm not quite satisfied by it; it has essentially no place for the "incrementally become better at X" abilities that allow Exalts to have a spectrum between "defeat ten men" and "defeat a thousand."

Click to shrink...

I was planning out a similar system for an eventual Spider-Man quest, which got into target number alteration.

That is to say, everyone used the 1-5 Skill scale, with features offering a few more dice. But if you were a child, you rolled a success on a 6. If you were a teen, you rolled a success on a 5. If you were an adult, you rolled a success on a 4. If you were a superhuman, you rolled a success on a 3. If you were legendary, you rolled a success on a 2. Some people might have features providing a different scale for particular Skills or specialties – for example, someone bit by the original spider would (among other things) see their Brawn and Grace jump to superhuman, as would their Wits (reaction time), but their Brains, Charm and Cool would remain untouched.

So Loki and a young Harry Osborn might both be Strength 2 with no particular specialties or feats enhancing that, but Loki has a 35/36 chance of rolling at least one success, because he's a living god (ish) while Harry has a 20/36 chance because he's a teenager.

It also meant that odds could be sort of translated into "are you at least as good as the average child (1/18)".

 

[EarthScorpion]

The Steel Dragon Society

Founded by deserters and dishonourably discharged officers from the Imperial Navy, the Steel Dragon has built itself into a brutal criminal syndicate. The corrupt, the politically unreliable, members of fallen Lesser Houses - all of these have come together to go into business for themselves. The Society has fortified its numbers with impressed people grabbed by their brutal recruiting gangs, and no small number of men whose only crime was drinking too much have found themselves clapped in irons and beginning a new life at sea.

The Steel Dragon Society has its centre of operations in Raranbek, just north of the Wailing Fen. Twenty years ago, they overthrew the prince of that small nation, taking control of its natural harbour and its position overseeing the opal trade passing down the Green Snake River. They run that nation as brutally as any satrapy, and the Society has begun to bring in slaves to work on intensifying the agriculture.

However, the Steel Dragon Society is not truly a nation. It is a syndicate of dishonoured Realm naval officers, and the culture of the Imperial Navy suffuses it. Raranbek is not their nation in their eyes - it is a valuable satrapy. They maintain enclaves and outposts and tribute-paying tribes from Saata to Mnes Muhan. To them, the true strength of the Society lies in its fleets. Each time they are out-sailed by a wind-fast Lintha ship or retreat from the savagery of the Zu Tak, it is an embarrassment. In truth the mainstay fleets of the Society are unexceptional by the standards of the pirate powers of the South West and it is the wealth of Raranbek and their well-structured training academy that lets them replace their losses.

On the open water, the ships of the Society carry their trade goods from port to port, while engaging in opportunistic piracy when the chance arrives. They are particularly invested in the opium trade which carries poppies to the Deep South, and the sugarcane trade which heads back north.

The Society is less than a century old. It has its origins with Bara Ledito, a mid-ranking Water Aspect within the Imperial Navy. While it must be admitted he was part of the Sargasso Sea Scandal, that he frequently took kickbacks from pirates to ignore them, and that he was certainly involved in an assassination attempt on the head of a rival branch of the Navy, at least in his opinion the blame was unfairly pinned on him. After his dishonourable discharge and once he was released from jail, he joined forces with Ledala Dura, a Fire Aspect discharged for her drug habit and unreliability, and Ragara Celado whose name was blackened by unproven allegations of infernalism.

Between them, the three Terrestrials had enough dirt and favours to burn that they managed to acquire the rights to certain inter-satrapy trading routes. They knew many of the corrupt naval officials in the South-West - and on top of that, the dynasts knew how to oil the wheels as required. A certain arrangement with a corrupt naval magistrate was enough to ensure that sailors punished with enslavement would be sold to them, and so they started to skim off the scum of the Imperial Navy.

Bara Ledito suffered an unfortunate series of stab wounds in his back shortly after the subjugation of Raranbek, and now the Steel Dragon Society is ruled over by Ledala Dura and Ragara Celado. Two of their children have been blessed by the dragons, and it is rumoured that Ledala Dura has begun to consider where to find Exalted spouses for them who can be brought into the Society.

The flag of the Steel Dragon Society is a dark grey dragon on a yellow background. It maintains a facsimile of naval dress regulations among its officers and recruits who freely join, but the impressed crewmen are only issued cheap hand-offs. Members of the society can be recognised by their necklace of a steel dragon.

 

[Salty]

So.

When's Keris going to be murdering their faces off?

 

[EarthScorpion]

So.

When's Keris going to be murdering their faces off?

Click to shrink...

Keris is currently learning that solving all your problems with murder just produces new problems.

And worse, solving your problems with murder involves engaging with the combat engine. It's a usual threat for a GM. "Don't be so murder-happy, or I'll resolve the combat using the 2e system".

(Meanwhile, slice of life soul interactions do not involve the combat engine)

 

[cyberswordsmen]

You seem to be assuming that somehow curing Autocthon (the primordial) will magically make all the problems of Autocthon (the place) go away. It won't. Resources will continue to be scarce, the terrain will continue to be dangerous, nations will continue to war with each other and weird threats will continue to show up. Autocthonian spirits will continue to be mostly apathetic or hostile to humans, with the consequences thereof. Waking Autocthon up will have consequences, but those are vague, ill-defined, and not required to actually cure him in the first place

There's a reason I proposed the example of killing the Neverborn as the equivalent: they both involve solving a huge problem facing reality as you know it, and issue that future generations would otherwise need to deal with as it gets worse and worse, but there's almost undoubtably still going to be problems for the future.

Click to shrink...

That is assuming the curing process doesn't kill everyone when his world body rearranges into a new non diseased form.

 

[Salty]

Keris is currently learning that solving all your problems with murder just produces new problems.

And worse, solving your problems with murder involves engaging with the combat engine. It's a usual threat for a GM. "Don't be so murder-happy, or I'll resolve the combat using the 2e system".

(Meanwhile, slice of life soul interactions do not involve the combat engine)

Click to shrink...

Okay, so when is Keris stealing all of them to incorporate them into her piratical empire, especially the kids?

 

[Aaron Peori]

And worse, solving your problems with murder involves engaging with the combat engine. It's a usual threat for a GM. "Don't be so murder-happy, or I'll resolve the combat using the 2e system".

Click to shrink...

Didn't either Kult or Unknown Armies make their combat engine as painful as possible to discourage people actually using it (also it was hilariously lethal and began with "So you decided to murder another human being...")?

 

[Dif]

Didn't either Kult or Unknown Armies make their combat engine as painful as possible to discourage people actually using it (also it was hilariously lethal and began with "So you decided to murder another human being...")?

Click to shrink...

Unknown Armies, though it did attempt something interesting with its use of Madness tracks as the primary stick, where simply attempting to engage in deadly-combat managed to severely traumatize characters even in situations where they were the aggressor, rather than simply being "lets not slog through this, I didn't bring a scientific calculator."

I will say though, that's one thing that always seemed overly self-congratulatory in late-90s/early-20s RPGs, the reactionary post-D&D trend that "people buy these games for combat, so while we don't condone action-hero bullshit, we included a system anyway but made it Bad on Purpose!" posturing was some manner of high art to shape player behavior. Rather than, you know, actually crafting a system which upheld the themes actually intended, instead of punishing the player for attempting to run it like a reskinned dungeon-crawl because they saw you had included three pages of gun stats.

But then, I suppose that's getting into the grey area of RPGs poorly articulating their intended goals in the first place, if not contrarily writing towards the audience they disapprove of to Make A Point, rather than courting its intended playerbase.

 

[Sanctaphrax]

I think the combat rules of Unknown Armies reflect the intended themes very well.

It's a terrible idea, you're going to do it anyway, and you'll probably die or otherwise get severely messed up.

 

[NonSequtur]

Didn't either Kult or Unknown Armies make their combat engine as painful as possible to discourage people actually using it (also it was hilariously lethal and began with "So you decided to murder another human being...")?

Click to shrink...

Unknown Armies (2e, at least, text below) had a part to that effect, can't remember about Kult but it wouldn't surprise me.

Spoiler

CHAPTER 4: COMBAT
Somewhere out there is someone who had loving parents, watched clouds on a summer's day, fell in love, lost a friend, is kind to small animals, and knows how to say "please" and "thank you," and yet somehow the two of you are going to end up in a dirty little room with one knife between you and you are going to have to kill that human being.

It's a terrible thing. Not just because he's come to the same realization and wants to survive just as much as you do, meaning he's going to try and puncture your internal organs to set off a cascading trauma effect that ends with you voiding your bowels, dying alone and removed from everything you've ever loved. No, it's a terrible thing because somewhere along the way you could have made a different choice. You could have avoided that knife, that room, and maybe even found some kind of common ground between the two of you. Or at least, you might have divvied up some turf and left each other alone. That would have been a lot smarter, wouldn't it? Even dogs are smart enough to do that. Now you're staring into the eyes of a fellow human and in a couple minutes one of you is going to be vomiting blood to the rhythm of a fading heartbeat. The survivor is going to remember this night for the rest of his or her life.

SIX WAYS TO STOP A FIGHT
So before you make a grab for that knife, you should maybe think about a few things. This moment is frozen in time. You can still make a better choice.

Surrender. Is your pride realIy worth a human life? Drop your weapon, put up your hands, and tell them you're ready to cut a deal. You walk, and in exchange you give them something they need. Sidestep the current agenda. Offer them something unrelated to your dispute. and negotiate to find a solution.
Disarm. Knife on the table? Throw it out the window. Opponent with a gun? Dodge until he's out of bullets. Descalate the confrontation to fists, if possible. You can settle your differences with some brawling and still walk away, plus neither one of you has to face a murder charge or a criminal investigation.
Rechannel. So you have a conflict. Settle it a smarter way. Arm wrestle, play cards, have a scavenger hunt, a drinking contest, anything that lets you establish a winner and a loser. Smart gamblers bet nothing they aren't willing to lose. Why put your life on the line?
Pass the Buck. Is there somebody more powerful than either one of you who is going to be angry that you two are coming to blows? Pretend you're all in the mafia and you can't just kill each other without kicking your dispute upstairs first. Let that symbolic superior make a decision. You both gain clout for not spilling blood.
Call The Cops. If you've got a grievance against somebody, let the police do your dirty work. File charges. Get a restraining order. Sue him in civil court for wrongful harm. You can beat him down without throwing a punch.
Run Away. The hell with it. Who needs this kind of heat? Blow town, get a job someplace else, build a new power base. Is the world really too small for the both of you? It's a big planet out there.

OH WELL
Still determined? Backed into a corner with no way out? Have to fight for the greater good? Up against someone too stupid to know this is a bad idea? Or maybe just itching for some action? So be it. The rest of this chapter contains rules for simulating the murder of human beings. Have fun.

I can't make any statements as to them deliberately designing the combat engine to be painful to play in the mechanical sense.

 

[Peanuckle]

(Meanwhile, slice of life soul interactions do not involve the combat engine)

Click to shrink...

This actually reminded me of a point I wanted to talk about in Kerisgame.

Calesco says that many of her people will die due to the retaliatory attacks from Haneyl and Rathan over convincing Keris to not indulge their spheres of power. Is Keris just taking an extreme hands-off approach to managing her soul-world? She didn't really reprimand Haneyl for genociding her own people either. It seems that Keris simply doesn't care about the fates of the first-circles, but I think the fact that Dulmea produces mindless Chell for hunting and that Calesco makes her citizens equals indicates that Keris does have some degree of concern for the life in her soul. Or has she accepted the fact that her souls are going to kill thousands of people over disagreements?

It feels to me like there is a wealth of roleplay opportunity trying to hammer out the warlike political atmosphere of Krisity.