- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Only insofar as you can screw over a computer by smashing the monitor. The sky isn't the Loom itself, it's just the readout.
General Exalted Thread
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I have no idea what you're talking about, everything is fine and conforms perfectly to those rules.
Now move along, these Styles are under investigation by the Wyld Hunt, and you do look a little strange, don't want you to get confused as an Anathema-worshipper do we?
Yes, as it happens the Sidereals wouldn't exactly be happy if you destroyed the Loom of Fate and murdered the Maidens, which is what you'd need to do to destroy the constellations.
Of course, the Sidereal Exalted collectively function as a back-up Loom of Fate - which is precisely how Sidereals can invent their own Constellations and then force the gods to do a lot of work to harmonise these new stars in the Sidereals with the exterior stars. That's why they can only remove Constellations from the Loom if no Sidereals know them - otherwise the Sidereals keep them and now you have Sidereal-Fate working differently from Loom-Fate. Five Sidereals (one from each Aspect) working together can weave Fate over an area, and the more Sidereals you add to that group, the wider the area affected is.
This is how Sidereals close Shadowlands and purify land of wyld-taint - very large astrological workings with 5+ Sidereals working together to weave new Fate over the hole in the world and keep it there for at least a season. Since such an exercise takes at least a season of full-time work for a notable fraction of the Sidereal host, they don't have the time to do it these days for things that aren't being a problem.
(This should be the Maidens' job, but they're a bunch of slackers who get antsy when they're kept away from the Games for three months.)
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It also means that you can do "teach me your ancient arts master"-type storylines where you fight to keep various Constellations alive.
You can also do political sabotage and attempt to discredit the utility of a Constellation to minimize the amount of people who learn it and thus attempt to secure that it falls into obscurity, and eventually forgetfulness.
Fenking, the Wit of the Koku
Demon of the Second Circle
Warden Soul of the Idea That Must Be Sold
At first glance, Fenking appears to merely be a humble entertainer of the sort who might be seen at any Calibration fair. His face is painted in chalky white and tar black, his red hair is unkempt and his clothes are archaic and ill-fitting. Around his neck he has a set of wooden pipes and he plays lilting tunes which make children laugh and grown men remember the days of their youth. He juggles, he dances and he tells outrageous jokes. Within the satchel on his back he carries Malfean delicacies that he scatters. When he touches coinage, jokes in Old Realm are scratched into their surface - the origin of his moniker. Cats and dogs are driven into confusion by his presence and chase their tails until they faint, and his smell lowers inhibitions and makes men prone to fits of laughter.
By the time an onlooker notices that his eyes are yellow and mad, he has the teeth of a shark, and the colour of his skin is not paint - well, it is too late. Fenking guards his greater self and he does so by saving her from her hunger. He is a lure and bait, and his mad antics only serve to captivate men and women, calling them back to Sileda's grand fair to be consumed by the demon queen.
Within Malfeas, he haunts the sewers where all the detritus of the Demon City floats. Long ago he gave great offense to Ligier. When the green sun notices the Wit of the Koku, he casts bolts of fire down at him. Force of habit leads him to only reluctantly expose himself to the sun within Creation, and so by preference he acts at night - though the street rats of Nexus and Chiaroscuro have fearful tales of a pale-faced creature that lurks underground.
Fenking collects laughter and screams alike. His magics allow him to draw the sound from the air as wool, and he weaves his ill-fitting garments from it. This is one of the reasons he is tolerated, for his wool is much prized by those who fear the Silent Wind. The death of a few hundred serfs is little compared to a tithe of laughter-wool which can be used to weave banners which giggle when the wind blows past them. He does not buy slaves with the funds from these sales, however, for his nature demands that fools must follow him freely; they cannot be forced.
A summoner will call on Fenking to gather men and women together or to entertain and amuse. The latter purpose is much kinder than the former, for Fenking is often called to round up conscripts for war or to lure an army out of the castle they are meant to be guarding. Other sorcerers desire the wool he makes to be woven into fabric, though they must provide him with an audience from which he can harvest his raw materials. A binder must take care to prohibit the Wit of the Koku from snatching away children or old men, who he stuffs into his baggy clothes where they sleep until he carries them back to Hell at the end of his service.
The proximity of those who do not wish to be where they are pains Fenking, and he flees their presence if they refuse to follow him elsewhere - and gains one Limit a scene if prevented from fleeing. Alas, the Solar Exalted were not as wise as they should have been, and a foolish Eclipse once swore an oath which lets Fenking escape Malfeas freely once every twenty seven years on the nineteenth of Resplendent Earth. The task which he agreed to perform is now impossible, and so the Wit of the Koku may act freely within the lands the Solar once ruled for a month and a day - and he does. Otherwise, he can also escape Malfeas upon Calibration, but only when mistakenly summoned by those who believe him to be a demon of the First Circle - a misunderstanding he makes sure to spread.
Demon of the Second Circle
Warden Soul of the Idea That Must Be Sold
At first glance, Fenking appears to merely be a humble entertainer of the sort who might be seen at any Calibration fair. His face is painted in chalky white and tar black, his red hair is unkempt and his clothes are archaic and ill-fitting. Around his neck he has a set of wooden pipes and he plays lilting tunes which make children laugh and grown men remember the days of their youth. He juggles, he dances and he tells outrageous jokes. Within the satchel on his back he carries Malfean delicacies that he scatters. When he touches coinage, jokes in Old Realm are scratched into their surface - the origin of his moniker. Cats and dogs are driven into confusion by his presence and chase their tails until they faint, and his smell lowers inhibitions and makes men prone to fits of laughter.
By the time an onlooker notices that his eyes are yellow and mad, he has the teeth of a shark, and the colour of his skin is not paint - well, it is too late. Fenking guards his greater self and he does so by saving her from her hunger. He is a lure and bait, and his mad antics only serve to captivate men and women, calling them back to Sileda's grand fair to be consumed by the demon queen.
Within Malfeas, he haunts the sewers where all the detritus of the Demon City floats. Long ago he gave great offense to Ligier. When the green sun notices the Wit of the Koku, he casts bolts of fire down at him. Force of habit leads him to only reluctantly expose himself to the sun within Creation, and so by preference he acts at night - though the street rats of Nexus and Chiaroscuro have fearful tales of a pale-faced creature that lurks underground.
Fenking collects laughter and screams alike. His magics allow him to draw the sound from the air as wool, and he weaves his ill-fitting garments from it. This is one of the reasons he is tolerated, for his wool is much prized by those who fear the Silent Wind. The death of a few hundred serfs is little compared to a tithe of laughter-wool which can be used to weave banners which giggle when the wind blows past them. He does not buy slaves with the funds from these sales, however, for his nature demands that fools must follow him freely; they cannot be forced.
A summoner will call on Fenking to gather men and women together or to entertain and amuse. The latter purpose is much kinder than the former, for Fenking is often called to round up conscripts for war or to lure an army out of the castle they are meant to be guarding. Other sorcerers desire the wool he makes to be woven into fabric, though they must provide him with an audience from which he can harvest his raw materials. A binder must take care to prohibit the Wit of the Koku from snatching away children or old men, who he stuffs into his baggy clothes where they sleep until he carries them back to Hell at the end of his service.
The proximity of those who do not wish to be where they are pains Fenking, and he flees their presence if they refuse to follow him elsewhere - and gains one Limit a scene if prevented from fleeing. Alas, the Solar Exalted were not as wise as they should have been, and a foolish Eclipse once swore an oath which lets Fenking escape Malfeas freely once every twenty seven years on the nineteenth of Resplendent Earth. The task which he agreed to perform is now impossible, and so the Wit of the Koku may act freely within the lands the Solar once ruled for a month and a day - and he does. Otherwise, he can also escape Malfeas upon Calibration, but only when mistakenly summoned by those who believe him to be a demon of the First Circle - a misunderstanding he makes sure to spread.
Last edited:
- Location
- Virginia
OK, but look at your portrayal of say Ligier. He's a smith, sure, but especially in game terms there are few "crafting projects" that his skills seem inapplicable to - like submarines, for one example. Sure, he has lots of infrastructure, but a PC Solar ought to be able to have a crafting concept at least as broad as the published NPCs.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Firstly, that's not really engaging the central point of ES's post, which is that you shouldn't just be crafting to craft because you heard someone likes craft so you want to put Artifacts in their Artifact so they can attune while they attune, yo. You should be tied into the setting and making an impact, a'la Shyft's Impact and Intrigue rules.
Secondly, Keris can turn her hand to multiple types of craft and art. She does this not by being a genetic "crafter", but by buying up multiple different types of craft - she's a silversmith and a painter and an embroiderer and an alchemist and so on because she's gone after each of these individually instead of just trying to be a generic all-encompassing "crafter". If you want to be a Tony Stark omni-crafter, you need to buy dozens of different Styles and accumulate a bunch of different Charms that you use at different times for different things.
And thirdly, Ligier works almost exclusively in metal (ideally brass), sidelines as an architect (also ideally brass, though he's more willing to compromise on that front), is capable of High First Age technological sophistication if he works at it in person, and must be given all the rare and valuable ingredients he demands for a project or else he will unwittingly include subtle flaws in his creations that will doom their users. There are plenty of crafting projects his skills aren't applicable to; you wouldn't summon him to make a vast marble dam, or to build a Water manse, or to craft a branch from the Last Western Tree into a bow that brings rain when it's fired, or to brew drugs, or to do anything related to Genesis-crafting. He's basically "metal, green fire, soaring architecture (Malfean materials) and High First Age devices", which is three areas plus his core nature.
So to bring that round to your original point, which was "what demon would be most suited to a crafter", it depends on your areas of craft. That concept of Ligier's would be fine for a herenhal, but not terribly well-matched with a neomah - despite the fact that neomah are also crafters (of flesh).
To use our usual example here; Keris is currently a silversmith, a vitriol-alchemist, an embroiderer and a painter, which means her projects tend to have strong themes of "vitriol-silver and pretty decoration" or be based around vitriol-mutating living creatures. She's also a musician, but this shows up less in her projects. So far.
Secondly, Keris can turn her hand to multiple types of craft and art. She does this not by being a genetic "crafter", but by buying up multiple different types of craft - she's a silversmith and a painter and an embroiderer and an alchemist and so on because she's gone after each of these individually instead of just trying to be a generic all-encompassing "crafter". If you want to be a Tony Stark omni-crafter, you need to buy dozens of different Styles and accumulate a bunch of different Charms that you use at different times for different things.
And thirdly, Ligier works almost exclusively in metal (ideally brass), sidelines as an architect (also ideally brass, though he's more willing to compromise on that front), is capable of High First Age technological sophistication if he works at it in person, and must be given all the rare and valuable ingredients he demands for a project or else he will unwittingly include subtle flaws in his creations that will doom their users. There are plenty of crafting projects his skills aren't applicable to; you wouldn't summon him to make a vast marble dam, or to build a Water manse, or to craft a branch from the Last Western Tree into a bow that brings rain when it's fired, or to brew drugs, or to do anything related to Genesis-crafting. He's basically "metal, green fire, soaring architecture (Malfean materials) and High First Age devices", which is three areas plus his core nature.
So to bring that round to your original point, which was "what demon would be most suited to a crafter", it depends on your areas of craft. That concept of Ligier's would be fine for a herenhal, but not terribly well-matched with a neomah - despite the fact that neomah are also crafters (of flesh).
To use our usual example here; Keris is currently a silversmith, a vitriol-alchemist, an embroiderer and a painter, which means her projects tend to have strong themes of "vitriol-silver and pretty decoration" or be based around vitriol-mutating living creatures. She's also a musician, but this shows up less in her projects. So far.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
I think you're missing a 'to be' here.
Otherwise, I really like Fenking.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Actually, building off this, let's have a look at the diets of the various keruby breeds! Some of them have undergone a few changes since they were originally posted in this thread, and will be getting minor rewrites - sziromkeruby need their predatory cattish sides given greater prominence in their bio and femkeruby need to have their un-taming thing toned down so that they're more useful as familiars, etc.
A few of these changes may be apparent from the following.
Szelkeruby
Szelkeruby are haemovores, and require blood to survive. When they eat raw meat they can get enough in their diet, but otherwise they have to hunt down and drink a mouthful every few days. The tongue of a wind-cherub can close open wounds, and so a szelkerub blood-hunt usually involves a pack tracking down their prey, slashing at them with knives to get access to the delicious blood, and then licking the wounds to close them up and send the still-alive prey on its way.
Otherwise, the wind-cherub diet is relatively flexible, and given blood they can survive nutritionally off a diet of grassy seeds, insects, fabric and salt. However, szelkeruby adore sugar and will do almost anything for it. The border with the Meadows is marked with a massive export trade of honey for the hungry szelkeruby of the Ruin, and sugar-cane toads are kept under control by relentless predation.
Orvenkeruby
Wave charmers are of the Sea, and such is their diet. Dry food of any form is indigestible for an orvenkerub, and forcing it down can damage their throats and leave them with terrible stomach pains. Their preferred meals are bowls of fish and seaweed in brine - they find most aquatic plants and animals to be edible, and see little difference between the two in their meals. When away from easy access of water, orvenkeruby face dietary challenges. They are able to eat land-grown food if adequately soaked, but dislike the taste. Freshwater is less palatable to them than brine, but they will catch rainwater in bowls to soak their food in if they must.
Demonologists might be surprised to see a wave charmer eat, for they devour huge portions despite their childish stature. A hungry orvenkerub can pack away twice or even thrice as much food as an adult human, and then be content with only water for several days thereafter. Rice and salt soup is surprisingly agreeable to their constitutions when on land; perhaps a result of the flooded fields rice is prone to grow in and the sheer size of the portions they favour.
Sziromkeruby
Onlookers have noted that the eating habits of the petal-cherubs much resembles that of the fox or the cat. Sziromkeruby are relentless omnivores, who prey on anything smaller than them - or larger than them and unable to adequately fight back. They are unable to digest raw meat and so must cook it in their fires. This they do gleefully, and the entire species loves cooking only slightly less than they love reading and writing. They also eat vegetation and paper, although they grow sick if they cannot get at least some flesh in their diet.
The tastebuds of the sziromkeruby are acclimatised to the herbs and spices of the Swamp, and so they will tend to find the food of Creation bland. Petal-cherubs who travel outside their homelands will often carry seeds of their favoured spices with them - which can often also be used to make inks. Humans should be wary of food spiced to a level a sziromkerub prefers, as mortal tongues will likely not be used to such painfully intense flavour.
Viharkeruby
Cloud thieves are obligate carnivores. They eat their victims and have little problem digesting anything which was once living. Their predatory nature is aided by the fact that they easily fall into hibernation. When dozing like that, they still listen and can wake up with just a few minutes of noise. Within the Edgeland mists they hang from branchless trees by their feet, dropping silently onto prey that stumble blindly through their cloudy domain.
Viharkeruby are also ice-eaters. They like the taste, and must gnaw and scratch at icicles or frozen surfaces to keep their teeth and claws from becoming blunt. One of the signs a cloud thief is in the area are the marks of teeth or claws on ice. If there is no ice, the same markings can be found on stone which they treat as an inferior substitute.
Zenekeruby
A lyrical heir has a two-part diet. As they describe it, they must nourish both the music and the instrument; feeding the mind and the body in equal parts. The former is simple - a zenekerub feeds in part from the music of others. This is why they occasionally group together, and why they favour angyalkae. Music played poorly sickens them, and they will attack those who sing or play an instrument with insufficient skill.
An interesting result of this ephemeral half of their diet is that zenekeruby appear to eat little. They consume wax and rosin, and can often be found chewing on candles, as well as chell-meat and certain oils. Of all the keruby, lyrical heirs feel the bite of hunger least, and must sometimes be coaxed or reminded to eat by their followers when caught by musical inspiration. If they are playing, other keruby will too busy dancing, and it is not unheard of for zenekeruby to faint mid-melody if they are too devoted to their performances.
Mezkeruby
This is the paradox of the mezkeruby - they are herbivores and tar-drinkers who nevertheless must periodically eat meat, once a month or so. If they fail to do so, they become neurotic and clumsy, growing more and more deranged and uncoordinated the longer they abstain. Just a mouthful of meat will clear up these symptoms in minutes. Tar augurs hate the taste of meat, and try to cover its flavour with tar and oil and honey whenever they must take it medicinally. Occultists speculate that this is some consequence of their kerub heritage - that the breed is 'meant' to be omnivorous and through abstaining some essential facet of their essence does not function correctly.
Otherwise, the mezkeruby have a largely liquid-based diet. The tar and honey from their homeland along with long-grained rice and various bog-plants are their preferred diet. The honey of the Meadows is often bitter, and so the tar augurs learn to love bitter things and eat the poisonous plants of Creation with apparent glee.
Femkeruby
Even compared to the sziromkeruby, the femkeruby are ferocious omnivores. A spark jockey will eat anything that it can force into its spark-filled gullet, and unlike their petal-cousins they can digest rock and metal. The garbage heaps of Krisity will usually have the local femkeruby picking over them, selecting choice morsels. Femkeruby drink beer over water if given a choice, and so are frequently tipsy. The breed has no sense of taste as mortals know it, and so anything that provides nutrition is acceptable to them - but nothing more.
However, their greatest delight is lightning, which brings all the sensations that they lack in taste into vivid, blissful clarity. A single strike can keep a spark jockey fed and buzzed for a month. Liquid lightning, refined in the Spires, is their drug of choice as it stimulates them to incredible heights. It is taken as a glowing blue fluid, or else in the form of tiny pills of charge-holding metal.
Angyakeruby
The living canvases - as might be guessed from their name - consider art ingredients of all sorts to be food. To this they add the coastal foods of their home islands. One will happily sit down to a dish of shellfish, ceramic and samphire flavoured with a fine oil-paint sauce, served with a shot of lacquer - though lacquers are intoxicating and get them outrageously drunk. Their nature makes them inordinately fond of hallucinogens, and visitors are advised to take care when eating a meal prepared by a living canvas.
Angyakeruby are artists, and some choose to specialise in cooking. In their homeland, such living canvases will often wind up feeding tens or hundreds of their siblings at once. Cooks are powerful artists within the Isles of Krisity, and if they are capable they are paid well in ingredients and works.
Eukie
Powered by furious Canadian redheads
Sounds like a perfect fit for GURPS! :3
- Location
- United States
Quick question and this has been bugging me. Apparently there's a surcharge of 1 mote when anybody uses a terrestrial style that is aspected towards an element. However when it comes to Celestial Exalted, the rules seem to flip flop. So do Celestial Exalted actually have to pay a surcharge when using elemental expected martial arts?
- Location
- The end of all things
Adopting a bit of that 3e Craft, I see.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Adopting a bit of that 3e Craft, I see.
I think they've literally been doing this since before the 3e book came out.
Celestial Exalted give zero fucks and do not pay the surcharge.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Man, I'm pretty sure we've been doing this since before 2.5e. If you want massive multi-applicable expertise in dozens of different areas, you have to... pay for massive multi-applicable expertise in dozens of different areas. Go figure.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You say that like it's obvious, but I distinctly remember the massive outcry when the devs announced Ex3 would use what many considered the worst part of previous editions' Craft system - not even the actual Craft system, just the division into subskills.
Cornuthaum
Be kind to each other.
- Location
- Austria
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And yet, Melee 5 gives you perfect omnicompetence with every weapon used in close combat despite them as different from each other in their handling as night and day.
Craft should not have to be the odd duck out.
It was a terrible decision as long as Exalted has existed, and it will remain a terrible decision as long as Exalted exists.
But we got rid of that. Occult 5 gives you equal proficiency in the natural philosophies of Creation - architecture, medicine, numerology, smithing, and so on (since Craft, Occult and Medicine were fused, into the "natural philosophy" skill). Just as Melee 5 gives you equal proficiency in armed and unarmed close range combat.
The difference is that the baselined assumption is that an Exalt who wants to be competitive in a field has picked up an appropriate Style and mastered it - and that's +4 dice when working in that Style's narrow themes. And that's why Keris would rather make a sword of vitriol-hardened Malfean silver than iron, because om nom nom lovely dice.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
So, to nail this down without any ambiguity, under your system, Craft 5 is omnicapable, but crafting Styles are not, and the rest of the system assumes (maybe Charms are limited by what Styles you have?) that you're being an architect/weaver/jeweler rather than a generic crafter?
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
IIRC, as of 2.5 eratta they explicitly do unless elementally attuned in some way or they buy the charm that makes terrestrial MA half off, at which point they no longer pay it.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The problem with this starts and ends with 2.5.
On a more serious note, it's like ages since I actually played with the official system, so thanks for reminding me.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Occult 5, yes. But in practice, still no. Craft requires tools. Materials. Investment. Unless you spend massive capital getting supply chains and advanced tools and so on in every area you want, you're likely to end up with a few areas of special focus and a bunch of things you're less good at - just as the Solar with a piercing daiklaive and a pair of boots that enhances their forward movement is an incredible fencer with a lethal lunge, but isn't as good with an axe or club. And because of the baked-in-at-the-mortal-level limitation of Abilities to 2 (or 3 for exceptional mortals) with the rest being dependent on Styles, the rest of the setting is set up similarly; with "crafting" only being a description as general as "travelling" or "fighting", and a requirement to spec your character to a given theme within that incredibly broad niche.
- Location
- Spain
I have to point, though, that this is basically a pure aesthetic difference.
(Mind, that's not a critique; Aesthetics are certainly important).
Last edited:
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, we return again to @Shyft's Impact and Intrigue on that note. The thing about Keris's signature aesthetic is that it's recognisable - and as she starts putting more and more of her work out, that's going to draw attention. Not all of it positive. Yes, a sword is a sword no matter what it's made of, but this is an effect vs means argument - you can probably achieve an effect by whatever means you're given; that's part of what roleplay is about. "Okay, I want to get the mayor of this large town on the northeastern coast of the Inner Sea out of power and I have an elemental pact with a tribe of turtlemen in a nearby lake, a daiklave that lets me heal individual plants by stabbing them with it, a god-blooded monkey-familiar and Resources 3 from my thriving imitation furnace-rhino-horn business. How do I do it?"
If anyone actually comes up with a plan there, I will likebomb the shit out of them.
If anyone actually comes up with a plan there, I will likebomb the shit out of them.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Another example of the same thing would be Yasalka from my game that I should really share with you guys.
Yasalka is an avid Thaumaturge and has invented multiple rituals for the Art of The Dead and The Art of Demons, he has developed a distinct Thaumaturgical style for those Arts that involves a sad, almost weeping tone combined with very elegantly drawn patterns in the ground and on objects of focus for those Rituals. He has written a few books on the subject of these Arts, and they have become relatively well-known in the Scavenger Lands, with Sijan owning a few copies of some of his works on the Art of The Dead, and Lookshy having declared several of his other works as nasty reading that you shouldn't read unless you're a sorcerer-engineer or a sohei.
The point here is that he has a distinct aesthetic that leaves impact and gets people to go "wait, this ritual used a Yasalkan style, so we can infer that the ritual's purpose was probably related to the Dead or Demons, but what might it be?", and thus it creates stories and makes things happen because it leaves impact on the world and creates rumors about how the Red-Handed Conductor of Ceremonies is in town to do something, which in turn causes other characters to act, because when the Red-Handed Conductor of Ceremonies rolls through town, something is going down.
Yasalka is an avid Thaumaturge and has invented multiple rituals for the Art of The Dead and The Art of Demons, he has developed a distinct Thaumaturgical style for those Arts that involves a sad, almost weeping tone combined with very elegantly drawn patterns in the ground and on objects of focus for those Rituals. He has written a few books on the subject of these Arts, and they have become relatively well-known in the Scavenger Lands, with Sijan owning a few copies of some of his works on the Art of The Dead, and Lookshy having declared several of his other works as nasty reading that you shouldn't read unless you're a sorcerer-engineer or a sohei.
The point here is that he has a distinct aesthetic that leaves impact and gets people to go "wait, this ritual used a Yasalkan style, so we can infer that the ritual's purpose was probably related to the Dead or Demons, but what might it be?", and thus it creates stories and makes things happen because it leaves impact on the world and creates rumors about how the Red-Handed Conductor of Ceremonies is in town to do something, which in turn causes other characters to act, because when the Red-Handed Conductor of Ceremonies rolls through town, something is going down.
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
Well, assuming you don't need the former mayor alive afterwards...
Invite them on a fishing trip to discuss cutting them in on the imitation furnace-rhino horn business in exchange for other considerations. Sail them into a cove on the lake, have your familiar run around stabbing pre-positioned plant cuttings to block the exit, then the turtlemen swarm the boat.