They are invulnerable. They can't be harmed, except by things that were bathed (or something like that) in the freely given blood of someone who never broke any of heaven's laws.


Well that is for the Hidden Judges of Heaven. Maybe it should be from someone who never broke the laws of cecelyne for the priests, but those laws are super easy to break.

That's not true though.

Like, I'm looking at Hekateron in Black And White Treatise right here, and it doesn't have any such power because that would be fucking stupid.
 
They are invulnerable. They can't be harmed, except by things that were bathed (or something like that) in the freely given blood of someone who never broke any of heaven's laws.


Well that is for the Hidden Judges of Heaven. Maybe it should be from someone who never broke the laws of cecelyne for the priests, but those laws are super easy to break.
Uh... you do get that the Hidden Judges are probably a wee bit beefier than the Priests, given that they are personally linked to the Incarnae and there are only seven of them. Right?

And if it explicitly says that Priests use the same statline, then that bit is - bluntly - dumb. Honestly, it's pretty dumb anyway, unless the laws of Heaven are super lax.
 
That's not true though.

Like, I'm looking at Hekateron in Black And White Treatise right here, and it doesn't have any such power because that would be fucking stupid.
Uh... you do get that the Hidden Judges are probably a wee bit beefier than the Priests, given that they are personally linked to the Incarnae and there are only seven of them. Right?

And if it explicitly says that Priests use the same statline, then that bit is - bluntly - dumb. Honestly, it's pretty dumb anyway, unless the laws of Heaven are super lax.

Well........... :V
 
Uh... you do get that the Hidden Judges are probably a wee bit beefier than the Priests, given that they are personally linked to the Incarnae and there are only seven of them. Right?

I'm of the opinion that a Hidden Judge showing up should be the sort of stuff that will make most Celestials go "oh fucking shit why".

But then again; I am a huge fanboy for the Seven Hidden Judges of The Secret Flame of Heaven who serve the Incarna directly and wield legendary blades that I can take as a mentor for a young Sidereal who has no idea what one of these ancient lawmakers see in him. :V

And if it explicitly says that Priests use the same statline, then that bit is - bluntly - dumb. Honestly, it's pretty dumb anyway, unless the laws of Heaven are super lax.

A hint: It doesn't, because almost everything about the Priests and the Judges is copypasta from 1e, and 1e didn't say that.

It doesn't say this though.
 
I can't tell if you are saying "It doesn't exist" or "yeah that totally doesn't exist, imagine how stupid it would be if it did".
Bascially "the literal Superman doesn't exist in Exalted" vs "The scroll of the monk doesn't exist".

Anyways here is quote from the book I maanged to find: "Judges can be harmed only by weapons anointed with the blood of a person who has never broken the laws of Heaven and who offers his blood willingly."



Anyways IIRC:
Stuff like that is worse in the hands of a player than in the hands of a NPC.
 
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It doesn't say this though.

It does, in CoCD:M

A POSSIBLY IRRELEVANT PARALLEL
Celestial Circle sorcerers can learn a spell to
beckon entities called the Hidden Judges of the
Secret Flame (see The Books of Sorcery, Vol.
II—The White Treatise, pp. 72–73). These
entities wear hooded black robes. Their hands
and feet are blackened bone. Instead of a face,
the robe's cowl holds a blue flame. The Hidden
Judges punish those who violate Heaven's laws.
They are incorruptible and infallible in their
service to Heaven.
Any similarity to the priests of Cecelyne
is surely coincidental, though their game traits
are exactly the same.

And yeah, it's dumb.

About the invulneraility thing, honestly i think that these kinds of weird weakness should be kinda common for spirits; But blanket invulnerability shouldn't really be a thing. More like ways to surpass or weaken their normal defenses.

So that your twilight can say "A ha! this dude can't bear the scent of rotten bananas" and then he gets a one mote surcharge for his perfect defense for the rest of the fight or a -2 penalty or something like that.
 
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I can't tell if you are saying "It doesn't exist" or "yeah that totally doesn't exist, imagine how stupid it would be if it did".

Anyways here is quote from the book I maanged to find: "Judges can be harmed only by weapons anointed with the blood of a person who has never broken the laws of Heaven and who offers his blood willingly."

Yeah, but there are no mechanics for it.

I'm laughing at it and saying "that's fucking stupid" because there are no mechanics to back it up and it doesn't at all fit with the thematics of the Exalted because as far as I can see we don't have a clear writeup of the laws of Heaven and I sure don't want to go to the trouble of writing a believable set of laws up for a nation older than our entire civilization.


Damn, missed that.

And yeah, it's dumb.

No that's amazing.

It means that Priests won't initiate battle with anyone who haven't broken celestial law.

That's hilarious.

I mean, it says exactly the same. :V
 
I'm laughing at it and saying "that's fucking stupid" because there are no mechanics to back it up and it doesn't at all fit with the thematics of the Exalted because as far as I can see we don't have a clear writeup of the laws of Heaven and I sure don't want to go to the trouble of writing a believable set of laws up for a nation older than our entire civilization.

Honestly, is not that hard to represent mechanically.

Just give their perfect defense a flaw that makes it inaplicable against weapons that haven't been bathed in the blood of someone who has never broke the laws of Heaven/Hell. Done.

Now they are invulnerable until they run out of motes. Just like everybody else.

(Or, if you think that is a too big weakness, give them a lesser debuff).
 
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If I had to run the Hidden Judges, I would probably say that they are technically invulnerable to everyone, because the laws of Heaven are such a bloated, absurd mess due to centuries of corruption and administrative breakdown and reconstruction that there is probably no one in the world who hasn't broken the laws of Heaven. But as a result, their "invulnerability" is diluted, because they have themselves broken some arcane detail of some forgotten law at one point in their lives, and their supposed aegis is cracked on the inside.
 
So, I had some questions about @EarthScorpion's homebrew.

Why does your Coadjutor have to be untouchable? His current philosophy is that it is absolutely impossible to kill anyone's Coadjutor no matter what, and trying is horrible because it takes away your nice shiny soul world, all of the characters living in it, and the XP you put into those charms. I mostly don't get why a Coadjutor has to be irreplaceable. There are already charms that let you replace it with your Id or one of your other souls. You obviously need something to regulate your Urge and Torment. The thing is that I don't see why the problem of having a dick of a Coadjutor should never be solved by violence.

It is absolutely in character for a violence focused character who believes himself to have been tricked into being a slave of the Reclamation to try to kill the voice in his head telling him to do stuff. Under ES's rules, this is both possible and verboten. The spirit of the rules says no killing Coadjutors. The letter says that no one from outside of your Empire can enter, and says nothing about your souls killing each other. This is the big thing that I dislike about ES's handling of Coadjutor death. It is unlike Fetich death in that it is philosophically forbidden from happening. Sure, most infernals won't kill their Coadjutors. Sure, having your Coadjutor killed without any way to save it is bad storytelling arguably worse than "Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies." I mostly just feel that the Lord British Postulate exists for a reason, and that I like the way that Exalted as a whole dealt with it: they acknowledged it and included ways for damn near everything to be killed. One of the big complaints about the Deathlords was that they were as completely immortal as the devs could make them.

Firstly, if you don't want to have to put up with a coadjutor, you don't buy the Merit. Coadjutor 1+ represents being on working terms with your coadjutor. A character who wishes to kill them does not have Coadjutor 1+.

Therefore every Charm with Unwoven (1) or higher as a keyword turns off. Fourth Soul Devil Domain has Unwoven (1) as a keyword.

Therefore no, actually, the mechanics are set up so you can't murder your own coadjutor because trying to murder it indicates you don't meet the prerequisites for the Charm which lets you access it.

That was subtle and entirely deliberate design.

A character who hates their coadjutor and wants them gone has Coadjutor 0, and ignores all this stuff - and so can't use this Coadjutor Charmtech. Unless, of course, they go develop their Id and access it via the alternate path, getting Second Soul Devil Domain, etc. But they still can't murder their coadjutor via it.

My other problem is that there is no discussion about what happens after your Coadjutor dies.

Take it as a given that someone will try to kill her Coadjutor at some point, and that they might just succeed. What happens to her Tiger Empire? Does it immediately disappear destroying everything except the artifacts inside, or does it start to slowly unravel from the center out without the keystone holding it in place? Can the Infernal do damage control and possibly learn a new Heretical Charm to make one of her other souls the linchpin of their Empire?

What about the charms she learned to let her Coadjutor speak through her? Can she repurpose those soul-structures to let her Id or one of her kids speak through her?

Does she immediately enter Torment as soon as the stabilizing factor of her Coadjutor is gone? Does one of her other souls take up the burden of directing her transcendental insanity? If so, what does it make her want to do, if it doesn't have a set of marching orders from the Yozis?

These questions and their answers open up a small niche of Infernal characters. They also eliminate the Lord British Problem. By adding consequences to killing your Coadjutor, you make it possible to kill them in an interesting way while also incentivizing players to protect their Coadjutors. Like all backgrounds, the ST should damn well discuss anything that may have an impact on the player's enjoyment with the player first. That's why backgrounds exist. It doesn't mean that it is absolutely impossible for you to lose your awesome ship, just that it would be lost only if the player is OK with it.

By making Coadjutors killable, you also open up your Tiger Empire to trade with the real world. You allow people you like and trust to enter your world. You allow your Coadjutor to be summoned, and interact with its old friends. You allow so many more things to happen.

If there is some other reason to preserve Coadjutors above and beyond Mentors and Allies and the like, please tell me. I'd love to hear it.

At a mechanical level, if you murdered your coadjutor, every Unwoven-keyworded Charm you have turns off forever. There is no mechanism in place to get back the XP for doing so. So yes, the Devil Domain and the Tiger Empire collapse in on themselves and are permanently destroyed. Any First Circles in there die. Any Second or Third Circles vanish back into the Infernal's mind, as their unmanifested Principles (remember, the Charm Chain for making souls is a General Charm, not a Heretical Charm. The fact that they live in your inner world if you have one is not the default state of that Charm).

And bluntly, I'm not inclined to be sympathetic to PCs who do this when they already had an option for "I don't want to deal with coadjutors, so I won't buy the Merit", so I'd essentially say you've just basically put yourself into NPC status through your self-mutilating act of soul-surgery, removing any way of getting rid of Limit - including entering Torment, so the next time you Limit Break you never leave it. Roughly cutting out a vital element of your soul structure with a spirit-killing Charm does horrible things to Primordials, so it does horrible things to you, and you've just murdered the element regulating Torment and providing a release valve for the stress of Primordial insanity.

So basically if you don't get a replacement before you next enter Torment, you're unplayable and an NPC and the player needs a new sheet.
 
@GeneralChaos, I'd file this under "EarthScorpion's Very Personal Blood-Grudges Against Certain Concepts", or possibly "That Thing EarthScorpion Does Sometimes Where He Makes An Ironclad Statement, But Then Later States That He's Open To Players Subverting It In Their Games*."

Personally, I'd say that you can absolutely kill off your Coadjutor and use Heretical Charms or something to replace them - presumably because it either makes sense within your PC's story arc or your DM has turned the trait into a millstone around your neck ever since your character turned against the Reclamation.

*Hey, remember that time he said 'Neverborn should be nonsapient god-carrion", but then also said it's A-okay for players to talk the Queen of Suicides into forsaking her grudge against the Incarnate Rebellion and passing on into Lethe? Like that.
 
@GeneralChaos, I'd file this under "EarthScorpion's Very Personal Blood-Grudges Against Certain Concepts", or possibly "That Thing EarthScorpion Does Sometimes Where He Makes An Ironclad Statement, But Then Later States That He's Open To Players Subverting It In Their Games*."

No, in this case, it's "No, you're already catered for if you don't want coadjutor things involved - Coadjutor 0, and then the later option with An Usurpation Unnoticed to replace your coadjutor with one of your souls if you're Coadjutor 0. So I'm not going to support this at all - go write your own mechanics if you want to do things here."

But I'm not going to offer a simple thing there - and I'm certainly not going to let you ignore the Unwoven (1) keyword on Fourth Soul Devil Domain as part of your plan to get a simple solution to the coadjutor. There isn't a simple solution to exorcising the demon in your head. Just suppressing it and beating it down so it's just a nagging voice, or coming to an accommodation with it that helps you coax it.

*Hey, remember that time he said 'Neverborn should be nonsapient god-carrion", but then also said it's A-okay for players to talk the Queen of Suicides into forsaking her grudge against the Incarnate Rebellion and passing on into Lethe? Like that.

Yes. Because if you say something's impossible, players will want to do something anyway. If you say something is very difficult, players will assume it's a given and internalise it as a baseline.

Hence, it's impossible to talk to the rotting corpses of the Neverborn, because they're despoiled filth putrefying in the Underworld. And players will still want to go talk to a rotting corpse, so when they decide on their goal of doing it, the GM has a very good reason for why it's never been done before - and also can legitimately tell them "No" if it doesn't fit into the scope of the game.
 
Jen Demon Homebrew: Na Lạc Ca, The Mist of Uncertainty
Yay, I finally write something ! Though I still can't think of a reason why an Exalted would want to summon her however.....

Na Lạc Ca, The Mist of Uncertainty

Demon of The Third Circle
Fifth Soul of The Ebon Dragon

Sometime, a Tomescu cries out in pain when it's neither at the start nor end of day. Wise demons, hearing these screams, quickly hide inside the bronze and basalt buildings of Malfeas, for the Mist of Uncertainty approaches. Ligier's light begins to dim as Na Lạc Ca's body embrace every streets and alleys in the neighborhood. Peeking out from the window frame made from Agatae shell, a landscape of black-white mist stretching out to infinity is all that a demon will see. To wander in Na Lạc Ca is dangerous, for the permanence of things are continuously changing inside her, a vendor table may become sentinel and grow wings while a Blood Ape can take one step forward and instead ends up on pressing its face Floviret's chest, or Isidoros's belly for those less unfortunate. The mist soon subsides as Na Lạc Ca takes her leave, changed things will remain that way however, which may be bad news for the serfs who are trapped in an alleyway that has lost the concept of beginning and end.

Those who can dispel Na Lạc Ca changing touch and walk freely in the mist can sometime meet her human form, wearing dark regal cloth, a pale and veiled woman appears from the mist, wisps of light circles around her. Na Lạc Ca may pass as a Ghost-blooded in Creation, if it's not for the fact that her lower body is a mass of black-white mist. The Mist of Uncertainty is a creature of beauty and poise, her manner is elegant, her movement graceful, the artist of Hell has tried for untold millennial to capture her fragile beauty and aloof smiles in their works.

The Ebon Dragon is not a creature of the living world, and thus Na Lạc Ca wishes to explore the nature of things, to discover the origin of wind and the source of love. If an individual ever encounter the Mist of Uncertainty in her human form, they'll usually saw a woman who is observing the impermanence of things or lost herself in thoughts of philosophies. Before the imprisoning of the Ebon Dragon, Na Lạc Ca want to know way of the Wyld and fairies, for Creation is the work of her master, an everlasting oasis that she can always explore later. Now, she desires the mysteries of Creation, for the Demon City is the Yozi themselves, and none in this Fallen Age can destroy them.
 
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Yay, I finally write something ! Though I still can't think of a reason why an Exalted would want to summon her however.....

That depends, can she control the changes she makes, or are they random?

If it's the former, there would be plenty of beings that would want to re-shape themselves, whether for vanity or other reasons (if it's the later, she's probably one of the demons with an advisory against summoning, as that leaves her as a walking wild zone, and while the summoner almost certainly has a shaping defense, that still leaves everyone and everything around them). There's also just unleashing her on a rivals lands/cities to turn their farmland to salt lakes, their cities to rat infested cheese, and their people to blind psychotic monstrosities.
 
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No, in this case, it's "No, you're already catered for if you don't want coadjutor things involved - Coadjutor 0, and then the later option with An Usurpation Unnoticed to replace your coadjutor with one of your souls if you're Coadjutor 0. So I'm not going to support this at all - go write your own mechanics if you want to do things here."

But I'm not going to offer a simple thing there - and I'm certainly not going to let you ignore the Unwoven (1) keyword on Fourth Soul Devil Domain as part of your plan to get a simple solution to the coadjutor. There isn't a simple solution to exorcising the demon in your head. Just suppressing it and beating it down so it's just a nagging voice, or coming to an accommodation with it that helps you coax it.



Yes. Because if you say something's impossible, players will want to do something anyway. If you say something is very difficult, players will assume it's a given and internalise it as a baseline.

Hence, it's impossible to talk to the rotting corpses of the Neverborn, because they're despoiled filth putrefying in the Underworld. And players will still want to go talk to a rotting corpse, so when they decide on their goal of doing it, the GM has a very good reason for why it's never been done before - and also can legitimately tell them "No" if it doesn't fit into the scope of the game.
Ok, what about the other souls? Let's say this guy has a Coadjutor and is fairly good friends with it. However, one of his souls (who just so happens to be Cold Fire Dissolution Brand and has a panoply charm equivalent to Radiant Fury Dissolution) is currently in a rage and trying to murder everything it sees, including the Coadjutor. Yes, he has massive anger control issues. Does this guy literally get so angry his inner world collapses and destroys all his stuff? Is the collapse violent enough to kill any Pantheon Souls chilling in other parts of the Domain?

Onto a different question! How do you determine the Enlightenment ratings of your Pantheon Souls? There's a fairly general 1CD to 2CD to 3CD progression as you learn their Pantheon Charms, learn THO and learn TWU. Also, none of them are Fetiches so none of them can ever get E10. The question is more about how fast they grow up. How easily do they reach E7 and start summoning one another? Is that reserved for when the Infernal is E10 but hasn't turned that soul into a 3CD?
 
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Ok, what about the other souls? Let's say this guy has a Coadjutor and is fairly good friends with it. However, one of his souls (who just so happens to be Cold Fire Dissolution Brand and has a panoply charm equivalent to Radiant Fury Dissolution) is currently in a rage and trying to murder everything it sees, including the Coadjutor. Yes, he has massive anger control issues. Does this guy literally get so angry his inner world collapses and destroys all his stuff? Is the collapse violent enough to kill any Pantheon Souls chilling in other parts of the Domain?
The Coadjucator probably defeats the other soul. As the oldest Independant Soul of the Infernal, the Coadjucator is probably the strongest of the Infernal's Souls, with an effective Enlightenment matching the Infernal's own whilst dealing with the Infernal's other Sould.
 
The Coadjucator probably defeats the other soul. As the oldest Independant Soul of the Infernal, the Coadjucator is probably the strongest of the Infernal's Souls, with an effective Enlightenment matching the Infernal's own whilst dealing with the Infernal's other Sould.
I'd have thought the Po would be the strongest, what with it being the "seat of power" and all that jazz.
 
The Coadjucator probably defeats the other soul. As the oldest Independant Soul of the Infernal, the Coadjucator is probably the strongest of the Infernal's Souls, with an effective Enlightenment matching the Infernal's own whilst dealing with the Infernal's other Sould.

You realize that you can have non-combat specialized Coadjutors, right? Enlightment isn't really a useful measure of combat power.
 
The simple answer is literally 'Your soul never does so.' and then you back-fill in an explanation :V

Maybe the Coadjutor just puts the other souls into a hold or knocks them miles away, maybe they fly or hide or render their home unreachable by some means. Maybe the Coadjutor is protected by a similar clause as the 'Yozi GET-alikes can't kill Primordials' clause.

Like, this is an incredibly niche 'problem' in the first place. It only exists because you want it to.
 
Ok, what about the other souls? Let's say this guy has a Coadjutor and is fairly good friends with it. However, one of his souls (who just so happens to be Cold Fire Dissolution Brand and has a panoply charm equivalent to Radiant Fury Dissolution) is currently in a rage and trying to murder everything it sees, including the Coadjutor. Yes, he has massive anger control issues. Does this guy literally get so angry his inner world collapses and destroys all his stuff? Is the collapse violent enough to kill any Pantheon Souls chilling in other parts of the Domain?

Bluntly, I don't care about such an edge case.

If I really had to justify it, I'd say that the Principal-Souls lack the metaphysical authority to perma-kill the core souls while in the Devil Domain - they can only do it in the real world, so if they kill the Infernal's hun-self, the po or the coadjutor in the dream-world, they just reform next Calibration (or wake up in the Infernal's case), but if they're actively suicidal they can try to kill you in the real world.

But when it comes down to it, there aren't any loopholes or Easter eggs intentionally hidden in the rules. The inner world stuff is your inventory and your Pokecomputer with pretty Primordial fluff around it, and a character that's in such a psychological mess that their Anger is trying to murder a vital component of their own soul hierarchy is a character who's suicidal and can be dealt with at your own table. I'm not going to cover such an edge case, because my general rules wouldn't fit such a personal story. If you wanna be Kratos, you do you.

Onto a different question! How do you determine the Enlightenment ratings of your Pantheon Souls? There's a fairly general 1CD to 2CD to 3CD progression as you learn their Pantheon Charms, learn THO and learn TWU. Also, none of them are Fetiches so none of them can ever get E10. The question is more about how fast they grow up. How easily do they reach E7 and start summoning one another? Is that reserved for when the Infernal is E10 but hasn't turned that soul into a 3CD?

You stat them as appropriate for their demonic circle - probably towards the weaker end, because they're young and inexperienced. I don't know what else more to say.

Also, Infernals notes that Third Circles can only summon their own Second Circles in the sorcery section, so, no, a post-upgrade soul can't summon pre-upgrade soul.
 
You stat them as appropriate for their demonic circle - probably towards the weaker end, because they're young and inexperienced. I don't know what else more to say.

Also, Infernals notes that Third Circles can only summon their own Second Circles in the sorcery section, so, no, a post-upgrade soul can't summon pre-upgrade soul.
I was wondering about an E7 (extreme upper end) 2CD using Sapphire Circle Sorcery to summon other 2CDs.
 
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