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General Exalted Thread

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Muhkat Lomorki said:
By the way, is there any uses for a "Beast of Resplendent Liquids" or no?
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The one which makes anti-aging drugs is a national-level strategic asset for the Realm that produces the anti-aging drugs that help keep their most valuable elder Dragonblood alive for another 50 years or more.

The Guild "just" uses the heroin one to make heroin and make lots of money from it.

So. Yes. There is most certainly a use for them.
 
Muhkat Lomorki said:
I suppose, considering it literally pees an expensive drug which you can sell for wicked cash, as well as be ridden as a steed.
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Also, as Earthscorpion mentioned, they excrete various drugs, heroin is merely the most popular one amongst those who can access one. The only one that was more sought after was the type that urinated anagathics (age-slowing drugs), and there's literally only one of those left in the entire setting, because the others were found out and fought over and accidentally killed off in the struggle.

Edit: And Ninjaed by the man himself!
 
So I know that part of the fun of playing an infernal is using bad powers to good purposes, but how the heck do you play a good infernal who focuses on Ebon Dragon powers? A lot of these powers are ridiculously evil, and I'm having trouble if thinking of good ways to use them.
 
rogthnor said:
So I know that part of the fun of playing an infernal is using bad powers to good purposes, but how the heck do you play a good infernal who focuses on Ebon Dragon powers? A lot of these powers are ridiculously evil, and I'm having trouble if thinking of good ways to use them.
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Well, as an example, take Golden Years Tarnished Black. It's one of his most evil charms, taking something you care about and remember, and forcing you to only ever think of the negatives without ever considering how it made you feel nice. The actual example given in the charm is using it on a woman's memories of her son, who was a fairly well behaved kid who generally loved his mom, and making her completely disregard all of that and only ever think of how he took her resources and made her work for his desires and didn't always do what he was told and got into two or three really big arguments that upset both of them over the course of decades... She focuses on that, and never consciously realizes that these bad moments that are there in every relationship make up less than 5% of the total time they spent together instead of most of it. Very evil. BUT.
What if, instead, you use it on her feelings towards the drugs she's addicted to? It's clearly a net negative for her overall, but the high is so tempting and makes everything else seem so much worse that she keeps on coming back. She'll then stop taking the high into account, and actually blame withdrawal on the drug instead of anything else, and while this doesn't force her to stop abusing it, it means she almost certainly will.
 
rogthnor said:
So I know that part of the fun of playing an infernal is using bad powers to good purposes, but how the heck do you play a good infernal who focuses on Ebon Dragon powers? A lot of these powers are ridiculously evil, and I'm having trouble if thinking of good ways to use them.
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First off, define good.

Second, TED's charms make for a good rogue, someone who is always lying at least a little, who finds powerful enemies and screws them over. He is a thing of opposition, and thing he is most often opposing is the heroic, virtuous Sun. If you want to make a non-evil TED favoring infernal, find someone bad to oppose. Tear down the Realm's tyrannical satraps, free the slaves, set weak demons above the strong. This is the more encompassing version of using GYTB on harmful intimacies. You find the things you don't like about the world, and you change them. You find the truths that hurt, and you tell them to the people who will change if they hear them. You don't want to get caught, so you set yourself up in opposition to a bad satrap who wants to squeeze every coin she can from her people, and set her arranged husband up to knock up her loyal enforcer, simultaneously making her enforcer not want to get into fights and giving you a scandal to reveal. Steal from her tax collectors and force them to hide the crime from shame by paying the taxes with their own money, and be sure to do it while disguised as someone you don't like. Convince judges to rule in your favor rather than the Realm's, and then set them up for grueling investigations. Generally, lie, cheat, and steal from the people you don't like.

Third, TED in canon MoEP: Infernals is massively flanderized. In Games of Divinity, he was the emo antisocial of the Yozis. He was obsessed with the doomed and the damned, and he opposed his confinement even though escape was flat out impossible. In 2e, he gained chronic backstabbing disorder. ES has some good non-evil stuff for him in the Book of Ten Thousand Scorpions, which focuses more on TED as an edgy goth who sings and dances and tempts people to have fun in ways that the establishment doesn't really like. He's still a corrupting force, but more like a rockstar who stays up all night and curses the sun every time you wake him up before sundown than Starscream. His Doomed charms allow you to keep a ill girl as a morality pet, and augment her so that she can do the whole charisma thing even better than you. Seduce a Deathknight to your side, so that you can have a Doomed friend who is on your level. Bonus points for convincing him to help you fuck over his old master's schemes.
 
notanautomaton said:
Made some minor changes to Sanctaphrax's Bureaucracy system. Putting it here for my own future reference.

The following chart is used for organizational actions, like auditing, restructuring an organization, and leading an organization. This chart will be referred to as chart A.

Hour
Day
Week
Month
Season
Year
Four years


Auditing

Organizations are inherently opaque. Learning anything non-obvious about them requires the use of (Perception + Bureaucracy or Socialize). The difficulty is the organization's Secrecy, and the time taken is (Size) steps down chart A, starting at Hour for Size 0:

If you lead the organization or have official authority to bother people with your investigations, subtract 2 from the effective Secrecy and Size. If that takes you to negative Size, the roll takes as long as asking a random minion.

Management

Running an organization uses (Intelligence + Bureaucracy). Spending a season running an organization adds the character's successes to the organization's Operation Roll in the form of dice. This may not more than double the organization's dice pool. Controlling the organization's actions for the reason requires the character to allocate successes equal to the organization's Resistance. If a leader doesn't do so, they will be largely unable to sway the actions of their organization.

Restructuring

Changing the Intimacies of an organization uses (Charisma or Manipulation + Presence or Bureaucracy). For other types of reorganization, (Intelligence + Bureaucracy) may be more appropriate. This is an extended roll, with a difficulty of the organization's Resistance, no terminus, and an interval that depends on Size. Use chart A. This assumes you're a major figure in the organization. If you're not, add 2 to the organization's effective Resistance and Size. Goal number is 15 to create or remove a Minor Intimacy, 40 to strengthen a Minor or weaken a Major, and 100 to strengthen a Major or weaken a Defining. Use the intimacy goal numbers as a guide for the difficulty of other types of Restructuring.

Note that Restructuring is very likely to offend people. Succeeding on the roll is only half the battle - the other half is dealing with named characters who object to the changes you're making. These rules don't cover those conflicts.

Organizations

Normally, you don't need rules for organizations. The government of the city you live in can operate fine with no dice and no mechanics. But when you end up in charge of that city, you're likely to want some rules to handle the effects of your leadership.

The core mechanic of an organization is the Operation Roll, which is made once per season to determine how much the organization accomplishes. Roll Size + Ability +/- Intimacy, and allocate successes among various activities. More successes represents a larger and better-executed effort, of course, with the value of each success determined by Size. The activity allocated the most successes must correspond to the ability used, and successes allocated beyond an ability's rating count as half.

Organizations never roll to make interesting problems disappear. You can't just allocate five successes to win a war unless the table agrees that the war was a tedious distraction from the real meat of the game. But you can allocate five successes to dictate that your organization's armies are very large and well-organized and well-equipped and enthusiastic as you lead them to battle.

Actions taken to manage an organization must be roleplayed out, like all other actions. Sometimes that roleplaying will involve obstacles that must be overcome for your actions to have any chance of succeeding. An excellent Management roll suffices to control all the nameless faceless members of your organization, but people with character sheets can still shut you down. Possibly by stabbing you.

Organization Traits

Intimacies

Much like character Intimacies, though they apply to rolls more often. Organization intimacies often contradict, because the agendas of organization members often contradict. Normally only the strongest relevant Intimacy applies to a roll, but if one would benefit the roll and the other would harm it apply both. Usually, an organization has a Defining Intimacy towards doing what it's meant to do.

Size

The only Attribute an organization has. Represents both the number of people involved and their resources. Size 0 is one person and maybe some hired help, Size 1 is an ordinary shop or a family, Size 2 is a mid-sized company or a large extended family, Size 3 is an army, a noble house, or a city's government, Size 4 is an actual city, Size 5 is a nation, Size 6 is an unusually powerful nation, and Size 7 is the Realm. One success represents something that would be a noticeable but easily manageable effort for a group of such a size.

Abilities

Organization abilities are freeform. Most organizations don't have very many of them. A guild caravan might have Trade 3 and Travel 2, while a barbarian tribe might have Survive 2, War 2, Diplomacy 1, Travel 1, and Religion 1 and a company of mercenary Tiger Warriors led by a Solar might have War 5, Travel 3, and Make Money As Mercenaries 4. Increasing or decreasing an organization's Abilities is uses the same system as altering its intimacies, with 1-2 being considered to be equivalent to a minor intimacy, 3-4 to a major, and 5 with defining.

Resistance, Secrecy, and Maintenance

An organization's Resistance impedes its leader's attempts to control it. A high-Resistance organization is large, set in its traditions, and full of people with competing agendas. A low-Resistance organization is small and obedient. Intimacies modify Resistance the same way they do Resolve, so it's much easier to lead an organization that likes and trusts you.

An organization's Secrecy opposes any attempt to Audit it. It reflects actual secrecy as well as general confusion. Again, it's affected by Intimacies.

An organization must spend a number of successes equal to its Maintenance each season in order to remain fully functional. Maintenance can fluctuate up and down depending on the circumstances - keeping a farming village intact is normally very easy, but a bad harvest or a nearby war can make it very hard. Failing to maintain an organization causes various minor problems in the short term, and reduces Morale.

Merits

Can be whatever. They appear and disappear as the ST sees fit.

Flaws

Less free-form than character flaws. They can have specific mechanical effects. Still exist at the ST's whim.

Morale

Similar to Willpower. One point of temporary Morale can be spent to add a success to an Organization roll. Each season of successful maintenance without the use of Morale restores one point of temporary Morale, while a season of failed maintenance subtracts one point of temporary Morale for each missing success. If Morale would fall below 0, the organization collapses into chaos instead.
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Looking through...seems like the only significant change is that you've added a system for adding skills to an organization. Not sure how I feel about that...there should be a way to improve your organization's abilities, but it shouldn't be easy or free. Shouldn't be something that everyone is doing all the time. And I think these rules might make it too easy.
 
Minor Saatan Syndicates

On top of the major pirate-lord groupings on Saata, there are many more minor organisations. In Saata's urban chaos any power must be backed up by the threat of violence - whether with one's own men or hired mercenaries.

Guen Za Family

The Guen Za family are the largest producer of rice wines and dulce - a local spiced seaweed beer - on Saata. Operating out of their ancestral tower block, the six-storey building is both a distillery and a temple to Zanes, the Southwestern god of alcohol. The building is painted bright red and brass statues glare imposingly at outsiders. The family is lavish with their offerings to him and their seasonal festivals in his honour are a cultural institution of revelry and indulgence.

While most of their produce is unexceptional swill sold to the waterfront dive bars of the island, their lavish offerings to Zanes means that many minor spirits serving him lurk around their stills, blessing them. These wines and liqueurs are even considered drinkable by visiting Dynasts, and the Guen Za are sure to offer them to visitors from the Realm. This is fully encouraged by House Sinasana, and as a result the lords of Saata have made it entirely clear that the family is under their protection.

The Guen Za have not yet told their masters about the strange affliction that is striking their dulce. While it appears to be entirely edible, when fermented it has a strange acrid taste that makes it worthless for anything save the lowest dive-bars. The family has stepped up their imports of rice to try to compensate, but Saata is a thirsty island and they are pushed to capacity. Prayers to the gods have provided no deliverance, and strangely none of their rivals appear to have found the same flaw. Some family members worry that the problem may lie in the great metal vessels they ferment their beer in.

Daimyo & Yellow Market

The Daimyo & Yellow Market is the main market within Saata, named for the heavily weathered lifesize statue of a warstrider of a long-forgotten Shogunate warlord that stands in the centre. Once the statue was covered in jadedust, but time has worn away even the weatherproof paint of lost eras. Still, it is said that the daimyo watches over the market and so to avoid offending him the statue has been repainted time and time again in the colours of the current rulers of Saata.

This is not a market where the inhabitants of the island city shop for their daily goods. It is instead a market for bulk purchases and the hiring of mercenaries. Captains sailing from An Teng and Buk Mui and Nightsea Isle and even further north come to buy cargos from those madmen who venture into the deep South. Pirate lords sell captured vessels and offer their services as guides. Contracts for delivery of opiates and cocaine are exchanged, to later be sold to primitive tribes. Part of the Daimyo Market is the great Saatan Temple of Mercury Wind-Swift, where the yellow-robed priest-notaries witness signings and lay curses of forfeiture upon oathbreakers and where insurers come to pray that ships reach their destinations safely.

It is the temple which maintains the sanctity of the Daimyo & Yellow market, and its yellow-robed soldiers are brutal in their enforcement of its neutrality. There are to be no fights between the forces of pirate lords within its territory, and those who shed blood within the market are chained to the roof of the temple to die of exposure and be eaten by the gulls which flock over the temple. Sinasana Mulea cut down a love-rival there fifty years ago, and for all that she is a Dragonblood she dares not return - for she knows that her family considers the tax revenue from the Daimyo & Yellow more important than her life.

The Dock Cats

Somewhere between a dockworker's guild and an ethnic mob, the Dock Cats are composed of escaped slaves and immigrants from Southern tribes with feline beastman blood. Some wound up taken as slaves, while other more worldly tribes have learned to hire themselves out as mercenaries and guides to outsiders. As a result, these populations have spread up through the trade routes to Saata, where they congregate around the docks. Tall dark-skinned men and women with cat-like features unload ships and brutally beat people who act suspiciously around warehouses they're paid to protect. They try to keep clear of the wealthy pirate-lords, but there are plenty of smaller Saatan merchants who need a cargo kept safe or unloaded.

The Dock Cats have claimed the Mutra district for nearly a century, and have garnered a certain air of quasi-respectability - helped significantly by the well-established ganglords who know how the game is played in Saata. They are fully aware that they're small fish, and posturing upstarts who come in fresh off the boat get that lesson beaten into them - as do any big cat beastmen who think they can work as dockworkers or hired muscle without paying their dues.

The feline beastmen in Saata are extensively hybridised with one another. Most of the families who have been resident here for more than a few generations correspond to no real big cat species, having features of both tigers and leopards - and often a few stranger mutations from Wyld-taint in their blood. Saatan life is not suited for cat beastmen who need a diet of meat or fish and combined with the melting pot nature of the city this means that established families have more human features than newcomers, who find themselves looked down upon. This has stoked no small amount of resentment, and the Dock Cats are losing territory to the Mau Kai, a band of tiger beastmen who have broken from the gang.

Terashen

Superlative hunters whose ancestors tracked the mightiest of terror lizards through the jungle-choked volcanic islands of the Far South West, the terashen are the progeny of Bataari, Celestial goddess of feathered tyrant lizards. They wear the form of men, but in truth they are not human. They are tyrant lizards born of a goddess who has taught them blood magics that let them don another skin. In the South West they walk among the tribes as avatars of the divine and have learned to mimic the ways of mankind. Scattered far and wide by vision-quests from their mother, they now hunt men for her blessing - and for the challenge, of course.

A family of terashen has come to Saata, recruited as assassins by the Padua Family to dispose of their rivals. The hot-blooded pirate lords believe them to be mere beastmen; a deniable asset that they can use to dispose of their rivals. The terashen are willing to play along for now, because Saata and Shuu Mua are interesting hunting grounds. Still, there have already been several unusual disappearances down by the docks, where scraps of blood and giant tyrant lizard footprints have been found. Some of the Saatans from the far South West have realised what they are, and seek to propitiate them and assuage their hunger - for if they do not taste human blood, their false skins tear and rot.

In their human forms, the terashen are hulking men and women with lizard-like eyes, a mouth full of serrated teeth, and feathers in place of hair. When they discard such falsehoods, they are prime specimens of tyrant lizards with brightly coloured plumage. It is their divine heritage that lets them pretend to be men and so they rarely breed true, for the blood of the gods fades with time. Most of their offspring are merely tyrant lizards who are smarter than usual.

It is for that reason that they are so desperate to prove themselves to Bataari, for terashen who impress her are blessed so that they might have a child that is truly their equal. Their patron-mother is ambitious and hungry. She is a daughter of the Western war-goddess, and her teeth are no less sharp than her mother's. Personal prowess is all that matters to her; she cares little for strategy or logistics, and extends her blessing only to the most lethal hunters.

Bataari flagrantly ignores the laws of Heaven and has little experience with the Immaculate Order whose reach barely touches the lands she frequents. She does not truly understand what it means that there is an Immaculate monastery in Saata - though she would be more wary if she knew that the abbot is the son of a Gold Faction Sidereal.
 
*narrows eyes*

"An island, water on all sides, but like no other island in the world. This is a place where she can easily hide."

Let me guess, either the Terashen, or the Padua family if they're playing host to them as well as hiring their services, operate in large part out of a local arena?

EDIT: That came off vastly more condescending than I intended... It should be said that I approve, but I see that reference you're making.
 
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The Phoenixian said:
*narrows eyes*

"An island, water on all sides, but like no other island in the world. This is a place where she can easily hide."

Let me guess, either the Terashen, or the Padua family if they're playing host to them as well as hiring their services, operate in large part out of a local arena?

EDIT: That came off vastly more condescending than I intended... It should be said that I approve, but I see that reference you're making.
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... I don't actually know what you mean.

What they are is an example of "the overconfident people showing up in Roanupur sure that nothing can fuck with them, then they promptly meet the locals and probably get their teeth kicked in". Only because this is Exalted, it's necessary to somewhat scale them up, and I'm a bit annoyed that the line doesn't do more with spirit-blooded animals [1], so I decided to make them god-blooded t-rexes who therefore are clever from their divine heritage and know blood magic (represented by them knowing thaumaturgy that lets them give themselves the Alternate Form mutation and assume a human shape).

Yes, the fact that they're were-t-rexes is deliberately pulpy and a bit camp. Because goddamnit, the Far South West is totally the place where King Kong takes place and there are totally islands where giant apes fight dinosaurs.

Plus, you know, they're there for PCs to either fight, or hire and then possibly get betrayed by, or possibly hire and use them as a way of getting in contact with their mother - who as an apex-predator and daughter of the Western War Goddess loves the Exalted because she prizes personal fighting skill above all and the Exalts are the apex predators of Creation in her way of looking at things.

[1] Which are super-cool. Exalts should totally be riding talking horses who are the child of the horse-god and can run as fast as the wind.
 
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Some of my favorite portions of Exalted are where they take silly anime things and ridiculous campy elements and play them more or less completely straight, so don't worry, you're on good ground, Scorp :p
 
EarthScorpion said:
[1] Which are super-cool. Exalts should totally be riding talking horses who are the child of the horse-god and can run as fast as the wind.
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*squints*

See, now, I have a Sidereal character who rides a talking semi-divine horse descended from the local horse-goddess, and she can indeed run fast as the wind and never gets tired. And now I'm not sure if that is merely a fortuitous coincidence or if Earthscorpion has been reading the PbP game over my metaphorical shoulder.

(Her name is... well, sorry, the name that Lotus gives her is Mischief. She has her own name in whatever language it is that horses use to communicate with one another, but not being a horse Lotus can't really pronounce that, so he took a look at her behaviour in the first ten minutes or so after meeting her and coined that one instead).

(She's been getting super-decadent from living in Yu-Shan.)
 
Maugan Ra said:
See, now, I have a Sidereal character who rides a talking semi-divine horse descended from the local horse-goddess, and she can indeed run fast as the wind and never gets tired. And now I'm not sure if that is merely a fortuitous coincidence or if Earthscorpion has been reading the PbP game over my metaphorical shoulder.
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Divine horses with all kind of attributed magical properties are common like dirt in the kind of myths than Exalted tries to emulate.
 
EarthScorpion said:
... I don't actually know what you mean.

What they are is an example of "the overconfident people showing up in Roanupur sure that nothing can fuck with them, then they promptly meet the locals and probably get their teeth kicked in". Only because this is Exalted, it's necessary to somewhat scale them up, and I'm a bit annoyed that the line doesn't do more with spirit-blooded animals [1], so I decided to make them god-blooded t-rexes who therefore are clever from their divine heritage and know blood magic (represented by them knowing thaumaturgy that lets them give themselves the Alternate Form mutation and assume a human shape).

Yes, the fact that they're were-t-rexes is deliberately pulpy and a bit camp. Because goddamnit, the Far South West is totally the place where King Kong takes place and there are totally islands where giant apes fight dinosaurs.

Plus, you know, they're there for PCs to either fight, or hire and then possibly get betrayed by, or possibly hire and use them as a way of getting in contact with their mother - who as an apex-predator and daughter of the Western War Goddess loves the Exalted because she prizes personal fighting skill above all and the Exalts are the apex predators of Creation in her way of looking at things.

[1] Which are super-cool. Exalts should totally be riding talking horses who are the child of the horse-god and can run as fast as the wind.
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Hunh, so it wasn't intentional.

From where I was standing, the Terashen looked like a combination of things, most relevant to my post being Godzilla references. Particularly the Godzilla (1998) parallels. (The Roland Emmerich one with the "new, sleeker" Godzilla rampaging in Manhattan.)

I mean, for one thing, Bataari's fundamental description is "God-Lizard and queen of monsters". Perhaps not Queen of all monsters, but there is certainly a subset of monsters of which she is arguably queen.

For the parallels to that specific film it's a bit backwards but here's what I saw:

As far as Bataari's progeny go, they're a very large brood that she sends out into the world, including to Saata. Saata being important in that it's a city that, while not exactly Nexus, is certainly a decent sized fish in it's own little corner of the South-west. Definitely it reads as though it's a bigger and more civilized city than the Terashen, or Bataari herself, are really used to.

Evocative giant footprints and dinosaurs that somehow simply vanish in the middle of a city? A pretty big part of that movie.

Basically, especially with what you've said about it, it just really looks like something that could play out with parallels to the Emmerich film, first the kids showing up and raising havoc until they get driven first out of the city warrens and then out of their home base in Madison Square Gardens one of Saata's Arena's/Colluseum's, then Mom coming in, not realizing how out of her league she is, ending the short adventure with a bunch of Immaculate Monks tying up her retreat on the bridge to the mainland (Does Saata even have bridges to the mainland?) while they kick her teeth in.
 
The problem with that idea is that I'm pretty sure Godzilla already exists in Exalted, and he's called the Kukla.
 
If Godzilla had been the Kukla, the whole "threat to Japan" story wouldn't have worked at all. Because Japan would have ceased to exist shortly after he awoke.
 
The Sandman said:
That's because Godzilla didn't exist in a world with Exalted.
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The point of Godzilla is that it is an implacable creature that represents the sins of mankind, the monster we have wrought in our own pride and hubris.

As opposed to the Kukla which is Creation's 'reset' button.

Neither thematically, nor mechanically are the Kukla or Godzilla the same.
 
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