Remove ads

General Exalted Thread

Reader mode
Gamerlord said:
Pretty sure Martial Arts explicitly have 'techniques' which are direct analogues for Charms though.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Exactly. Charms are kung fu. They're clearly martial arts. Sure, they aren't based on the martial arts ability but if you tell me Peony Blossom Technique isn't martial arts, I'm going to go ahead and giggle.
 
runeblue360 said:
Exactly. Charms are kung fu. They're clearly martial arts. Sure, they aren't based on the martial arts ability but if you tell me Peony Blossom Technique isn't martial arts, I'm going to go ahead and giggle.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yep. They're explicitly supposed to be referencing and drawing inspiration from Wuxia movies, where everything is martial arts. The way the baker kneads his dough? Martial arts. The way the blacksmith hammers iron? Martial arts. The way the weaver cards wool? Martial arts.
 
Bursting Eagerness Soul said:
Yep. They're explicitly supposed to be referencing and drawing inspiration from Wuxia movies, where everything is martial arts. The way the baker kneads his dough? Martial arts. The way the blacksmith hammers iron? Martial arts. The way the weaver cards wool? Martial arts.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And of course this is taken to the illogical extremes of "Air-Breathing Prana" and "Restful Slumber Mantra" by critics of this line of thought.
 
Sydonai said:
And of course this is taken to the illogical extremes of "Air-Breathing Prana" and "Restful Slumber Mantra" by critics of this line of thought.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Ironically, the 3E dev model-that charms don't exist in-universe but are representations of a character's capabilities in a crunchy, specific process-based system, leads to this conclusion far more easily than the idea that charms do exist in-universe. I mean, sleeping is a specific process that a character can undertake. :V
 
Sydonai said:
And of course this is taken to the illogical extremes of "Air-Breathing Prana" and "Restful Slumber Mantra" by critics of this line of thought.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nah. Those are just stuft you get from being alive. However, "Circular Breathing Prana", where you use your essence to basically turn yourself into a rebreather is totally a valid Charm design, if a smidge situational. As is "Healing Slumber Meditation", where you basically hibernate in order to boost your healing rate. The key here is to build on what is already there naturally, instead of building an idiotic strawman.

Besides, did you consciously learn how to breathe or sleep? Compare that to having to learn a skill or trade.
 
Last edited:
A charm to breath air is stupid. A learnable magical effect where proper breathing improves stamina ... ok that shouldn't be a charm because that's a learnable thing IRL which requires that there be a version accessible to non-essence using humans. Probably would fall under something akin to 2e thaum.

To prevent stacking issues actual charm versions of it would replace it (and possibly use it's cost as an XP discount).
 
pheonix89 said:
A charm to breath air is stupid. A learnable magical effect where proper breathing improves stamina ... ok that shouldn't be a charm because that's a learnable thing IRL which requires that there be a version accessible to non-essence using humans. Probably would fall under something akin to 2e thaum.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's called "Training to increase your Stamina Attribute".
Carrnage said:
What idiots think that charms are a requirement for normal human ability rather than a supplement and complement
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nobody, that's not what I was saying.
I was saying that some people that dislike the idea of "Charms are actual things that exist in-setting" have previously extended the line of thought to Charms being responsible for absolutely everything to make it look like a ridiculous concept.
 
Last edited:
Sydonai said:
I was saying that some people that dislike the idea of "Charms are actual things that exist in-setting" have previously extended the line of thought to Charms being responsible for absolutely everything to make it look like a ridiculous concept.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That is honestly a stronger argument to more harshly codify what 'a Charm' entails, not less, so that you have a clearly delineated standard for what does and does not fall under that banner. Removing the existence of "we call this a Charm" in-setting does nothing to remove the potential for Charms which conceivably do everything, from being better versions of spells and mutations or granting free bonus Charms in addition to themselves or fucking with traits, the game-math and narrative pacing.

And it clearly hasn't accomplished this judging by the fact God-King's Shrike and Wyld-Shaping Technique both currently exist in the forms they do, among other examples of Charms which only nominally seem to be Charms at all, simply by existing within the "Charms" chapter. Instead it simply creates a nebulous situation which is ideal for no side at all and does not actually resolve the problem it claims too, or actually take that suggested step and enrich the setting by the absence and replace it with something equally interesting to engage with.

Those who do not like Charms-as-Things will simply continue to play as they always have, ignoring the pieces they dislike and gaining nothing save the chance to be smug about others being unable to debate the metaphysics, while those who desire Charms-as-Things for internal setting consistency only get increasing levels of unnecessary ambiguity which serve no helpful mechanical or storytelling purposes.
 
Last edited:
=== The Daily Grind ===

The Eight Nations work ceaselessly in a land of endless shadows, metal and industry for their survival and that of their world-god. This is a given fact of life in Autocthonia, but what does that actually entail?

Each nation is made up of numerous population centers that are all more or less topographically and logistically close to one another. Note that unlike Creation, most such settlements are arranged in a fully three-dimensional space. The most important and populated cities are of course the ascended Alchemical Exalted, the Metro and Patropolises that act as beacons of culture, industry, science and government in a given Nation.

Most Polises are located on auspicious or important confluences of Autochthon's continent-organs and the modules those vast workings are made of. A lone polis might sit astride a vast river of molten metal, fed from dozens of foundry-organelles that in turn refine scrap, ore and stranger raw substances ferried by distant capillaries and endless legions of machine spirits. Another might act as a bulwark against an entrenched blight zone.

The process in which a polis finds its place lies with the Divine Ministers, who discern ideal placement and send the appropriate signals to both men and gods. There is no set rate of expansion or mandated quota the Nations have to fulfil in this regard- it is an opportunity that both mankind and god-world take as it comes.

So with Polises founded at the confluence of the Minister's far-cast plans and the availability of a suitable Exalt, most other settlements are wholly human affairs. Cities grow around natural factories, important resource caches, and holy sites. To say nothing of how the Tunnelfolk live and sometimes thrive in the darkness outside the Eight Nation's sight. To live in or near a Polis is a great fortune, but for every such city, a dozen or more urban sprawls stretch outward with nothing more than mortals and maybe a Champion or two assigned to that region.

As important as a city itself is however, the people who live there are even more so.

In any given city, be it polis or no, the two main labors of the Populat are maintenance of home, and maintenance of god. The human-fashioned factories and industrial plants that make life possible in the Pole of Metal need dilligent, if not constant upkeep, as they often work twenty five hours a day, five shifts round the clock.

The citizens work, ranging from menial rote tasks to challenging skilled labor. It is not ceaseless toil or meaningless busywork. Manufactures create useful goods out of harvested raw materials, and in a well-run crew, every stitch, weld and rivet is a prayer to the Great Maker or Minister. The Populat strives to minimized waste.

Consider that in Autocthonia, such emplacements- even the man-made ones, are akin to terrain features, recognizable as locales in the limited cartography of the Great Maker's internal systems. One city might be built around a sprawling air-purification plant that cleanses the living chambers and allows the inhabitants to breathe uninhibited. In lean times or under stress, the citizens don gasmasks at all times.

Kamak is known for the towering heat exchangers, hundreds of stories tall and dripping with cooling and heating vanes that would char an unprotected man to ash. On one side, the exchangers throw out heat, and the other exhausts cold air into uninhabited spaces or is further channeled into another great industrial undertaking. These great devices are necessary to survival in the frigid machinery spaces within that nation's borders, and checking the radiating surfaces for flaws, corrosion and decay is a constant necessity.

Among the working masses, the Sodalites stand out as leaders in their fields and experts above the more rote-educated Populat. These machine-sages are responsible for numerous aspects of daily Autochthonian life such as the Harvesters, Conductors and Illuminators. Even in truly affluent regions where a city can afford Essence-powered lamps and similar conveniences, Autocthonians maintain those things devoutly. The supposed permanence of an artifact is no excuse for lax maintenance, and it should be stated that such greater works are understandably rare.

Day to day, men and women create, repair, recycle and otherwise maintain the infrastructure that grants them safety and comfort in Autochthon's harsh environment. A Polis is unique in that its vast industries are in fact Charms that empower the workers as well as the Alchemical, and in turn interact with the local environment in more elaborate ways.

Outside a given city, the Autochthonians turn to their world-god for resources and services. The most common projects undertaken by a given city are Retrofitting, Re-purposing, and Repair.

Quite often, a city will not bother building a given subset of industrial facilities simply because Autocthon has provided many of them on their metaphorical doorstep. Part of settling a new city involves the gradual and careful retrofitting of a organ-device for human use and maneuvering. Gantries, handholds, safety lines and more. Consider that any given natural feature will have no gague or meter that a human can read, necessitating their installation. The fabricators in more established cities often must create the devices that the outlying settlements need to even work in such places.

Alchemical Exalted work tirelessly during these projects, ensuring that the local spiritual presence does not take the sudden human incursion as a disruption. At the most benign, a legion of fix spirits may undo a shift's worth of work... Or silently cleanse a worksite of foreign contaminants, no matter how much they scream.

Alternatively, a city might decide that a nearby structure or facility would be better repurposed, even torn down in service to some other cause. This is done rarely, but often enough that most nations have recorded more successes than failures. As with retrofitting, a great deal of care is paid to esure that Autocthon's vast processes benignly ignore the incursion, or tacitly approve of it. The obvious ramification here, is that by tearing down one of Autocthon's organs, some distant system may be affected. Regardless of the risk, facilities are reupurposed, and the Eight Nations make an ongoing effort to track the effects their efforts have on the Great Maker.

Lastly, and most frequently, the populat of a settlement will venture out into the locales outside their immediate safe zone for the express purpose of maintenance. Autochthon's vast systems tick forward at a rate measured in years or decades, though the smaller, more human-surmountable sub-sub processes work at a blinding pace. Here, men and women work to fix, adjust and optimize the Great Maker's life with restored components, prayer and meticulous maintenance.

Repair is critically important as well, because while Autochthon can allow a factory-cell to decay and wait for his spiritual maintenance to clear it, humanity moves faster still. Most non-polis cities are created out of a need to bolster flagging systems deep in the Maker's body, which in turn has incremental but unmistakable positive effects both near and far.

Repair is also the most direct way the Eight Nations fight against the encroaching Void and Blight Zones. If a blight zone or region likely to decay into one is discovered, a Nation will commit a great deal of resources to its recovery. It has been proven time and again that fixing a blight zone is always the best long-term option, as void-tainted machine spirits and similar hazards can become an enduring problem if not fixed early. However, this has the obvious tradeoff of spending resources that might have been used elsewhere, causing critical shortages.

Therefore, any settlement in the Eight Nations will be spending hundreds if not thousands of man-hours both internally and externally.

=== Further Afield ===

Of the Sodalties, the Harvesters and Conductors spend the most of their time outside the safety of any given city or settlement. Weeks or months at a time in roving inspection bands and prospecting missions. Often lead by a mid-level Sodalite executor or overseer, these missions overlap with cartography, military reconnaissance, and semi-spiritual pilgrimage.

The Conductors are most known for their ongoing mission to locate and tap Autochthon's veins for useful substances, including both vital nutrient slurry and potable water. Industrial oils, liquid metals and stranger gasses are also available for the taking. Those tasks are by no means simple, however, as the further out one moves from a given settlement, the less human retrofitting exists, and what is there does not last very long without constant upkeep, placating spirits and machine repair teams.

Traversing the spaces is not easy, even with magitech vehicles, tools and the support of Alchemical Exalted. Hazards are not merely acknowledged, but anticipated with every safety briefing and planning session. One of the simplest complications is making it across a vast cavern or machinery compartment with no walkway or handhold. Easy if one can fly- less so if not.

Blistering heat, crushing pressure, exposed electrical arcs that can blind a man if unprotected. All of these are common hazards in the outlying regions of the Pole of Metal.

=== Playing It Out ===

As Players, the Alchemical Exalted are most involved in the above when a given project is of high priority, and it must succeed against all opposition both real, imagined and unexpected... Or when things go catastrophically wrong. Accidents are a fact of life in Autocthonia, and offer no shortage of opportunities for daring, ingenuity and heroism.

To put it bluntly, 'Action' in an Alchemical game is rarely combat. It is industrial hazards and accidents and rarely upset or corrupted machine spirits. Instead of looking at wuxia epics or high-flying action movies, Alchemical Games actually draw the greatest inspiration from disaster movies and non-fiction accounts of industrial accidents. Humanitarian efforts to rescue people, to save lives, prevent or end a crisis.
 
ManusDomine said:
And uh, none of these come any close to actually being a Warframe proper; given a Warframe is actually a remote-controlled golem-body designed to limit and focus the power of the Tenno. And they also allow you to do shit like jump easily over 20 meters in the air, run on walls, influence gravity on a personal scale and many other feats. I really like power armour in Exalted, because I think it's aesthetics are rather interesting and sort of unique, but a Warframe, it is very much not.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Actually, I think you can canonically have something very close to this: an infernal using SWLIHN's Hollow Mind Possession on a high-powered automaton or a warstrider/hellstrider.

(Well, an unusually teeny tiny fun-sized warstrider. A funstrider, if you will.)

Depending on the level of infrastructure available – which for an E4 infernal could potentially be lots – you could even justify the existence of purpose-built artifacts to fill this role. That is, some category of half-magitech, half-organic "hellframes" that are like hellstriders or power armor or automata, but not, because they're designed from the ground up to be possessed rather than piloted or autonomous.

(You'd have to be careful in implementing mechanics like that, as it would be easy to create serious problems with mechanical or narrative balance. It'd be much simpler for a concept game – "you are a party of hell-Tenno, operating hellframes from your fortress-manse hidden in another dimension." Bringing warframes into general play as something SWLIHN-types can do would be a lot trickier, with concerns like balance against other primordial charmtrees and at least other solaroid splats, potential narrative issues of "your character might die but mine's only a doombot" or "I can effectively be in several different countries at once", balancing opportunity costs for all the charmtech and artifacts and infrastructure, etc.)

(Tangentially, you could also potentially have charmtech offering similar remote-avatar capabilities in other infernal trees – some Metagaos infestation-avatar line, something building off Adorjani gales or Cecelyne's "appear to the faithful" charms, that sort of thing.)

Anyway, under the "hellframe" model there are several ways you could mechanize warframe powers. They could be discrete artifact powers that are just fuelled by the infernal operator's essence, or they could be the operator's own infernal charms projected through the avatar-artifact (either because of operator-end HMP expansion charms, or through some artifact ability).

One (off-the-cuff and potentially half-baked) implementation idea: say each hellframe design is an Artifact (4? 5?) aspected toward a specific Yozi, and that aspect determines which infernal charms they can channel; every hellframe can channel any E1-2 charm the operator has, and beyond that only charms of their aspect Yozi. Or maybe each hellframe has two Yozis, or a Primary and Secondary Yozi with different essence caps, or surcharges/discounts, or whatever – adjust to taste.

The E1-E2 bit means any hellframe could potentially wallrun with Gravity-Rebuking Grace or supercharge their close-range attacks with Green Sun Nimbus Flare if the operator knows those charms (and also do a lot of other stuff without direct Warframe equivalents since E1-E2 covers a lot of ground), but only use the big splashy powers of one or two Yozis. You wouldn't have exact equivalents to the canon Warframes, but there would still be some similar character divisions – you might have a Malfeas/Isidoros hellframe fight more Rhino-like, while one with Adorjan might be a more murder-dashy Excalibur, you might have the Metagaos/Kimbery hellframe play as the hypertoxic Not!Saryn to the Metagaos/Malfeas mutant Not!Nidus, etc.

(Not sure how you'd handle heretical charms – allow? Disallow? Maybe heresy-ok hellframes are something you'd have to custom-design and then build or upgrade into. Or get a 3CD do that for you, I'm sure they'll love the notion.)

-

EarthScorpion said:
What, gods no.

Warframes are nothing to do with the Primordials. Orokin are as First Age Solar as fuck.

Evidence 1: They loved gold. Really, really loved gold.

Evidence 2: They got murdered by their loyal soldier warrior elite in a sudden betrayal at a grand celebration

Evidence 3: Hubrissssssssss
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The Orokin are indeed Solar as fuck, but a Tenno is an Orokin that's been warped into something more alien by the eldritch energies of space-hell.


Hm. Actually, you could very easily make a Hellframe Shard by mashing up Warframe canon with SotED's Exalted Modern backstory (In Space).

"In the beginning, the Incarnae—Sol and the Maidens, and their children Luna, Autochthon and Gaia—made Creation. But where the light of the Incarnae did not reach, strange and alien powers took root. In the voids between the stars—in lightless caverns beneath the mountains—in the ocean's black abyss—in the song of numbers and the fog of dreams—in the shadows of all things—there grew the Yozis, timeless and terrible, festering with malice towards the world of gross matter with which they were intertwined.

For an Age, the gods ruled in peace. But the Yozis unleashed unnatural forces—demon legions, mutated humans and animals, and their own nightmarish avatars—to reshape the world to their liking. Their first strike cast civilization into chaos, decimating mortals and gods alike." (SotED p119)

So the caste-based Orokin society is gods ruling mortals; the Yozis are the Sentients. Maybe they're things the Orokin made (per Warframe), or maybe just something strange and alien and hateful (per Modern). Whatever, they're big, they're bad, they're weird, and they're wrecking the Orokin's shit.

"Then Autochthon forged the Exaltations, imbuing the Essence of the eldest Incarnae into mortal vessels. These Solar and Sidereal Exalts strove mightily against Creation's foes. In their first sortie, they proved their power by slaying some Yozis and driving back the rest in confusion. The war then grew protracted."

The Exalted host are the Orokin's straightforward take on posthuman supersoldiers, with the Solars the shiniest and most golden of them all and therefore obviously the best. Nevertheless, the war does not go so hot.

"Uncertain of victory, a few of the Solar Exalted—led by the Night Caste Gorol—conceived a plan to seize the power of the Yozis for themselves. By dint of forgotten rites, these Solars became the first Infernals, wielding the Sun's power in one hand and Yozi might in the other."

The Infernals are warped, eldritch Solars with the powers of space-hell – the Tenno. Maybe they were innocents changed by accidental exposure to an alien void, who the Orokin upgraded into transhuman soldiers (Warframe). Or maybe they started as Solars, who then twisted themselves to be more like their foes (Modern). Either way they did great for their shiny golden progenitors, right up until they really, really didn't.

"Led by the Infernals, the Solar Host seemed invincible. Together they drove the Yozis to the edge of existence. But the Solars were betrayed by their Infernal brethren in the final battle, leading to their defeat."

In Modern, this led to a world ruled by Infernals. The Hellframe shard is, well, Exalted Warframe – the backstory is left unclear, the better for the storyteller to shank you with later. The players don't know what the hell happened, except that now the scattered Infernal!Tenno are awakening from stasis into a creation that hates and fears them, dominated by degenerate successor states of the Orokin's mortal worker-caste.

Also, each infernal has a mysterious but super helpful voice in their head, giving them advice, guidance, and objectives. Usually pretty murdery objectives.

I'm sure it'll be fiiiiine.

Space Coadjutor Mom Best Mom.

Obviously that Shard is something of an infernal-centric idea, but you could slip other splats into other roles. Perhaps the Dragonbloods play the far-more-capable hero units that rule the Grineer or the Corpus, or the Sidereals run the shadowy syndicate factions who support you or try to assassinate you depending on their ideology. Maybe players are hunted by an Abyssal Stalker, or the infested hive is guarded by the mad, mutated form of a Lunar they knew in a past life. Maybe their dojos are built by demons.

(Actually, the Lunars are clearly the Kubrows. Your previous life's Lunar mate wasted away, waiting for you to come back. You monster.)

As for the Solars, well, in a non-solar game they're probably where the Orokin are in warframe canon: "MIA", which likely means "something for the storyteller to drop on your ass for the big oh fuck moment twenty updates from now".

(In a Solar game, you might instead present the Hell!Tenno as a part of the ongoing war status quo, with the Solars doing their usual "you're the emergent, disruptive power" bit. As in standard Exalted, chance of Sudden Onset Ninja Syndrome remains high.)

Edited for typos.
 
Last edited:
Elero said:
Look. When we say "Ghost-eating Technique", that's usually just a name for a mechanical ability which does not, strictly speaking, exist. But in the context of "Spirits fear Ghost-Eating Technique" they do not mean the mechanical ability, because the mechanical ability doesn't exist IC. What they mean is what the ability represents. GET represents the capacity of the Solar Exalted to kill spirits. Spirits fear that capacity, not the mechanical instantiation of it in the form of the Charm called Ghost-Eating Technique. The Charm called Ghost-Eating Technique doesn't exist, but the capacity to kill spirits it represents and puts into a form we can mechanically interact with, does.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And yet, if I recall correctly, that very charm has a footnote that says if a Solar learns this charm, all spirits they meet are intrinsically aware the Solar has done so, and therefore holds the capacity to perma-kill them.

Which led me, in turn, to develop a custom Stealth charm explicitly to mask the fact that I had learned that charm, in a game. Spirits become much less . . . tense, when they don't think you can kill them. And if you need to amp up the pressure, well, you can just let the masking charm fade.
 
Last edited:
Golden Lark said:
And yet, if I recall correctly, that very charm has a footnote that says if a Solar learns this charm, all spirits they meet are intrinsically aware the Solar has done so, and therefore holds the capacity to perma-kill them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm pretty sure you're thinking of Soul Mastery, the last charm of Wood Dragon Style, which is a Bad Touch kill effect.
 
Golden Lark said:
And yet, if I recall correctly, that very charm has a footnote that says if a Solar learns this charm, all spirits they meet are intrinsically aware the Solar has done so, and therefore holds the capacity to perma-kill them.

Which led me, in turn, to develop a custom Stealth charm explicitly to mask the fact that I had learned that charm, in a game. Spirits become much less . . . tense, when they don't think you can kill them. And if you need to amp up the pressure, well, you can just let the masking charm fade.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You recall incorrectly. The Charm doesn't say anything like that. Are you maybe thinking of the second Edition Wood Dragon Capstone, whose special thing was spirit perma-killing?
 
No, I am most definitely thinking Ghost-Eating technique, as I have never read either of the DB books.

Perhaps I am recalling the first ED core text? I've been playing Exalted for a very long time, now . . . (and my buddy owned the first ed books we used to play so I have no immediate reference in reach)
 
It's in 2e Measure the Wind, in its Roll of Glorious Divinity presentation. "Finally, the Charm detects whether any creature the spirit examines is capable of killing a god permanently, as with Ghost-Eating Technique. "
 
Measure the Wind in Roll of Glorious Divinity book 1 pg 143-144 says "Finally, the Charm detects whether any creature the spirit examines is capable of killing a god permanently, as with Ghost-Eating Technique."

EDIT: Siderealed by Omicron
 
Last edited:
Golden Lark said:
No, I am most definitely thinking Ghost-Eating technique, as I have never read either of the DB books.

Perhaps I am recalling the first ED core text? I've been playing Exalted for a very long time, now . . . (and my buddy owned the first ed books we used to play so I have no immediate reference in reach)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You're thinking of Measure the Wind, which tells the spirit in question whether the character knows any spirit-killing charms.

Article:
Finally,
the Charm detects whether any creature the spirit
examines is capable of killing a god permanently, as
with Ghost-Eating Technique.
 
Amusingly this means that Ocean Father can look at you and know that you bear Black Depths Foretold, the dagger fated to end his life, even should you not know of the prophecy yourself.
 
Omicron said:
Amusingly this means that Ocean Father can look at you and know that you bear Black Depths Foretold, the dagger fated to end his life, even should you not know of the prophecy yourself.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Would he know specifically that you have that dagger, or would he just know that you were capable of killing him?
And if wouldn't automatically know you had that dagger would he be able to work it out on his own or just assume that you had a generic spirit-killing capability like GET?
 
Sydonai said:
Would he know specifically that you have that dagger, or would he just know that you were capable of killing him?
And if wouldn't automatically know you had that dagger would he be able to work it out on his own or just assume that you had a generic spirit-killing capability like GET?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Good question, and I honestly have no idea. I'd err towards the dagger so that you can have a scene where Ocean Father smiles politely and makes casual talk while frantically trying to get you to either leave or hand over the dagger if he realizes you don't know its importance while your own character is oblivious to it.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top