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General Exalted Thread

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Omicron said:
Actually I think the Primordial War is better if it lasted not "a single Exalted lifetime" but only a few years to a few month.

Zeus didn't spend a thousand years working his way up to Mount Olympus before spending a century bringing down Cronos.
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Zeus didn't exist in a game system that has characters acquiring xp and growing stronger with age. He was about as tough when he took the throne as he was a thousand years later.

The Exalted, meanwhile, exist in a setting and system that expects them and their adventures to grow over time. Someone who's been Exalted for a few weeks will have their hands full dealing with mortal opposition. It takes time for Exalts to become ready to challenge a sapient world full of superhuman monsters and its dozens of beyond-divine semi-independent souls.

Suppose you were running a Primordial War game. Would you really have the whole story span a few in-game months?

Omicron said:
The Primordials do not have to be a match for the Exalted, because their relative "power levels" are largely irrelevant to the modern setting.
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Nonsense. The modern setting has a couple dozen living Primordials, a few hundred Third Circles, a couple thousand Second Circles, and countless First Circles. Small pieces of the Primordials have stats in the back of the Ex3 Core, and some of them are pretty damn tough. Some of them are clearly stronger than the sample Exalts in the same book, who've been empowered for longer than the duration you posit for the Primordial War.

There were probably more Third Circles in the Primordial War than there were Celestials. That gives a pretty high lower bound on how strong the Primordial side of the War was.

Starting characters in Ex3 have been Exalted maybe six months. And I don't think a bunch of chargen Exalts took down a thousand Third Circles, their armies, and their worlds.

And I don't think having the Exalted reach Essence 5 in secret before crushing the Primordials like overleveled JRPG characters taking out the final boss after doing all the sidequests is a good idea at all.
 
Though, both parties should probably define what they're talking about first?

Time wise. Omicron has stated that it should be somewhere in the area of months to a few years for the war, and given their reasons and arguments.

Sanctaphrax has disagreed, in favor of: [Insert Value Here, please.]

Which makes it a hard debate to have.
 
The Laurent said:
Time wise. Omicron has stated that it should be somewhere in the area of months to a few years for the war, and given their reasons and arguments.
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I don't think I count as arguing for the same thing as Sanctaphrax, because it sounds like they're arguing multiple centuries, so I'd be a midpoint who thinks it took at least several decades but less than two centuries.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
Zeus didn't exist in a game system that has characters acquiring xp and growing stronger with age. He was about as tough when he took the throne as he was a thousand years later.

The Exalted, meanwhile, exist in a setting and system that expects them and their adventures to grow over time. Someone who's been Exalted for a few weeks will have their hands full dealing with mortal opposition. It takes time for Exalts to become ready to challenge a sapient world full of superhuman monsters and its dozens of beyond-divine semi-independent souls.

Suppose you were running a Primordial War game. Would you really have the whole story span a few in-game months?
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Irrelevant. In the abstract the Primordial War is interesting and might make a good game to explore, but the game isn't designed to run the Primordial War. Just because it's an element of the background doesn't mean that it's supposed to be playable. The game is designed to run the Creation that exists now, and the Primordial War is irrelevant to its rules.

That said, if I were to run the Primordial War as a game, I would want it to take a few IRL months, maybe a year or two. In-game time would correlates to that. I certainly wouldn't try to have the game span decades or centuries, just as I don't have my modern-day Creation game span decades or centuries.


Nonsense. The modern setting has a couple dozen living Primordials, a few hundred Third Circles, a couple thousand Second Circles, and countless First Circles. Small pieces of the Primordials have stats in the back of the Ex3 Core, and some of them are pretty damn tough. Some of them are clearly stronger than the sample Exalts in the same book, who've been empowered for longer than the duration you posit for the Primordial War.

There were probably more Third Circles in the Primordial War than there were Celestials. That gives a pretty high lower bound on how strong the Primordial side of the War was.

Starting characters in Ex3 have been Exalted maybe six months. And I don't think a bunch of chargen Exalts took down a thousand Third Circles, their armies, and their worlds.

And I don't think having the Exalted reach Essence 5 in secret before crushing the Primordials like overleveled JRPG characters taking out the final boss after doing all the sidequests is a good idea at all.
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I don't think this is a good way to compare the situations at all. We have a canonical account of how a Primordial was destroyed: it went something like "she interposes her body before the Exalted host which halts their entire army, and then a single dude sneaks in behind her back and defeats her." Nobody whittled down her hundreds of souls or whatnot.

The Primordial War wasn't decided by the comparative stats of 3CD and Solar Exalts of Essence X with Y experience points. It wasn't run in the game. It's a quick bit of backstory. I don't find your argument particularly compelling. I'm not arguing for "the Exalted powered up to E5 in secret then delivered a single assault." That's still an incredibly mechanistic approach to this mythical event.

The Primordial War isn't a game event, and the game isn't designed to run it. It's designed to run the here and now of Creation. And in the here and now, the Primordials are trapped entities, locked away forever and unable to escape, while for many simultaneously being world that no one has any convenient way to engage in combat. However they were defeated in the war is not something the game is concerned about except in broad retelling.
 
Worth noting, so far as I know Exalted chargen is written on the assumption that your character might have Exalted around the time, or not long after, the Empress vanished, and has used that time to get their feet under them, have a few adventures, that kind of thing. That's one reason why you get bonus points and starting charms. This is, so far as I know, only one possibility; the game isn't written on the idea that a character who Exalted yesterday and immediately grasped some Exalted hero-magic is badwrongfun. Nevertheless, I don't believe it's The Rule of how Exaltation works.

That In mind, I'd call a few months to a year or two a bit short for the Primordial War, but I still trend towards the idea that it was relatively short. I just calibrate my idea of 'relatively short' as 'not longer than a single mortal lifetime, at most.' Maybe a decade or less?
 
I mean, the length of WWI or WWII seems like it'd sorta fit? That's one of the things with the idea of a centuries long war. I mean, you know how much crazy shit and cool adventures and so on went on during the "totally very short" WWII?

Five or six years at most, and by about 2/3rds of the way through, the winner wasn't really in doubt, and all that was left were desperate last stands. For instance.
 
I think it's a mistake to divide Exalted into the mythical past and the playable present. Every part of the setting is meant to be mythical; if you think thinking through the lens of the game messes with the myth, then you should probably throw out the mechanics entirely.

The mechanics that make Third Circles so powerful are a reflection of the narrative fact that Third Circles are, in fact, so powerful. There's really no getting around the fact that the opposition the Exalted faced in the Primordial War was disgustingly powerful, incredibly numerous, preposterously knowledgeable, INSERT SUPERLATIVE HERE. If you make the Exalted overcome that easily or quickly, it makes every successive generation of Exalt look like a total scrub.

Maybe you'd prefer the Primordials be less overwhelming, but the setting we have in one where the corebook calls each fragment of each Primordial's soul "world-shaking" and "apocalyptic".

Omicron said:
I don't think this is a good way to compare the situations at all. We have a canonical account of how a Primordial was destroyed: it went something like "she interposes her body before the Exalted host which halts their entire army, and then a single dude sneaks in behind her back and defeats her." Nobody whittled down her hundreds of souls or whatnot.
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Someone killed her fetich, if I remember right. Slew a Third Circle alone.

If my previous incarnation did that three months after Exalting, I'm going to feel like a complete garbage waste of an Exaltation for struggling with blood apes.

Imrix said:
Worth noting, so far as I know Exalted chargen is written on the assumption that your character might have Exalted around the time, or not long after, the Empress vanished, and has used that time to get their feet under them, have a few adventures, that kind of thing.
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In 3e, the corebook says the default rules are for Solars who've been around for less than a year.
 
I guess if I'm going to shoot down other people's proposals, I should make one of my own.

...

If you told the Exalts fighting in the Primordial War that they were at war with the Primordials, most of them would've disagreed most of the time.

Yes, the Exalted were created to bring down the Primordials.

Yes, they (and the rest of humanity) were generally hostile to the Primordials from day one.

Yes, those parts of the Primordials which paid any attention to the Exalted were generally hostile.

But when the "War" began, the Primordials were completely out of reach. And they cared little about humanity. The first Exalts didn't really seek to strike them down. But they didn't hesitate to kill devas, either. And they often found themselves with reason to do just that.

As the Exalted slew devas and built kingdoms, they drew the ire of the world-makers. Battles escalated, lasted longer, and covered more of the world. The periods of peace became less peaceful, shorter, and covered less of the world. The Primordials themselves began to pay more and more attention.

Overall, it took about two centuries. The part at the end, though, where the whole world was divided in two and consumed by war, though, was only about five years long.
 
I would view the primordial war as less a war and more an era. There would be dozens of smaller scale wars against individual primordial loyal races and demon armies with peace between them before the Primoridals themselves even start to realize it is a pattern against them.

Remember the exalted aren't just the warrior castes they also have diplomats, priest kings, and sorceror beauracrats . They wouldn't base such a large portion of their forces off of a skillset that works best in long term actions if they didn't intend for the conflict to last long enough for their investments give dividends.

The final push against the Primordials where they revealed that they were playing for keeps and Primordials could truly be harmed by the fighting may have taken place in only a couple years but before that they would have had to uplift humanity into a civilization that can support an army that can fight titans, conquer land to build those civilizations on, eliminate as many of the primoridals minions as possible before the final fight, collect the intelligence needed to put their armies in the right place, recruit allies. The buildup could easily have lasted centuries while they basically played civilization, raised the dragonblood population, tested strategies and bleed their enemies.

While the system certainly isn't intended to fight the primoridals themselves. The early days of the plan when exalts are turning humanity from stone age primitives suviving under the boot of basicaly everything else running around into something of meaningful power on the grand scale could tell plenty of grand stories. Just don't try and start fight with third circle deva or primordials. Instead deal with primordial created races that don't exist in the first age and loads of lesser demons. The biggest difference is instead of your enemies having a human face and knowing you are potentially the top dog you are the underdog reaching for the stars against inhuman foes.
 
Anyway, mirrored one of my Adorjan Charms into the Solar tree, so Solars can be Riddick and kill you with a teacup.

Weapon-in-All-Things Mastery
Cost: 5m, 1 wp; Mins: (Combat Ability) 4, Essence 3; Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious, Merged (Melee, Thrown, Archery)
Duration: One scene
Prerequisites: Call the Blade (Melee) or Call the Blade (Thrown) or Phantom Arrow Technique (Archery)

To see the oak tree in the acorn; to see the man in the boy; to see death in an origami crane. Such is the wisdom of the Lawgivers.

While this Charm is active, the Solar may reflexively ready mundane or improvised weapons with a -0 DV penalty. This includes scavenging improvised weapons from the environment or picking up a dropped weapon within (Essence) yards. In addition, the characters treats all mundane close combat weapons as if they were their closest equivalent single or paired basic 1, 2 or 3-dot oricalcum artifact weapon, as judged by the Storyteller. Improvised weapons benefit from this effect. The killing genius of the Solars allows a broom to impale a man like a dire lance and a stepladder to break bones like a goremaul.

However, enhanced weapons only last for a single action - when an enhanced weapon deals any damage to a target or is successfully parried or used to parry, it breaks the next time the Solar's DV refreshes. In the case of ranged weapons, the weapon as well as the projectile is destroyed when the Solar's DV refreshes if an attack has been made with it. If the Solar has an overdrive pool, she gains an offensive mote whenever a weapon breaks. She may only gain this benefit once per refresh of her DV.

If the Solar has an intimacy towards the weapon, it is not destroyed when her DV refreshes. However, until her DV refreshes a second time the weapon glows red-hot inflicting one unsoakable level of lethal damage that ignores Hardness to anyone who touches it. The character may reflexively drop the weapon to avoid this damage.

This Charm may be repurchased. When the Solar's anima is at the 8-10 mote level or higher, she may even form glowing weapons from the burning light of her soul, which may have the form of any mundane weapon from an applicable ability she has rated at 4+. The Solar's skill is born of ten thousand broken weapons, and weapons she creates cannot use the same artefact template until her DV has refreshed twice.
 
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Hmm. Immediate retrospective thought on this is that there probably needs to be a sibling Charm so a Solar can pick up their father's sword and use it constantly as a daiklaive without having to constantly drop it because it's glowing red hot.

So I probably need to restructure this a bit/a lot, because as it stands it still too obviously holds to its Adorjan-incentivising heritage of "pick up a weapon, kill someone with it, it breaks because you're setting both the weapon and the person you killed with it free".

Possibly... hmm, yeah, one charm is the "I enhance a weapon I own to function at the artefact tier", and then there's the "I work my way through improvised weapons breaking them as I kill people". That's more Solar - Adorjan doesn't care that you're using your beloved father's sword, but Solars do.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Hmm. Immediate retrospective thought on this is that there probably needs to be a sibling Charm so a Solar can pick up their father's sword and use it constantly as a daiklaive without having to constantly drop it because it's glowing red hot.

So I probably need to restructure this a bit/a lot, because as it stands it still too obviously holds to its Adorjan-incentivising heritage of "pick up a weapon, kill someone with it, it breaks because you're setting both the weapon and the person you killed with it free".

Possibly... hmm, yeah, one charm is the "I enhance a weapon I own to function at the artefact tier", and then there's the "I work my way through improvised weapons breaking them as I kill people". That's more Solar - Adorjan doesn't care that you're using your beloved father's sword, but Solars do.
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You should probably be required to have a Principle relevant to the weapon you're enhancing for the first one of those.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Hmm. Immediate retrospective thought on this is that there probably needs to be a sibling Charm so a Solar can pick up their father's sword and use it constantly as a daiklaive without having to constantly drop it because it's glowing red hot. (...)
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horngeek said:
You should probably be required to have a Principle relevant to the weapon you're enhancing for the first one of those.
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I am sure most DM would allow it to be enhanced by Glorious Solar Saber for aesthetics of it. I would. We really don't need charm for everything.

You could also purchase upgrade with xp and role-playing. "My father sword is part of me and and it's get infused with my powers" is as valid source of artifacts, IMHO, as "I stumble unto conveniently stashed weapon type that my character prefers in random Solar tomb". Zenith that made a deal with celestial God of All Swords to bless his ancestral blade in exchange for making said god's cult/martial school/swordsmith academy spread all over Creation is just a thing that Exalts do without need to sink xp into charm.
 
OK! Revised version.

Weapon-in-All-Things Mastery
Cost: 5m, 1 wp; Mins: (Combat Ability) 4, Essence 3; Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious, Merged (Melee, Thrown, Archery)
Duration: One scene
Prerequisites: Call the Blade (Melee) or Call the Blade (Thrown) or Phantom Arrow Technique (Archery)

To see the oak tree in the acorn; to see the man in the boy; to see death in a rice-threshing flail. Such is the wisdom of the Lawgivers.

While this Charm is active, the Solar may reflexively ready mundane or improvised weapons with a -0 DV penalty. This includes scavenging improvised weapons from the environment or picking up a dropped weapon within (Essence) yards. In addition, the characters treats all mundane close combat weapons as if they were their closest equivalent single or paired basic 1, 2 or 3-dot oricalcum artifact weapon, as judged by the Storyteller. Improvised weapons benefit from this effect. The killing genius of the Solars allows a broom to impale a man like a dire lance and a stepladder to break bones like a goremaul.

However, enhanced weapons only last for a single action - when an enhanced weapon deals any damage to a target or is successfully parried or used to parry, it breaks the next time the Solar's DV refreshes. In the case of ranged weapons, the weapon as well as the projectile is destroyed when the Solar's DV refreshes if an attack has been made with it. If the Solar has an overdrive pool, she gains an offensive mote whenever a weapon breaks. She may only gain this benefit once per refresh of her DV.

At Essence 4, this Charm automatically upgrades. When the Solar's anima is at the 8-10 mote level or higher, she may even form glowing blades from the burning light of her soul, which may have the form of any mundane weapon from an applicable ability she has rated at 4+. The Solar's skill is born of ten thousand broken weapons, and weapons she creates cannot use the same artefact template until her DV has refreshed twice.

Stick-As-Sabre Meditation
Cost: 5m, 1 wp; Mins: (Combat Ability) 4, Essence 3; Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-OK, Merged (Melee, Thrown, Archery)
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisites: Call the Blade (Melee) or Call the Blade (Thrown) or Phantom Arrow Technique (Archery)

Better to face a student who wields a blade than a master armed only with a fresh-cut branch.

This Charm enhances a specific mundane or improvised weapon carried by the Solar, and applies the benefits of the enhancements of Weapon-in-All-Things Mastery to it. Weapons enhanced by Stick-As-Sabre Meditation do not break on use and enjoy the durability possessed by artefact weapons for the purpose of Charms such as Heavenly Guardian Defence. While the effects of this Charm apply, the Solar owns the weapon. The Obvious keyword only applies to this Charm when the character has joined battle and the weapon is readied.

If the character has an Intimacy towards the weapon and possesses an overdrive pool, she gains one offensive mote whenever she successfully parries, is parried by, or injures an opponent. She may only gain this benefit once per refresh of her DV.

Weapons that enjoy the benefits of this Charm for extended periods of time and are used for many valiant deeds frequently spontaneously become artefacts in their own right. Such weapons often only display their true nature in sunlight, when wielded by a virtuous individual, or in the hands of one of the Sun's chosen.

This Charm is a valid prerequisite for Glorious Solar Sabre or Glorious Solar Bow.
 
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Admit it, the real reason you came up with this just now is that you've been playing Breath of the Wild.
 
I just wished Solar charms had some kind of theme. No direction to theme - just problem and solution. Cannon and homebrew, their charms are completely lacking flavor.

-I wanna fly? Ok, point your fist, you just do it cause.
-I wanna do something now? O ya, you just do it - I don't know how, it happens.
-I wanna craft without a workshop? Ya I know you need a extremely fine set of pliers from this clockwork, you can just do it - I know your hand is not a fine detail instrument. Maybe you rip out two arm hairs and harden them with essence akin to Weapon-in-all-Things-Mastery.
-I don't want my boat to break? O you just make it perfect and unbreakable, we do a lotta perfects, really easy. Smash that easy button over and over.

We look at Solar essence and magic and what is it? It is not like our Sun, many spectra of light that serve as the source of all energy. Wood, Air, Fire, Wind and Water all draw their essence from the Elemental Poles. The Sun does not draw power from the Wyld like the poles, but in at least one interpretation, draws it from Luna in a purified form. What is this rarified form, what does the Sun do and what does he represent?

The Sun created the Law-Givers and he is the god of Order. The Sun is a source of order and radiates the laws of Creation that holds back the manipulative forces of the Wyld.

Do the writers understand this? No, no they do not. I look at the Solar's charms and they carry no theme of Law through them - just a lot of make it so. The Sun is not a Creator or a builder - he maintains. He maintains the laws the Yozi wrote and he maintains the world that they build through those laws. He operates upon existing scripture and is unable to grow, change or adapt. He can not sweep over the Wyld and create new tracks of Creation (As Wyld Shaping would suggest) nor can grow or mutate things or have anything to do with Luna's purview of Beasts (as Bestial Traits Technique would suggest). Rather it would make far more sense for his themes to prevent Wyld corruption of lands in the first place (Akin to Boundary Marking Meditation) or to return something to a pattern conforming with Creations laws.

Solars are themes of: Stasis, Law and Will. Will is often read as indomitability or perfection - which is an issue. Stasis and Law are very evocative and suitably limited. Will/Perfection/Indomitability are all impossibly broad and has lead to Solars doing everything, making the splat excessively bland.

Innovation, change and frankly madness - these make the greatest inventors and makers of all ages. Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein, these men did not think greater than normal men, they thought other than normal men (perhaps Lunars). The labeling of Solars as the best everything undermines their themes and makes them empty shells without meaning.

Solars would be best seen as judges and wardens of the world - maintaining order and the world as it is. Not reshaping it in some grand vision - they are not beings or forces of change. The Sidereals would be political and societal forecasters that could determine when and what can change. The Lunars would be the innovators, inventors and proverbial idea-men that lead Creation in new directions - submitting such ideas to Sidereals for clearance. The Dragonbloods the work teams to pave such grandiose ideas into the realms of reality.

I just don't see Solars as crafters, men of change, or trailblazers of any kind.
 
Touch of Sepia said:
I just don't see Solars as crafters, men of change, or trailblazers of any kind.
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Then you are wrong; the sun is a source of light, a radiant ball of burning glory which illuminates our day, causes plants to grow and creatures of darkness to retreat. You may believe that Solars are not trailblazers and glorious iconoclasts, but then you have - to be blunt - misunderstood literally everything about Solars. A Solar is Nietzsche's Übermensch; she is Plato's philosopher-king or Achilles or Nikola Tesla or Hou Yi - exceptional men and women who forge the path they want with indomitable will and the glory of a classical hero; someone unafraid to throw away the morals of society to impose their own vision, their own law.

John Austin (sorry @MJ12 Commando) defines a law as a command in his command theory; while this isn't necessarily true in the sense of what a law actually is, it does hold relevance here. Solars command, they create, they perfect - whether they are judge-kings or philosopher-priests or inventors or blademasters, and trying to make them into static lawmakers exclusively is not only so hilariously wrong you might as well have been reading other books, but also unattached to anything Solars have ever been about as well as the fiction which inspired them. You'll need Dragon-Blooded for your reliable wardens of Creation; trying to make them into 'work teams to pave such grandiose ideas into the realms of reality' is not only demeaning to the Dragon-Blooded but also eerily similar to what 2e did to them; so speaking as one of the bigger detractors of 3e here (though not a rather vocal one), I'd gladly take 3e's vision of the Exalted than this one any day, because at least it has something to do with the source material.
 
Solars have tons of themes, @Touch of Sepia - but it's not surprising that people have trouble articulating them, or throwing everyone else under the bus of 'human effort and excellence'.

Now, some of this is rooted in the fundamental thesis of 'Returning Solars' and how that they are by design, the top of the power curve. They are intended to be the simplest, and every other splat, representing what is essentially a different game are contrasted against them. Mistakes were made over the course of the line, most definitely, but the core here itself is not flawed.

Solars are, metatextually, meant to be the human culture heroes like Tesla, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Sulieman, Ghandi, DaVinci and so on. They draw a lot of their inspiration from Hercules and Gilgamesh, whereas Lunars are most directly sourced on Enkidu, Asansi and Loki.

So their actual themes are 'human action', leadership, sunlight, authority, law and so on. This is hwy the vast majority of their leadership magic is top-down and authoritarian, as opposed to bottom up or whatnot.

The point of the Solar Experience is to be able to with a straight face, DO the Paul Bunyan or John Henry stories like felling a forest in a night or beating a steam hammer in a contest- and to do so organically. One of the major issues of late 2e and current 3e is that they're being too specific with these mythic tropes, instead of arming players with the tools to recognize and express them naturally.

Now, you're actually also pointing out a core issue with a lot of Exalted design in general, which makes me ask a very important question- do you care about a game that lets you make meaningful choices, or do you care about a setting/story that properly handles the consequences of your choices?

I ask this, because time and again, people have argued about perfects or a given Charm as being 'boring' and 'I don't want to handwave half the system'. Which is totally fair and reasonable... but each splat is actually intended to handwave different parts of the system/setting and focus on the ones they don't as challenges.

Like, you raised the Sail perfects as being boring. Being shipwrecked is not fun either! Oh, it can be if you have a good table of players, but the default assumption is that everyone is going to be an awful ST or player- not in the sense of 'I am out to hurt fun' but more 'I don't know how to write well'.

So, if you want a proper game, which is to say one with clear rules and logical resolution for things... well Exalted in any edition is not going to provide it, because it's rooted first and foremost on the Storyteller system, and what it cares about is getting players to tell shared stories.
 
... Once upon a time, there was a knight of a holy lake, a master of blades who once, lacking a sword, beat foes senseless with a bough torn from a tree.

... His story is remarkably akin to a Solar's, now that I think about it. His son is closer to the themes but he himself is closer to how the Solars turned out.
 
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So a question for the thread. I have a Oramus Aspected infernal who wishes to undertake and complete a pretty grand design, but I'm unsure how to approach it mechanically.

The basic idea: Garbed in Glory (GiG) wants to create a method by which, when both he and another person are asleep, he can be summoned into their dreams. While in the dream he can manipulate it in order to show them breathtaking sights and indulge in the greatest of pleasures, and charms can be used as normal. However, damage done in the dream does not translate to damage in the waking world, and the dreamer can wake up whenever they wish. GiG's plan is to disseminate the knowledge of how to do this all across creation. Once summoned he will faithfully aid the dreamer in whatever way he can, teaching them skills, collaborating in problems, providing a listening ear, etc. He will present himself as a kind and caring friend, and listening with interest to the goings on of the dreamers life and surroundings. This casual gossip, telling him of drought in one area, delayed caravans in another, the Dragon Blooded who wondered through town yesterday, will be used to develop a broad view of the goings on in creation, acting as a rudimentary spy network. If he knows that their is a drought in one area, he can then infer that grain prices will rise in another, etc. As time passes, he will grant them greater and greater knowledge, gradually guiding them to serve his interests. They will spread knowledge of this ritual to their friends and family. As the town falls more and more under his sway, they will also become more and more skilled in various tasks and their town will flourish. He will then start to add various derangement and mutations as gifts, turning the town into a small but growing regional power which he can use for various ends. Sanity-Shattering Instruction will be good for this. He will also use this network to spread worship of himself, generating a small but decentralized cult.

So how would something like this be modeled? A series of custom charms, a large scale sorcerous working? Both?
 
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