Fair enough. Most of my initial point is that for all that people dismiss TMA, it's important to remember that it's still blatantly magical martial arts Charms.

Now, I'd attribute this to 2e's MA bloat and a severe lack of criteria that distinguish TMA from CMA on any level other than that of power, but that's another topic entirely.
The impression I got was that a Terrestrial Martial Art is a profession or a kind of fighter - First Pulse Style is "I am a grungy street brawler", Golden Janissary is "I am a demon-slaying soldier", White Veil Style is "I am an innocuous, but deadly, assassin", etc. Terrestrial Styles key off of what kind of combatant you are.

Celestial Martial Arts tackle broader subjects, themes and archetypes rather than a short job description - Mantis Style is about lightning-quick strikes and misdirection, Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Style focuses on a theme of being more deadly than you appear and using harmless objects as deadly weapons. It's more about a broad theme, or even a cluster of smaller ideas, than the tightly-connected "this is what I do/am" model of TMAs.

In theory, Sidereal Martial Arts are supposed to take things a step further by representing vast, global-scale things: the Loom of Fate's ability to determine the nature of things, the ideas of awareness and perception, huge categories that include a shitload of related concepts.

Let's take the idea of "fight guy". A Terrestrial Martial Art might model that as "I am a cunning mercenary" or "I am a stalwart bodyguard". A Celestial Martial Art would turn that into something like "the martial power of the Unconquered Sun" or "brutality & swiftness". The Sidereal Martial Art would be something like "warfare" or "conflict".

Make any sense?
 
Sandact6 converted Exalted to D&D3.5/Pathfinder over the Onyx Path forums.

Even if you don't much like the system, I highly recommend checking out his work.
I remember him saying he was going to do this... but... I assumed he was joking. Of course he was, right? He had to be. It was just far too much. It would be an undertaking as immense as the heavens themselves—far more than any one man can bear. The sheer thought of the endless vastness of such a creation makes my very blood run cold.

How ironic then, that it is very cold... in space.
 
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I remember him saying he was going to do this... but... I assumed he was joking. Of course he was, right? He had to be. It was just far too much. It would be an undertaking as immense as the heavens themselves—far more than any one man can bear. The sheer thought of the endless vastness of such a creation makes my very blood run cold.

How ironic then, that it is very cold... in space.
Why am I only finding out about this now?

*pours setting fluff into vast void that grinds up the inspiration and outputs own writing*
 
Violation of Rule 1: No Piracy
Personally, I'd say 'measured in MPH' speed territory. I tried poking around on Youtube for some examples, but there's surprisingly little there from the movie except trailers. Anyway, even though early in the movie she has scenes doing stuff like outpacing ostriches, later on in the movie she's flying next to big cargo jets. In that later case though, I'd honestly be tempted to chalk that up to Miyazaki just writing what made for a good movie and not really giving a shit about literal numbers for how fast that is. In light of that, saying that it tops out at ~150 MPH seems reasonable (a little faster than Stormwind Rider, but it's probably not as maneuverable) to me.

Fucking criminal that there's not more clips of my favorite (and thus, objectively the best) Miyazaki movie on Youtube, though...
You want to watch studio ghibli?

Go to [REDACTED]. They have the movies there.

On that note, has anyone made a homebrew setting that takes inspiration from Laputa: Castle in the sky?
 
Quick question here:

Is there a firm date or even a general period for when Gorol (of Infernal Monster infamey) was discovered and died?
 
Quick question here:

Is there a firm date or even a general period for when Gorol (of Infernal Monster infamey) was discovered and died?
He turned traitor sometime before the end of the Primordial War(The last Third), He became an akuma sometime after the end(about 100 years) and was killed shortly after. (After which time his ghost was dragged to Malfeas due to various oaths(?) he swore and he was tortured/experimented on)

EDIT: For more exact dates.
 
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Quick question here:

Is there a firm date or even a general period for when Gorol (of Infernal Monster infamey) was discovered and died?
Dreams of the First Age: Lands of Creation, page 98 and MoEP: Infernals, pages 50 - 51 (warning: it's chapter 2), which give roughly the same information (though the former is in the context of the Calan's Lament/Wailing Fen shadowland, and the latter in the context of what akuma are).
They put his time as a spy at roughly the last third of the Primordial War, and his akumatization, discovery, and death approximately a century after.
 
On a more serious note, apparently they're not getting paid for some of the work they did before getting fired. Holden's bizarre and terrible way of handling contracts is probably to blame.

Holden's mistakes aside, I find Onyx Path's labour practices pretty scummy. Not to rehash the stuff that got me banned over on the official forums, but I think Rich uses the nature of the RPG industry and its razor-thin margins as an excuse to mistreat the people he hires. It's actually the only thing keeping me from applying to write for Exalted, now that the line's under new management.
 
Fuck it, I'm posting what I've got, can I please have some feedback on how I can improve it?
Welp, finished the chapter. Hope it works halfway decently.
A strangely delicate shudder shook my assailant, squeaking rasps escaping it's frame as the wiry, shriveled claws seized my face and pulled it closer. A depthless abyss stood in stark relief to the merely stained oil-black hide of the corpse, cracked brown teeth jutting out at irregular intervals. A rattling gasp and a cloud of stale stinking air buffeted my face as the totem drew in a breath.

"Cóng shénme bùluò nǐ bīngbáo? Nǐ fúwù de rén?"

Some part of me registered the lips of the freak moving, but the entirety of my conscious mind was focused on the pain that bloomed behind my eyes. Each syllable struck my paralysed skull with the full force of a hammer blow, slamming home with with a resounding boom that echoed through my ears.

"Shuō wàiguó rùqīn zhě."

Another lance of pain, thundering crashes resounding in my skull... And without. From the corner of my eye I could see the treetops against the light of the moon shaking and falling as the rumbles drew closer. The corpse-totem lowered my captive body, turning toward the edge of the clearing as the clawing things scattered. With a final crash of thunder a massive shape rushed into view.

The beast stood perhaps twice my height, it's twisted form illuminated by jagged tusks glowing bright in the dark night. A monstrous boar, hide dappled with pink splotches and bristling with long, thick hairs, each step seemingly shaking the earth and sending aftershocks through my chest. A challenging bellow erupted and the great swine moved. Five footfalls and the tusks slammed into the corpse-totem, parting the arm that held me captive from the freak with a single blow. Several of the chittering masks that festooned the dried flesh snapped away, their every strike upon the earth accompanied by a keening shriek, only to be snatched up by the furtive creatures, dashing into the light cast by the Boar. The forest floor left a trail of numbness down my back, stretching from right shoulder to left hip. Rolling over to keep the monsters in the center of the grove in view, the detached arm - still clutching my chin with an iron grip - flopped about like a dying spider, the dry tendons twisting and straining at the skin, the stump flailing about in search of the rest of it's body.

As my rescuer rounded for another pass, a band of the snarling snapping figures burst from the treeline, charging the boar from behind. Their protracted emergence into the light revealed more of their features - almost humanoid, hunched over and running alternately on two legs and knuckle-dragging on four. Their faces, though contorted into hateful grimaces, still resembled men and women in some basic respect. One, two, three of the twisted monsters sprung onto the pale boar's back, clawing and chewing at whatever flesh they could reach. The colossal swine huffed, pausing but a moment to flog itself, throwing the freaks into the air and impaling them on the arrow-like hairs that bristled from it's flesh.

Before my very eyes, the monster's bodies crumbled into smoke, leaving no trace of their existence. The boar charged again, slamming the totem into a tree, the mighty blow ripping it from it's roots. For a moment, the corpse-beast was illuminated by the glowing tusks. The colossal husk took a single look up at it's foe, broken masks dangling from it's flesh, before turning tail and fleeing into the darkness, slithering through the trees like some abominable serpent.

Even as I stared after the freak, it's smaller compatriots following it into the night, the great swine approached me, the steps that had shattered trees and cracked the earth now seeming almost delicate. It's front legs buckling, beady eyes came level with mine for a long moment, then a huff, before it's head slammed into me, sending me flying. The last thing I saw before I hit the tree was a large bright green frog perched on the boar's snout.

I know it's shitty Chinese, I was just looking for something that vaguely resembled an Asian language. It's just asking 'what tribe do you come from' and 'who do you serve', stuff like that.
 
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Oof, it is shitty. It literally translates to "from what tribe do you hail*?"; "the person you serve?"

And the reply is, "say foreign invader".

* the pinyin for the "hail" that you're using is the "lumps of ice from the sky" one - I think you want bǐngbào, "report". While the literal translation into English is sensible, the structure of it in Mandarin isn't.

It also depends on whether you want the speaker to come off as fluent, but... hey, kudos for effort at least ^^;;
 
Welp, finished the chapter. Hope it works halfway decently.


I know it's shitty Chinese, I was just looking for something that vaguely resembled an Asian language. It's just asking 'what tribe do you come from' and 'who do you serve', stuff like that.
I don't know anything about Mandarin, but I will say there's a definite visualization-friendliness to how you describe the fight scene; my mind naturally pictured what was going on as I read (even if the bit about the boar-thing "impaling them on its bristles" is a bit hazy), and you kept a consistent sense of momentum and progression that walked the line between too much detail and not enough very adroitly. The totem's retreat into the night, by the way, put me in mind of the Demon God Nago at the start of Princess Mononoke (although the presence of a supernatural giant boar definitely contributed there), which is always a good thing in my book.

Now for speculation!

My current guess is that the tribe which was massacred were ancestor cultists, and the "totem" is their equivalent to a patron god; the hun of a revered progenitor which has grown strong by feeding on the prayers of its children*. The "monsters" which attacked the boar are probably hungry ghosts created by the slaughter of the tribe** who are either protecting the totem out of instinctive loyalty (or hate for the boar-thing and its frog friend, potentially) or have been bound to its will via some manner of spell or Charm.

Meanwhile, the boar-thing is a bit of a tougher guess. I really want to say it's spent time in the Bordermarches - the animate spear-bristles, glowing tusks, and pink blotches sound more like Wyld mutations than the more "cohesive"/theme-driven features of unaltered elementals, gods, and their semi-mortal offspring. The real question is whether the frog-god is ordering this thing around or if it had to entreat the boar-thing for aid. If the former, I'm betting it's a godblooded or elementalblooded animal, if not just a Wyld mutant; if the latter, our hero may have just been headbutted into a tree by the God of the local plains or someone similarly prestigious.

Wait, there's a tiny chance this is a TAW Lunar using a combo platter of mutations from various things he's killed - but there's a serious lack of silver light and weird Charms on display from the boar-thing, so either its base stats are crazy beefy, the totem and its gaggle of ghouls all suck, or the boar did some kind of subtle Sorcery or Necromancy or something to nerf its opponents from hiding before busting through the treeline.

@Gamerlord, any chance you could tell me what edition/homebrew stuff you're using here? Are the local elementals organized into courts like in vanilla 2E, Gaian constructs which form from the dragonlines in response to elemental imbalances like Revlid's original hack, or weird wildlife like that other version more recently? How do ghosts and the Underworld work here?

In any case, I do like this and hope it continues; feel free to let me know via PM if you need a sounding board for ideas, or if you just want to talk about your work with somebody.


* And if I don't miss my guess, it's also getting a power boost from the souls of other noteworthy tribesmen, which have been bound into - or taken the form of - the masks attached to its body. An idea like that is definitely very in keeping with how I tend to picture mortal thaumaturges: they can't wave their hands and get the job done like an Exalt or Sorcerer/Necromancer, so they find ways of tweaking and exploiting the existing rules of Creation to the fullest possible advantage. Like, say, having lesser ghosts bound into masks for their patron to wear, so they can act as external mote/Willpower/Virtue channel reservoirs via Touch of Divinity...

** Seriously, their attackers must have despised them beyond all reason to forgo giving them funerary rites; Creation's rules gaze unfavorably on those who deny the dead dignity. There's an outside chance they intend to have their own ghost-breaker come in to harvest the resultant crop of hungry ghosts in a week or two, but that's a risky plan. It would mean they have some significant magical juju on their side, enough to be confident of successfully rounding up several dozen wrathful shades roaming free across an area. After all, Necromancers and Sorcerers are pretty uncommon - your average exorcist is getting by on talismans, thaumaturgic rituals, and a low-grade Artifact or two.

Another possibility is that the attackers were driven off before they could build proper pyres (or were drawn away by news of something going on in their territory, etc) and weren't able to get back here before three days had passed and the victims' po-souls had risen.
 
Oof, it is shitty. It literally translates to "from what tribe do you hail*?"; "the person you serve?"

And the reply is, "say foreign invader".

* the pinyin for the "hail" that you're using is the "lumps of ice from the sky" one - I think you want bǐngbào, "report". While the literal translation into English is sensible, the structure of it in Mandarin isn't.

It also depends on whether you want the speaker to come off as fluent, but... hey, kudos for effort at least ^^;;
The Mandarin was meant to be shitty - Creation has so many dialects, I just wanted something vaguely Asian to work with. That said, will take this into consideration.
I don't know anything about Mandarin, but I will say there's a definite visualization-friendliness to how you describe the fight scene; my mind naturally pictured what was going on as I read (even if the bit about the boar-thing "impaling them on its bristles" is a bit hazy), and you kept a consistent sense of momentum and progression that walked the line between too much detail and not enough very adroitly. The totem's retreat into the night, by the way, put me in mind of the Demon God Nago at the start of Princess Mononoke (although the presence of a supernatural giant boar definitely contributed there), which is always a good thing in my book.
Thanks! The 'bristles' are meant to be as thick as arrows - sort of an unnatural touch to an alien being. The boar tosses the ghosts into the air like a bull tosses a rider, and then they fall onto the massive stiff hairs that stick out.
Now for speculation!

My current guess is that the tribe which was massacred were ancestor cultists, and the "totem" is their equivalent to a patron god; the hun of a revered progenitor which has grown strong by feeding on the prayers of its children*. The "monsters" which attacked the boar are probably hungry ghosts created by the slaughter of the tribe** who are either protecting the totem out of instinctive loyalty (or hate for the boar-thing and its frog friend, potentially) or have been bound to its will via some manner of spell or Charm.
This would all be essentially correct.
Meanwhile, the boar-thing is a bit of a tougher guess. I really want to say it's spent time in the Bordermarches - the animate spear-bristles, glowing tusks, and pink blotches sound more like Wyld mutations than the more "cohesive"/theme-driven features of unaltered elementals, gods, and their semi-mortal offspring. The real question is whether the frog-god is ordering this thing around or if it had to entreat the boar-thing for aid. If the former, I'm betting it's a godblooded or elementalblooded animal, if not just a Wyld mutant; if the latter, our hero may have just been headbutted into a tree by the God of the local plains or someone similarly prestigious.

Wait, there's a tiny chance this is a TAW Lunar using a combo platter of mutations from various things he's killed - but there's a serious lack of silver light and weird Charms on display from the boar-thing, so either its base stats are crazy beefy, the totem and its gaggle of ghouls all suck, or the boar did some kind of subtle Sorcery or Necromancy or something to nerf its opponents from hiding before busting through the treeline.
I didn't even think of the TAW Lunar thing - though now that I consider it, I did mention that his tusks were glowing - maybe silver? Who knows? :p I haven't actually been able to find much info on godblooded animals and elementalblooded anything so if you've got any info to throw this way, please do so. As to the frog-god...
He's a festival-god for the region (with bits of drugs/medicine thrown in for flavour). For example, when Calibration or another celebration comes around he could just arrange for the usually ignored boar-thing to be paraded through camps and villages at the forefront of the party!
@Gamerlord, any chance you could tell me what edition/homebrew stuff you're using here? Are the local elementals organized into courts like in vanilla 2E, Gaian constructs which form from the dragonlines in response to elemental imbalances like Revlid's original hack, or weird wildlife like that other version more recently? How do ghosts and the Underworld work here?
3e, with my own homebrew region in the Northeast, as well as using Mankalvar further to the Northeast, as well as most of the stuff posted in this thread (if demons and the like pop up in the story of course).
In any case, I do like this and hope it continues; feel free to let me know via PM if you need a sounding board for ideas, or if you just want to talk about your work with somebody.
Thanks a ton! I love getting long feedback posts! Makes me feel fancy! :p
* And if I don't miss my guess, it's also getting a power boost from the souls of other noteworthy tribesmen, which have been bound into - or taken the form of - the masks attached to its body. An idea like that is definitely very in keeping with how I tend to picture mortal thaumaturges: they can't wave their hands and get the job done like an Exalt or Sorcerer/Necromancer, so they find ways of tweaking and exploiting the existing rules of Creation to the fullest possible advantage. Like, say, having lesser ghosts bound into masks for their patron to wear, so they can act as external mote/Willpower/Virtue channel reservoirs via Touch of Divinity...

** Seriously, their attackers must have despised them beyond all reason to forgo giving them funerary rites; Creation's rules gaze unfavorably on those who deny the dead dignity. There's an outside chance they intend to have their own ghost-breaker come in to harvest the resultant crop of hungry ghosts in a week or two, but that's a risky plan. It would mean they have some significant magical juju on their side, enough to be confident of successfully rounding up several dozen wrathful shades roaming free across an area. After all, Necromancers and Sorcerers are pretty uncommon - your average exorcist is getting by on talismans, thaumaturgic rituals, and a low-grade Artifact or two.

Another possibility is that the attackers were driven off before they could build proper pyres (or were drawn away by news of something going on in their territory, etc) and weren't able to get back here before three days had passed and the victims' po-souls had risen.
1. Yeah, most of that is true.
2. Well when you're dealing with Raksha Worshippers...
 
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On a more serious note, apparently they're not getting paid for some of the work they did before getting fired. Holden's bizarre and terrible way of handling contracts is probably to blame.

Holden's mistakes aside, I find Onyx Path's labour practices pretty scummy. Not to rehash the stuff that got me banned over on the official forums, but I think Rich uses the nature of the RPG industry and its razor-thin margins as an excuse to mistreat the people he hires. It's actually the only thing keeping me from applying to write for Exalted, now that the line's under new management.
Well that flipping sucks from top to bottom.
 
Well that flipping sucks from top to bottom.
Charitably, @Sanctaphrax is making inferences that we can't be sure about. Since I was party to the Skype conversation I think he's drawing from, I believe the source is these tweets. Personally, I think Holden was making a joke out of OPP unfollowing him on twitter, and that his closing laughter was just a matter of pointing at the extremely low wages that all tabletop RPG writers earn. But Sanct seems to have had an axe to grind about this ever since mid-2016, so he views it through that lens.
 
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