- Location
- my house
General Exalted Thread
Godstones from Banner Saga, except they were created by lunar exalts during the balorian crusade to stabilize the local territory against the encroaching wyld, and the people that lived in the area later enshrined the lunars who died fighting to set them up (this has been lost to history?).
Atoshi
The human equivalent of a potato
Ah, all my Christmases have come at once!
Also, you've already made both an Avatar and an Innsmouth reference. You are most terrible.
Could I please have two things:
1) A 1CD demon that's a little bright spark that basically acts like a demon roofie.
2) An Air manse that both sentient and highly fragile, so tries to drive people away, with a bell motif.
Thank you very much ^_^
The Prayer Strip Chasm
Manse: Air 3, Secrets 1 (Wyld-Tainted)
In the dusty canyons of the badlands of the Fire Mountains, there is a forgotten rift in the land. Strong winds blow through this scar, bringing with them the smell of snow. The walls of this place are slick with ice, and countless hair-thin wires criss-cross the rift - almost looking the thread one might use to stitch together a wound. Clarion bells chime when the wind blows through this place, sounding like voices, and ten thousand prayer strips dangle in the breeze. If but a few threads were cut, the effects on the local geomancy would be catastrophic and so the bells whisper in a woman's voice "Go back, go back, this is not a place for ones such as you" and wise men listen to her warnings.
Earthspliter Yuunes was one of the chaos-princeling generals of Prince Balor, and he sought to slice Creation into small enough chunks that he could devour it piece by piece. His armies swept into the South, tainting the river Anam with the madness beyond the borders of existence, and with his great axe he began to slice the weakened world into fragments as a woodcutter might split an oak. Then the Empress acted, and steel spears fell from the heavens and impaled him and his men like flies. Maimed and blinded, Yuunes lay down in his rift and sought to staunch his many wounds.
But one of the chosen of the Maidens found him and whispered in his ear, telling him many things that were not true, or were nearly true, or were true but he could not understand. In the end he went mad, and took up his earth-cutting axe and cut out his own heart - for he thought that he could throw it back to the realm of Chaos. But the green-eyed lady stole his icy heart and so Yuunes died. Yuunes had maimed Creation and so the cunning star saw how to use him to remedy his actions. From his body she took his tendons and his muscles and she stitched Creation back together. Ten thousand prayer strips sanctified the wound, and the bells that hung here chimed with Yuunes' voice, singing out to terrify chaos-beasts who heard them.
But perhaps the Sidereal was cleverer than she should have been, for the blood from the heart was used to write the prayer strips, and within the paper of the strips lives Yuuneska, daughter of Yuunes and a little bit of chaos infuses the manse. She has the seeming of the Sidereal who did this, for she believes that woman was her mother, and she knows nothing of her father save what she has learned from the prayer strips. Her world is the paper in the chasms and she speaks with the chiming of the countless bells that hang here. Perhaps she is right when she believes the Sidereal to be her mother, for her presence here has made this chasm into a place of hidden secrets and lore that Yuuneska has divined is scrawled across the prayer strips. Sometimes lesser goblins crawl out of the bells or squirm from the prayer strips and so they flee this place, into the surrounding land.
Atoshi
The human equivalent of a potato
*squees* Thank you ES-senpai!
Hmm, we really need a document that gathers together homebrewed demesnes and manses, like the GCD. Both you and...I think it was Shyft? Or Revlid? Either way, you and someone else have homebrewed quite a few good ones, and it would be nice to have them in one place.
ES is still doing requests?
Okay, how about a Manse that is a giant tree inhabited by a species of( presumably also giant) hive-based insects.
Okay, how about a Manse that is a giant tree inhabited by a species of( presumably also giant) hive-based insects.
Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
Free homebrew made by Earthscorpion???
I will now try to make you do something. Here, have a scattershot of ideas.
The Desmene resulting from the tears of a Behemoth/Demon/"insert strange thing here" that loves the sun, but knows that such a love is forbidden.
Vial of Tears of the Bazaar: A tiny flask of utter sorrow. The touch of the corked flask provokes weeping. Consume it, and be fatally consumed by melancholy.
A cat fallen in a Desmene made from the essence of Metagaos/gulped down by a demon/behemot of Metagaos. It surpisingly survived, but now it is a little strange...
The Starveling cat! The Starveling cat! Jumped down the well for a good long chat!
A tirannical artificial false sun, shining on an island close to the seas of the underworld.
From the Logbook of a Zee captain, an excerpt about the Dawn Machine: THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN
A third circle demon/behemoth: betrayed, eaten, and drowned. Still somehow survives in dreams. Is seeking revenge.
A reckoning is not to be postponed indefinitely
I will now try to make you do something. Here, have a scattershot of ideas.
The Desmene resulting from the tears of a Behemoth/Demon/"insert strange thing here" that loves the sun, but knows that such a love is forbidden.
Vial of Tears of the Bazaar: A tiny flask of utter sorrow. The touch of the corked flask provokes weeping. Consume it, and be fatally consumed by melancholy.
A cat fallen in a Desmene made from the essence of Metagaos/gulped down by a demon/behemot of Metagaos. It surpisingly survived, but now it is a little strange...
The Starveling cat! The Starveling cat! Jumped down the well for a good long chat!
A tirannical artificial false sun, shining on an island close to the seas of the underworld.
From the Logbook of a Zee captain, an excerpt about the Dawn Machine: THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN
A third circle demon/behemoth: betrayed, eaten, and drowned. Still somehow survives in dreams. Is seeking revenge.
A reckoning is not to be postponed indefinitely
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
I see that Sunless Sea reference @Giygas
- Location
- Singapore
How would you calculate the rating for an artifact that replicates a charm?
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
"With difficulty." As a question, it has too many variables to really answer. Comparing, say, an Essence 5 Solar Charm with a nation-shaping scope like Tiger Warrior Training Technique, to an Essence 1 Dragonblooded charm with a personal combat focus like Hopping Firecracker Evasion, is a totally different kettle of fish.
- Location
- Singapore
Ah, then this:
•••••• C REATE G ATEWAY
Cost: 10m, 1wp; Mins: Essence 6; Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious
Duration: (Path rating) actions
Exploiting an array of Creation's inconsistencies that are nevertheless true, the Dragon King creates a semi-permanent gateway between two distant points in space. The gateway appears as a shimmering oval disk of solid light between one and six yards in diameter. Anyone (not anything) from either side who touches the portal, willingly or not, is instantly transported to the other side. The portal lasts for (Path rat-ing) actions or until she wills the portal to close.One end of the gateway appears before the Dragon King. Targeting the other end uses exactly the same system as Distance Ignoring Technique above, with necessary rolls being made in secret. As a result, an overzealous Dragon King can very possibly send six of his good friends to their doom. Successful gateways cannot connect different realms of existence, such as Creation and Yu-Shan, but botched
rolls can create gateways to very bad places. Sometimes, the very bad things that live in those places can come through. Caution is advised.
If the Dragon King uses this step to or from a manse or demesne to which she is attuned, or if she activates the Charm at the culmination of a 10-minute preparatory ritual, then the maximum range of the gateway is extended to (Path rating) miles.
I was looking for a more science fiction-y, more fantasy-y exalted.
And so I thought of portals connecting different towns and cities, as a sort of portal network.
To put it short - you cannot.
We know what it takes to build a teleport thing. It's a Level 5 manse power, connecting to another Level 5 manse power, that costs a fuck-huge amount of essence to operate. It was one of the wonders of the High First Age, and is totally fallen into ruin and disrepair in the modern age.
You're not getting a buildable portable artefact that does that. And given the maximum range of this Essence 6 Charm is "(Path Rating) miles" - no. No, you're not even linking towns and cities with that Charm.
- Location
- Singapore
Ah, how unfortunate.
Then I'll try to write a shard for it. Any suggestions?
- Location
- my house
How prevalent are these? If it's a one off plot hook type device left over from the first age or something I would allow it and rate it as artifact N/A. I'm personally thinking something like the portal from treasure planet which allows for the opening of various portals from a central hidden hub to a variety of different locale. Controlled by a Pirates/a City State/etc it allows them tremendous force projection. Taking or destroying this, immobile, artifact could be a fun adventure.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Decide how easy and common you want teleportation-liked effects. Work from there.
- Location
- Singapore
Eh....
Well, kinda like modern world. But even higher. As in, much higher.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Well um, we don't have teleportation in the modern world, so...
- Location
- Singapore
Yeah.
I apologise. It was more like a certain world I once made on SB. Its high tech. Really high tech. Bruises and cuts get healed easily. Stuff like crippling effects are on the level of going to the doctor to get a cast for a broken leg. Painful, inconvenient, but not permanent. A combination of charms and other effects increase the crop production to the point that starvation is a thing of the past.
I was trying to come up with a place incredibly utopian, with the only problem being the people inside it. Like, say, oppression. Racism. War. All material needs are met. But the people suck.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
So decide how common you want portals or teleportation to be, and cost the relevant Artifacts accordingly. If you want it to be mundane, make them not Artifacts at all, like how there are mundane spacecraft in Heaven's Reach. If you want them to be rarer, slap a dot rating on them.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
So one way to handle it is that the Artifact rating goes to things that are actually hard to make, outside the realm of normal products and available technology. Things which you could get your hands on without crazy connections are obtained with Resources, regardless of how powerful they'd be in vanilla Exalted.
Like, using Star Trek as an example: a phaser is something that's normal and widespread within the setting, so you buy that with Resources. Even big stuff like a Federation starship gets priced via Resources, because it's still within the scope of things that are understood quantities/can be reproduced with minimum issues aside from necessary revenue.
Meanwhile, Artifacts are either bleeding-edge hypertech like the Genesis Device or the fruits of a long-lost civilization that nobody really understands anymore, like the device from 'What Are Little Girls Made Of?' that lets you make robot duplicates of people or transfer someone's mind into a mechanical body. You use it to represent things that, at best, only one genius knows how to make, so obtaining one (or the designs for one) is the kind of stuff major power players come to blows over.
Low-power Artifacts are either swiss army gadgets that can each do the work of one or two low-cost Resource purchases, or niche items that nevertheless offer options that exist outside the established technological paradigm. Continuing the Star Trek example, a hypertech Artifact in the form of a container that puts items placed inside it into temporal stasis would be worth one dot, because it does something that conventional tech in the setting can't do despite having a fairly limited spread of possible applications.
Does that help?
- Location
- Singapore
Ah, yes. Thank you.
Give me some time to think this through, please.
Or just write it. I don't mind.
Romv
A Memory of TREES
I wrote some minor homebrew. It's an elemental; though it's probably more accurate to call it elemental vermin. I imagine things like this to be basically everywhere in Creation. Every gust of wind carrying wind serpents, every pond birthing mud toads, etc. All of them very short-lived without intervention, mostly too weak to be much use - or danger - to anyone but the most inexperienced shaman. Elemental vermin would just be a fact of life to people, only noticed by poets too lazy to come up with an actual metaphor.
Road spiders
Spawned by Ancient Causeways
Earth vermin
A common sight on ancient Shogunate roads throughout the Threshold, road spiders more closely resemble small stone crabs than spiders. Their name probably stems from analogy to their larger and more arachnoid cousins, the stone spiders. Where their relatives tend to natural stony outcrops, road spiders are caretakers of human artifice that has - usually through time - grown into the landscape.
Road spiders are about two inches in diameter, with ten rapidly tapping legs carrying them across the cobbles that spawned them. They have no eyes, and can be seen to randomly switch directions mid-run. Their shells share the appearance of the stone beneath them, including the water-smooth look caused by a thousand-thousand marching feet. As they run up and down their homes, they often resemble floating pebbles, which is another, more uncommon, name for them.
To the people of the Threshold road spiders are a sign of good fortune, and it is considered incredibly bad luck to harm them in any way - even by accident. In fact, stories and songs abound of an errant kick causing a roadway to turn on an army or caravan with disastrous results.
In the Realm on the other hand, they are considered a sign of shoddy geomantic design or extreme neglect, and great pride is taken in the fact that none have been seen on the Blessed Isle in centuries.
Road spiders have a very short lifetime, most of them only existing for at most a few hours, with some even remaining only for a few moments. Their lifespan is sometimes stretched by the casual worship of a marching army; they have a minor role in a lot of marching songs. These 'elder' road spiders can then turn into temporary mascots, though even then they never survive for very long after their would-be worshippers reach their destination.
Road spiders
Spawned by Ancient Causeways
Earth vermin
A common sight on ancient Shogunate roads throughout the Threshold, road spiders more closely resemble small stone crabs than spiders. Their name probably stems from analogy to their larger and more arachnoid cousins, the stone spiders. Where their relatives tend to natural stony outcrops, road spiders are caretakers of human artifice that has - usually through time - grown into the landscape.
Road spiders are about two inches in diameter, with ten rapidly tapping legs carrying them across the cobbles that spawned them. They have no eyes, and can be seen to randomly switch directions mid-run. Their shells share the appearance of the stone beneath them, including the water-smooth look caused by a thousand-thousand marching feet. As they run up and down their homes, they often resemble floating pebbles, which is another, more uncommon, name for them.
To the people of the Threshold road spiders are a sign of good fortune, and it is considered incredibly bad luck to harm them in any way - even by accident. In fact, stories and songs abound of an errant kick causing a roadway to turn on an army or caravan with disastrous results.
In the Realm on the other hand, they are considered a sign of shoddy geomantic design or extreme neglect, and great pride is taken in the fact that none have been seen on the Blessed Isle in centuries.
Road spiders have a very short lifetime, most of them only existing for at most a few hours, with some even remaining only for a few moments. Their lifespan is sometimes stretched by the casual worship of a marching army; they have a minor role in a lot of marching songs. These 'elder' road spiders can then turn into temporary mascots, though even then they never survive for very long after their would-be worshippers reach their destination.
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- Location
- Singapore
So... what's the rating for stuff that can be found in modern workshops? For like, say, power saws, power tools in general. Those metal bits they use to drill, lathes, CNC machines, 3D printers, the works? What's the rating for them, in the context of sword and sandals exalted?
Either it's an artiler manse (Wonders of the Lost age) or a Factory Cathedral. Both are exceedingly rare and powerful.