General Exalted Thread
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Autochthonia is only tangentially a part of Exalted as a game. It's practically a setting in its own right.
Plus, while Alchemicals are an exception to the rule, the conceits that make them so cannot be transferred to the other Exalted. They are elements which are specific to Alchemicals and the institutions of the Eight Nations.
Autochthonia is something of a special case, because technically the most powerful are already in charge and have remained there since the very beginning, enforcing their rules down the hierarchy to both keep themselves and their rivals in deadlocked stasis. The difference is, that is the Divine Ministers at the helm, not the Exalted properly, because the Alchemical Exalted operate in a more managerial capacity to keeping the Eight Nations intact, not informing what the shape of Autochthon should be amid every crisis rolling their way.
If the Alchemical Exalted would ever have the time, inclination, or resources available to stop plugging holes in a leaky boat and turn an eye towards the Pole of Crystal, asking demanding questions of "why can't we do better than This?" that would be the point where the Ministers would give eachother meaningful glances and order the entire experiment in Exalted mortal-stewardship shut down and rebooted for safeties sake, no doubt at the edge of an Adamant daiklave.
And for the record, although lacking any kind of external biotech influences, all the YoRHa androids are extremely Moonsilver Caste in aesthetics, overall tone and demeanor.
The Phoenixian
The Glacier Witch
- Location
- My own little world
This is just a layman's supposition, but how far could you go with simple fermentation? In the real world we don't use it as much as we used to and prefer pasteurization because, IIRC, fermenting food produces gasses that can damage the containers we use to ship the food while pasteurized food doesn't. But it seems reasonable to me that another society without access to pasteurization might bite the bullet and put in the work to develop methods to help ship fermented food.
Instead of sealing everything to keep things fresh, you're invoking a ritual of brine and other methods to help ensure that it decays just the right amount, in just the right way, over the course of the journey. In some case you do ferment stuff for months after all. It makes sense that time fermenting could also be time in transit. (And taking from FBH's idea, gods of food decay would still get a lot of love in this system, since they're now right at its beating heart.)
(Incidentally, it would amuse me if this + eternal favorable wind meant that docks and pirates could usually smell Realm food shipping before they could see it.)
Isn't it a lot harder for the Alchemicals to just take over due intentional holes in their power set?
No it isn't.
Alchemicals ruled Kamak for roughly a century after a bunch of young bloods staged a putsch.
They were systematically sabotaged and in some cases assassinated by the Adamant Caste under orders of the Divine Ministers.
Creation was a body with an infected limb and they had three choices;
Leave it be, and let the whole body die.
Attempt to cure the infection, but risk it spreading.
Amputate the limb.
They chose to amputate.
Nuts! for C) its already canon that the Realm and its Immaculate Monks spend hefty amounts of time kicking the absolute crap out of the various Salt Gods all along the coast lines, ensuring that the Gods in question don't try and use their hold on the absolutely vital substance hostage.
Ensuring that the Salt flows (relatively cheaply as well) is one of the principal pillars of the Realms social strength, by following the Realms rules you get steady access to reasonably priced salt.
You'd think it would be! Given how every single Charm they have is engineered, vetted, and finally manufactured by some element of the Tripartite or another, all of whom have a pretty vested interest in holding the Alchemical host in their rightfully-chosen advisory position and at arm's-length from direct seats of power which could be abused by the right kinds of specialized magic demagoguery. But the writers say Nope, they're just short-sighted idiots handing out Solar-social templates, I guess!
Honestly every time that book tries to make the Adamant caste into something besides a distant and foreboding secret hiding out within the Reaches and a possible Sword of Damocles over the Eight Nations it makes my back-teeth itch. Because every time they do it comes across as the most blunt-force "hey this super-crazy thing happened and I guess no one is ever going to question why! Move along, nothing to see here!" way to present things, and only serves to give the setting its own analogue for Teacup Sidereals in the worst possible way.
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
Alright. Actual important question time.
Can Sidereals hide in a teacup? I know tecup Sidereals is a meme, but what charm allows them to hide in a teacup?
Can Sidereals hide in a teacup? I know tecup Sidereals is a meme, but what charm allows them to hide in a teacup?
- Location
- England
That's one of the things I like most about exalted.
In a lot of other stories about hero's the hero is the most qualified person to deal with issues, but they only ever firefight. They do nothing to prevent the same problems re-emerging beyond constant vigilance.
You don't see batman or ironman performing societal studies to see how to reduce crime or improve global quality of life, just help them fight crime and preserve the status quo. And when they do do it in some elseworlds story, its an instant utopia, no real exploration into the process and concessions made to achieve it, just unrestrained heroes being a good thing.
Exalted makes you look at the journey to a utopia and makes you realise why the word means not-place, because you can have a high functioning society with a high quality of life, built on strange principles that will cause war with another utopia that runs on different equally strange principles, and the less savoury decisions that had to be made to
achieve that utopia.
The second thing I like it for is the simple acknowledgement given with each usurpation of why the great people were in charge in the first place.
The primordials built an amazing world for primordials. The exalted were incapable of maintaining a world on that scale, even if it was just because they cycled out every few centuries/millennia making it impossible to build long term consensuses to really get into the bigger projects.
The Solars and the rest of the exalted host built an amazing world for the solars and exalted host. Without the solars the world is worse. maybe safer from the solars, but tech and average quality of life has slid back. The quality of life of a random peasant which isn't being tortured has gotten objectively worse.
Destroying the empire means that all the lovely things the romans do for you have gone with the romans.
I really can't stand endings were empires which relied on vast networks and exchanges are toppled, and everyone somehow recovers to a better quality of life within a lifetime.
- Even if the central government which managed and enforced the deals and exchanges of labour and materials is somehow gone, and everyone has to deal with each other as equals and rivals once more.
- Even if there was only one real expert in a field who actually knew what she was talking, it still easily strides after she is gone
- Even if only one general had ever succeeded in holding of the enemy, the still maintain there borders against there foes with less capable leadership
The fact that everyone involved in both usurpations went into it knowing that they would be worse off afterwards for the rest of time, is what made both usurpations tragic and beautful.
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What makes even worse IMO, that in terms of the archetype feels a bit muddled and unnecessary since the starmetal caste already exists to fill that niche.
It does, and admittedly the Moonsilver caste as well, since they exist to be the covert strike team to the Starmetal special ops.
But really, the presentation of the Adamant caste as a required check of Only-Exalt-stops-Exalt against the eventual dominion of Alchemical social power because the mortal government is too incapable of Not giving their Champions access to unnecessary rulership magics is so much less interesting than what they currently exist as, without anyother supernatural involvement: A standing force of free-agents tasked to pursue the contradictory agendas of the Divine Ministers who each have their own ideas about what changes need to be made in the system and want to stonewall the others at every angle.
All of the Adamants know eachother like professional spies, they know their respective calling cards, know the lay of the land in this shadow-war, know their bosses and what will be asked of them, but the exact details are always changing. Who is working for who, trying to accomplish what aims and where. Is this another alliance of convenience this time, or is it a double-blind test of loyalty to the mission? Will it come only to blows like last time, or has one of the Ministers taken a big risk and authorized lethal force to cement their victory and equally deny an Operative knowledgeable of their plans to their rivals?
They don't Need to interact with the Octet at all, except in the capacity as a boogieman and unexpected ally when actions within the Reaches go awry. Adamants have a whole wing of unwritten storyline potential which is only hampered by making them the only thing holding back Yet Another Exalted Takeover.
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- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Everywhere-and-Nowhere Technique; the third Resplendency of the Destiny of the Mask, and also God Ways, an Essence 4 Sidereal Martial Arts Charms in Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Style.
I aim to please.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
And that's where I kinda don't like it? Eh. Like, I don't think, as far as metanarrative themes, that the world really needs to contemplate "Why great people are in charge in the first place" when the greatness is gained via specific circumstances that make inequality objectively just.
...that's not really a theme that I think people need to learn? Because tons of other fiction says the same thing, that there's a reason the great, magical people were in charge, even if it fucked things up. It's not really new, and yet people pretend it is?
Edit: Also, while I see the problems with superhero comics, you're kinda giving them too short of shrift. Batman does work with that sort of thing through Waynecorp, and more importantly...they're cops. That's the function they serve, and so complaining about them maintaining the status quo seems...like, I get where you're coming from, but the complaint is sometimes overblown.
Like, do we really, in real life, want the people whose job it is to protect us from crime to start taking on more and more authority and power in order to 'fix' the world?
But Exalted short-circuits the reasonable, sane instincts that many (I wish it were all) people have of "No" by saying, "Oh, not only can they fight gooder than anyone else[1], they're also smarter, more beautiful, better singers, better poets, better artists, better craftsmen, etc, etc."
[1] And because of genre conventions, most powers tend to literally just be 'help me fight gooder' in superhero stories, making it reasonable that someone who can tank a nuclear device isn't actually the Ubermensch whose vast intelligence and vision make it only right that people fall down and obey them.
I mean, I could also mention how it seems like it might unbalance the whole system/ability to understand it because we've never seen a government run by super-geniuses with Government Magic and yet we're supposed to make something anyways. That's always difficult to do in fiction, I'll have you know.
Edit 2: Again, this is mostly kinda my subjective way of looking at things. And I note that I get what they're trying to do, I'm just not sure it works for me? People already miss the point when the deck isn't stacked. Exalted just seems to be asking for people to totally wind up missing the theoretical message about greatness.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
Edit: another thing I've been thinking about the Haltan league. I agree that its strange they're the only ones who have Crossbows, but I wonder what they do have, their advantage is obviously supposed to be higher technology than the rest of creation, so what else might they have, beyond airships?
I was wondering, for instance if they might not be producing lots of low cost munition plate, possibly reinforced breastplates, and also quite a few incendury arrows and repeating crossbows.
There's actually quite a few ways to keep things forever.
Like, white rice will last indefinitely. The issue is that you can't actually live on it alone.
I was wondering, for instance if they might not be producing lots of low cost munition plate, possibly reinforced breastplates, and also quite a few incendury arrows and repeating crossbows.
There's actually quite a few ways to keep things forever.
Like, white rice will last indefinitely. The issue is that you can't actually live on it alone.
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- Location
- Singapore
On the note of think gooder, how does one express or show how much smarter and competent an Exalt is compared to a mortal?
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- She/Her
Depends on the exalt.
It's hard to actually quantify because it's mostly about game rules.
- Location
- Singapore
Ah. Well, I was thinking dragonblooded and solar.
It's kinda my problem with exalted. And I see all these numbers, all these extra dices and successes, and wonder:
"How does this actually look like in-universe?"
- Location
- Singapore
Really? I did not know that. How does that work?
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- She/Her
Brown rice only spoils cause it's super oily. White rice doesn't spoil, but it's kind of bad for you.
Dunno about munitions plate, but repeating crossbows are explicitly something only the Mountain Folk and Autochthonians have been able to manage, and incendiary arrows are a thing, but only really in the South, where its economical.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yes but that's immensely stupid, since this decision was only made because the authors didn't get that crossbows have been used since Ancient Greece (gastraphetes) and Ancient China (if this isn't the most Exalted thing in the world, you're objectively wrong
). This is one of those dead horses that the thread has been beating since it's beginning, because it will never not be stupid and never not hilarious to poke fun at. Besides, the lack of crossbows means that you can't have Nexan shopkeepers who pull out affectionately-named crossbows from beneath their desk to point menacingly at a band of would-be thieves, and that simply wouldn't fly.
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Yes but that's immensely stupid, since this decision was only made because the authors didn't get that crossbows have been used since Ancient Greece (gastraphetes) and Ancient China (if this isn't the most Exalted thing in the world, you're objectively wrong
I'm totally fine with crossbows being widely available in most areas. Like, I think Exalted would be more interesting if the south could manage at least Song levels of gunpowder weapons with firedust.
I just do think it's neat that the Haslanti have superior technology in some ways. So I'm trying to figure out what it might be.
