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General Exalted Thread

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Leingod said:
I'd say you have a point there... except Pyrrha was already strapped in the soul-merging machine when he said it. Pyrrha had no way to effectively back out by that point unless Ozpin allowed her to. Him giving her an out at that point serves literally no purpose unless he legitimately means it on some level, unless you think he just wants to convince himself that he's not manipulating her. Which... would actually be an interesting place to take that, come to think of it.
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... or, you know, he believes what he's doing which doesn't change that it's manipulation. Hell, even if you were acting like this for purely selfish utilitarian ends; it costs you nothing to ask - the chances of them backing out after so much prepping and after they've made the choice to strap themselves into the machine itself are minuscule - and you're then covered in the event of something like it blowing a fuse or heroes breaking down the wall to stop you or whatever. Any half-decent kindly-benevolent-grandpa act doesn't abruptly turn off once you're in private and they're committed to the point of not backing out easily, like "okay you're past the point of no return CUE THE MANIACAL CACKLING AND CHAINS!" (cough cough Palpatine cough). No, any competent attempt at "soft, friendly" manipulation is kept up even in private or when there's no obvious immediate gain, because consistency and trustworthiness are important parts of it, and it makes sense for the kindly-grandpa role who's previously been so intent on "it's your choice" to offer that one last chance (in the knowledge that there's basically zero likelihood of it being taken).
 
Aleph said:
... or, you know, he believes what he's doing which doesn't change that it's manipulation. Hell, even if you were acting like this for purely selfish utilitarian ends; it costs you nothing to ask - the chances of them backing out after so much prepping and after they've made the choice to strap themselves into the machine itself are minuscule - and you're then covered in the event of something like it blowing a fuse or heroes breaking down the wall to stop you or whatever. Any half-decent kindly-benevolent-grandpa act doesn't abruptly turn off once you're in private and they're committed to the point of not backing out easily, like "okay you're past the point of no return CUE THE MANIACAL CACKLING AND CHAINS!" (cough cough Palpatine cough). No, any competent attempt at "soft, friendly" manipulation is kept up even in private or when there's no obvious immediate gain, because consistency and trustworthiness are important parts of it, and it makes sense for the kindly-grandpa role who's previously been so intent on "it's your choice" to offer that one last chance (in the knowledge that there's basically zero likelihood of it being taken).
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But is it an act?
 
Aleph said:
Saying "are you sure you want to do this?" and "it's dangerous; there's no shame in backing out" and "I cannot force you to do this; it's your choice to make" and "nobody will think any less of you for refusing" are among the best ways to sink someone into being even more determined to do it than ever, if said in the right way.
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Wait, so you're saying Game Theory Precia wasn't just a kindly old woman who loved both her daughters dearly and wanted to be sure Nanoha was well informed when making her decision?
 
Aleph said:
... or, you know, he believes what he's doing which doesn't change that it's manipulation.
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While I agree that it does fit the definition of manipulation when there are no qualifiers, so does literally every action that effects or is witnessed by another person ever, making the word functionally useless. When most people say "manipulation", they tend to include unspoken qualifiers because even discussing what counts as manipulation fits the unqualified definition.

So you're right, but you're arguing to make it a useless descriptor, which is counterproductive.
 
Leingod said:
So how would Ozpin fit in among the other Sidereals? He'd be an Elder, someone whose words held serious weight among them. But how much weight, and how would he use it, and how would others see him?
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I'm on mobile so I can't grab the full quote, but his line about "having made more mistakes than any other man, woman, or child" screams Bronze Faction Elder who regrets what he did to me.

Maybe he doesn't believe that at first, but eventually he broke from the party line and went independent, focused on teaching the Dragon-Blooded / Hunters how to care for themselves. In the modern day of Creation he would have a very hard choice regarding the return of the Solars.

Leingod said:
Incidentally, Pyrrha as a Solar is incredibly easy to envision. Like, Ignis Divine, someone must have written this at some point, right?
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If it involves a JNPR main character, it's almost always Jaune. Though I did think about Pyrrha becoming both a Dawn and a Battles in top of the tower for a while.

The Laurent said:
But is it an act?
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Does it matter?

I don't mean to be flippant, but there's more to Manipulation than raw deception. He could honestly have been worried about Pyrrha's thoughts and also wanted to reassure her that this was her choice to make her feel better without any of it being an act. The action would still be Manipulation in my eyes because of the circumstances, means employed, and ends reached(a potential change to her internal state and thoughts).
 
To get off the manipulation derail, let's just take a bunch of the things Salina and friends could possibly have done and mash them up to better fit the idea that this was a massive, multilayered project rather than one tweak (First Circle at E3 rather than E4).

First off, they made it possible for mortals to (effectively) enlighten themselves with no aid from more powerful beings. They also made it much easier for a mortal to gain Enlightenment. Alice, born back under the Dragon Kings' rule needed an enlightened tutor, a lot of resources, and 30 years to reach E1. She died at 120, after taking a lot of anagathics and other medicine, at E3.

Bob, in Salina's home province under the Solar Deliberative after the Salinian Working was largely complete, tested just how fast a mortal could reach E4 and become a Sorcerer without outside aid under the Working. He trained from when he was 5 years old, reaching E1 at 10, E2 at 20, and E3 at 35. Then he went out to the wilds and meditated for a year, eating only what he could find and cook himself. At the end of that year, he ascended as a Sorcerer, an E4 behemoth specialized to cast sorcery.

With tutoring, Charles reached E3 by 20 and ascended just in time for his 21st birthday party, celebrating his success by casting his first spell.

Now, in the Age of Sorrows, very few people had the Solar inspired drive that Bob and Charles did. Many Sorcerers don't start training for Enlightenment until they are 20. Often, their training is interrupted. It's rare for a mortal to ascend before she's 35, much less at 21. That said, they don't need anywhere near as many resources as they did back in the Primordial Era.
 
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Aleph said:
... or, you know, he believes what he's doing which doesn't change that it's manipulation. Hell, even if you were acting like this for purely selfish utilitarian ends; it costs you nothing to ask - the chances of them backing out after so much prepping and after they've made the choice to strap themselves into the machine itself are minuscule - and you're then covered in the event of something like it blowing a fuse or heroes breaking down the wall to stop you or whatever. Any half-decent kindly-benevolent-grandpa act doesn't abruptly turn off once you're in private and they're committed to the point of not backing out easily, like "okay you're past the point of no return CUE THE MANIACAL CACKLING AND CHAINS!" (cough cough Palpatine cough). No, any competent attempt at "soft, friendly" manipulation is kept up even in private or when there's no obvious immediate gain, because consistency and trustworthiness are important parts of it, and it makes sense for the kindly-grandpa role who's previously been so intent on "it's your choice" to offer that one last chance (in the knowledge that there's basically zero likelihood of it being taken).
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The thing is, by this token you may as well say that a beautiful dawn is the USC manipulating you, or that your parents punishing you until yopu eat your vegetables are manipulating you. That is, if you stretch it too much "manipulate" stops meaning anything.

Like, let's look at the oxford dictionary definition:

Control or influence (a person or situation) cleverly or unscrupulously.

'the masses were deceived and manipulated by a tiny group'
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This doesn't cover your grandpa telling you a fun story, even if that makes you appreciate him more.
 
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Well, i don't think that Ozpin-as-Sidreal would necessary disagree with Bronze Faction or wouldn't be trusted with Heptagram and education of young Sid sorcerers. In RBWY he was hiding the secret war with Salem from all his students and wider world. His name is allusion to "grand wizard of Oz" for Sol Invictus sake. He is as Bronze Faction as you get, if you don't subscribe to "Bronze Faction is evil and obviously wrong" side of argument.

GeneralChaos said:
To get off the manipulation derail, let's just take a bunch of the things Salina and friends could possibly have done and mash them up to better fit the idea that this was a massive, multilayered project rather than one tweak (...)

(...)an E4 behemoth specialized to cast sorcery.(...)
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Ok, wait. I missed something.. what behemoth specialized in sorcery?
 
I can't exactly speak for @Imrix, but, mm...

There's a quote from the Nasuverse fandom (yes yes) that I think is relevant here. "Magecraft is 'how did you do that', Magic is 'what did you do.'" The context isn't relevant at the moment, but there's a distinction there that's stuck with me, even so.

"Magecraft" is sort of like science fiction. It's comprehensible, it works on principles we at least think we understand for the most part, it just works on a scale - in size, in energy, in efficiency, in precision - that's far beyond the current day. It's impressive, but it's "merely big".

"Magic" is something else entirely. Magic is conceptual effects (well, not in the Nasuverse, but this is the Exalted thread and I'm using it as a metaphor.) Magic may or may not achieve things you could achieve through technology - but the way it does it makes you step back and take a minute, gives you a moment or two of incomprehension. "Kill 'the state of a burst appendix'", "change your Name and thus disguise your identity no matter how paper-thin your disguise" - or, yes, "make it physically impossible for someone to not find a tutor for Sorcery." Magic is something new.

Part of what makes Exalted cool, for me, part of what makes it interesting as a setting, is the way that it treads on Magic. Because I'm a physicist, that's my day job, and so I know just how much is within the limits of "what's hypothetically possible." I work on cosmological scales all the time. It's impressive, if a human - or Exalt - learns to work on those scales, but it's ultimately "merely big." It doesn't leave me in awe, it doesn't leave me breathless, it doesn't make it seem like an Age of Wonders, just because the things they make are bigger than the things we have. I want new concepts, I want new ideas - or things that just can't be done through technology.

Most settings don't do that. Even the most powerful wizard tends to just make very pretty lights in very large spaces. Exalted has perfect defenses and Dodge Charms that work on lawsuits; that's a very large part of what drew me in in the first place.

So of the ideas listed, the closest that I could consider as "deserving to be in the Age of Dreams" is the country with zero robbers. Most of the rest are "merely big." And most of the, mm, the broad scale conceptual effects, the sort of abstract Magic working... they're going to have serious mechanical implications. Maybe you can draw the line before you touch Enlightenment minima - but it shouldn't be too much before that, because the Exalted have already demonstrated the ability to interface with and manipulate the abstract, and a whole lot of that is going to end up looking like "painting the fourth wall" in practice.
 
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changeling said:
Ok, wait. I missed something.. what behemoth specialized in sorcery?
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Sydonai said:
Bob, who apparently decided that becoming a Behemoth was preferable to becoming a God.
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ichypa said:
His decision isn't without merit though. Being a god means paperwork.
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It's more that behemoth is a a general term describing weird, powerful things. Most of them, granted, are Genesis/Fae creations designed to be biological tanks rather than people, but ES has kinda broadened the definition to include weird things like the kids of Celestial Exalted in addition to big beatsticks.

There may well be a better term for the thing that a mortal turns into when she learns sorcery, but it damn well isn't a god. An ascended sorcerer should not be immortal any more than a Dragonblooded should be. She should be influenced by how she learned sorcery, she should be more enlightened than humanly possible, she should be weird, but she probably isn't a spirit any more than the Lintha are spirits. She is E4, and may have the potential to get even stronger than that. If Salina had continued her work, she may well be able to get up to E7 and learn Celestial Circle Sorcery as well, but Salina died so she can't.

If you remake the First Age, get the cooperation of a bunch of Enlightenment N/A beings, and spend a few centuries working on it, you damn well ought to be able to make it so that any mortal with sufficient training can eventually become an Adamant Circle Sorcerer. Granted, you would need those E N/A beings, and most of the existing ones are rather hostile to humanity. And they're more powerful than you.
 
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ichypa said:
I was more thinking of maybe making them one of the implied gods who died along with their Exalted during the Primordial War, close to the level of if not one of the Incarnae. They're Thor, they're Zeus, they're Susanoo, they're Ba'al; even if they aren't the king of the gods, they're still powerful and important.

I was toying with the admittedly weak idea of them being some sort of anti-behemoth specialist, but you gave me a better idea: they could have been the Primordial's hatchet man. Whenever the Titans decided they didn't like one of their creations, and wanted them annihilated/driven beneath the earth, they'd send in the storm god, who brings destructive floods and windstorms. And they hate it. They hate their task so much they join the conspiracy to overthrow the masters of the gods, and fight to the end even though it ultimately costs them their life.

Could be the backstory of a kickass 5-dot or N/A starmetal Grand Goremaul, too.
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Sounds cool to me.

I don't think there's any need to make a shard here.

Accelerator said:
.....come to think of it, i wonder if instead of sorcery, Salina carried out a working that enabled mortals to learn the 1st 3 excellencies
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Yo.
 
One question: how does Sorcerer-behemoths go about increasing their enlightenment score?

Elementals grow just by living long enough and eating enough essence, gods get upgrades through increased size of purview and worship, Kerisgame demons got the sublimati thing going on, ghosts with their cannibalising other ghosts/rivers of death/neverborn plundering, and exalts gets by on meditation.

Are sorcerers-behemoths enlightenment-capped, or can they become more enlightened by meditation? Or something less subtle like designing unique sorcerous rituals to self-craft themselves into greater beings?
 
I would probably mix enlightenment capped with strange sorcery rituals to turn themselves into greater beings. This fits into the narrative of stopping the mad sorcerer before he finishes the ritual and becomes a demon (hello Mayor Wilkins), but well you don't get to work around hard-lined enlightenment caps without some freaky shit going on. Not every demon work hard to become swol and punch out Liger etc.
 
Bel said:
I would probably mix enlightenment capped with strange sorcery rituals to turn themselves into greater beings. This fits into the narrative of stopping the mad sorcerer before he finishes the ritual and becomes a demon (hello Mayor Wilkins), but well you don't get to work around hard-lined enlightenment caps without some freaky shit going on. Not every demon work hard to become swol and punch out Liger etc.
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Makes me wonder if this method also works on exalts. If lets say... a dragonblooded wants to access Celestial sorcery but was barred by that pesky enlightenment cap, I can totally see some of them using heretical rituals to transform themselves into an elemental-behemoth-dragon thing that can cast CCS spells, at the cost of being no longer an exalt (no more exalt-level mote reactor :p) and possibly getting a wyld hunt sic'ed on their ass for the heresy of becoming anathema/removing themselves from the cycle of reincarnation (probably).
 
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Alasnuyo said:
Are sorcerers-behemoths enlightenment-capped, or can they become more enlightened by meditation? Or something less subtle like designing unique sorcerous rituals to self-craft themselves into greater beings?
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Depends on how far Salina got into raping reality.

At a baseline, they cannot become powerful enough to use CCS without outside intervention (although they likely could go to Malfeas, find a powerful 2CD or random 3CD and get turned into an akuma capable of CCS), if only because that would kinda break bits of the setting.

I personally would give them the ability to meditate up to E6, with higher Enlightenment being really fucking difficult to achieve (as in, ACS is not powerful enough to let everyone learn CCS so she needs a few Primordial helpers).
 
So has anything for 3e been released yet other than the corebook and the thing of extra Solar Charms? And are there any release dates for other stuff?
 
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