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General Exalted Thread

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ichypa said:
Is there any way to realistically prevent the Unconquered Sun and/or Luna from walking all over a give hostile force without involving the Games of Divinity or the Primordial Geas?

While full of lies in-universe, I've always found the Stormlight Archive's mythology, specifically the part where humanity started in heaven but got driven out by the forces of evil, to be a rather fascinating idea. I want to see if I can sketch out a version of Creation where, instead of being the god's weapons to overthrow their masters, the creation of the Exalted was defensive and/or retaliatory, a response to the threat of an overwhelming hostile force rather than a tool of aggression. Rather than trying to take Yu Shan for themselves, the gods/Exalts are trying to get it back.

The thing I'm stuck on atm is that I can't think of anything that could actually oust the Incarnae from Yu Shan, especially the Sun; I'm probably going to have to uproot a whole bunch of setting assumptions and end up doing to lot more remaking than adjusting, but I figured I ask and see if I've really exhausted all of my options before I do more work than I needed to.
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Just weaken them. You're remaking the world; you can make the Sun weaker than a mortal if you want.

Graveless said:
Even though the power disparity is so large that no mortal can ever hope of matching one of the greater supernatural beings, they still have importance and agency. They handle all of the boring paperwork and infrastructure maintenance that allow their leaders to act.
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Of course, sometimes it's the other way around, and the Exalts handle the boring infrastructure maintenance and paperwork for their mortal leaders.

The hypercompetent tend to rise to the top, but that's only a general rule. We all find ourselves working under idiots from time to time, and we all know capable people who don't desire high positions.

Plus there are some mortals with 5s.

And of course Alchemicals are a thing. They almost universally take orders from mortals they could easily kill.

Graveless said:
I'd love for their to be a system where logistics and the details of societies matter, but as I've gotten older, I've realized that simulations like that are so complicated that a lot of money is spent on them every year, and even then the program doesn't capture everything.

It's too much to expect for a tabletop game, which leaves any such modeling to the individual storyteller. Most will leave extras and what they care about as setting dressing because it's hard to think about and plan around. Depending on the political alignment of a given play group, it may even be impossible to not break someone's suspension of disbelief.
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Simulations are very difficult. Games rules aren't so hard.

If your players are experts, or if they have strong ideological opinions about what should work, that can cause issues. But with most groups maintaining SOD shouldn't be too hard.
 
Unbanshee said:
Don't overthink it. Assuming it all happens in the ancient past, you can just say that everyone who could roflstomp the hordes that drove god and mankind from Heaven was busy dealing with other creation-spanning threats. Or say that they were taken by surprise and by the time the Incarna could mobilize themselves to take on the threat, the collateral damage that they would cause if they engaged personally would destroy Heaven.
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True, true. Thanks for the advice!

Sanctaphrax said:
Just weaken them. You're remaking the world; you can make the Sun weaker than a mortal if you want.
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But that would be too easy :p.

I might have to do that if I can't think of something more along the lines of what Unbanshee suggested.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Any polity which can host a full-time school of sorcery has enough Exalts that it's worth it, or a large enough population that they have enough E3 mortals to be worth teaching them. So, yeah, superpower.

Lesser major powers "merely" have a school of thaumaturgy with a sorcerer on staff who can teach anyone with the potential to do it. If you can still get a few sorcerers a generation... yeah, the Realm and Lookshy might be able to fuck you up because they have more sorcerers and their sorcerers are Exalts so they have More Motes Than You, but you're still the regional big fish.
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I'm sort of seeing that you would end up with a Kingkiller Chronicle-style Arcanum, where most people are there to learn thaum/sympathy, but a select few can learn true magic (Sorcery/naming). Would that work?

ichypa said:
Is there any way to realistically prevent the Unconquered Sun and/or Luna from walking all over a give hostile force without involving the Games of Divinity or the Primordial Geas?

While full of lies in-universe, I've always found the Stormlight Archive's mythology, specifically the part where humanity started in heaven but got driven out by the forces of evil, to be a rather fascinating idea. I want to see if I can sketch out a version of Creation where, instead of being the god's weapons to overthrow their masters, the creation of the Exalted was defensive and/or retaliatory, a response to the threat of an overwhelming hostile force rather than a tool of aggression. Rather than trying to take Yu Shan for themselves, the gods/Exalts are trying to get it back.

The thing I'm stuck on atm is that I can't think of anything that could actually oust the Incarnae from Yu Shan, especially the Sun; I'm probably going to have to uproot a whole bunch of setting assumptions and end up doing to lot more remaking than adjusting, but I figured I ask and see if I've really exhausted all of my options before I do more work than I needed to.
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I'd go with peer-level opponents if you need an easy out. Some plot-level thing summoning a bunch of E10 TCDs into Heaven to wreck shit, for example.

Graveless said:
Let the Contagion remain and have a miracle cure discovered, but it was too late to save most of the population. The same number died as in canon, the barriers to the Wyld still exist and there is now a vast amount of land that lays unclaimed.
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Could we get a threadmark on this please?
 
What would an exalt using craft excellencies look like? Grab a piece of metal and then wring a sword out of it?
 
Accelerator said:
What would an exalt using craft excellencies look like? Grab a piece of metal and then wring a sword out of it?
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Using Craft Excellencies would just look like someone being really amazingly good. Every hammer blow is perfectly placed etc.

"Grab a piece of metal and then wring a sword out of it" is in the realms of Craft charms - specifically the oft-maligned Craftsman Needs No Tools.
 
grommile said:
Using Craft Excellencies would just look like someone being really amazingly good. Every hammer blow is perfectly placed etc.

"Grab a piece of metal and then wring a sword out of it" is in the realms of Craft charms - specifically the oft-maligned Craftsman Needs No Tools.
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Wait. maligned? What's wrong with it?

But how would I put that in text? Because I'm gonna try to write a fanfic where a person can give stuff like excellencies.... and he gave it to his father. Who's out of a job. So his father's currently fixing up the house, and so how do I describe such a thing?
 
Accelerator said:
Wait. maligned? What's wrong with it?
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I'll let ES explain it:
EarthScorpion said:
Because when it comes down to it, "I can build a crude suit of artefact powered armour which is basically articulated plate with some boosts and some bolted on weapons systems, when I have a lot of Shogunate weapons parts and a crude set of Shogunate tools" is totally in Solar-OK territory. CNNT is the problem because it means Solar Tony Stark isn't using a blowtorch and hammering out his plate and carefully measuring out melted rare earths to forge his hearthstone socket and writing his prayer-algorithms on a horribly inadequate laptop.
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Which Exalt type would be best at doing the whole Gorgon Medusa thing of staring at a person and turning them to Stone.

I think Infernals can do it using SWLiHN charms, but which type would be able to get explicitly Medusa charms, instead of just being able to use a Swiss Army Knife Charm to fake it.
 
Walker of the Yellow Path said:
Which Exalt type would be best at doing the whole Gorgon Medusa thing of staring at a person and turning them to Stone.

I think Infernals can do it using SWLiHN charms, but which type would be able to get explicitly Medusa charms, instead of just being able to use a Swiss Army Knife Charm to fake it.
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You could probably use Sidereal f*ckery to mess with a person's Fate to turn them into stone. And if there's an actual Medusa out there, a Lunar can just hunt it down, eat it's heart and take it's shape.
 
I seem to remember an old document containing a shit-ton of homebrew 2e Charms scraped from the old wiki - not necessarily in any coherent order, but including Martial Arts etc. Anyone got a link to that? I'm looking for the rewrite I did of JiveX's Hellfire Ballet Style, specifically, but I'll take a general link.
 
Revlid said:
I seem to remember an old document containing a shit-ton of homebrew 2e Charms scraped from the old wiki - not necessarily in any coherent order, but including Martial Arts etc. Anyone got a link to that? I'm looking for the rewrite I did of JiveX's Hellfire Ballet Style, specifically, but I'll take a general link.
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Actually, yes.

The link to the giant doc is in the thread marks here.

The download is a rar file. A quick search of the CMA doc shows that it does have the Hellfire Ballet Style, but I'm not sure if it's the one you're looking for. The charms only list JiveX as the source and I can only find the one.
 
So... is there ever an explanation given for why the Empress doesn't know that jade currency has to circulate in the Threshold for the Order-Conferring Trade Pattern to help keep the Wyld at bay and thus her deliberate and aggressive attempts to rip it all out of the Threshold and put it in her own hands is literally harming the stability and prosperity of the world, despite the fact that her #1 adviser is Chejop Kejak, a guy who was born basically right after the Primordial War and who should thus know this little tidbit?

Or is this one of those things where we're supposed to expect that these explicitly beyond-human minds with hundreds of years of experience are just that stupid and/or selfish?
 
Leingod said:
So... is there ever an explanation given for why the Empress doesn't know that jade currency has to circulate in the Threshold for the Order-Conferring Trade Pattern to help keep the Wyld at bay and thus her deliberate and aggressive attempts to rip it all out of the Threshold and put it in her own hands is literally harming the stability and prosperity of the world, despite the fact that her #1 adviser is Chejop Kejak, a guy who was born basically right after the Primordial War and who should thus know this little tidbit?

Or is this one of those things where we're supposed to expect that these explicitly beyond-human minds with hundreds of years of experience are just that stupid and/or selfish?
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To be fair, being incredibly intelligent and being selfless aren't actually necessarily correlated at all? They're not negatively correlated, note.

But from everything I've been able to pick up, the Scarlet Empress isn't a nice person? Either the canon version of her, or the 'chain' of Emperors/Empresses that Earthscorpion promotes.
 
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The Laurent said:
To be fair, being incredibly intelligent and being selfless aren't actually necessarily correlated at all? They're not negatively correlated, note.

But from everything I've been able to pick up, the Scarlet Empress isn't a nice person? Either the canon version of her, or the 'chain' of Emperors/Empresses that Earthscorpion promotes.
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Yeah, but there's selfish and then there's "I will literally put the very existence of the world itself in danger so that I can have all the jade forever" kind of selfish. It's especially galling since her rise to power was precipitated by the Balorian Crusade swallowing about half of Creation back into the Wyld. You'd think if anyone would be willing to take the Fae seriously, it' be her.
 
Is the Order-Conferring Trade Pattern actually a real thing that works in the Age of Sorrows and can be verified to work?

That seems like a prudent question over the treatment of it in the books before making assumptions about the intelligence or lack thereof of the Scarlet Empress in this situation.
 
Leingod said:
So... is there ever an explanation given for why the Empress doesn't know that jade currency has to circulate in the Threshold for the Order-Conferring Trade Pattern to help keep the Wyld at bay and thus her deliberate and aggressive attempts to rip it all out of the Threshold and put it in her own hands is literally harming the stability and prosperity of the world, despite the fact that her #1 adviser is Chejop Kejak, a guy who was born basically right after the Primordial War and who should thus know this little tidbit?

Or is this one of those things where we're supposed to expect that these explicitly beyond-human minds with hundreds of years of experience are just that stupid and/or selfish?
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Simple answer; the currency system of Creation was invented before the Order-Conferring Trade Pattern was retconned in. The Order-Conferring Trade Pattern is rather a bloated tumour on the setting that people keep on trying to make into more than a mild curiosity.

Moreover, I note, silver currency is an insistence of the Guild in canon. The Realm wants everyone using their jade currency as the international currency of commerce because it gives them power over them. So, no, even there it's not the Realm's fault.
 
Leingod said:
Yeah, but there's selfish and then there's "I will literally put the very existence of the world itself in danger so that I can have all the jade forever" kind of selfish. It's especially galling since her rise to power was precipitated by the Balorian Crusade swallowing about half of Creation back into the Wyld. You'd think if anyone would be willing to take the Fae seriously, it' be her.
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If you take some of the canon info about the OCTP seriously, you end up with some really dumb things in your game.

Like the guild deliberately using a form of currency that actively makes it easier for Raksha to invade reality, but no one who knows about this cares about the global organization destroying the stability of the world and making the jobs of every Sidreal and more than a few Lunars harder.
 
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