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General Exalted Thread

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Here's the first demon I've statted up, with the original description coming from Earthscorpion. I did it before I thought to ask for permission, sorry.

Karapeshka, the Choir Adoring

Demon of the Second Circle
Reflective Soul of the Blood-Red Moon

An androgynous woman with short brown feathers for hair and overly large red-tinted spectacles, Karapeshka is the ugly cygnet to Ululaya's radiance. This is as the Blood-Red Moon would wish and helps make the Choir Adoring her favourite handmaiden. When she opens her mouth, however, every word is gracious and her songs are so gentle and soft that one voice is not enough to hold her lavish praise. To that end, therefore, she speaks with ten thousand voices in unison, so that every flattery may be heard its deserved number of times.

It is therefore no surprise that Karapeshka's words go to the head of anyone who listen to her.

Her voice softly lulls the sense of reason and inflates the ego beyond reason. When she devotes her full attention to praise, the hubris of her target becomes too great for their mind to contain, and it overflows, forming a slick icy sheen on their skin. It is at those times that the Choir Adoring engages in her profession, for she is an armourer and sculptor by trade. From the calcified ego, she carves glorious suits of armour for the one she praises. This plate is gorgeous beyond compare, and waxes and wanes in strength proportionately to the self-confidence of the wearer. On someone who doubts and fears it is like tissue paper, but when worn by one with no room for uncertainty it is harder than diamond.

Ululaya adores her handmaiden and has made her a duchess, but keeps her at court as much as she can. Sometimes she will send her to her allies and rivals, to praise them and weaken their sense of reason - but Ululaya always commands her to make her praise insincere and her words false, for fear of losing her handmaiden. In truth, it has already happened, though not in the way that the Blood-Red Moon dreads. One hundred years ago, on a visit to Ligier's court Karapeshka fell for Gervasin and the sanctity of his love for a dead man. From the red moon on high she watches for the Grieving Lord, and writes sonnets for him that she dares not sign with her name.

Wise demonologists call upon Karapeshka to flatter their foes and inflate their egos, and lets the demon craft armour from their enemies egoes so that they might shatter the plate and so with it their enemy's confidence. Foolish demonologists instead take the Choir Adoring's praise for themselves and wear their hubris as their shield. The touch of a truly humble person burns the Choir Adoring, and inflicts one level of lethal damage and one Limit for each turn it is maintained. Karapeshka can wriggle from the jail of the Yozis upon the coronation of a hated monarch who doubts their position, to sing her songs and praise them in the eyes of others.

Essence: 6; Willpower: 7; Join Battle: 7 dice Personal Motes: 110
Health Levels: -0/-1x2/-2x3/-4x2/Incap.
Sample Intimacies
• Defining Principle: Spread beautiful flattery
• Major Tie: Ululaya (Filial Love)
• Major Tie: Gervasin (Love)
Minor Principle: I love to carve, sculpt, and create armor
• Minor Tie: The touch of the humble (Fear)

Actions: Demonic Lore: 4 dice; Read Intentions: 6 dice; Senses: 6 dice; Social Influence: 12 dice (Flattery 13 Dice); Craft Armor: 14 dice; Linguistics: 8 dice
Appearance 1, Resolve 4, Guile 4

Merits:
Cult 2: Karapeshka has been given a large stable of prayer-slaves by her greater self, as a part of her duchy.

Social Charms:
Chorus of Pride (10m, Simple, Scenelong, Essence 3, Eclipse): Karapeshka speaks with one thousand voices, such that all can hear her flattery. Upon activating this charm, consider her appearance to be equal to her Essence for the purposes of Social Influence. In a situation in which her Appearance would normally be rolled, this charm does not come into effect.

Lull of Reason (5m, Supplemental, Instant, Essence 2): When Karapeshka speaks, the subject of her flattery forgets all thoughts but their own ego. Lull of Reason reduces the Resolve bonus from opposing intimacies by 2.

Invincible Ego Juggernaut (7m, Supplemental, Instant, Essence 3): The flattery of Karapeshka is capable of filling even the humblest monk with their own glory. When making an instill roll to for a Principle of hubris or pride, double eights. The cost of preventing an intimacy from forming in this way is increased to two willpower. If the target already has a Principle of hubris or pride, Karapeshka can raise it by one step without referring to another intimacy once.

Miscellaneous Charms
Hurry Home (10m, 1wp; Simple; Instant; Essence 1): Karapeshka fades away and vanishes on her next turn, drawn instantly to her summoner's side. This Charm is unavailable when she is unbound.

Materialize (55m, 1wp; Simple; Instant; Essence 1): Karapeshka appears in a chorus of voices.

Measure the Wind (5m; Simple; Instant; Essence 1): Karapeshka may discern the nature of anyone who has an intimacy related to hubris or their ego.

Slick Hubris (3m, Simple, Instant, Essence 3): Karapeshka gathers materials from those who listen to her. If a character has had a Principle of Pride raised or created by Karapeshka, she may activate this charm. This charm causes a slick icey sheen to form on their skin. After harvesting, a process that takes one hour for each level of intimacy, and is harmless, Karapeshka gains an amount of a unique magical material. A Minor Intimacy grants enough for light armor, Major for Medium, and Defining for Heavy. Artifact armor made from this material has the following property when attuned by the person with the original intimacy, in addition to whatever normal attunement bonus it has: If the wearer has a Principle of pride or hubris at Major, increase Soak and Hardness by 1. If the wearer has a Principle of pride or hubris at Defining, increase Soak and Hardness by 2. If the wearer has no such Principle, reduce the Soak and Hardness by 2. Again, these effects only take place for the person whom the material was harvested from. When whatever was produced from this material is shattered, the donor loses the relevant Intimacy and 3/4/5 points of willpower (from a minor/major/defining intimacy), which cannot be regained for one week. This charm can only be used on an individual once per year.

Blood-Ice Carver (20m, Supplemental, Instant, Essence 3): Karapeshka is a carver and sculptor by trade. Double eights for a single project, so long as it is carving or sculpting. If she is working with the material made from Slick Hubris, double sevens instead. When working with the material made from Slick Hubris, Karapeshka is considered to have a master's workshop, 'a bit,' 'some' and 'plenty' magical material from a minor, major, and defining intimacy, respectively, an ability related to the artifact at 5, and a Charm related to the artifact. Additionally, the roll interval is decreased by two steps and the difficulty is reduced by 2.

Humility Burns (0m, Permanent, Essence 1): The touch of the humble burns. Upon being touched by a character with a principle of humility, or who the ST decides should have one, Karapeshka takes one Aggravated damage. This
can occur only once per round per humble person.
 
runeblue360 said:
I guess I could do it? If people were willing to tag me in any homebrew posts of theirs and ideally provide an elegantly crafted link along with it for me to copy and paste.

Give me a second to look through the threadmarks and I'll tag the various posters.

@Stormwhite, @rogthnor, @Parabola, @horngeek, @greensun, @Graveless, @Catty Nebulart, @SerGregness, @Aleph, @GardenerBriareus, @Anyone else with homebrew but not a collection that I have missed out

Would you guys mind if I put your stuff in an archive of this thread's homebrew?
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Go for it. My stuff is scattered, but I've got some URLs here.

My Homebrew - Onyx Path Forums
[Homebrew] New First Circle Demon - Onyx Path Forums
Solar Charms (Sanctaphrax Version)

I think the rest is already threadmarked here.

This next one isn't my work, but I did edit it. And I borrowed massively from it for my own take on the Charmset.

BlueWinds' house rules & Simplified Solar Charms - Onyx Path Forums

EDIT: Wow, I did not expect the forum to automagically generate link text. Impressive.
 
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Are Mara's combat stats listed anywhere? Like in errata, or in a later printing of the book? The one I have doesn't have them.

Edit: Ex3
 
notanautomaton said:
Are Mara's combat stats listed anywhere? Like in errata, or in a later printing of the book? The one I have doesn't have them.

Edit: Ex3
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They were in the original leak. Considering that it's just a small paragraph, I really wonder why they left it out. I almost think it was just an oversight because she still has a Join Battle dicepool and so on.

I hope it's not against the rules, since it's such a tiny quote, so here's everything that's not in the core about her:
Combat
Attack (Unarmed): 12 dice (Damage 11)
Combat Movement: 6 dice
Evasion 4, Parry 5
Soak/Hardness: 7/0
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Just playing around with some thoughts to making WST more Lore-y. The idea here is that it's all about the Solar in question being the one who writes the history books, and the awfully imperialist notion that geography doesn't exist until someone has planted a flag in it.

(In this, the Raksha serve the purpose of the native inhabitants who were living here all along, but who don't matter in the face of a Solar wearing a pith helmet who raises a big flag on the location and names it after his pet dog.)

Flag-Raising Hagiography
Cost: 1wp; Mins: Lore 5, Essence 3; Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious, Shaping
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Chaos-Repelling Pattern

Forging out into the unknown, the Solar Exalted raised their banners over foreign lands and brought history and geography to meaningless chaos.

This Charm may be activated when the character takes ownership of a waypoint. She rolls her [Charisma + Lore] at difficulty 4, or difficulty 2 if the land was previously part of Creation. Appropriate stunts related to the act of discovery or claiming land (such as dramatically raising of her flag, looking over the expanses of her new domain and admiring its features, or providing a musical number about the gold she plans to mine here) provide bonus successes instead of dice. On a success, over the course of the next day the enlightened understanding of the Solar renders the waypoint part of Creation, cleansing the landscape of anything that could not survive outside of the Wyld. Successes over the threshold may be spent on features of the land, shaping it as if by Wyld-Shaping Technique, as she discovers mineral resources or verdant fields in her new domain. If the Solar is slain before the day concludes, the transformation reverts.

This Charm can be repurchased, to allow it to be used when she takes ownership of a shadowland. This closes the shadowland over the course of a day and renders the area part of Creation, but does not allow her to reshape as she may the Wyld.
 
On the subject of Halta, why not make them an offshoot of a culture that used to exist in the Far East, where the ground ceases to exist as you approach the Pole of Wood? When a major raksha incursion destroyed them, they fled west, searching for a place where the local forests could support their agricultural and technological package.
 
So, @EarthScorpion came up with the idea of using @Revlid's mutation rules to stat up thaumaturgic rituals, talismans, mystic investitures, and other forms of sub-Sorcerous magic, which was brilliant. Then, he used the same system to model various kinds of Ghoul, and came up with one type that had all the really screwed-up, inhuman features hidden away in an Alternate Form to make a sort of werewolf/wendigo mashup. In between those two events, somebody prompted me to look through the original Fist of the North Star anime for martial arts that would translate well into Exalted.

Those three events helped give me the idea of making not-quite-TMAs modeled with that mutation system so that you could have martial arts master-y things like "I throw around DBZ energy blasts" or "the power of Ancient Kung Fu Wisdom lets me read my enemy's emotions" or "my sifu beat me to shit every single day for three years so I'd either learn to ignore the pain of my injuries or leave and stop wasting his time" or "my spiritual awareness that worldly pleasures are a lie allows me to subsist on dirt and ashes without difficulty" without needing to cook up a Charm for it. Since I happen to like FotNS, my first idea on a Technique to put together was to try and translate one of the martial arts style from that into that framework, and now here we are.

This has been sitting on my computer for... two months, now? A lot of my last pass before posting today was just firming up some of the prose and removing placeholders from when I first wrote it. Still, I now present my first attempt at using ES' idea for mutation-based things that aren't in-universe mutations!

Please enjoy and let me know if the mechanical balance is okay. Seriously, I'm not that good at crunch.



ARHAT DEVA FIST

Positive
Alternate Form (2) – Like all Martial Arts Techniques, Arhat Deva Fist is somewhere between a stance, a state of mind, and a thaumaturgic invocation; its power (and madness) must be intentionally brought forth, and may then be sent away. Activating (and deactivating) Arhat Deva Fist is a miscellaneous action costing either 4 motes or 1 Willpower (user's choice). After manifesting or demanifesting the Technique, however, the user may not do so again until their DV has refreshed twice.

Cosmetic (0) – The use of Arhat Deva Fist sends twisting breezes of chaotic Essence rushing around the practitioner's body, visibly rippling and disturbing clothes and disordering their hair into a wild, shifting tangle.

Disturbing Appearance (3) – Under the influence of their infamous art, practitioners of Arhat Deva Fist seem (and to some degree, are) more than mortal; they radiate destructive power and killing intent, and their foes often choose to flee or fight at range rather than face such a fearsome aura up close. Anyone attacking someone who has invoked Arhat Deva Fist in close combat suffers a -1 external penalty on attack rolls against them. This is a fear-based Emotion effect, automatically resisted by characters with a Dodge MDV of 8+, and others can ignore the effect for a scene by paying 2 Willpower. Users reduce their effective Appearance to 0 for purposes of determining MDVs (with the usual effect on intimidation) when engaged in social combat – itself a somewhat uncommon occurrence, to be honest, given the mindset Arhat Deva Fist induces.

Extended Reach (6) – Aside from the mercilessness it instills in its practitioners, Arhat Deva Fist's most well-known feature is the bone-crushing gales that sweep out in the wake of users' fists, allowing them to kill enemies well outside their physical reach. The user increases the effective range of natural attacks by a number of yards equal to thrice their height.

Lethal Attack (fists)(2) – Users of Arhat Deva Fist can deal lethal damage with their fists; if the practitioner could already deal lethal damage with their fists, increase their Damage rating by 2 instead.

Natural Weapon (fists)(2) – Secondhand as it may be, the power of Arhat Deva Fist is still divine in origin, and the mortal body strains to express its assumed power; while in its thrall, practitioners' bodies swell and distort with inhuman, bulging musculature, until their physique resembles heroic statuary or an exaggerated portrait more than anything purely natural. The Damage rating of attacks with their fists is increased by 2.

Negative
Cursed Will of the Deva (-6) – While invoking Arhat Deva Fist, the user cannot do anything other than attack his enemies to the best of his ability, regardless of collateral damage or other concerns; the Deva's eyes see only the objects of its hatred and disgust, disregarding all concerns that do not involve erasing such filth from Creation. paying 5 Willpower suppresses this compulsion for one scene, reducing it to an Emotion effect of pitiless fury instead.

Lacking Compassion (-1) – The heart of the Deva is cold and pitiless, and those who invoke it become similarly deaf to pleadings of conscience or empathy. While invoking Arhat Deva Fist, the user's Compassion cannot be channeled, and is treated as having a rating of one for all purposes.

Mute (-2) – Arhat Deva Fist has no need for words – the mere fact of its invocation proves that the time for rhetoric has passed. The only vocalization practitioners are capable of is a bestial roar, laden with deific wrath and hatred toward their enemies.

Overwhelming Valor (-1) – While invoking Arhat Deva Fist, the user automatically succeeds all Valor rolls, and must pay 2 Willpower to suppress it for a scene.

Slow Walking (-1) – The inhuman wrath & power of Arhat Deva Fist weighs heavily, and even the brawniest user shows it in the slight slowing of their pace. Practitioners' effective Dexterity suffers a -1 external penalty for purposes of calculating Move & Dash distances.


Initial Cost: 15 points
Discount: -9 points
Total Value: 6 points
 
I just had a thought. My understanding is that the underworld roughly mirrors creation, but what does that mean in the border marches? As creation begins to give way to the Wyld, does the underworld as well? Does the underworld simply not extend so far? Obviously you can't enter the underworld from the wyld, but how far into creation do you have to be until you can?
 
flacyosh said:
I just had a thought. My understanding is that the underworld roughly mirrors creation, but what does that mean in the border marches? As creation begins to give way to the Wyld, does the underworld as well? Does the underworld simply not extend so far? Obviously you can't enter the underworld from the wyld, but how far into creation do you have to be until you can?
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*waggles hand* There are shadowlands in the Wyld, and where there are shadowlands, there are ways into the Underworld. As for the rest of the non-shadowlands parts of the Underworld...well, your guess is as good as mine. I would imagine, however, that the reflections of the Bordermarchs would be similarly unstable, since they aren't as inhabited and constant as areas of Creation proper, so there'd be fewer ghosts and less belief/memory around those areas to give the land a more stable shape. The parts in the Underworld probably wouldn't actually be the Wyld, however, and therefore wouldn't have the same mutative effect on those who wander through it.

I'd also imagine that the Underworld's "Bordermarches" and "Middlemarches," etc., would also be where most of the rakasha who use the ghost Assupmtion and live in the Underworld dwell.
 
runeblue360 said:
Next you're going to tell me you didn't know she was a sentient, flensing cloud of razors.
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Isn't she a sapient wind made out of knives? :V

On a differnt note, does anyone esle think that the blank spaces on the map could be arranged better? The most detailed bits should be around the Blessed Isle and Nexus, and fade away towards the edges as opposed to having "here be dragons" between detailed parts.
 
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