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General Exalted Thread

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Aleph said:
One of the things I've always really, really liked the idea of is the concept that, for the most part, Solars work through a paradigm of "human heroes" and "tool users". Their powers - as I see them - aren't magic, they're supernal skill. At least from a thematic standpoint. They don't change shape; they adopt an impossibly good disguise. They don't mind-control people; they give arguments and speeches so persuasive that even the most stubborn hearts are swayed. They don't lay hands on someone and wish them back to health; they use pressure points and medicine to prescribe a super-efficient treatment plan that guarantees a recovery.
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This seems like a good time to bring up a complaint I had recently. I was posting over on the Avatar the Last Airbender thread about why firebenders make better smiths then normal people, and it made me realize that I was dissatisfied with every exalt being supernaturally skilled. Rather, I would like their being so to be a side effect of their other themes. A dragon-blooded for instance shouldn't be more "skilled" then a mortal who puts the same time and effort into a the same skill. Rather, being dragon-blooded should give them additional tools and insights which lend the appearance of better skill. As an example, a mortal might have to spend years learning how to break rocks with their fists, while a Dragon-bloods innate bond with the earth lets him pinpoint the rocks weak points so he can do it without training.

Also this is the Avatar post if anyone is interested:
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.c...ns-all-the-spoilers.12951/page-6#post-8748958
 
EarthScorpion said:
Heh. I see @Shyft somewhat taken-aback by the baseline description for Kerisgame "yeah, go resolve this action in one roll, if you stunt it" that's basically the way we resolve those kinds of narrative events in place of most extended rolls.

Generally speaking, we don't use many extended rolls - instead, challenges are broken up into dramatic beats and those beats are success-fail. You don't accumulate successes to make a daiklaive - you succeed on rolls for purifying the workspace, forging the blade, and then tempering and honing it.

(It's almost a bit Quest-like as a resolution mechanic - it's the dramatic beats where things can go wrong or be interrupted that matter, not the amount of time it takes)



Hmm. What we might have here is the product of some divergent assumptions about how many spirits are "active" from day to day.

I work from the assumption that most of the time, the god isn't roaming their domain. They function more like a Roman lares or a Japanese yokai; they're more immanent in it or dwelling within a part of the house. The house god, for example, may well spend most of his time in the kitchen hearth, slumbering in the keystone above the heart or sitting in the fire when it's lit. A person with enlightened essence can see him sitting in the fire, and they're woken in the middle of the night when he scampers along the rafters, doing strange little rituals, but most of the time he's concerned with other things. And that's even if he's a little god; least gods dwell within their object and are generally much more integrated.

Or, to put it another way, most of the time little gods are only active because of Plot, in one way or another. Otherwise, they're just a little bit of background weirdness that the ST can use to flesh out a location - for example, when you see that the household god is thin and mournful despite a seemingly happy household, that's a plot hint that there might be something much less happy hidden within this house. And when the family prays to the house gods in the family shrine, they're praying to the place where the gods either live, or a place where they gather to hear prayer. The family shrine is the best place to see the gods of the household, because they gather there to listen - but most of the time they're not so active.

Likewise, for demons... well, honestly, seeing a lurking demon around immaterially is basically always an act of Plot [1]. And elementals are naturally material, so they're just a weirdness you run into in Creation no different from a wild hippo.

Honestly, quite a lot of elementals are less dangerous than a hippo.

[1] I don't have demons be consistently immaterial or material - it depends on the breed and their themes. The vice-driven, wrathful blood apes are naturally material because they're demons of blood and bone, but the teodozija, as priests of the Yozis, are immaterial voices on the wind save when they manifest their leonid power.
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I don't disagree with the idea of 'chunk/beat' resolution versus Extended Roll- I think the latter is more useful for tracking variable time when used properly. Like, a lot of any game system presents you types of rules/rolls to help pin down How something works. Sometimes you want an extended roll, because it rewards the player who can pile on the advantages that give them a better per-roll return. Maybe this isn't good for artifact crafting, but it is a useful tool in the toolbox.

The thing that specifically threw me was Aleph describing more of my action than I did, because again I'm more used to being the ST and not doing that, relying on my players to sufficiently describe their feats while I focused on resolving the actions themselves.

As for spirits- I suppose that also comes down to fundamental assumptions. I assume that spirits are thick in Creation, but hidden from view. You raise a good point regarding 'in domain' as opposed to hanging around in a 'person' form though. This is one of those key issues of conveyance- not enough plaintext description of 'This is how spirits work. This is what you will see 99% of the time. Exceptions include-'
 
MJ12 Commando said:
So if we wanted to lower that number a bit, I think this would be the basic playbook for Exalted World:
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You might want to add a few more, especially if one of the possible advances is "Take Another Playbook" or "Start A Second Character", both of which show up in AW, and "Take Another Playbook" shows up in Masks.
The Warlord-leader of kingdoms, general of armies, bringer of ruin.
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*World games also have extras, things that playbooks get that aren't moves. The Warlord gets an army, and he can bring that army to a fight. The Captain gets a ship. The Sorcerer gets magic.
Aleph said:
Where would The Crime Lord or The Pirate fit into this?
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Pirate is either a Captain taking a few moves from Warlord, or Warlord taking a few dips in Captain. Crime Lord/Merchant Prince is a bit trickier.
 
GardenerBriareus said:
I mean, there's probably stretches of @Gnarker's Labyrinth like that, with mad ghosts & mortal Underworld-dwellers tapping the black, stagnant blood from Abhorrence of Life's corpse and girding themselves in armor made from carved shards of his bones. Set in a region where Shogunate ghosts have tried to set up their own fiefdom to get a source for people to steal/ replicate battered junker vehicles fueled by the aforementioned black blood of the Neverborn for the battlewagons and so you can have a crazed Greater Dead Shogun who's gathered the disparate mortal tribes with demagoguery and the promise of joining his Half-Life Warboys who've been juiced with transfusions of AoL's processed ichor.
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The Mad Max-themed Neverborn as I see it is He Who Was Ramethus, actually - Themes are that power is everything that matters and that an environment of violence makes monsters out of the most decent men simply by what they must do to survive. Environment is basically everything that's marked by war; corpse-filled swamps, ashen wastelands, bombed-out city ruins, charred forests, trench complexes, etc. Inhabitants would be roving tribes of raiders, a Lost Shogunate Legion or a Fallout-style Brotherhood of Steel (I think?) that brutally enslave even their own people in the name of order and survival, scattered survivors caught in the middle that just want to live to see the next day, and similar.
Abhorrence of life, if we work from Revlid's Underworld, is the one with the laboratory-complexes for a body, with theorems scribbled onto blackboards where if you stare at them long enough and try to understand them, you begin to understand in exacting and terrible clarity exactly why life is worth despising. Inhabitants are the likes of genocide-cults that want to wipe out all life in Creation and beyond, demented tribes of ghoulish Igors that find religious fulfillment in serving as the human experiments of the former, escaped monstrous lab experiments, or a group that investigates Creation with occult scrying devices and keeps a detailed ledger of each and every sin they see.
Though there can certainly be overlap, so where the two meet you get mad scientist cults that enjoy building and using necromantic warmachines for the sheer joy of it while cackling maniacally.
 
Demonic Anchors

The surrender oaths chain the spawn of the Yozis to hell. Cruel Cecelyne is an affliction on the exiles and makes any escape hard, but Creation itself is hostile to them. The world they wrought no longer welcomes them - and the burning sun and mind-clouding moon lay their own curses on the Yozis' broods.

First Circle Demons are slight enough that they exist below the notice of the greater powers. They are construct races, rather than the souls of the titans. A first circle may remain in Creation indefinitely without an anchor. At sunrise and on the night of the full moon they hear the whispers of the Endless Desert and feel a spiritual suction calling them back to their prison. If they have zero willpower points left, they are pulled back to Hell.

Second Circle Demons and Third Circle Demons are part of the living legends of the chained titans, and Creation is less welcoming to them. These mightier demons require an Anchor to remain extant in Creation, just as a sorcerous spell requires an Anchor to remain extant.

The Anchor required by the demon must have an Backround rating greater than or equal to how much the demon would be worth as an Ally. Depending on their potency, demon lords usually are in the 2-3 range (though weaker ones may go as low as 1 and the most powerful may climb to 4) while demon princes are universally rated at 4+.

Demon lords must acquire a sufficient Background to sustain them before the night of the full moon, as Luna's power is strongest and she burns like a pale sun in the night's sky. For a demon who escapes or is summoned or beckoned on the new moon, therefore, they have fourteen days to find a sufficient Anchors to sustain them.

Demon princes are more tightly chained. The rising of the sun sends them scurrying from Creation unless they can find potent marvels to sustain their presence in the world. One of the reasons so few demon princes escape from Hell for any extended period is that power of this level is not free for the taking.

While a greater demon lacks a sufficient anchor, the light of the sun burns terribly. A demon lord or a demon prince without a sufficient Anchor takes one level of unsoakable aggravated damage per minute from direct sunlight, or one level of unsoakable aggravated damage per hour on overcast days.

The cruellest act of the Primordials, so say the princes of chaos, was to force time upon the timeless Wyld. Places outside of Malfeas but which are not part of Creation still enforce these limitations hammered into time by the Sun and the Moon. However, without Fate such restrictions are greatly lessened. The required rating of the Background is reduced by 2 for demon lords and 1 for demon princes, to a minimum of 0, as long as the demon remains in a place Outside of Fate. It is for that reason that escaped demons tend to lurk in the cursed places of Creation where the weave of the world has worn away. Those who intend to stay within Creation for extended periods frequently seek to make a lair where Fate has been shredded, to lessen the oppressive hand of the gods. Sidereal demon hunters find such blighted places to be an all-too-frequent item on their itineraries.

These restrictions apply to the souls of the Green Sun Princes just as much as they do the progeny of the Yozis, though some of the Infernal Exalted reckon it is a question of personal strength rather than the vestiges of the Surrender Oaths that catch them too. If a Green Sun Prince was to undergo metamorphosis to a full titan then perhaps their souls could freely manifest, sustained by a primordial mythos, but as it stands they are fledgling things that try to snap back to the minds of men.

Valid Anchors

The Anchor must be thematically appropriate for the demon in question for them to be able to bind themselves to Creation with it. This is one of the reasons that the lords and princes of hell are so fond of raising cults to their twisted majesty; the worship of mortals is a universal currency. Otherwise, the demon must be able to draw symbolic links between them and the Background. Gervasin, for example, can anchor himself with a dire lance and those who use it in truth take him up. By contrast, Alevua could not use a dire lance, but a forge-manse or demesne is a place which could shelter her essence.

The Anchor must be located within Creation for them to be able to use it; lamentably and to his considerable disgust, no amount of arcane machinery and cultists within Hell has permitted Ligier to breach the walls of his jail. Moreover, the demon cannot bring the Background from Hell when they are summoned or beckoned, and other demons may not function as Anchors.

The princes of Hell are desperate for escape. Anchors can be burnt which effectively doubles their rating for the duration of the interval but which destroys the Anchor. This means a new one must be acquired before the next interval, but does allow a lesser Anchor to sustain them for a duration. Moreover, the demon need not own the Anchor they burn. Wanton destruction destroying an enemy army (burning someone else's Command) or smashing the holy places of the gods (burning Manse or Demesne) can sustain the presence of a demon just as well as faithful worship.

Allies (and similar backgrounds)

When demons use - and abuse - their so-called Allies to remain in the world, what they care about most is the authority of their patsy. If someone has the right to summon a demon, they can permit a demon to stay in Creation. Some demons prefer to casually trick them so they do not realise they have offered such broad-ranging permissions, while other demons prefer iron-clad contracts which cannot be so casually revoked.

Only beings who may bind a demon under the Surrender Oaths may offer this release to a demon. The Infernal Exalted, who have no rights there and instead command Cecelynian Law, may not serve as such casual dupes unknowingly giving permission.

Demonologists who are willing to make pacts with Hell are the most useful kind of Ally for this. More powerful demons treat the master-familiar bond as an alliance, with both getting something from the deal. Individuals in a formal contract with Hell need not be able to invoke the surrender oaths, but they must still have enough metaphysical value to be of use to the demon. A wandering minstrel lacks the potency to anchor Erembour, but one of the members of the Council of Entities in Nexus is whispered to have made a deal with a dark-skinned silver-haired woman who is sometimes seen leaving their mansion on moonless nights.

Artefact

It is well-known that many demons anchor themselves in items of power. Blades of power, ancient crowns, magic rings, dark altars - all of these are ways that demons may act in the world.

Demons who anchor themselves in an artefact cannot roam far from it. Some are even bound into it. When Octavian is bound into a great suit of turtle-shell armour, he animates the armour which oozes his sense-numbing oil from every joint. Others lurk immaterially by the sacred crown and whisper dark thoughts into the mind of the wearer, poisoning their mind and twisting their thought. When deer-footed Mara anchors herself in an artefact tome, the text displays only what she wishes and the lurid images move to show the would-be sorcerer their most secret desires.

A few rare artefacts are built specifically to enable a demon access to the world. Those potent items let the demon roam freely, but must be guarded well for they are hard to replace and their destruction maims the one using them.

Backing

The backing of the organisations of Creation allows demons a loophole to hide from the burning sun. Many demons know how to weave themselves into the flow and bustle of mortal affairs, influencing them subtly. As long as the demon acts within the auspices of their Backing, they can Anchor themselves in it. Such Anchors can be transient - for if the organisation revokes the backing, the demon can be cast back to Hell in short order - but through subtle trickery or leverage cunning demons hide themselves among mortal affairs and further their own agendas at the same time.

Such agreements are often made when demons approach princes and empresses and offer their services. "I will serve as your eyes and ears in the lands, great one," whisper the demons, "and tell you what they speak of you when they do not think anyone is listening. Just give the traitors to me, and I will dispose of them for you". And too many powerful women and men say yes, and permit a demon to roam their lands and snatch up traitors and drag them to hell. Some do not even care.

When Marikos ventures forth from Hell with a jaunty smile, he knows that his membership in good standing of the Nexan Guild gives him free reign to go wherever he wishes where they operate. He certainly helps them spread to markets and prosper, because as long as the Nexan Guild thrives, he can purchase dreams all over the Scavenger Lands.

Cult (and other group backgrounds, like Followers and Command)

Cults are beloved of demons, for the worship of mortals is potent and enables so many things. Demons such as Sondak with extensive cults in Creation never need worry about being dragged back to Hell should they escape; not as long as the mumbled words of their faithful soothe them with sweet succor.

Other backgrounds can be used to similarly sustain a demon, if their worship is turned towards the Hell-beast (essentially converting them to a Cult).

Familiar (and other familiars)

When demons use familiars to anchor themselves in Creation, they possess the creature fully, wearing its skin as their shield against the cruel auspices of the gods. The Familiar remains aware and thinking, but the demon within them can take control any time they feel like. The Familiar may simply black out during these times, or more sadistic demons may leave them trapped within their own body.

Demonic Familiars cannot conventionally provide freedom to a greater demon. A pretense where they offer to serve a creature of Creation as their familiar should be mechanically treated as a use of "Allies" - for the one they serve must be potent enough to extend such an offer, even if they know not to what they are making the offer.

Demons may purchase "Mortal Familiar" as a demon-only background to represent a mortal host who is particularly useful as a host. This may be due to their willing involvement in Yozi-worshipping rituals (perhaps where they symbolically wed the demon), due to their own demon blood, or possibly even an ancient mark of a shamanistic bloodline that demons have perverted towards their own ends. Mechanically, Mortal Familiar functions as Familiar, only the Familiar is a non-Exalted human. Rather than the physical power of the beast, the rating of the background can be raised by the social status and importance of the human. A prince seduced to worship demons or a high priestess from an ancient bloodline is a more useful host for Hell than a mere peasant-farmer cultist.

Manse, Sanctum & Demesne

Places of power are potent anchors for a demon, allowing them to hook themselves into the dragon lines of creation. These backgrounds count as being one dot higher rated for the purposes of the demon's Anchor. However, the cost of this is that the demon cannot leave the grounds without losing the protection of the Anchor.

Before a demon can make use of a place of power, it must first be suitably harmonised - or some would say corrupted - to their nature. Those rare manses and demesnes in Creation which partake of the nature of their parent Yozi are most useful and can always be used. Others must rely on thematic associations or modifications. Ligier could dwell in a Solar-aspected manse designed to capture and concentrate the light of the sun, while Kagami might hide within the mirror-like surface of a perfectly still manse and the Shashalme would swiftly fill a purchased Sanctum with hungry plants and their adoring worshipers.

A demon who occupies a place of power for extended periods will invariably corrupt it. Demesnes and manses find their aspects shifting to the parent Yozi of the demon - which may push manses into power failure and banish the demon if they cannot repair the damage caused by their presence. Sanctums take on something of the nature of Hell, and if a demon dwells in one long enough, it will be dragged back to Hell along with the sanctum.

Resources

Mere lucre is not enough to hold a demon to Creation for long. Wealth comes and goes.

A constant stream of offerings of egg-sized emeralds might be enough to sustain Ligier, but such expenditures would bankrupt most nations. It is that sacrifice of temporal power that holds him to the world, not the mere expenditure of money.

Whispers

If a demon lord or a demon prince heard the whispers of the Neverborn, one might hope that they retain enough sanity to not embrace such foetid decay and bind themselves to Creation with it. The Yozis themselves fear such a horror.

Were such a thing to be done, perhaps even a demon prince could attain indefinite freedom through their murdered cousins. And Creation and the Yozis alike have much more to dread than a mere demon prince.
 
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Couldnt motes from a sorceror with an appropriate level of sorcery also be used to anchor a demon tempoarily?
 
I would assume that such a Sorcerer is using his own backgrounds to sustain the demon. The Sorcerer-King commands all that is in his kingdom...and that means he has enough essance/resources/manses to sustain the Demon.
 
@EarthScorpion so I was reading your sorcery homebrew and I have to say that I really like it, except for one thing.
That doesnt feel like sorcery, but rather thaumaturgy. Its the mortal "sorcerer" king making pacts with spirits to use their powers, channeling the authority of the great works they have aquired as though it were their own, or bankrupting their nation to eck out a few more years for themselves.
It is the domain of mortals who have no true authority of their own.
A Sorcerer doesn't need that pageantry. They have understood and internalized the framework upon which the Titans built Creation and as such they need merely visualize their desire and enforce it upon reality.

Edit: I mean, I love the work you have done on this but it feels more like a way to make Thaumaturgy actually matter rather than "I usurp the authority of the Titans themselves" Sorcery
 
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andres said:
@EarthScorpion so I was reading your sorcery homebrew and I have to say that I really like it, except for one thing.
That doesnt feel like sorcery, but rather thaumaturgy. Its the mortal "sorcerer" king making pacts with spirits to use their powers, channeling the authority of the great works they have aquired as though it were their own, or bankrupting their nation to eck out a few more years for themselves.
It is the domain of mortals who have no true authority of their own.
A Sorcerer doesn't need that pageantry. They have understood and internalized the framework upon which the Titans built Creation and as such they need merely visualize their desire and enforce it upon reality.

Edit: I mean, I love the work you have done on this but it feels more like a way to make Thaumaturgy actually matter rather than "I usurp the authority of the Titans themselves" Sorcery
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If Sorcery lets you show up to a fight with fifteen Second Circle demons bound to act as your murder squad at no ongoing upkeep cost, it is too powerful.
 
So my request now, @EarthScorpion - is to see usecases for these anchors. I also am interested in how you articulated them as all things the demons look for to secure their position in Creation, as opposed to what sorcerers contribute to the game-action of summoning a demon.

Like, a preface or opening paragraph illustrating that this is what a lord or prince of hell in Creation will do- and follow that up with how Sorcerers provide anchors for their demon servants. You also should not forget that sorcerers (PCs) can be clever too, providing anchors that advantage them over the demon as much as the other way around. When I say 'clever' I don't mean in terms of 'waiving all complication or cost', but more like, if I know a demon behaves in These Ways with These Anchors, I'm going to source the kind of anchor works for me and my situation the best.
 
andres said:
@EarthScorpion so I was reading your sorcery homebrew and I have to say that I really like it, except for one thing.
That doesnt feel like sorcery, but rather thaumaturgy. Its the mortal "sorcerer" king making pacts with spirits to use their powers, channeling the authority of the great works they have aquired as though it were their own, or bankrupting their nation to eck out a few more years for themselves.
It is the domain of mortals who have no true authority of their own.
A Sorcerer doesn't need that pageantry. They have understood and internalized the framework upon which the Titans built Creation and as such they need merely visualize their desire and enforce it upon reality.

Edit: I mean, I love the work you have done on this but it feels more like a way to make Thaumaturgy actually matter rather than "I usurp the authority of the Titans themselves" Sorcery
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I am deliberately, intentionally, and wilfully rejecting "the Will and the Word". Belgarath can go fuck off.

Yes, sorcerers - in keeping with their fictional, theological and mythological inspirations - should be forced to do Sorcerer Things. Moses the Zenith has his power through the fact that God has his back and he and his divine Ally are tight. Conan's sorcerers kidnap women and sacrifice them to their gods and receive dark powers. Even Gandalf and Saruman need their staffs.

Sorcerers do need their pageantry. Primordials need their vast arcane machineries and their brain-washed ritual slaves and their ritual runes carved into the landscape, the size of mountains.

And indeed, if we look at canon spells, a lot of them do involve this kind of ritual behaviour. One of the big things I'm doing here is I'm standardising this, so it's no longer exception-based "You need to make orichalcum statues of yourself to cast Solar Sanctuary". No, you are choosing to anchor your Solar Sanctuary in the statues of yourself you're building. But you could also making a Sanctuary of the Elements, fuelled by your alliance with the local elemental court - or you could have learned the secret words of power from your Mentor Ligier and his light shines on this area in place of the Unconquered Sun.

As I wish to use it, sorcery is privilege. It's turning your power into more power. "I am king of this land, therefore I can command it to build a city for me". "I have this magical murderous sword, so I can banish demons by threatening them with it". "I control this fire demesne, so I can channel this power to rain fire from the sky".

And that's what it means for the Exalted to take this power - it indicated that they were now the top dogs, using their institutional power to crush others.

I don't care for "I'm doing it with just my will" because 1) that's not actually how it works in Exalted, and 2) it's boring. It has no interesting interacting thingamajigs. It has no interesting weak points.

Shyft said:
So my request now, @EarthScorpion - is to see usecases for these anchors. I also am interested in how you articulated them as all things the demons look for to secure their position in Creation, as opposed to what sorcerers contribute to the game-action of summoning a demon.

Like, a preface or opening paragraph illustrating that this is what a lord or prince of hell in Creation will do- and follow that up with how Sorcerers provide anchors for their demon servants. You also should not forget that sorcerers (PCs) can be clever too, providing anchors that advantage them over the demon as much as the other way around. When I say 'clever' I don't mean in terms of 'waiving all complication or cost', but more like, if I know a demon behaves in These Ways with These Anchors, I'm going to source the kind of anchor works for me and my situation the best.
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Okay, just as an initial note, this was written from the PoV of a) demon antagonists, to give them nice convenient weak points that line up with how these things go in stories, and b) Infernal players, to hard-nerf them from keeping their inner demons around without "paying" for those Allies they're getting.

(It's the same problem as normal demon summoning, except worse because the demons all at least want something that you want)

So that's why it was all written from the PoV of "what the demon looks for" - it's there for "This is why demons in Exalted do these mythological demon things, like willingly becoming the familiar of someone who doesn't realise their true power or building cults or the like". With a side order of "Look, here's some more weaknesses for demons so they act like mythological demons", and so one lacking an anchor hides from the sun, moves around by night, and desperately is trying to either get what it wants to do before the full moon or is desperately looking for power.

Likewise, the mechanisms are set up for Sidereal games so the GM can be like "Okay, so I'm going to anchor Lelabet to the Queen of this nation - she's signed a contract with the Night Hare, who's acting as her spy and using this to offer power to people and tempt them. Therefore one way to put Lelabet on a timer is to work out that the actions Lelabet is taking is benefiting the queen, and therefore that's a lead for them. Either they can kill the queen - but what about the consequences for Fate given they need her to do something? - or they can somehow use that to lure Lelabet into at trap".

So, essentially, the sorcerer's guide is a different write-up - this is for demon antagonists and for people with demon allies.
 
@EarthScorpion out of pure curiosity, have you ever thought about just sorta making a new system of magic and just swapping out Sorcery for it? Kind of like how you swapped out the Essence power scale for Enlightenment?
 
Gnarker said:
The Mad Max-themed Neverborn as I see it is He Who Was Ramethus, actually - Themes are that power is everything that matters and that an environment of violence makes monsters out of the most decent men simply by what they must do to survive. Environment is basically everything that's marked by war; corpse-filled swamps, ashen wastelands, bombed-out city ruins, charred forests, trench complexes, etc. Inhabitants would be roving tribes of raiders, a Lost Shogunate Legion or a Fallout-style Brotherhood of Steel (I think?) that brutally enslave even their own people in the name of order and survival, scattered survivors caught in the middle that just want to live to see the next day, and similar.
Abhorrence of life, if we work from Revlid's Underworld, is the one with the laboratory-complexes for a body, with theorems scribbled onto blackboards where if you stare at them long enough and try to understand them, you begin to understand in exacting and terrible clarity exactly why life is worth despising. Inhabitants are the likes of genocide-cults that want to wipe out all life in Creation and beyond, demented tribes of ghoulish Igors that find religious fulfillment in serving as the human experiments of the former, escaped monstrous lab experiments, or a group that investigates Creation with occult scrying devices and keeps a detailed ledger of each and every sin they see.
Though there can certainly be overlap, so where the two meet you get mad scientist cults that enjoy building and using necromantic warmachines for the sheer joy of it while cackling maniacally.
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Que? Abhorrence of Life is Ramethus' Neverborn self, from what I remember. I always found you using his cultists as mad scientists a bit odd. If AoL isn't That-Which-Was-Ramethus, then who is?

Your interpretation of That-Which-Was-Ramethus is fairly in line with my own - the major difference is that I'd describe his big change in themes being from "conflict is inevitable, conflict brings growth, conflict exalts the strong and gives the weak a chance to purify and refine themselves" to "CONFLICT IS ETERNAL". To stoop to using comic book characters, Ramethus' champion would be Doomsday - to fight him only makes him stronger, inoculates him against the countless deaths the universe has to offer. That-Which-Was-Ramethus, on the other hand, would drag out something like Solomon Grundy - a hulking monster that just fights, forever, without meaning or purpose, because its world has shrunk to the point where conflict is all it can remember and all it comprehends. The former resists mortal injury because what does not kill him makes him stronger, and if he's not dead now then obviously that blow wasn't enough to kill him. The latter shrugs off death like an insomniac failing to find his rest, unable to understand that it would end the bone-deep weariness that consumes his every moment.

Where I put in a lot of the nuance for Oblivion taint and Labyrinth phenomena is by assuming that, in terms of internal structure and communication, Primordials are to Neverborn what a teleconference between heads of state is to the disparate radio signals coming from beneath irradiated rubble, as everyone with a means of transmission desperately screams into the nothing outside their bunker. Taken as a whole, That-Which-Was-Ramethus carries the themes I mentioned. However, his influence on the Labyrinth and the Underworld beyond is much more than that; in fact, the bulk of his influence is in the form of his ruined corpse vomiting forth its hopes, dreams, memories and nightmares into the world, or splintered chunks of his former totality struggling to express whatever they retained of his lesser selves' personalities and themes.
 
GardenerBriareus said:
Que? Abhorrence of Life is Ramethus' Neverborn self, from what I remember. I always found you using his cultists as mad scientists a bit odd. If AoL isn't That-Which-Was-Ramethus, then who is?
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What Source do you take this from? An official publication, or a fan-made write-up somewhere?

In general my attitude is that so little has been done with the Neverborn for the most part, especially from an official side, not even such basic things as describing what they look like or what Primordials they used to be, that we're free to make stuff up as it suits us.
The most extensive description I know of is actually Revlid's Underworld, in which Abhorrence is described as a giant lab complex full of self-writing blackboards and giant uranium-beaker holoscreens that constantly try to calculate exactly how much hate the lingering corpse feels towards the Creation and humanity that killed it, I just worked from there.
Now, we could say that Abhorrence is the Neverborn of Ramethus, sure, but that would require giving up one of the Mad Max Neverborn or the Murderous Science Neverborn. Or, since there isn't anything to contradict us, we could declare that He Who Was Ramethus is in fact a new and entirely different Neverborn from Abhorrence, and get two Neverborn to play with instead. So I really don't see why we'd do the former, actually.

Though granted, I've been severely out of the loop since a little after 3E came out, so there may have been new developments since that actually do clarify in a way that contradicts this. If such happened, w/e, pick whatever suits you best.
 
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EarthScorpion said:
A constant stream of offerings of egg-sized emeralds might be enough to sustain Ligier, but such expenditures would bankrupt most nations. It is that sacrifice of temporal power that holds him to the world, not the mere expenditure of money.
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I take it that this phrasing excludes easily created wealth, such as making giant emeralds through Principle-Invoking Onslaught.

I understand the intent to make demons behave more like classical demons, but I also think it might be too harsh. Hell-support is on of the Infernal's best (and only) assets. Making each demon consume difficult resources puts more pressure on them than a Solar raising a human army or a Lunar cultivating a beastman horde.
 
Peanuckle said:
I take it that this phrasing excludes easily created wealth, such as making giant emeralds through Principle-Invoking Onslaught.

I understand the intent to make demons behave more like classical demons, but I also think it might be too harsh. Hell-support is on of the Infernal's best (and only) assets. Making each demon consume difficult resources puts more pressure on them than a Solar raising a human army or a Lunar cultivating a beastman horde.
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The thing is though, this is mostly on Second and Third circle demons. You can have your demon army, but if you want Liger to lead it you need something monumental to hold him in Creation.

That said I kind of got the same feeling that it may be going a bit far.
 
Peanuckle said:
I understand the intent to make demons behave more like classical demons, but I also think it might be too harsh. Hell-support is on of the Infernal's best (and only) assets. Making each demon consume difficult resources puts more pressure on them than a Solar raising a human army or a Lunar cultivating a beastman horde.
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Infernals can get their own assets in creation in their own like all bloody Exalts. For a start, Cecelyne is basically all about making fanatic cults, and even if they can't make tiger warriors, they can still augment their followers with all kinds of practical demonic accesories.

Ultimately, Demon of the First Circle offers, in RAW, a free 15 demon lords of your choice working for you full time, witch is obviously stupid at many levels.
 
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Broken25 said:
Ultimately, Demon of the First Circle offers, in RAW, a free 15 demon lords of your choice working for you full time, witch is obviously stupid at many levels.
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Demon of the Second Circle is required to summon 2CDs.

And it's not like you'd have 15 perfectly loyal supersoldiers. You'd have 15 powerful independent people with very odd quirks, desires and requirements. Just like binding a Blood Ape to guard an area could result in it killing everyone in a mile radius, telling a 2CD to support your army could result in wacky hijinks outside your expectations. Like maybe killing the conscripts to "purify" your fighting force.

Rather than start putting supply caps on your demons, make them tricky to use appropriately. What's more interesting, playing resource management or (in)human management?
 
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