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General Exalted Thread

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horngeek said:
Would it be accurate to say that all Princes of Chaos exemplify a Style under your system, @EarthScorpion?
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Mmm, probably not. Like, not at a metaphysical level. The way I model them, they're basically a collection of Titles (from the Equinox Road supplement from Changeling: the Lost). That means that his Title is probably something like "The Love-Seeking Prince from Strange Lands" or something, and Exotic Beauty Style is part of that overall narrative.

On the other hand, Styles are a super-useful shorthand for coming up with their "story" when I'm only allowed three paragraphs to get across their concept and character (because they don't get a "why you'd want to summon them" unlike demons and ghosts). And it tells you how to run him
 
horngeek said:
Only allowed three paragraphs? Mind expanding on that?
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Haven't you noticed my self-imposed rules for writing 1CDs, 2CDs and ghosts? They get four paragraphs, which keeps the wordcount down to 500 or so words. The last paragraph is always "why you'd want to summon them". That means these wyld things only get three paragraphs, because they don't get the "why you'd want to summon them" thing.

It stops bloat.

(3CDs get more because they're big bads and I need to explore their themes enough to spin 2CDs off them, but they're still capped at 1k or so words)
 
Right, fair enough- I just thought there might've been a bit more to it than a simple word limit, like a structure or something like that.

EDIT: Altjough as MD has pointed out, there is in fact such structure :V
 
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horngeek said:
Right, fair enough- I just thought there might've been a bit more to it than a simple word limit, like a structure or something like that.

EDIT: Altjough as MD has pointed out, there is in fact such structure :V
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>implying everything is not a structure
>doyouevenderrida.exe

On an entirely unrelated note, come next Dilaragame session and we should be able to make a log of it like Inksgame or Kerisgame!
 
GardenerBriareus said:
Ramethus is the Crusader Worm, the Garden of Victory, whose themes are of conflict and bloody evolution. He represents the ideal that strength only comes through pain and survival, that all life must remain in flux or fall into stagnation, and when the Exalted Host rose up and stormed the gates of Heaven, he laughed - for what better proof could there be of his philosophy that peace is a lie, and all life must exist in eternal struggle? Ramethus would relish the idea of being the underdog fighting back against an overpowering enemy, because to him that's just the prologue to getting more badass. Likewise, a world wracked by the Highstorms would be very pleasing to him, as it forced all life to adapt or be wiped away.

He'd be both a major ally and a major resource hog for the Exalted Host - an active, allied Primordial who nevertheless needs constant support and upkeep to keep him from potentially getting in over his head and being captured/killed. Likewise, the akuma he'd spawn during Desolations would definitely help bolster their ability to fend off Gordius' armies.
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*scribbles down ideas* Thank you.

GardenerBriareus said:
One way to help explain it is that these Exaltations aren't anywhere near finished - the Solar/Lunar/Sidereal Exaltations are half-finished beta prototypes and the Abyssal Exaltations were completed under duress. Autochthon just didn't put the kind of effort into making these Exaltations that he did in canon, so not only do they need centuries of maintenance between uses, their top performance is much lower as well. There are no elder Exalts because the Exaltations they're using are too primitive to support that kind of power without exploding.
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Sort of what I was intending with the willing acceptance of the Great Curse, as the Exalt would essentially be removing the safety features, but honestly I'm thinking that Eseence 6+ probably should just be something only Big Good and Big Bad tier Exalts (and very successful PCs) should be able to have.
 
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ES Guidelines - Demon writeup template
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    • horngeek said:
    Right, fair enough- I just thought there might've been a bit more to it than a simple word limit, like a structure or something like that.
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    Yep, there is a general one. Let's use Ianade as an example, because she's yandere and would be offended to be ignored:

    Ianade, the Devotee of Blades
    Demon of the Second Circle
    Messenger Soul of the Prince of Leeches

    When Ianade is called forth into Creation, she teaches three truths with her cleaver-like knives; firstly, love is jealous; secondly, love cuts men and women from their parents; thirdly, that true love requires willingness to die - or kill. To that end, she seeks out a lover, stalking them for a month and a day. If they publicly declare their love for a living soul, she then kills all that they love, kills their parents, and finally devours them whole, spitting out their bones. From these bones she carves fine trinkets and jewelry which have the seeming of ivory and hold much power.

    The Devotee of Blades wears the form of a woman of the Realm, but to look too closely in her eyes is to see the mad serpents that coil inside her skull, chewing on the blood-red strings of love she tears from her victims' chests. Snakes and centipedes hear their hissing and come to her in swarms, obeying her every command. When she is near, roosters lay eggs and bulls lactate. Her face is locked in a permanent smile and she never speaks unkindly or crudely, even as she does her bloody deeds.

    Ianade watches her greater self from afar, lusting after him. She sees so many men and women that adore him and the snakes that are her mind hiss and coil. To that end, for she fears to teach Balanodo her truths, she instead focuses her attentions on the others that love him and seeks to dispose of them in many ways both cunning and brutal.

    Sorcerers invoke Ianade to ruin a rival or slaughter a family. She is an assassin who is very nearly as dangerous as Lucien, though her foibles make her erratic and harder to control. The Devotee of Blades may escape from Hell when one who adores the Prince of Leeches promises love for someone else, only appearing for long enough to take their heart for their infidelity.

    There is some room for flexibility. Often the first and second paragraphs are the other way around, so they don't read too mechanically, and sometimes people get a second quirk paragraph or they get a separate domain and appearance section. But it's a very efficient way to get the core information down and sell a reader on the concept.
     
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    • EarthScorpion said:
    Lunar essence is Favoured by this spell; all animals are treated as being within theme. This only applies to natural animals - obviously magical traits of the form must still be within a Lunar theme.
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    Minor note; this could be pared down. "Lunar essence is Favoured by this spell; all natural animals are treated as being within theme. Magical traits must still be within a Lunar theme."
     
    Alright @EarthScorpion -

    So this spell has two variants which can be learned independently, an instant version that requires her to recast it to change back, and an indefinite version that can be countermagic'd. Does this mean the indefinite version commits the motes? Further still the Sorcerer can still cast other spells while shapeshifted.

    Secondly- you imply that the anchor is not 'occupied', so in the case of familiar-anchor, both the sorcerer and the familiar can both be present, though logically a second spell can't be cast through that anchor while the first is running? That could be made clearer, as a lot of the times it's not really apparent how 'occupied' an anchor is from spell to spell. Like I assume with Skin of Bronze that a channeled familiar is Absorbed as part of the casting. If you want to maybe add some granularity, consider keywords like 'Invoked Anchor' and 'Committed Anchor'.

    Thirdly, I feel safe in assuming the five solar sobriquet-animals are valid for this spell, both in terms of 'what anchors qualify' and 'what you can turn into'. So Tiger, Bull, Spider, Wolf, Falcon.
     
    Shyft said:
    Alright @EarthScorpion -

    So this spell has two variants which can be learned independently, an instant version that requires her to recast it to change back, and an indefinite version that can be countermagic'd. Does this mean the indefinite version commits the motes? Further still the Sorcerer can still cast other spells while shapeshifted.
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    Nope, it's sorcery. Sorcery doesn't commit motes (see also Sorcerous Charms for precedent of how sorcery interacts with indefinite duration).

    The choice here is between "Can be countermagiced, can be dropped without casting the spell again" vs "can't be countermagiced, has to be cast again to drop the transformation, doesn't trigger on AESS because it's not an active effect so if people look at you with AESS they see just a bird - albeit possibly an Essence 3+ bird with Solar essence if they look more closely".

    Yes, they can still cast Charms. It's just a mutation package at a mechanical level.

    Shyft said:
    Secondly- you imply that the anchor is not 'occupied', so in the case of familiar-anchor, both the sorcerer and the familiar can both be present, though logically a second spell can't be cast through that anchor while the first is running? That could be made clearer, as a lot of the times it's not really apparent how 'occupied' an anchor is from spell to spell. Like I assume with Skin of Bronze that a channeled familiar is Absorbed as part of the casting. If you want to maybe add some granularity, consider keywords like 'Invoked Anchor' and 'Committed Anchor'.
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    Yeah, I honestly haven't worked out how to handle this in a systematic way. As it stands, I can tell you how it should work at an "artsy" level, but artsy isn't worth shit for mechanical solidity.

    At a basic level, you shouldn't be able to enjoy the benefits of the background while it's committed, unless there's a really strong thematic reason, and you can never anchor two spells in a single background (except for Whispers). The image of a sorcerer getting to hunt alongside their familiar should be enabled and it's strong enough to be an exception, but it's also a bad precedent if overgeneralised.

    Generally speaking, mmm, "personal" backgrounds should be used as "ingredients", while social/organisational ones should be "channeled". So, like, if you're using Allies (Ligier) to nuke people, obviously you're just invoking his name to set things on fire with green fire, but if you're using your Artefact (Staff) or your Familiar (Giant Wolf) then you channel your own essence down the staff to make the fireball or your wolf howls and a giant wolf head emerges and explodes.

    So, yeah, a Familiar used for Skin of Bronze should totally make you into a bronze statue with certain traits of the familiar about you (or, hell, a lion head if you feel like using your lion that way), but I don't have a mechanical way of hard-ruling this yet - I'm still basically running off gut feeling and aesthetics for special cases.

    Shyft said:
    Thirdly, I feel safe in assuming the five solar sobriquet-animals are valid for this spell, both in terms of 'what anchors qualify' and 'what you can turn into'. So Tiger, Bull, Spider, Wolf, Falcon.
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    Yes, of course.

    Like, when it comes down to it, if you read the limitations they're pretty lax. The Abyssal one basically says "you gotta either be a death animal, or you need to look all ill", while the Infernal one says "just take a normal animal and make it kinda demonic" and the Solar one says "they gotta be a cool example of that animal". Even the Element one says "yeah, anything that lives in that Direction is OK. Or Dragons. Dragons are cool too".

    There's really two ways to use this spell. There's "I'm going to learn myself a mundane-ish animal so I can hide myself and spy on my enemies or escape from trouble", and there's "I WANNA TURN INTO A GIANT SNAKE". It supports both kinds.

    So, like, any Solar sorcerer with a daiklaive can go "I'm turning into my caste animal, I'm using Solar essence so that's OK, my sword is just the vessel of my will and because I'm using a golden daiklaive the falcon has golden talons" and that's OK. You just have to make the decision to learn it that way, and now your sorcerer will refuse to hand over their daiklaive for fear that it's a trap to stop them turning into a bird and escaping an ambush.
     
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    Amusingly, that spell is probably the most useless for Lunas, even thought they get the most out of it. The only real use would be if you wanted to turn into something you didn't have the heartsblood for, and killing animals isn't that hard for any exalt.
     
    Estro said:
    Amusingly, that spell is probably the most useless for Lunas, even thought they get the most out of it. The only real use would be if you wanted to turn into something you didn't have the heartsblood for, and killing animals isn't that hard for any exalt.
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    Yep, pretty much. It's not for Lunars.

    The trick there is for other people who get hold of Lunar essence - whether through heartstones or rituals or strange esoteric devices to harvest moonlight - and want a way to get an animal form that lets them hide their own nature. A Solar with a Lunar heartstone can be a weak-looking, deceptive fox rather than a proud, bushy-tailed, king of foxes (who probably has five tails, fuckin' Solars man).
     
    @EarthScorpion , so 'sorcerous' mote commitments are still as written- I was asking mostly for clarity.

    The 'cast again/AESS' factor is poorly conveyed, I understood that's what you were going for, but only because I have higher system mastery and we've discussed similar usecases before (Voice of Distant Regard). I'd make a more specific call out to what an observer sees with AESS-like effects. Related to conveyance, a central index of sorcery mechanics that are not changed + those that are.

    Using Inks here as a test case, she has Familiar 3, so if she invokes Maji, she has Anchor x10 mutation points to play with, or 30. I don't have an archival knowledge of mutations handy, but suffice to say a budget of 30 is Awesome.

    Alright, so on the note of spell anchors. My current grasp/view is that if the spell is effectively 'instant', or lacks any sort of thematic 'channeled' component, then you only have a Background to justify casting it. Which when I think about it, is sort of like the hearthstone tax on magitech. You can't just get the [thing] you need dots in this Other Thing to even make it useful.

    As you say, skin of bronze is enough of a buff to justify committing a whole background for the duration. Terrestrial Banishment or Countermagic are both 'instant' enough in the sense that they only need something to be invoked through.

    At the core, you want to incentivize/mechanize 'sorcerer' behavior. One thing I was discussing with Aleph is that the anchor system in a way incentivizes 'cast-off' artifice and the like; such as a bunch of rings your sorcerer wears to channel simple spells. I don't know how in-line that is with this mechanic, but it's what I think of.

    Hope this helps!
     
    Shyft said:
    Using Inks here as a test case, she has Familiar 3, so if she invokes Maji, she has Anchor x10 mutation points to play with, or 30. I don't have an archival knowledge of mutations handy, but suffice to say a budget of 30 is Awesome.
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    Yeah, this spell is roughly ballparked against Devil Tyrant Avatar Shintai, which is an E3 Shintai (that gives Essence x10 MP), and while this is worse as it doesn't have the same side benefits like the soak and the anti-shaping, it's certainly enough MP to build yourself your giant snake.

    And yes, I believe I explicitly mentioned the "wanting people to load themselves up with rings and bling" thing as a previous "gotta be a sorcerer" thing. So yeah, a very common sorcerer look is "tasteless magpie".
     
    EarthScorpion said:
    The Locust Host
    Creature of the Wyld
    Once-Creationborn

    Buzzing, squirming, the locusts of the endless sands east of Gem are born of man as well as insect. One of the host is no longer than an adult man's forearm. Their forelimbs end in human hands, and the eyes in their chitinous faces are human. There is no humanity in their gaze, however; the locust host have lost the ways of men to centuries of endless hunger. In their thousands they swarm over any foodstuff they find, picking clean sandships and mindlessly gnawing on the bleached bones of their crew. They make no art; they forge no tools; they sing only half-remembered wordless songs passed down from ancestors more capable of thought.

    In cool caves and the ruins of forgotten buildings hidden from the light of the sun, they sleep. The emptiness in their bellies churns endlessly, and if they cannot exist in a sleep near death, they fall upon each other in vast cannibalistic orgies that leave the floors littered with hollow husks. A few nests of the locust host dwell in wyld-tainted lands where plants grow from the sand and mana falls from heaven. There, they feast and feast and feast until the chaos-twist is exhausted. Such gluttonous broods deviate even more from the human form, becoming more monstrous - and often larger. A few flying terrors the size of yeddims fly across the south, their crawling siblings infecting their flesh.

    Sailors upon the sand-seas know that the locust host are drawn inexorably to the scent of flowers. To fend them off, dried petals are kept in lead-lined boxes and scattered behind the ship as a decoy when they must sail near their territory. The locust-host do not fear fire, but the firedust that often encrusts their chitin when they slumber is no less volatile for it. A keen archer can set a swarm ablaze from a distance, but if they close fire may doom the ship as well as the locusts.

    King Scorpion
    Creature of the Wyld
    Once Divine

    The sand-sailors of the South, when they are deep in their cups, tell tall tales of the monstrous beast they call King Scorpion. Taller than a ship, King Scorpion buries himself under the scorching sands and waits until he can hear the hiss of a sandship's hull. If the ship comes close enough, he raises his tree-sized stinger and jabs out, crashing down. Those who avoid where he waits are greeted with the sight of a monstrous scorpion with a jewel-encrusted black hide chasing after them, eyes burning with red fire.

    Once, long ago, King Scorpion was a god. Not a scorpion-god, no; a god of a mighty river, now dried and forgotten. But the wyld twisted his river so it no longer flowed with water and he was changed too. His thirst for the forgotten river will never be quenched and the fires which burn in him fill the hollow places in his body. He remembers ships, but sandships are not as they should be so he smashes them apart and feasts on the souls of their crew.

    Over the years, three captains have gone mad and been subsumed into the legend of King Scorpion, swearing to be the one who slays him with unbreakable oaths. The first took out one of his eyes, before he was burned to ash. The second died in vain and his dessicated corpse is still strapped to the wheel of his ship, waiting in the desert for King Scorpion to appear once more. The third is an ancient man who has seen his two hundredth birthday but will not and cannot stop his endless hunt. Desert mice man his ship, for his crew are all dead of heat and old age, and his sails are made from vulture feathers. Wise men avoid that vessel, for when it is sighted it means King Scorpion is near.

    Naib Danidal
    Creature of the Wyld
    Prince of Chaos

    Sometimes in the South many trumpets are heard and a great shimmering horde of banners and other beautiful things are seen on the horizon. Then the cry goes out: make way, for Naib Danidal! Lord of far-off Ahra, prince of princes, generous and fair beyond compare! The naib comes to town, bedecked in wealth and where he goes he scatters fine gems and things of great value. He dresses in white feathers which sets a handsome contrast to his coffee-dark skin, and his pupil-less eyes are the deep blue of the Southern sky. Every night men and women dance to the wailing music of his courtesans, and during the day he meets with the mighty and powerful. Passions flow like wine and wine flows like water when he is about, for his very presence imparts moral laxity.

    Still, the naib is looking for something, for he bemoans his loveless life. His bountiful heart seeks a companion - and in the city, he finds the most comely woman or most handsome youth. With all his fortune and all his cunning he pursues them, and should they fall to his blandishments, a marriage is set for seven days hence. The wedding is the finest ever seen, and all the lives of the guests seem grey and meaningless in comparison. And when it comes for the wedding feast; why, the naib and his attendants unhinge their jaws and consume the minds of the guests. His new spouse leaves with him, and is later seen among his many attendants, a virtue-eater just like him.

    It is said by experts in the occult that the naib has the seeming of one of the lesser goblin-creatures that came pouring into Creation with the Balorian Crusade. Through cunning and treachery he came to devour one of the greater princes of chaos who had been injured by the terrible power of the Scarlet Empress; scarfing down the mighty lady of the wyld like the monkey-like creature that he was. Draped in devoured finery, he took full advantage of his newfound power to further the story of the stranger that was now his. His elaborate festival-parade darts in and out of the wyld-tainted lands of the South, never coming to the same place too often.

    Naib Danidal exemplifies Exotic Beauty Style:
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    What's the scaling on Wyld things? Like, is Creature of Chaos the lowest rank, comparable to First Circle Demons or Lesser Dead? How does this jive with Naib Danidal seeming more like a 2nd Circle or Greater Dead?
     
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