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Seems to me the 90% smash calls a different problem into questionv why didn't any of the Neverborn pull similar stunts in their death throes?

Might work better if it was a "just so" story where the Cataclysm irrevocably removed the concept of true and complete perfection for instance, because she's not destroying it so much as mutilating the perfection which the universal law references.
 
veekie said:
Seems to me the 90% smash calls a different problem into questionv why didn't any of the Neverborn pull similar stunts in their death throes?

Might work better if it was a "just so" story where the Cataclysm irrevocably removed the concept of true and complete perfection for instance, because she's not destroying it so much as mutilating the perfection which the universal law references.
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No, she can't do that.

Regardless, assigning any special significance to this event is completely unnecessary. "She threw a tantrum as she was being sealed into Hell and nuked parts of Creation, causing a massive disaster" - done. Problem solved.
 
Jon Chung said:
The main problem with it is that you are completely incapable of comprehending a place which is 90% conceptually different to the setting you are in.
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It isn't though, it just said; "ninety percent of all of Creation was destroyed, including several concepts"
Not "ninety percent of all concepts were destroyed"
emeralis00 said:
Huh. All this time I thought the 90% of Creation thing was the Wyld pressing in.
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The TSC destroyed 90% of Creation at the end of the Primordial War, and then later IIRC the Great Contagion killed off most of the surviving life and the Balorian Crusade destroyed 90% of whatever remained of Creation.
What it means it that Creation is canonically about 1% of the size it was in the Age of Glory.
 
I like the 90% or at least a significant chunk of creation being destroyed by a primordial as its sealed, makes the setting seem more delicate. Like a modern civil war with 2 nuclear states.

At some point both sides were capable of reducing everything to ash if sufficiently provoked demonstrated by the Sun nuking that fake creation in the time of glory.

But both sides found creation a prize worth preserving if there was even a hope of recapturing it later. Or lost the ability to act on malicious desires when they became nevermore.

Moreover, an incomprehensible past sets a blank canvas for the first age to build from.

Half remembered kingdoms and wonders rebuilt or eclipsed by exemplars of the new age.

A creation with features built for interaction by human scale actors rather than steller phenomenon.

A chance to grasp new heights not explored by the old masters of the world.

An age of exalted glory, the first age of man
 
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Broken25 said:
If a primordial can destroy 90% of everything with a flick of her wrist, one wonders how anything remained at the end of the war.
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Didn't she have to permanently cripple herself, forever denying herself perfect order, violating the hierarchy of the new world.

Essentially go against all her core principles to pull it off?

I mean if you can get malfeas to publicly beg a mortal for something, and brand himself in visible subservience, of his own accord. I think that should be worth a setting changing effect.
 
Eos_Astraeus said:
Didn't she have to permanently cripple herself, forever denying herself perfect order, violating the hierarchy of the new world.

Essentially go against all her core principles to pull it off?

I mean if you can get malfeas to publicly beg a mortal for something, and brand himself in visible subservience, of his own accord. I think that should be worth a setting changing effect.
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Doesn't really matter, tho.

i mean, the war ended with several primordials dead and all the rest imprisioned. If all of them are as powerful as SHLIHN (And there is no indication they are not) why didn't they do their own spite nuking? Why didn't Theion, in his last moments before Ruvelia was executed, blow like a supernova?

Ultimately, the less is said about such ages, the better. Or, if you want to tell a story of those times, describe it in a mythic tone instead of as an objective historical fact.
 
Broken25 said:
Doesn't really matter, tho.

i mean, the war ended with several primordials dead and all the rest imprisioned. If all of them are as powerful as SHLIHN (And there is no indication they are not) why didn't they do their own spite nuking? Why didn't Theion, in his last moments before Ruvelia was executed, blow like a supernova?

Ultimately, the less is said about such ages, the better. Or, if you want to tell a story of those times, describe it in a mythic tone instead of as an objective historical fact.
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Agreed. It should be an age lost twice over, with none able to recollect it, willing to share a true version of events.
 
I dislike the 90% destruction figure for both Three Spheres and Crusade tolls. 90% population is fine, but it is weird to just lose all that land and means that I can't estimate the landmasses for Shogunate/pre Crusade games, let alone Primordial War.

Creation is already obscenely big, I dont want to have to add whole new Directions to accommodate stuff.

I'd prefer if it was treated like the breaking of the world in Wheel of Time, where there is a humongous death toll and continents and mountain ranges get rearranged, but at least the average total land stays the same.
 
The PbP continues in Solar Shenanigans Session 1.5.3!
  • We get to the top, Wing and Snakeguy are there
  • Wing: "Who da fuck are you?"
  • Remember that he's the Socialize supernal Eclipse
  • Spear: "I'm here to take your new boy-toy away."
  • Wing objects to this
  • Sifu Spear is being super unsubtle about being a Sidereal, because lol, I'm Essence 6 I'll do what I want, bitches
  • Wing writes him a check for Resources 3 to get him to go away
  • Spear stretches and yawns
  • Dozens of silver talents fall from his sleeves
  • Spear: "Call me when you've got Resources N/A."
  • The rest arrive, see tension, Fang decides to go find Ruby and make some tea
  • Everyone enters Ruby (see what I did there?) to drink tea and chill
  • Alyndra comes back with her bat-wyvern, having cooled down some
  • Time for 20 Questions with Sifu Spear
  • He basically confirms the existence of the Sidereal Exalted, because again, he could fucking wreck our shit if we tried anything stupid
  • Oh yeah, by now it's blatantly obvious that Snakeguy is gonna be a Sidereal
  • He gives me a gift
  • It's Starmetal hand wraps that count as a light Artifact weapon and are compatible with MAs (replacement for my Soulsteel Dire Chain that the ST let me retcon out since I hadn't really used it much yet)
  • Invisible Horse Princess: "I promise to use them for fun and profit!"
  • Sifu Spear: "Good girl."
  • A little more talking, Ruby gives us a little more exposition about the manse
  • Wandering Wing rolls Read Intentions against Spear's Guile 7
  • Fucking 14 successes
  • Discovers he has a Defining Intimacy of protectiveness towards me
  • Gonna take her a few days to get her systems online, meaning we can't actually stay here yet, so we decide to head back to Nexus in the meantime
  • Sifu Spear is planning on staying in Nexus for a month before he spirits Snakeguy away
  • Oh, at some point Fang summoned a Neomah, decides to leave her and Slenderman at the manse and just have them use Hurry Home after a set duration
  • Neomah starts hitting on Slenderman, he just looks confused
  • Poor (or is it lucky?) Slenderman
  • Fang flies back with Alyndra on her familiar, having seemed to make peace
  • I give Snakeguy a ride back since my horse is a ghost horse and better than other horses
  • Spear has his own ways of fast travel
  • Nakar and Wandering Wing have to take their regular lame horses back
  • Sucks to be them :V
  • Snakeguy and I chat on the way back
  • He's feeling kinda down
  • I roll well, give him a confidence boost
  • End of session
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TL;DR Snakeguy is gonna be a Sidereal, I get a priceless Starmetal artifact, and my Essence 6 Sidereal surrogate-father would literally rend anyone who actually managed to seriously hurt me limb from limb.

Really wasn't a lot going on here, but this was basically just a filler session before the real Session 2, which happens tonight.
 
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RedV said:
Why'd you decide to drop the dire chain? Was it not a form weapon for your styles?
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It was, but I plan on expanding into other styles and I realized that I didn't want to invest so much in a weapon I wouldn't always be using. There were ways I could have worked around it, but I decided to just go with the simpler option and punch people from short range using Galloping Horse Fist. :V
 
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Broken25 said:
Doesn't really matter, tho.

i mean, the war ended with several primordials dead and all the rest imprisioned. If all of them are as powerful as SHLIHN (And there is no indication they are not) why didn't they do their own spite nuking? Why didn't Theion, in his last moments before Ruvelia was executed, blow like a supernova?

Ultimately, the less is said about such ages, the better. Or, if you want to tell a story of those times, describe it in a mythic tone instead of as an objective historical fact.
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I'm not sure.

But I think it was a combination of several things.

1. She Who lives in her name is, I believe, the one who invented the laws of physics. What goes up is pulled by gravity. Objects moved by another force stays moving. Water flows downhill. When 2 objects strike each other, the weaker one is broken. And things do not spontaneously cease to exist in a puff of smoke.

When SWLIHN smashed those 3 spheres, it was the equivalent of her removing the strong nuclear force for 90% of creation. Or even the whole of creation, and the 10% saved was just the part the gods and the exalted host managed to save.

2. Nobody wanted to destroy Creation. I mean, seriously. It was the prize. A place for the humans to live, the God's home, and a place for where the primordials could rest and play the games of divinity. There could never be anything like it.
 
Cosar said:
As long as the content isn't breaking rules you don't have to ask permission to post stuff, though you should link to and credit the original source.
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Very well then.

This thread: Exalted - Can demons love? - Page 8

Nothing in Exalted is really objectively evil (even the Ebon Dragon, though he wishes he were). There are other adjectives that work better.

Consider the inmates of some manner of super-prison, which is like an amalgamation of high- and low-security prisons and insane asylums. They were locked away for a variety of crimes. This guy did some white-collar embezzling. This other person killed someone. This person over here is mentally ill, and a danger to others as a result. We even have a few people innocent of any crimes, framed or simply found guilty due to circumstance.

Now, lock these sociopaths, madmen, murderers and thugs together without any hope of parole, for a life sentence that is literally eternal unless they die due to violence. The only way out of this prison is escape or slavery to those privileged with freedom. Additionally, there is a group of prisoners that have all of the power, whom lesser prisoners are psychologically incapable of disobeying--these inmates run the prison, and have completely unquestionable free reign over their lessers.

Let this stew for five thousand years, and you have an inkling of the sort of resentment, anger, terror, hate, depression, fatalism and violence that mark every day of every demon's life. The description thus far does not, however, truly express the alien nature of both the demons and their circumstance.

If you are a Second or Third Circle Demon, you are a powerful and important prisoner that makes up a significant portion of the power and capability of the next rank above you... but those above you have repeatedly shown self-destructive and cruel streaks that mean that you can't rely upon them to recognize your importance forever. If you are a First Circle demon, you do not even have the illusion of importance; you can die at any time, by any more powerful demon's whim, for any reason or for no reason at all, and there is a miniscule chance that you will amount to anything beyond another casualty. The prison may, at any time, crush you to death, and the only defenses are quick travel and proximity to Isidoros (who will probably crush you). Adorjan may, at any time, flay the skin from your bones, and the only defense is constant omnipresent music (and she can ignore that if she feels like it).

And let's not forget that you're not really a person by the definition of most people in the setting. You're a cog in a poorly-constructed machine. You were born to poison yourself to death, or swallow and excrete other demons as a form of transportation, or drink fresh blood, or play music, and if you don't do these things, you will probably go crazy or die.

Prison life is pointless, brutal and banal. Life in Malfeas is moreso, in large part because the Yozis are spiteful enough to make it so. The best defense against despair is not to think, to throw yourself into religion or work or violence or sex or drugs or servitude or nationalism, and hope you either stand out enough in your accomplishments to be one day considered a person, or die before you even dared to hope for something better.

Nobody calls a wild dog evil for eating a human baby. But people will call a demon evil for being fascinated by human babies, collecting them, and not understanding that human children require food to live.
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Incanabuli, the Ardent Champions, Spawn of the Demon Lover

Once in a great while Mara, the Demon Lover, is moved to show mercy to a potential victim. These are the rare individuals who attract her attention, but not because of a taste for death that she can nourish with the taste of stolen souls. Rather, they are entirely ordinary people who somehow earn Mara's love. Some legends say it is because they make her laugh. Others give Mara a wide variety of qualifications.

When Mara's time in Creation is done and she is banished back to Malfeas - as she invariably is - she must purge herself of the memory of these loves, lest they drown her in sorrow. Mara weeps for five days, and when her weeping is done, vomits forth a black mass. Mara walks away, no longer troubled by the memories of her loves in Creation. Those memories congeal into the hearts of Incanabuli, who must survive as best they can on the streets of Malfeas.

Incanabuli (Incanabulus for a male, Incanabula for a female) appear as dark-haired, dark-eyed, dusky skinned men and women of extraordinary and delicate beauty. Small glossy black horns grow from their foreheads. Incanabuli are passionate creatures, socially adept in general, and excellent judges of character. They tend to become skilled in delicate and graceful fighting arts. They usually survive in Malfeas as courtiers, artists, and duelists.

Incanabuli are blessed and cursed with a peculiar fixation. The first time an Incanabula enjoys sex with another demon, the Incanabula is bound to that being for a hundred years. The memory of Mara's love wells up inside them, becoming undeniable. Incanabuli are passionately dedicated to the beings they are bound to, and have powers that keep them appraised of that person's status and help them keep that person safe.

Incanabuli fear and hope for the opportunity to become bound to a human, mortal or Exalt. The love of a human can drive an Incanabulus to the heights of passion and heroism. An Incanabula who is bound to a human is never free of that bond - she will love that being and only that being until her destruction.
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Gevaisa, the Aspirant Baubles - Progeny of the Laughing Vine

Gevaisa are First Circle demons descending distantly from Hegra- or rather, gevaisa are not demons, as they constantly explain to the misunderstanding inhabitants of Malfeas. They are mortals, trapped in the Demon City and cursed with the semblance of horrible monsters. Or, more rarely, they are elementals or little gods thrown unjustly into the prison of the Yozis. A few eccentric gevaisa even insist that they are something even more outlandish, like a raksha or a Jadeborn.

Every so often, a demon, unable to cope with the tribulations of imprisonment in Malfeas, seeks solace in the hallucinogenic rains of the Yozi Hegra. Often, these drugged waters bring the delusion of mortality, or of some other more pleasant state of being, and exceptionally broken demons sometimes cling to their delusions even after the effects should subside.

Mekeuta, the Laughing Vine, a Second Circle soul descended from Hegra, was inspired by this quirk of demon psychology and created the gevaisa as scouts and spies. The gevaisa suffer from the permanent and incurable belief that they are some kind of creature other than a demon, usually a human. Absolutely nothing can convince a gevaisa that this conviction is mistaken.

Regardless of their own opinion, the gevaisa are rainbow-colored glassy orbs about a foot in diameter which hover in the air and can dart quickly back and forth if need be. Within their spherical bodies, they display the picture of their imagined selves and speak with that self's voice. They can see and hear with remarkable clarity and make no noise when stationary. Sorcerers often find use for them as scouts, but they are difficult to control when not working.

Gevaisa have a deep and intense need for human (or whatever) affection, and when not given anything else to do, they will attempt to disguise themselves and seek out someone who will love them. No order a sorcerer can give will prevent them from doing this, although they can restrict the gevaisa's searches to certain areas if they may reasonably expect to find love there. All too often, the demon will find companionship for a time before its new friend's or family recognize it as a monster, at which point it often goes into a killing rage. Prepared sorcerers plant mortal servants with their gevaisa, instructing them to humor its delusions and provide the companionship they require.

In the Demon City, gevaisa often form tiny communities of their own, mimicing mortal lives, often in an over-dramatized fashion, but these activities rarely satisfy them. When a mortal recognizes on Calibration that he has no love in his heart for anyone or anything, the imbalance between mortal and demon may allow a gevaisa to slip out of the prison and into his soul, possessing his body.

Motivation: Be loved, no matter what it takes.

Essence: 3
Willpower: 7
Essence Pool: 75 motes
Virtues: Compassion 3, Temperance 2, Conviction 4, Valor 2
Health Levels: -0/-1/-1/-1/-1/-1/-2/-2/-2/-2/-4

Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 5, Stamina 2, Appearance 4, Manipulation 2, Charisma 4, Perception 6, Inteligence 2, Wits 4

Abilities: Awareness 5 (Eyesight +3), Investigation 5 (Gossip +1), Stealth 4 (Transparency +2), Larceny 4 (Disguise +1), Athletics 3 (Aerial Navigation +2), Lore 2 (Mortal Cultures +1), Performance 2, Dodge 3, Linguistics 5 (Old Realm, High Realm, Low Realm, any three directional tongues)

Charms:
First Excellency - Stealth, Larceny
Second Excellency - Awareness, Investigation
Materialize - costs 50 motes
Essence Plethora (x1)
Measure the Wind - detects the resonance of non-Malfean Essence users
Amethyst Awareness - perceives natural geomancy and other large-scale Essence flows
Spice of Custodial Delectation - Upon spending a scene peacefully interacting with non-creatures of darkness
Mirror of the Infinite Wardrobe - Disguises itself as a sentient native to the area)
Landscape Travel - doubles flight speed when moving in a straight line and not correcting course
Harrow the Mind - convinces the target it has a positive Intimacy to the demon
Mind-Hand Imitation - applies its Strength and Dexterity as telekinetic force within (Essence x 2) yards
Possession - mortals who have no postiive Intimacies to another individual
Weather Control - All-Encompassing
Divine Prerogative - Insistence that it is not a demon
Paper Tiger Arrangement - Displays images of things it has seen
Hurry Home - Returns to the side of someone with a positive Intimacy for it

Dragon's Suspire: Accuracy +8, Damage 4L

Sustained Flight Speed (without Landscape Travel): 30 mph (15 yards/tick)

Dodge DV: 6
Soak: 5B/5L
Hardness: 2B/2L

Summoning: Obscurity 3/4
Gevaisa often follow the Ecstatic or Functionary limit plates. When a gevaisa is informed that it is a demon, it gains 1 Limit, but it can only gain Limit in this way once each week.
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Consider a demonic race descended from Hegra whose entire motivation is To Love. Their Motivation is not synonymous with their Purpose, however--said purpose is to suffer. These demons were created as a cautionary example to all of demonkind, a lesson as to the dangers of love.

And oh, how exquisitely they suffer. Their songs of heartbreak inspire tears of appreciation in the coldest of demons. Their wails of pain inspire a dark lust in all who hear them. Their love-filled hearts infuse the blood pumping through their veins with motes of essence, and a stolen bite provides an attacker with a dose of that most precious commodity.

Suffice it to say, no party is complete without one of these demons and a talented torturer to act as food/music and server/DJ. And if you ever hear their cries or see the tears of pure affection in their eyes and feel a pang of pity or commonality, you'd best steel yourself against it, lest you be afflicted by that most dangerous emotion.
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Is the sidereal book from 1e any good? I want to learn more about the loom of fate and the maidens but I know some exalted books are less than good.
 
rogthnor said:
Is the sidereal book from 1e any good? I want to learn more about the loom of fate and the maidens but I know some exalted books are less than good.
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Yes, it's good. The Charmset is probably the best of the whole lot thematically, as long as you remember that it wasn't built to accomodate using any of it against your non-Sidereal players.

Pretend the martial arts don't exist and Essence stops at 5 to prevent the inevitable setting conclusion that elder Celestial NPCs are completely invincible to player characters if played with half a brain, remember that 1E didn't have resistance mechanics for most things that weren't combat (you'll have to add those yourself, the 2E book is worse than useless), that's about it.
 
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Jon Chung said:
The main problem with it is that you are completely incapable of comprehending a place which is 90% conceptually different to the setting you are in. If that bit of dumb fluff is true, you should be worshipping SWLiHN for creating the universe you are living in, for whatever came before is a meaningless black box of pointlessness. Did you actually fight in a Primordial War? Who the fuck knows, maybe the Unicorn Exalted did it with the power of [incomprehensible sparkly bullshit]. Maybe "unicorns" were twelve-dimensional recursive toroids. Does it matter? Praise the Principle of Hierarchy, creator of the world.

As ways go to make Primordial War games unplayable, that was a particularly stupid way of going about it, and is another wonderful example of 2E freelancer insanity: a good line developer would have shitcanned it.
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Unicorns are actually a creature from the Wyld.
 
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I prefer to put the whole '90% percent destroyed' as the top limit of a guess on what was lost.

Places, people, even concepts got destroyed, perhaps even the memory and evidence of those things. So everyone would be wondering just how much was lost which could range from 1% to 90% and the majority of those making the written record would likely overestimate the level of lost and so used the top limit then the knowledge degraded by time. Until people thought it was historical fact.
 
Yama951 said:
I prefer to put the whole '90% percent destroyed' as the top limit of a guess on what was lost.

Places, people, even concepts got destroyed, perhaps even the memory and evidence of those things. So everyone would be wondering just how much was lost which could range from 1% to 90% and the majority of those making the written record would likely overestimate the level of lost and so used the top limit then the knowledge degraded by time. Until people thought it was historical fact.
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I like the 90% figure for the pre and post cataclysm would be similar to the link between Mad Max/Waterworld scenarios and the modern world.

If you dropped 1000 random experts (engineers, scientists, artists, archaeologists etc.) from around the globe into the setting, they would be able to say that a lot has been lost, but be unable to give an accurate percentage beyond it being far to much for them to begin to explain to the settings natives what the world was like without slipping into heavy metaphor and straight up magic. Moreover, between just a 1000 experts in different fields, a lot of knowledge would simply be lost until someone rediscovered it centuries later, or just no longer applicable.

Everything that wasn't being defended by either the exalted or major gods was just gone. They would have had systems, technologies, races and ecosystems that obviously used to link to something, but no-one remembers what it was.

Only 700 celestials and a couple thousand DB's are still standing at the end of the war, and most of them are quite young and were born into a major conflict for the survival of their race. They simply wouldn't have had the time, or the inclination to search out and catalogue the world around them, which could be more than 10x the size of earth, to any significant degree. They would have honed there skills in order to combat the primordial threat through strength of arms, diplomacy, craftsmanship. etc.

The sum total of their knowledge of the world, would be all that would be guaranteed to survive the cataclysim. Anything else would have required a divinity to successfully protect their purview from a primordial tantrum which limits the pool of those that could have been succesful.

So I can definitely buy 90% of the world being the agreed number in the first age, because they know they've lost a lot because of missing connctions, with the actual tally for concepts, regions and people lost beyond all recovery actually being unknowable, because no-one knew how much they didn't know about the world.
 
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