General Exalted Thread

[Broken25]

how does this 3rd ed goofiness effect the recently mentioned math for "too few dragonbloods in the world without even more cataclysms than are mentioned cutting down the numbers"?

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Well, it makes perfect sense. I proposed similar things some time ago.

(Honestly i think than the more children a DB has, the less chances of Exalting any of them has. Sure, it doesn't make sense genetically, but we are talking about heroic magical blood, and genes don't exist in exalted anyway, so hey).

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Otherwise, male dragonblooded making an harem of mortal slaves and trying to produce as may children as possible would be an optimal tactic, eww.

 

[notanautomaton]

Also, it makes it easy to play a female DB without having to constantly justify why you're not pregnant.

 

[SinisterPorpoise]

I know, right? Bring an ancient Great House to its knees through an epic campaign of sabotage and betrayal, and who gets the credit? Some jumped up Solar Anathema warlord whose only real accomplishment is not dying along with his allies.
It's total bullshit.

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How is that any different than what the Scarlet Empress did?
Group of Heroes goes into the Imperial Manse, single person with blood on her hands walks out and claims that the rest tragically perished in the attempt.

Hmm, that actually makes Old Red seem much worse.

 

[fdsafdsafasdfdas]

Also, it makes it easy to play a female DB without having to constantly justify why you're not pregnant.

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just add a custom charm for dragonbloods to lay eggs. gender equality is only really had when the males fertilize onto a pile of eggs like fish do(but without dying like salmon afterwards) and you have servants to tend the nest and incubate them for you.

kidding. I just kinda figured they only had as many kids as they could properly train, educate, and find appropriately prestigious positions for, with maybe one or two spares to account for military deaths or failure to exalt, and didn't start until they were in the best position themselves from which to do so.(so not just constantly pumping out babies)
and since realm was pretty gender neutral(until they added an entire house who's thing is gonna be bucking gender trends and therefore it now needs to have those) or if anything mildly matriarchal, women were about the same as men as far as that goes. especially with that "real women are butch" thing 2e mentioned.
between that and exalt pregnancies for some weird reason taking 15 months "I'm focusing on my career right now" seems like a fairly valid response, especially since dragonblooded women don't have to worry about the sharp drop in fertility rates at ~34 where if you're ever gonna have them you've gotta do it soon that tends to get grandmothers on your back about it.

Hmm, that actually makes Old Red seem much worse.

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didn't she semi-regularly genocide entire houses(even the children) of her descendants by making them do seppuku because even one member crossed her? (and theres the whole selling lillun thing knowing the general sense of what ed was gonna do with her, and other stuff like that) but possibly killing a couple people at the start, that's what makes her sound bad?

What a nice toy for an infiltrator to have.

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you can do way way better only 2 charms deep

Like, it's not like they're a hivemind.

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technically some of them are

We firebombed the vast majority of Japan's cities and look at them 70 years later.

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to be fair america also iirc gave them various industries to help rebuild afterwards

Malfeas is post-colonial culture.

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just so much reaching lol

 

[MJ12 Commando]

Theoretically, if you assume breeding can be regained[1]​, sure, if you have the records and tools to keep track of the lineage of everyone and set up a system to, bluntly, breed out mortals, you could do that. [2]​

But even the potential for that hasn't existed for centuries.

[1] I'm not sure if it is, or to what degree. Given Aaron Peori's thesis it could be a one drop thing.

[2] It'd be something of a moral disaster, given the simplest solutions would read like racist porn-fantasy.

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Nah all you have to do is make a deal with the Ebon Dragon to make sure that your exaltations can be passed on through something other than blood, that they can be freed and find worthy people who have lived a lifetime that qualifies them for the Exaltation. I'm sure he wouldn't make it so that these exaltations would only be able to find people who have died and exalt them, I'm sure he wouldn't make the standards incredibly fucked-up and horrible, and I'm sure it wouldn't turn all the Dragonblooded into undead husks, who must subsist on the stolen life of others and rot when they are touched by the sun.

None of that would ever happen.

 

[EarthScorpion]

Nah all you have to do is make a deal with the Ebon Dragon to make sure that your exaltations can be passed on through something other than blood, that they can be freed and find worthy people who have lived a lifetime that qualifies them for the Exaltation. I'm sure he wouldn't make it so that these exaltations would only be able to find people who have died and exalt them, I'm sure he wouldn't make the standards incredibly fucked-up and horrible, and I'm sure it wouldn't turn all the Dragonblooded into undead husks, who must subsist on the stolen life of others and rot when they are touched by the sun.

None of that would ever happen.

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Look on the plus side.

If that did hypothetically happen, your Exaltations would be more powerful than the guttering, degraded flames of the Solars. That's got to be worth something, right?

(though not as powerful as the Sidereals, it must be noted)

 

[Salty]

Nah all you have to do is make a deal with the Ebon Dragon to make sure that your exaltations can be passed on through something other than blood, that they can be freed and find worthy people who have lived a lifetime that qualifies them for the Exaltation. I'm sure he wouldn't make it so that these exaltations would only be able to find people who have died and exalt them, I'm sure he wouldn't make the standards incredibly fucked-up and horrible, and I'm sure it wouldn't turn all the Dragonblooded into undead husks, who must subsist on the stolen life of others and rot when they are touched by the sun.

None of that would ever happen.

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And absolutely none of them would get regularly ganked by Sidereal killsquads and moederous killing machines, you betcha.

 

[Talkkno]

Otherwise, male dragonblooded making an harem of mortal slaves and trying to produce as may children as possible would be an optimal tactic, eww.

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There are a lot of political reasons this would be a bad idea; the amount of political instability that would result from so many potential pie is a recipe for regicide, just look at Ottomans which did exactly this and the problems it created that the implemented the law of fratricide.

"Whichever of my sons inherits the sultanate, it behooves (is necessary for) him to kill his brothers in the interest of the world order; most jurists have approved this; let action be taken accordingly"

 

[Bursting Eagerness Soul]

Otherwise, male dragonblooded making an harem of mortal slaves and trying to produce as may children as possible would be an optimal tactic, eww.

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You could also go with the fact that most people, yaknow, don't want to do that and treat it as being as weird and unacceptable in the setting as it would be in real life. Like, yeah it's probably happened in the history of Creation, but most people would look at that and go, "eww..." Not to mention that "optimal tactics" like that only work when you expect everyone to be raging sociopaths with no goals or feelings beyond whatever you have decided the "optimal" thing to be.

 

[fdsafdsafasdfdas]

right, I always figured dragonblood populations were limited by the dynists being at least somewhat responsible(for basically that reason), rather than kept in check in whole or in part by the limits of their biology like 3e seems to suggest with the "one exalt child every 20 years max" cooldown vance just cited

 

[SinisterPorpoise]

but possibly killing a couple people at the start, that's what makes her sound bad?

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It makes her sound worse than the example I quoted yes, which was the point of quoting it in the first place.

 

[azoicennead]

Also, it makes it easy to play a female DB without having to constantly justify why you're not pregnant.

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I'm baffled by the idea that Terrestrials need to justify why they're not having kids right fucking now in general, day-to-day life. Male or female.
I realize that if the goal is to optimize pregnancy for maximum DB kids then there would be a reason to push for constant pregnancy; however, that's not most people's goal in the setting. It's generally a mix between improving their standing, pushing some ideal, and doing what they enjoy. DB culture is long past the point where they want to maximize the number of children; that's supposed to be what thinned the blood so not all their kids Exalt (because they had kids with non-DBs).

Dragon-blooded women have decades more than mortal women do; where mortals might say "oh, in a few years", Terrestrials can say "in a decade or two, I'm focusing on my career". If someone tries to force the issue, then they have to force someone with super-human skills and superpowers to go along with what they want, which is a terrible idea. In order to have anything resembling a reliable chance, you'd be tying up the time of 3-4 Terrestrials per pregnant woman (though I suppose if you put together a group home and force them all to stay there under guard you could cut it down to 1-2 Terrestrials each) instead of just waiting a while.

Getting into more mathematical reasons, a Terrestrial who lives 150 years and has a kid (on average) every 30 years will have a total of 5 kids. That's an entirely reasonable size for a family, and if each of the 5 kids has an average of 5 kids then (with 60-year generations because fudging) then the first couple, assuming they started about 50 years into the Scarlet Empress's reign (i.e. 700 years before canon start) would have a total of 48,828,125 kids.
So yeah. To get numbers resembling canon, 99.9% of those kids need to die. That's not a joke or exaggeration; 0.1% of 48,828,125 is about 50,000.
(If we account for early deaths by saying they each only average 3 kids who have 3 kids, etc., then you still get 177,147 kids as of canon start.)

You don't need to justify female DBs not being constantly pregnant because exponential growth is nuts. Also, they have super-powers.

 

[beowolf]

(If we account for early deaths by saying they each only average 3 kids who have 3 kids, etc., then you still get 177,147 kids as of canon start.)

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While I agree the Breed mechanics are dumb and unnecessary, one thing that should be noticed from them is that, given the fluff of the Realm's dynamics, maybe half the kids of full Dragonblooded will Exalt themselves. And only 10% of the kids of those who didn't will, while exalting when your nearest exalted relative is a Great-Grandparent is considered notable. Between these factors, and early deaths, it's probably best to assume they actually average around two per parent, rather than three.

That's still 2,048 active Exalts in canon for each Exalt when Her Redness took over, of which there were supposed to be less than a thousand, but still multiple hundreds. So, yeah, something's wrong.

 

[Sanctaphrax]

You could also go with the fact that most people, yaknow, don't want to do that and treat it as being as weird and unacceptable in the setting as it would be in real life. Like, yeah it's probably happened in the history of Creation, but most people would look at that and go, "eww..." Not to mention that "optimal tactics" like that only work when you expect everyone to be raging sociopaths with no goals or feelings beyond whatever you have decided the "optimal" thing to be.

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Sure. But it's still a good idea to shut down the option, because

a) there are raging sociopaths among the gods, Sidereals, and Terrestrials who are extremely competent and want there to be more DBs
and
b) sometimes player characters act like raging sociopaths.

The second reason is more important, of course. Best to shut down stuff like this before it gets started.

right, I always figured dragonblood populations were limited by the dynists being at least somewhat responsible(for basically that reason), rather than kept in check in whole or in part by the limits of their biology like 3e seems to suggest with the "one exalt child every 20 years max" cooldown vance just cited

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The Dynasty would like to have more DBs than it actually has, so that explanation doesn't work very well.

 

[azoicennead]

While I agree the Breed mechanics are dumb and unnecessary, one thing that should be noticed from them is that, given the fluff of the Realm's dynamics, maybe half the kids of full Dragonblooded will Exalt themselves. And only 10% of the kids of those who didn't will, while exalting when your nearest exalted relative is a Great-Grandparent is considered notable. Between these factors, and early deaths, it's probably best to assume they actually average around two per parent, rather than three.

That's still 2,048 active Exalts in canon for each Exalt when Her Redness took over, of which there were supposed to be less than a thousand, but still multiple hundreds. So, yeah, something's wrong.

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See, the reason I went with "average 1 kid per 30 years for 150 years" is that you can triple it and leave mothers with 90% of their time to spend not-pregnant. That's 15 kids, with huge breaks in between. When you have something like 150-200 years of fertility, you have lots of time to work with to allow for major gaps between pregnancies.
Hell, MoEP: DB says the average birth rate is "eight per century, or about one every 12 years" (page 22, section titled "Children"); compared to that, I was conservative. Using that figure, a century and a half of having kids allows for losing 75% for the purposes of continuing the line of Exaltation and still getting 3 Exalted children who go forth and multiply.
That's not accounting for Exalted children of mortal Dynasts, because I'm not willing to put together the math for that.

Either way, TL;DR is that pushing for constant pregnancy for the sake of producing more DBs is unnecessary on a cultural level and liable to backfire horribly on an individual level.

 

[Talkkno]

The Dynasty would like to have more DBs than it actually has, so that explanation doesn't work very well.

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The scarlet dynasty would also like to have stablity so as i meationed before its precarious balence.

 

[Imrix]

At the end of the day, the state religion of the Scarlet Dynasty exists to say "what the Dragonblooded want is righteous," half of all Dragonblooded are women, and pregnancy is bloody painful. If they don't want to be barefoot and pregnant all time, they're damn well going to ride out and have adventures.

 

[veekie]

Seems to me the simplest explanation is that Dragonblooded are elite nobility. The children of Dragonblooded, exalted or not, are still nobility, and must receive an elite noble's education for the children in case some of them exalt.

Nobility means you need to distribute political power, titles and land, all of which are finite resources. Which you can get more of if you go on rampant conquests, but that means you need to build up the bureaucratic infrastructure to maintain control of everything, al while the fringes will be wondering why they stay with the Empire the further out you go.

Exalted are not really well suited to being content with their place and position either, a fairly big chunk will be pushing the limits, climbing the social ladder(and kicking other exalted down who'd be rather annoyed).
So I see the typical Dragonblooded dynast lifestyle would be:
-Exalt, go make a name for yourself. Whatever titles and land you start with, you need to get more. By politics, achievement or war.
-Then get married once you are worth more than just your family name and your <insert relevant reproductive organ here>.
-Get several kids out. Let them grow up, see if any exalt. If they do, well, you have whatever you got in your adventuring days to get them their own starting kit. If not, once they're past the age of exaltation, you have another. If they ALL exalt...well, probably cut down on the babymaking for a bit until they win more resources to the House. Repeat.

The number of Dragonblooded you can support without social strife depends on your political and economic power. But since said power depends also upon the number of dragonblooded you can employ to gain it...slower growth happens for the same reason feudal nobles don't tend to have dozens of children?

 

[Eos_Astraeus]

Another reason to veto the 1 DB having a harem to build an army of DB children would be that each of those children are less likely to exalt. So it would essentially be getting a big increase for one generation, followed by a crash in the next one due to far lower breeding.

Moreover, once the kids with lower breeding exalt, there is no way of stopping them lowering the average success rate lower, because who's going to tell 2 DB's who want to have kids no?

 

[Tahu1809]

Something else to consider is that Dragon-blooded scue female at least 2 to 1. Likely more.

 

[EarthScorpion]

Something else to consider is that Dragon-blooded scue female at least 2 to 1. Likely more.

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[Accelerator]

Anyway, I found something rather interesting:

[Setting weirdness] The Tumbled Towers of Mattas-Doon
10-03-2017, 11:08 AM

(I have weird dreams sometimes)

There is a town in the South, situated on the banks of a fertile river. It would be unremarkable, save for the many fine brick ruins a few miles inland, and the needle-like tower, reaching towards the Heavens.

During the Age of Dreams, the sorcerer Mattas-Doon dreamt of ascending a tower to the heavens, and usurping the power of the moon and stars. To this end, she summoned forth five-score demon laborers, ordering them to work ceaselessly on crafting a tower which would reach the lunar surface.

It was a task of centuries, but time has less meaning for immortal spirits, and so they set about their task.
Demon-apes mucked clay and mix straw and bone and sinew for strength.
Hunched and squat men with animal faces bake bricks ceaselessly in ovens so hot the red clay is seared a reflective black.
Three figures, both man and woman, with purple skin and with neither hair nor fur nor clothing, conjure houses of shell in which they mix mortar out of blood and brazen dust.
But the most common are the three score creatures, a mix of wet fur and walking entrail. They gather the finished bricks and mortar, carrying them to the heights of the tower, adding to it's height.

The demons have no care should common men wish to walk the tower's heights. Few do; the interior is baking hot, prone to sudden updrafts of wind during the day. Cunning gaps in the supporting walls and stairs transform the upsweeping winds into weird and haunted piping, which can be heard at nearly a quarter mile away at the height of the day's heat during the height of summer. An enclave of Varangian star-priests maintain homes in the village. They prepare for journies up the tower as sherpas in the far north do those treacherous mountains- for the view of the Heavens from the ever ascending top is remarkable and is said to assist in diving the will of Heaven.

They do not care should men walk the tower's height, but it is not the tower's height that men covet and the demons do jealously guard; the brick and tile and mortar of the demon craftsmen are of quality better than found anywhere save the Blessed Isle. Alchemists will pay dearly for the brazen mortar; men of a military mind dream of even a small fortress built of those black bricks, and watching their enemy's siege weapons shatter against stone baked harder than iron.

But the bricks are purchased at only prices dear. A slave for a brick, to furnish the needful blood and bone and sinew. Ingots of tin and zinc and copper, to feed the brazen crucibles.

Better still to steal the bricks. Youngsters will sometimes climb the tower, for the builders are amazed and beguiled by human children- and while so distracted, their friends may pilfer a brick that can feed their family for a month, or a small glass pot of false-gold mortar.

The demons do not take kindly to these thieves; those that are caught will be made into the tower they sought to steal from.

And so does the Tower of Mattas-Doon rise, long since the sorcerer fell beneath treacherous blades. Others have tumbled before; felled by storm or assault. But the loyalty of the demons to their task is unbroken.

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This is entirely my opinion:

I always viewed the reason that Sidereal Charms are weird, abstract and obtuse is because the Maidens are weird, abstract and obtuse. The Charms of an Exalt represent an Exalt's personal capacities filtered through the lens of their patron's mythos and theme.

If I am an archer and a Solar, then my archery is perfected. My arrows never miss, no matter the distance or circumstance. You could blind me, mutilate my hands, cast me into a hurricane with the crudest and meanest bow, and ask me to strike a target a mile away- and I would do so. Flawlessly. Repeatedly.

You could array an army against me and I would strike them down, for each of my arrows can pierce the hearts of a score of men before stopping, for my skill at arms is beyond divine. Perfection flows from me to my bow, to my arrows! I could shatter the dome of heaven if I so wished!

But if I'm a sidereal, then it's different. My quiver holds not just arrows- but solutions. By dint of my skill, I turn deadly weapon into anything I require. From my quiver can come food, shelter, life and love. In battle my arrows are inescapable, they twist around barriers and come from every direction. Not because of any perfection, but because all possible paths lay before me and I choose them all. If you take quiver, if you strip me of my arrows, I can turn poems and curses into ammunition. Through the medium of the bow, I can touch infinity!

This is because the Sun is perfection through human pursuit. Excellence and light flow from him. The Maidens aren't that- they're obtuse and strange, often unintuitive. Their powers are parables and sutras, abstract lessons drawn from ordinary things. They don't mean to be, anymore than the Sun means to shine, they just are. By simply plucking a beautiful flower from the ground, Saturn transforms an ordinary action into a lesson of the primacy of finality, of the inevitability of death- By arriving somewhere, Mercury reflects the newness of a place as seen through the eyes of a stranger, the beginning of relationships between a person familiar and a person new!

In my mind, Sidereal charms are like they are because the Maidens chose that, they are as they are because of something inherent to the nature of the Maidens.

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[Tahu1809]

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Sorry head Canon, it late I'm on my cell phone and I forgot to add that little caveat. It's mostly based upon the fact that the original dragon-blooded majority female. Sorry I just got off of 10 hour shift I go into more detail but my bed is making it very compelling argument to get into it right now.

 

[veekie]

Sorry head Canon, it late I'm on my cell phone and I forgot to add that little caveat. It's mostly based upon the fact that the original dragon-blooded majority female. Sorry I just got off of 10 hour shift I go into more detail but my bed is making it very compelling argument to get into it right now.

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No basis in that. They created more female dragonblooded originally because thats the only way to jumpstart population numbers. The births should be equal in the second generation and then the Primordial War equalized the rest by killing most of the first batch, second batch and third batch.

However, dragonblooded have no more skew than any human population, aside from never losing females to childbirth and both males and females engaged in warfare.

 

[Talkkno]

However, dragonblooded have no more skew than any human population, aside from never losing females to childbirth and both males and females engaged in warfare.

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Wait why would female dbs never die in childbirth? Its still basicilly huge chance of getting infections and other complications even if ur bit tougher from being exalted.