- Location
- my house
I really would love to see you write up some law charms. It'd be really incredible to see you take your exquisite gaming design and marry it to your background in law.
General Exalted Thread
- Location
- NOVA
I like the concept, but have a number of questions:
What is the appropriate scope of destinies?
Do they need to have an explicit method of ending and, either way, what happens to the background when they're complete?
Does the person risking death count for breaking the destiny? What about crippling injury?
I'm assuming that crafting destinies would be Craft(Fate), but do higher strength ones need any special components to build?
I also think that the time frames should be more defined into either explicit numbers of uses per story or change the timing to once per chapter/session instead of several uses per story.
I'm not particularly familiar with Exalted game design. You'd probably want someone like @EarthScorpion or @Revlid to actually make them.
What I'd say is that her core law charm permanently gives you the ability to read rules, laws and otherwise, and shows you not what the rules were intended to do, but any and all ways the rules are being used to benefit causes/actions/people that the character has a negative intimacy towards. For example, if you look at property law, and you have a negative intimacy towards slavery, you become aware of exactly how these laws are being used by the region to oppress the enslaved. This is the root of Cecelyne's cynicism, because she at this point is too damaged and weary to see anything but the abuse of the law.
Obviously the intent is to make people jaded and go "why should I give a fuck about abusing the law and being as unfair as I can in the letter of the law, everyone else does it" but obviously you can see how it could enable someone to fight injustice. That's the fundamental core here-going into Cecelyne's law tree makes you a critical legal theorist, who understands law only as an extension of one's political viewpoints.
But if you can see the ugliness of the world and face it head-on, it gives you a powerful tool to fight injustice, and that's the fundamental irony of Cecelyne's understanding. The tools Cecelyne gives to prove her point, ironically, give a legal reformist the perfect weapons to prove it wrong.
It would then branch into two trees: The first one would be the 'understanding law' tree, which gives you more tools to understand and defeat law as a social construct, and the 'enforcement of law' one, which starts by letting you decree a thing and make it True by granting bonuses/better TNs (as a Sorcerous effect), has upgrades that build up on that system by allowing you to bend it and add more conditions to it, and then gives you more and more tools which let you smash anything that tries to break your system.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
My view is that Cecelyne's law exists solely as a spiteful minefield to trap anyone who walks within it.
Everyone is a criminal in Malfeas. Everyone is breaking at least one law, all the time, and if you're not punished it's because you're strong enough to get away with it (for now), and if you are punished it's because you were too weak or too poor. You're all sinners, you're all damned, and whether you're judged or escape a guilty verdict, either way that's just a gleeful validation of the unfairness of it all. Cecelyne's law is perfect because, as she would have it, her law mirrors life. The world is her courtroom, and every breath you take is a crime, and every tear you shed is nothing less than your expected and deserved punishment.
Cecelyne has Charms to restore order, yes, but they're Charms which enforce slavery: which instruct the gods to accept the chains the Primordials placed on them at birth, and which force demons to bow their heads and avert their eyes from one who power cannot be questioned. She does not geas someone to do their job because they are suited to it, she crushes their nose against the grindstone because the small submit to the great, and we are all slaves before the pyramids of the cosmos.
And no doubt a great many Solar lawyers of the First Age did indeed mock her philosophy and declare that she was a self-fulfilling prophet, and their laws proved her wrong because they had built a just system which upheld virtue and fostered a world where mere force bent the knee to morality.
And they were butchered at their feasting by ten thousand Dragon-blooded, and their houses fell into ruin, and they are known today only as ancient and vanished demons.
And laughter hisses across the silver sands of the Endless Desert.
Last edited:
Jon Chung
=][=
Remember that the base law charm Cecelyne has in her core set, Counter-Pronouncement of Enthymemic Law, lets you make up arbitrary bullshit on the spot to render an attempt to use shaping or mental influence on you illegal and therefore nonfunctional (perfect parry). The charm explicitly notes that it doesn't care if you're contradicting yourself with previously established Counter-Pronouncements (there goes precedent...), and doesn't even require the "law" to make logical sense. The only restriction is that you may not set the weak above the strong, and that you need to spend a Willpower if you don't want to develop an Intimacy towards your newly proclaimed bullshit.
If this is the root of her legal tree (presumably it would be), whatever's built on top of it is very likely going to be even funnier.
If this is the root of her legal tree (presumably it would be), whatever's built on top of it is very likely going to be even funnier.
Last edited:
So I could join their game. I don't want to subject players to me behind the DM seat again.You rang?
Tenfoldshields Setting Homebrew: Laguz
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That feel when you've chewed over an idea so long it's basically lost all flavor but you still gotta just spit it out
Laguz: The Maw Of Malice
They came from the West, those men of Karn: their backs to the setting Sun, dragon-headed prows cutting into oil black oceans as they sailed through the night. Mercury, mother of Journeys, guiding their way as blue-lit beasts finned through the abyssal deeps. Watching the slim, wooden ships as they skimmed across the slopes of the heaving, thundering waves. Cresting the peaks in sprays of white. Racing down the glassy flanks. Laguz is one of the oldest extant settlements in Tiangou and has been continuously inhabited since the fall of the Shogunate. A city of stone set in a sheltered cove; grassy tiers carved into the cliffs, the ancient Shogunate bunker at the core overcome and overgrown. Inner guts bared to the skies: sprawling command quarters re-purposed as palatial manors, sleek supercrete corridors turned to roads and boulevards. Laguz lives under the threat of constant siege: river-bound dreadnoughts or kronen-mounted Icewalkers from the South. Kin-raiders to the West. Necrotic terrors of the North. But, as with all things, one becomes accustomed and life? Life must go on.
Hurricane Season
Rain, the rain, the endless rain. Laguz has perhaps thirty days of blue skies and sunshine the whole year, it's almost always raining otherwise and when it isn't? The sky is often the color of lead and steel, beams of light barely breaking through the clouds; a brief respite before the deluge resumes. Chill fog and endless, rippling veils of fine misty rain in Spring. Torrential, thunder-wracked downpours that turn gutters into raging rivers in Summer. Witch's lightning in the sky and black winds that set the trees thrashing and clawing at the walls in Autumn. And the endless midnight of Winter, when sleet turns to snow and shadows deepen into pools of liquid ink. When the city's pyromancers turn out in endlessly burning flame-masks and Titanbone harness just to melt the skin of the harbor with their familiars.
The climate is a constant reminder: Laguz is never truly at peace, Laguz is never truly safe and even on the brightest, clearest day of Wood storm-clouds linger on the horizon. Three months ago a colossus of whalebone and rotting fish-flesh crashed through the Rampart Islands, dead white-jelly eyes studding its body, ribbed gullet hanging wide. Drowned yidak plagued the city for months after it was slain. Three months before that outriders from the Icewalker Confederation swam up the River of Tears to raid, clad in black sealskin and clinging to woven seaweed harnesses hooked about saurian, cetacean seamonsters. Each of their kronen the width and length of a Realm junk. Three months before that it was Karn.
The rain gets to you. Wears open cracks in your head and drips into your heart. Over time one finds themselves taking solace from the once-claustrophobic corridors and endless stone. Every curtain wall and guardian gate like a comfortable shawl draped about their shoulders, keeping in something of the warmth.
Stone Marrow and Supercrete Skin
Rampart Island, Fifth Coil is the northernmost of the island forts that guard the city's harbor. A steep, knife-edged shard of land upthrust from the grey-green waters, crooked and bent trees growing from fissures in the sheer stone skin. Once this place and others like it comprised the Shogunate's security cordon about their buried fortress. Colossal Essence-cannons set back in jadesteel reinforced nests. Their complex mechanical guts reaching through rock, tangling with each other. But the Lunargent cabling is tarnished now and the brass piping corroded; armored panels bent and broken in by green roots. The vats of molten metal long since cooled. Now half-tamed Elementals of every stripe crawl and nest and sleep and feed here, burrowing through the Fifth Coil's skin. Emerging into hallways to beg for attention, food, or affection. With coaxing by the islands shrines they can be induced to crudely power the dormant artillery once more.
Anhelan Ward is host to the largest hospital in Hushen's Belt, a center for learning and treatment built about the nucleus of the old Shogunate medical bay and encompassing the larger portion of an entire tier. Conjoined buildings forking and spiderwebbing over the vast, grass-topped riser; a warren of honeycombed wards within. Bunks for the poor fill spartan halls closer to the outside. To the busy streets and cold, wet air. Perhaps unpleasant but the linens are clean, the food is hot, and the staff here are bound by ancient oath to tend to all the city's populace. Wealthier patrons enjoy their privacy in residential wings of the old shelter. Sharp, twisting stairs cut into sides of the surrounding tiers, granting discrete access to the levels above and below. The small Manse at the center draws water from the storm-channels of Laguz. Purifying it into gems of crystallized cleansing.
Hagalaz Hall is an institution of the Beastmen quarter. A long meadhall in the traditional Karnic style, albeit hewn from stone rather than stout timber, crouched on the lowest tier of Laguz. Hemmed on two sides by a river fed by one of the city's waterfalls and overlooking one of the poorer, more rickety docks. Private apartments about it, communal tables within. Wooden steamrooms and baths worked into the cavern network that stretches beneath it. A colossal swathe of paneling pinned with hundreds of yellowing advertisements and requests for aid. Solid and sturdy, old and unlovely, this place's patrons are primarily soldiers of fortune and specialists for hire. Leopard Sealmen in rune-etched nacre, waiting around a table for treasure seekers to purchase their services. Hulking half-human River Dragons sitting half submerged in steaming water, eyes glazed and glassy. Black-beaked Squidmen arguing over a tab. Paying strangers are hardly unwelcome but this place caters to a specific kind of clientele.
Government and Culture
Laguz is (mis)managed by the Sublime Sub-Minister for Installation Zero Nine: Jokamachi. A fragment of grace from the age of the Ochre Fountain, recovered during the height of the Shogunate and preserved in the centuries hence. Taking the shape of one of the local Umibozu, albeit swollen to a massive scale, it appears as an elemental formed from freezing blue saltwater. An unsettling mix of sleek-headed seal and writhing, tentacular celpholapod. Veins of golden orichalcum patterned beneath the liquid flesh and enormous black jade control rods rising from its back. He is ancient, knowledgeable, and quite insane. Endlessly murmuring to himself in his tumbaga capped tank. What lucidity he has fractured and divided between the disparate intelligences encompassed within his four primary tendril-pods, each possessing its own priorities and rough personalities. Yet even his fragmented knowledge has allowed the inhabitants to make effective use out of much of the buried facility and his deep understanding of area threats has saved the city several times.
The day to day affairs of Laguz are handled by the Jarl, descendant of the ancient Karnic chiefs who came to these shores, and her task is an utterly thankless one. A ceaseless succession of dousing progressively larger fires even as the inferno of Nine-Tails-Tarnished and the ever harsher demands of her nominal lord burn brightly on the horizon. Her father died in office, alcohol having chewed his liver into so much scar tissue and his favored narcotics claiming the rest. Her grandmother died of a colossal heart attack in the midst of an Icewalker siege. The current Jarl is determined not to go out in the same fashion, leading her to undertake increasingly underhanded methods of resolving nascent crises.
Within Laguz the endless pressure has twisted and contorted many of the major clans. While on the surface everyone seems to stand shoulder to shoulder, beneath an oil black sea churns and seethes. Generations of long-suppressed rage, buried spite and remembered slights, accumulating. Rising without hope of release for the city is always in danger and their duty must be done.
Religion
A deceptively young organization the Immaculate Mythos is the steward of much of the region's faith. Its roots are old, its doctrine a melange of ancient traditions, heterodox rites and heretical rituals, wearing the face and flesh of the Immaculate Order; vestments so helpfully provided by those southern monks. Contact with the Realm was always intermittent, the domain of colossal riverine craft and long-distance aerial carriers. Upon the region's assumption into a satrapy even the most zealous of abbots found themselves operating at the end of an almost unmanageably long supply chain. Sufficient to construct sovereign enclaves, woefully inadequate to truly make headway against centuries of established culture. In the end the best that could be done was to sheathe the whole mess in the dogma of Looky and the Realm but even that proved susceptible to mutation and drift in the two decades since.
Dragons are the embodiment of absolute perfection, the attainment of true enlightenment. But, for the Mythos, this enlightenment is found, not in serene hierarchy, but in intense collectivization. Unity forged from disparity, the various portions of mankind and the state coming together as organs of the body politic. Every one an extension of the guiding will, an expression of divine might. The greater identity that blissfully subsumes the self. In addition to the serpents of classical understanding the Mythos freely incorporates the heroes and godheads of subordinate groups into its study and has no particular proscription against artistic depiction. Common additions include: the Dragons of Dawn and Dusk (easily recognized as Sol and Luna), the Five-Way-Wyrms (the Maidens), but also the Dragon Without who dwells in the chaos of the Wyld and stirs it with his maddening piping and the Ashen Dragon who dwells in the lands of the dead.
Economy
Situated on the shores of the Gulf of Malice, where the great bay narrows to the River of Tears, Laguz exerts a tremendous amount of control on marine trade passing from the White Sea to the Threshold heartland. Taxes fill the coffers, outfitting a fine fleet on the city's behalf. Besides the well stocked seas Laguz is a distillation of half of Tiangou's trade. Mukade rail-fortresses carry blood-red lumber, harvested bone, and jade ingots from the mountains. Spices from the North-East. Chemical salts and reagents from the South-East. Adventurers stock slim merchant junks with exotic finds and mercenaries stride the decks of their charges. Journeys south through the Saltspire League and Icewalker Confederation are fraught. "Tribute" paid to a given Chieftain is increasingly less of a guarantee of safety as the Bull's varied deputies and captains vie for prominence when his attention is turned.
Magical Materials!
Igdrazil Ash
Towering trees rising, vast snow-laden branches creaking in the night like a ship at sea. Produced in Northern factory-forests, this steel-hard scarlet-stained ash is favored by the Chosen of Hesiesh, cinder divinities, pyromancers, and all manner of fire-elementals. The uses are legion: staves and pendants carved from the stuff endow the bearer with finer control over primordial flames while balled soot and sap nourish aspected spiritual fauna. Luxurious red laquered screens ward away seasonal chills while oils and extracts boil away unhealthy abundances of Water. Tending the manses is a delicate craft. Rich veins of green and red jade must be present and the boles themselves often become home to powerful elementals which must be placated. Yet particularly fine cuttings of crimson wood often carry some sliver of that power inside them, a "tame" lesser spawn or crawling, spark-eyed kin. Nesting within the bloody timber.
Titanbone
Something died, something so colossal that its bleak bone coils drape over three mountainsides and two valleys. Something so massive that it's ribs rise like a grisly cathedral over a black sand beach and stark white surf. There are a dozen sources -a saber-toothed skull the size of a house, a series of stone spines embedded in a cliff- but the functions are largely the same. In places of primordial death the fossils of fallen behemoths endure. Lesser ossuraries may be carefully quarried out, mined clean, while the larger charnel pits only seem to grow larger, year after year, slowly regenerating in winter. Structures, armor, and necrotech assemblies that incorporate the bone into their construction are better suited to resist nature's harsher hand and vagaries of climate. When polished the material has a smokey shine, reflecting swirling, blurred stars and strange, celestial bodies no longer present in the sky.
Laguz: The Maw Of Malice
They came from the West, those men of Karn: their backs to the setting Sun, dragon-headed prows cutting into oil black oceans as they sailed through the night. Mercury, mother of Journeys, guiding their way as blue-lit beasts finned through the abyssal deeps. Watching the slim, wooden ships as they skimmed across the slopes of the heaving, thundering waves. Cresting the peaks in sprays of white. Racing down the glassy flanks. Laguz is one of the oldest extant settlements in Tiangou and has been continuously inhabited since the fall of the Shogunate. A city of stone set in a sheltered cove; grassy tiers carved into the cliffs, the ancient Shogunate bunker at the core overcome and overgrown. Inner guts bared to the skies: sprawling command quarters re-purposed as palatial manors, sleek supercrete corridors turned to roads and boulevards. Laguz lives under the threat of constant siege: river-bound dreadnoughts or kronen-mounted Icewalkers from the South. Kin-raiders to the West. Necrotic terrors of the North. But, as with all things, one becomes accustomed and life? Life must go on.
Hurricane Season
Rain, the rain, the endless rain. Laguz has perhaps thirty days of blue skies and sunshine the whole year, it's almost always raining otherwise and when it isn't? The sky is often the color of lead and steel, beams of light barely breaking through the clouds; a brief respite before the deluge resumes. Chill fog and endless, rippling veils of fine misty rain in Spring. Torrential, thunder-wracked downpours that turn gutters into raging rivers in Summer. Witch's lightning in the sky and black winds that set the trees thrashing and clawing at the walls in Autumn. And the endless midnight of Winter, when sleet turns to snow and shadows deepen into pools of liquid ink. When the city's pyromancers turn out in endlessly burning flame-masks and Titanbone harness just to melt the skin of the harbor with their familiars.
The climate is a constant reminder: Laguz is never truly at peace, Laguz is never truly safe and even on the brightest, clearest day of Wood storm-clouds linger on the horizon. Three months ago a colossus of whalebone and rotting fish-flesh crashed through the Rampart Islands, dead white-jelly eyes studding its body, ribbed gullet hanging wide. Drowned yidak plagued the city for months after it was slain. Three months before that outriders from the Icewalker Confederation swam up the River of Tears to raid, clad in black sealskin and clinging to woven seaweed harnesses hooked about saurian, cetacean seamonsters. Each of their kronen the width and length of a Realm junk. Three months before that it was Karn.
The rain gets to you. Wears open cracks in your head and drips into your heart. Over time one finds themselves taking solace from the once-claustrophobic corridors and endless stone. Every curtain wall and guardian gate like a comfortable shawl draped about their shoulders, keeping in something of the warmth.
Stone Marrow and Supercrete Skin
Rampart Island, Fifth Coil is the northernmost of the island forts that guard the city's harbor. A steep, knife-edged shard of land upthrust from the grey-green waters, crooked and bent trees growing from fissures in the sheer stone skin. Once this place and others like it comprised the Shogunate's security cordon about their buried fortress. Colossal Essence-cannons set back in jadesteel reinforced nests. Their complex mechanical guts reaching through rock, tangling with each other. But the Lunargent cabling is tarnished now and the brass piping corroded; armored panels bent and broken in by green roots. The vats of molten metal long since cooled. Now half-tamed Elementals of every stripe crawl and nest and sleep and feed here, burrowing through the Fifth Coil's skin. Emerging into hallways to beg for attention, food, or affection. With coaxing by the islands shrines they can be induced to crudely power the dormant artillery once more.
Anhelan Ward is host to the largest hospital in Hushen's Belt, a center for learning and treatment built about the nucleus of the old Shogunate medical bay and encompassing the larger portion of an entire tier. Conjoined buildings forking and spiderwebbing over the vast, grass-topped riser; a warren of honeycombed wards within. Bunks for the poor fill spartan halls closer to the outside. To the busy streets and cold, wet air. Perhaps unpleasant but the linens are clean, the food is hot, and the staff here are bound by ancient oath to tend to all the city's populace. Wealthier patrons enjoy their privacy in residential wings of the old shelter. Sharp, twisting stairs cut into sides of the surrounding tiers, granting discrete access to the levels above and below. The small Manse at the center draws water from the storm-channels of Laguz. Purifying it into gems of crystallized cleansing.
Hagalaz Hall is an institution of the Beastmen quarter. A long meadhall in the traditional Karnic style, albeit hewn from stone rather than stout timber, crouched on the lowest tier of Laguz. Hemmed on two sides by a river fed by one of the city's waterfalls and overlooking one of the poorer, more rickety docks. Private apartments about it, communal tables within. Wooden steamrooms and baths worked into the cavern network that stretches beneath it. A colossal swathe of paneling pinned with hundreds of yellowing advertisements and requests for aid. Solid and sturdy, old and unlovely, this place's patrons are primarily soldiers of fortune and specialists for hire. Leopard Sealmen in rune-etched nacre, waiting around a table for treasure seekers to purchase their services. Hulking half-human River Dragons sitting half submerged in steaming water, eyes glazed and glassy. Black-beaked Squidmen arguing over a tab. Paying strangers are hardly unwelcome but this place caters to a specific kind of clientele.
Government and Culture
Laguz is (mis)managed by the Sublime Sub-Minister for Installation Zero Nine: Jokamachi. A fragment of grace from the age of the Ochre Fountain, recovered during the height of the Shogunate and preserved in the centuries hence. Taking the shape of one of the local Umibozu, albeit swollen to a massive scale, it appears as an elemental formed from freezing blue saltwater. An unsettling mix of sleek-headed seal and writhing, tentacular celpholapod. Veins of golden orichalcum patterned beneath the liquid flesh and enormous black jade control rods rising from its back. He is ancient, knowledgeable, and quite insane. Endlessly murmuring to himself in his tumbaga capped tank. What lucidity he has fractured and divided between the disparate intelligences encompassed within his four primary tendril-pods, each possessing its own priorities and rough personalities. Yet even his fragmented knowledge has allowed the inhabitants to make effective use out of much of the buried facility and his deep understanding of area threats has saved the city several times.
The day to day affairs of Laguz are handled by the Jarl, descendant of the ancient Karnic chiefs who came to these shores, and her task is an utterly thankless one. A ceaseless succession of dousing progressively larger fires even as the inferno of Nine-Tails-Tarnished and the ever harsher demands of her nominal lord burn brightly on the horizon. Her father died in office, alcohol having chewed his liver into so much scar tissue and his favored narcotics claiming the rest. Her grandmother died of a colossal heart attack in the midst of an Icewalker siege. The current Jarl is determined not to go out in the same fashion, leading her to undertake increasingly underhanded methods of resolving nascent crises.
Within Laguz the endless pressure has twisted and contorted many of the major clans. While on the surface everyone seems to stand shoulder to shoulder, beneath an oil black sea churns and seethes. Generations of long-suppressed rage, buried spite and remembered slights, accumulating. Rising without hope of release for the city is always in danger and their duty must be done.
Religion
A deceptively young organization the Immaculate Mythos is the steward of much of the region's faith. Its roots are old, its doctrine a melange of ancient traditions, heterodox rites and heretical rituals, wearing the face and flesh of the Immaculate Order; vestments so helpfully provided by those southern monks. Contact with the Realm was always intermittent, the domain of colossal riverine craft and long-distance aerial carriers. Upon the region's assumption into a satrapy even the most zealous of abbots found themselves operating at the end of an almost unmanageably long supply chain. Sufficient to construct sovereign enclaves, woefully inadequate to truly make headway against centuries of established culture. In the end the best that could be done was to sheathe the whole mess in the dogma of Looky and the Realm but even that proved susceptible to mutation and drift in the two decades since.
Dragons are the embodiment of absolute perfection, the attainment of true enlightenment. But, for the Mythos, this enlightenment is found, not in serene hierarchy, but in intense collectivization. Unity forged from disparity, the various portions of mankind and the state coming together as organs of the body politic. Every one an extension of the guiding will, an expression of divine might. The greater identity that blissfully subsumes the self. In addition to the serpents of classical understanding the Mythos freely incorporates the heroes and godheads of subordinate groups into its study and has no particular proscription against artistic depiction. Common additions include: the Dragons of Dawn and Dusk (easily recognized as Sol and Luna), the Five-Way-Wyrms (the Maidens), but also the Dragon Without who dwells in the chaos of the Wyld and stirs it with his maddening piping and the Ashen Dragon who dwells in the lands of the dead.
Economy
Situated on the shores of the Gulf of Malice, where the great bay narrows to the River of Tears, Laguz exerts a tremendous amount of control on marine trade passing from the White Sea to the Threshold heartland. Taxes fill the coffers, outfitting a fine fleet on the city's behalf. Besides the well stocked seas Laguz is a distillation of half of Tiangou's trade. Mukade rail-fortresses carry blood-red lumber, harvested bone, and jade ingots from the mountains. Spices from the North-East. Chemical salts and reagents from the South-East. Adventurers stock slim merchant junks with exotic finds and mercenaries stride the decks of their charges. Journeys south through the Saltspire League and Icewalker Confederation are fraught. "Tribute" paid to a given Chieftain is increasingly less of a guarantee of safety as the Bull's varied deputies and captains vie for prominence when his attention is turned.
Magical Materials!
Igdrazil Ash
Towering trees rising, vast snow-laden branches creaking in the night like a ship at sea. Produced in Northern factory-forests, this steel-hard scarlet-stained ash is favored by the Chosen of Hesiesh, cinder divinities, pyromancers, and all manner of fire-elementals. The uses are legion: staves and pendants carved from the stuff endow the bearer with finer control over primordial flames while balled soot and sap nourish aspected spiritual fauna. Luxurious red laquered screens ward away seasonal chills while oils and extracts boil away unhealthy abundances of Water. Tending the manses is a delicate craft. Rich veins of green and red jade must be present and the boles themselves often become home to powerful elementals which must be placated. Yet particularly fine cuttings of crimson wood often carry some sliver of that power inside them, a "tame" lesser spawn or crawling, spark-eyed kin. Nesting within the bloody timber.
Titanbone
Something died, something so colossal that its bleak bone coils drape over three mountainsides and two valleys. Something so massive that it's ribs rise like a grisly cathedral over a black sand beach and stark white surf. There are a dozen sources -a saber-toothed skull the size of a house, a series of stone spines embedded in a cliff- but the functions are largely the same. In places of primordial death the fossils of fallen behemoths endure. Lesser ossuraries may be carefully quarried out, mined clean, while the larger charnel pits only seem to grow larger, year after year, slowly regenerating in winter. Structures, armor, and necrotech assemblies that incorporate the bone into their construction are better suited to resist nature's harsher hand and vagaries of climate. When polished the material has a smokey shine, reflecting swirling, blurred stars and strange, celestial bodies no longer present in the sky.
Last edited:
On the one hand, Cecelyne as depicted in 2e canon is not a critical lawyer.
On the other, I rather got the idea that this was more like Revlid's SWLiHN rewrite, where you start with the new principles and work out an entire new charmset, throwing out anything you don't like. That way, you can establish precedent and logical sense from the start, and maybe turn her evil genie charms into ES's version, where you actually have to fulfill your mark's wish to get any benefits.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The issue here is that this is not a law charm, not really. This is an 'arbitrary random taboo' charm, and the distinction between the two is critical if you want Cecelyne's philosophy to make any sense. The way Cecelyne's laws are set up are all Realm triremes to me, in the sense that it's just unfitting. "Yawn, another misunderstanding of legal theory and the nature of judicial injustice, take ten." It's comic book law, more or less. It ignores things like international law, which is law that is very much designed to enable the strong to do what they want and morally justify doing so, for something trite.
The reason I say Cecelyne is a critical legal theorist is because if you're aware of the history of critical legal theory, it came about when the American left lost the US Supreme Court, and suddenly all their decades of precedent set in the New Deal and beyond, decades of precedent, started getting overturned. Critical Legal Studies was a reaction to that, because it was important to ask why these long-standing precedents suddenly became 'bad law,' and critical legal theory came out of the affair, which suggested that law was a political environment where political and social strength-force-mattered. But yet, it was still law. It didn't stop being law and become newly proclaimed bullshit simply because five conservatives decided to reverse decades or centuries of precedent.
So I think it's much more interesting if Cecelyne is a critical legal theorist because the same insight would apply to her-the law is something imposed to justify the strong, and it will not protect you against injustice because even if the law is fair and consistently applied and acts like law, the law exists as a political prize to those in power-"this is illegal" may have meaning, but it is tainted by the fact that all law enables the powerful and harms the weak by its nature. It also makes her theoretical charmset a lot more interesting than 'play Calvinball' because it would be about creating 'fair' conditions that fuck with the other guy a lot more than you. As a Melee 5 (Swords + 3) master swordsman, declare that the use of archery is a violation of the laws of war. It's procedurally fair, after all. Both parties aren't allowed to use bows. But you have Archery 2, and the other guy has Archery 5 (Long Range Sniper Bullshit +3) and goes "but this isn't substantively fair" before you stab him to death with your sword and go "that's the point. Get it? Point? Ha ha ha ha ha."
Cecelyne as rules lawyer versus Cecelyne as calvinball player also works really well with her 'asshole genie' shtick.
Jon Chung
=][=
I see this as her having explicitly given up on law entirely, as opposed to creating her own system of law - she knows she's not creating law, she's just making arbitrary spiteful capricious decrees for the sole purpose of watching the demon-serfs of Malfeas tie themselves in knots trying to comply with her Calvinball rules, which is fundamentally, inherently impossible because they're self-contradictory. Even if they weren't at the time, she can make new ones at will whenever she feels like it.
Your Infernal character, by contrast, can willingly decide to construct a coherent system of law, as the charm doesn't mandate you make illogical self-contradictory pronouncements, it simply allows you to do so. Similarly, I assume pre-Primordial War Cecelyne also chose to not play Calvinball, and it was possible to win a legal argument with her (hit her with mental influence, she doesn't perfect parry with arbitrary bullshit) because she hadn't yet decided that there was no such thing as law, only the RULES OF NATURE.
Note that the functional end result of this charm is "every shaping effect or mental influence effect I don't want hitting me is illegal for arbitrary reasons and I can ignore it completely, until you run me out of motes, and I must comply for I have been crushed by force".
Last edited:
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
This is super, super cool, and I want to play a game here.
Among other things I'm vaguely reminded of Pacific Rim's Hong Kong, for some reason. Although-
-I see you there Junji Ito.
Yes, Cecelyne's not interested in enabling the strong. Her law won't adapt to Ligier's whims because he's a powerful lobbyist, he just gets to ignore punishment. Her law is an arbitrary joke, and intended as such. The core goal of her philosophy isn't "aha, so now you understand the inherent flaw of all legal systems", it's "get fucked, peasant, lol". She doesn't set up circuitous and contradictory laws that you can't help but break as a clever rhetorical device, she does so because it lets her priests murder whoever they please and call it judgement, and that's bitterly amusing to her.
Yours is an interesting take, but I'm not sure I prefer it to the canon Cecelyne. Could certainly lead to some fun Infernal lobbying, mind you.
("here's a list of the unquestionables who offered thoughts and prayers after yesterday's use of ghost-eating technique")
Last edited:
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Pretty much. I don't think Cecelyne is where you should go if you want to make some insightful commentary on the nature of legal theory. Ultimately, she's a Yozi. That is, she's a mad, broken, hateful Titan trapped beyond the world and wrapped up in her own neuroses. It's like how Adorjan isn't actually making some biting commentary on Buddhist philosophy, but rather acting out a childish "nothing can hurt me if I don't care SEE HOW MUCH I DON'T CARE" attitude writ large. So, yes, the foundation of Cecelyne's law magic is arbitrary random taboos instead of actual law, because Cecelyne has given up on law. That's the point.
If you want to actually make some insightful commentary on critical legal theory in Creation, I feel like you'd be better off doing it somewhere that's both more rational and... well, somewhere that actually matters to 90% of the setting, rather than a mad, broken Titan sealed away from the world in the guts of her king where she can't hurt anybody.
Off the top of my head, I'd probably do something with a Realm satrapy where local law has been co-opted but not replaced outright, so you have both the local laws and the Realm's legal code in effect, and the two often conflict, leading to fierce political battles in the guise of legal arguments as a spirit of defiance grows among the local populace.
If you want to actually make some insightful commentary on critical legal theory in Creation, I feel like you'd be better off doing it somewhere that's both more rational and... well, somewhere that actually matters to 90% of the setting, rather than a mad, broken Titan sealed away from the world in the guts of her king where she can't hurt anybody.
Off the top of my head, I'd probably do something with a Realm satrapy where local law has been co-opted but not replaced outright, so you have both the local laws and the Realm's legal code in effect, and the two often conflict, leading to fierce political battles in the guise of legal arguments as a spirit of defiance grows among the local populace.
Last edited:
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I disagree. Adorjan's nature of not-caring about stuff may be a reaction to things she cares about hurting her, but she sticks to it. Once she decides so, she legitimately stops caring.
- Location
- my house
So this matches my thoughts as well, though better articulated, better thought out, and as a coherent belief system.
I would however add that Cecelyne believes this is just. She thinks that the law being a political prize given to the strong is fundamentally fair. She hates it, and she hates that she thinks it, but she still does.
Last edited:
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Yes, but she still cares quite a lot about not caring.
Stranglerfolk
Lesser Dead
Dead by Slow Hanging
A traveller ignores the local folktales a farmer tells her, and sleeps under a tree from which an old noose dangles. That night she sees the hanged man, eyes bulging and nails bloody. He speaks to her in a breathy whisper, and tells her how the farmer - his brother - framed him for a terrible crime so that he might steal his inheritance. All she needs to do is cut him down, and he can rest in piece. She does so. Alas, he was not framed. The next morning the farmer is found dead in his bed, strangled with an old rope. The traveller wanders off, bruises on her throat and a cruel mind behind her eyes.
Those ghosts who return as one of the stranglerfolk were hanged and were not granted the mercy of a quick death. They wear their deathmarks clearly, and on their corpus the rope still dangles from around their swollen neck. Stranglerfolk are intensely angry ghosts. As long as the rope that kills them remains intact, they are bound to the tree and this gives them a very long time for their rage to simmer. Their bony hands have a terrible strength in them and when they seize a victim they throttle them slowly.
Occultists broadly categorise stranglerfolk into two broad motives; the ones who wish revenge on their killers and the ones who wish to share their pain with all and sundry. Unfortunately, the two of them are very hard to tell apart while they are still trapped. In either case, these Dead are natural body thieves. Some infamous murderers in folklore were possessed and led to kill and kill again.
Necromancers call on stranglerfolk for their capacity to puppet the living and as assassins. Bodies they snatch slowly sicken as the necrotic essence bleeds into it, wounds not healing and bruises forming on the hands and neck. Such a possession is a crude theft and gives them nothing of the memories, but these ghosts only want hands to touch the world again. Exorcists, by contrast, usually encounter stranglerfolk in a hostile context. Even when they are sympathetic or unjust victims, their slow and painful death leaves them rage-filled and viewing the world through a malevolent lens. Sometimes the only way to help them pass on, though, is to help such a ghost track down its killer - and pray they turn out to have already died in a way which satisfies them.
Lesser Dead
Dead by Slow Hanging
A traveller ignores the local folktales a farmer tells her, and sleeps under a tree from which an old noose dangles. That night she sees the hanged man, eyes bulging and nails bloody. He speaks to her in a breathy whisper, and tells her how the farmer - his brother - framed him for a terrible crime so that he might steal his inheritance. All she needs to do is cut him down, and he can rest in piece. She does so. Alas, he was not framed. The next morning the farmer is found dead in his bed, strangled with an old rope. The traveller wanders off, bruises on her throat and a cruel mind behind her eyes.
Those ghosts who return as one of the stranglerfolk were hanged and were not granted the mercy of a quick death. They wear their deathmarks clearly, and on their corpus the rope still dangles from around their swollen neck. Stranglerfolk are intensely angry ghosts. As long as the rope that kills them remains intact, they are bound to the tree and this gives them a very long time for their rage to simmer. Their bony hands have a terrible strength in them and when they seize a victim they throttle them slowly.
Occultists broadly categorise stranglerfolk into two broad motives; the ones who wish revenge on their killers and the ones who wish to share their pain with all and sundry. Unfortunately, the two of them are very hard to tell apart while they are still trapped. In either case, these Dead are natural body thieves. Some infamous murderers in folklore were possessed and led to kill and kill again.
Necromancers call on stranglerfolk for their capacity to puppet the living and as assassins. Bodies they snatch slowly sicken as the necrotic essence bleeds into it, wounds not healing and bruises forming on the hands and neck. Such a possession is a crude theft and gives them nothing of the memories, but these ghosts only want hands to touch the world again. Exorcists, by contrast, usually encounter stranglerfolk in a hostile context. Even when they are sympathetic or unjust victims, their slow and painful death leaves them rage-filled and viewing the world through a malevolent lens. Sometimes the only way to help them pass on, though, is to help such a ghost track down its killer - and pray they turn out to have already died in a way which satisfies them.
Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well sure, it's selectively not-caring, but that doesn't make it childish.
It's such a part of her nature that I'm not sure it really counts as consciously caring, either. I suppose I care about breathing, for instance, though I could hold my breath for a while if I wanted to. Similarly, Adorjan holds value to her nature as a killing wind that doesn't care about anyone, but she can care about stuff, for as long as she chooses.
- Location
- Ottawa
You're probably right. How's this?
Destiny (• to •••••) - Story
The character's destiny, or a part of it, is woven tightly. The world bends to make it happen, with effects determined by its rating as follows.
• - The destiny has little ability to enforce itself. However, it's visible to Heaven, and gods who take their job seriously will usually try to make it happen. If the destiny is in danger of being broken, it can cause a minor intervention on its own.
•• - The destiny has a noticeable effect on the working of the world. It can cause a minor intervention each story, or a moderate intervention to save itself. Gods will hesitate before acting against the destiny.
••• - The destiny represents the will of Heaven, and even corrupt gods will generally comply with it for fear of Paradox or Sidereal intervention. It can cause a moderate intervention each story or a minor intervention each session.
•••• - The destiny is a thing of tremendous power. A minor god exists whose sole role is to see it through. Even without the help of its god the destiny can cause one moderate intervention each story and a minor intervention every second scene. It can cause a major intervention if necessary to save itself from being broken.
••••• - The destiny is among the most powerful in Creation. An office of gods is dedicated to it, and the Sidereal Exalted have no intention of letting them fail in their task. The destiny itself can produce a major intervention each story or a moderate intervention each session, and can cause a minor intervention each scene as well.
• - The destiny has little ability to enforce itself. However, it's visible to Heaven, and gods who take their job seriously will usually try to make it happen. If the destiny is in danger of being broken, it can cause a minor intervention on its own.
•• - The destiny has a noticeable effect on the working of the world. It can cause a minor intervention each story, or a moderate intervention to save itself. Gods will hesitate before acting against the destiny.
••• - The destiny represents the will of Heaven, and even corrupt gods will generally comply with it for fear of Paradox or Sidereal intervention. It can cause a moderate intervention each story or a minor intervention each session.
•••• - The destiny is a thing of tremendous power. A minor god exists whose sole role is to see it through. Even without the help of its god the destiny can cause one moderate intervention each story and a minor intervention every second scene. It can cause a major intervention if necessary to save itself from being broken.
••••• - The destiny is among the most powerful in Creation. An office of gods is dedicated to it, and the Sidereal Exalted have no intention of letting them fail in their task. The destiny itself can produce a major intervention each story or a moderate intervention each session, and can cause a minor intervention each scene as well.
By the way, Worm worked fine before the entities showed up. It's not all about the cosmic angle except in fanon.
Infinite, but attaching a weak destiny to a grand objective is just asking for Paradox.
They need to have a goal that can be achieved. When they're completed, they disappear. I figure most PC-crafted or PC-attached destinies will be either death-related or sufficiently awesome that having them fulfilled is better than having a Merit.
A destiny is broken when it becomes impossible to fulfill. Death usually breaks a prophecy about what the dead being will do, but not always. Crippling rarely does. It is, by the way, intentional that destiny gives the ST a perfect excuse to contrive reasons for a PC to not die.
I'm leaving the details of destiny-crafting a little vague until the Sidereal book comes out.
- Location
- Virginia
I dunno, man. I've never found this sort of mechanic ("destiny gives you buffs to fulfilling the destiny") really engaging. In a player's hands it has all the usual problems with granting benefits of notionally narrow scope (you can usually turn that scope into "everything I want to do"); applied to NPCs the mechanics will get abstracted anyway.
A while ago @barbecue on the discord wrote up this which approaches Fate from the other direction, and I think it's more fruitful for it. There aren't any on-screen mechanics, but the resolution mechanism it describes is really helpful for figuring out when and how a destiny succeeds off-screen.
The issue with that is that Legalist Cecelyne was at the core, to some extent, of Primordial Cecelyne's very existence, and I don't think that she suffered fetich death, which I think would be required to take her out of that paradigm, because it's a shift comparable to Theion->Malfeas or Adrian->Adjoran. Even when she shows cynicism towards the law, she should express it in a paradigm that is informed by her innate nature as a lawmaker, which means that the things she declares should still be recognizable as law. Solar Lon Fuller should be able to go 'yeah this sure is law, it's awful but it sure is law' when looking at the Laws of Malfeas or whatever.
Procedurally, Cecelyne's legal proclamations should be fine in a Fullerian, due process morality sense (the eight conditions I mention in my prior posts). They just fail all of Aquinas's tenets as to what makes good law:
1. They are not based upon good intentions;
2. They do not fairly distribute the burden of compliance;
3. They do not actually come from just authority.
- Location
- Spain
Ohh, this is quite nice. Shame it's incomplete.
Can Primordials even undergo such dramatic shifts without one of their third circles being axed though? As far I'm aware; Autobot sewing up his second circles to the divine ministers didn't change his personality.
Last edited: