I mean, the Four Horsemen +1 would make a great Abyssal Circle concept.
Probably nothing. "Depression" was the next autofill option after squares for me as well, followed by "a dragon."
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General Exalted Thread
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Infernal with past life 5
hls
War hamster
The funny/sad thing is, I literally can't even remember whatever it was I apparently said about your Alchemical homebrew or idea or whatever it was all those years ago that is apparently going to send you to your grave still vibrating with rage.
Azrael
Sakura Saber
- Location
- Throne of Heroes
...There are airships in canon that are completely not artifice. The principles behind primitive airplanes like those of the Wright Brothers work perfectly well in Creation, even if the 'engine' has a tiny air elemental or something rather than being combustion-based. Nexus has trolley cars, and while I can't recall an example of trains specifically in canon there is nothing about 'sending a carriage along a pre-prepared path/rails' that polities or individuals in Creation can't figure out, even if the rails are wood and the train is pulled by Yeddim.
- Location
- East of the Sun and West of the Moon
You can always just hold onto them until you find an airship. Or need to bribe an alchemist with a shitload of a valuable material. Or have to negotiate with someone who'd be intimidated by being in a room with three giant spheres of superacid.In the game I'm playing, I'm wondering what to do with the three giant jade spheres filled with enough vitriol (suspended within the spheres so as not to let them actually touch the jade because even that would be melted away in time) to ruin the Threshold's largest jade mine that the mines' previous owner had as a way to destroy everything if he were to lose control. Luckily the other players managed to work around that (accidentally) when I sent my forces in, but now there's just three orbs filled with horrifically powerful acid and I haven't the slightest clue what to do with them. If I had an airship, I could just drop the damn things on Cold House (since its masters have been doing rather irritating things such as summoning Dukantha AND his boat to fuck with me) and really fuck over everybody in there, but since I don't, I'm wondering what the heck do I do with these things because I don't want them in the mines.
My first thought is a Solar doing some bonkers things with Performance. Fear the poses.
- Location
- my house
Really she could be any exalt depending on the aspects of her character you focus in on
I would personally say a solar leading a bunch of dragonblood
I feel the Scouts have to be Sidereals. They even have the caste marks.
Yeah that's my (limited) thought on the matter. I mean part of this was becuse shadowjack's "In which I watch" series. I want to say Usagi is a Zenith specked for Presence and (somehow)Integrity, but them what is clearly her bond-mate gets turned into a Abyssal. -\_*.*_/- I know just enough to be frustrated by not knowing enough.
It bears noting that defeating encryption in 2E is an Artifact 2 effect:
TRANSLATION CRYSTAL (ARTIFACT ••)
Repair: 3
This clear, flat, rectangular crystal is the size of a large man's hand and an eighth of an inch thick, and it's set within a narrow frame of blue jade and orichalcum. To activate this item for a scene, the wearer need only spend three motes of Essence. Whenever this artifact is placed over any piece of text thereafter, whether that text is in the tongue of the Riverlands, a rare demonic tongue spoken only in Malfeas or the most complex of the All-Seeing Eye's many codes, anyone looking at the crystal sees this text perfectly translated into Old Realm. When this item is placed against the text and activated, the item literally reads the text, and the complex circuitry inside it translates the meanings into Old Realm. This translation is then displayed upon the artifact's upper surface. The use of orichalcum in this item allows it to partake of a tiny fraction of the Unconquered Sun's limitless brilliance, so the translation is accomplished in less than a second. In addition to simply translating the language, comparing a text to the translation this artifact provides allows the character to learn the written version of any language as well as if she had a skilled tutor. (She could also use it thus to learn Old Realm if she already knows the written language the artifact is translating.) This artifact can be used to translate spells and other esoteric arcane texts as well as simply allowing the user to read texts such as a treaty between a demon lord and a raksha noble.
Repair: 3
This clear, flat, rectangular crystal is the size of a large man's hand and an eighth of an inch thick, and it's set within a narrow frame of blue jade and orichalcum. To activate this item for a scene, the wearer need only spend three motes of Essence. Whenever this artifact is placed over any piece of text thereafter, whether that text is in the tongue of the Riverlands, a rare demonic tongue spoken only in Malfeas or the most complex of the All-Seeing Eye's many codes, anyone looking at the crystal sees this text perfectly translated into Old Realm. When this item is placed against the text and activated, the item literally reads the text, and the complex circuitry inside it translates the meanings into Old Realm. This translation is then displayed upon the artifact's upper surface. The use of orichalcum in this item allows it to partake of a tiny fraction of the Unconquered Sun's limitless brilliance, so the translation is accomplished in less than a second. In addition to simply translating the language, comparing a text to the translation this artifact provides allows the character to learn the written version of any language as well as if she had a skilled tutor. (She could also use it thus to learn Old Realm if she already knows the written language the artifact is translating.) This artifact can be used to translate spells and other esoteric arcane texts as well as simply allowing the user to read texts such as a treaty between a demon lord and a raksha noble.
But as written, defeating mundane encryption in Creation is not that big a deal to someone with magical resources.
One time pad or not.
Salty
Shadow Cabal Assumptor Supreme
- Location
- Sun, Moon, Talia
- Pronouns
- I/Me
*rouses abruptly from near sleep to follow up*
And maybe the depression bit is because of all the Yozi = mental disorders stuff?
Man I really don't want the Yozis written that way anymore. Neph was way too fond of "antagonists that are sort of miserable and lame deep down"
Stop: Stop
- Pronouns
- He/Him
stop
This is pointedly uncivil and violates the thread guidelines, a violation of rules 4 and 5. Furthermore it is an unacceptable personal attack on another user, a violation of rule 3. As such, in addition to your infraction points I've permanently removed you from the thread.
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Jon Chung
=][=
We're not interpreting this the same way.
Exalted 2 said:
When I send you a message encrypted with an OTP, the message I am sending you is not coded, obscured or hidden. It's just that the message is telling you to go look stuff up in the key, which you don't have. You can understand this perfectly, it just doesn't help you.
This charm should allow you to read any message if the understandable plaintext content of the message was present in the message itself (eg, "You shall invade Ashina on the first day of the next month!"), and you just need to rearrange the message to get it back into a readable original state and/or find where I've buried it in an innocuous letter, obscured the characters or whatever. No matter how difficult my cipher, how diligently I bury my coded message or how clever my camouflage is, you can read it and understand it. This is fine, that's exactly what the charm does. This is not in dispute.
Thing is, if all that message says is "Look up character 24 (186, 78924, 11, 3... etc) in some other document, lol", you still can't figure out what I'm ordering my minion to do unless you have that other document. The content of my intended communication to my minion is not present in the message you are reading, you understand exactly what it's saying, but the charm doesn't say it can pull information that's not actually there. You get my message and can read it, but you don't have what I meant to tell my guy. That's not in the message, that's in the other document, and the charm you are using doesn't get you that other document.
A Charm that let you automagically divine what I meant to communicate is different from a Charm that allows you to read stuff through any form of code, camouflage or obfuscation. See below scenario / thought experiment.
Hmm.
Okay, here's a scenario. Dragon-Blooded Officer Steve and Dragon-Blooded Officer Alex pre-arrange between themselves a signal. Should Steve send Alex a note saying "Hey, you remember when we snuck out of the House of Bells to get sloshed on Dragon Spring sake? We should do that again!", Alex will understand that Steve wishes to signal him that their embezzlement scheme with their legion quartermaster is under threat. They agree to this beforehand.
Should Solar Bob the Night Caste be able to use the decoding charm we're talking about to understand what Steve is actually trying to tell Alex when he reads this memo, or does he only get the actual content of the memo? Personally, I think Solar Bob will only get the actual content of the memo, and to understand what Steve is intending to communicate to Alex, Solar Bob needs to have this other piece of information that isn't present in Steve's actual message, which the decoder charm isn't going to help him with. A different charm could help him, but this charm can't.
If you're running a game and this wouldn't be interesting to your players, don't throw this situation at them.
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That's a tricky one. For all her association with the moon (you know, being sailor moon), I'd probably say Solar, with some kind of Artifact 5/NA for the Silver Crystal. Most likely she's a Sorcerer with her ranged attacks and doing things like breaking possession, rewinding time and resurrecting people(Though that might be the result of the Silver Crystal).
An Infernal as somebody suggested could kind of work though.
(Hilariously awful idea, Usagi's the Fetish soul of the greater Princess Serenity Primordial with the Senshi as her other 3rd Circles. Hence why in the 90's anime everybody seems to have one overriding personality trait...)
- Location
- Virginia
This isn't too different from the spoken case of the same code, although there are fewer contextual cues. There are two clear channels through which the Solar could divine intent (before we get into fiat magic): as I keep harping on, the handwriting or calligraphy which could convey emotion (and, remember, Exalted thinks calligraphy is a Big Deal, to the point that in some editions pretty writing has similar effects to super-sexiness), or the choice of coded message could indicate something about the meaning. Sure, that doesn't sound like it's related to an embezzlement scheme, but then again I'm not a Solar with Linguistics charms.
In fact I might be tempted to let this be decoded with a mundane action at a very high difficulty, although I can see the case against that.
Jon Chung
=][=
I don't buy that being able to tell the emotional state of the writer from their handwriting (which is, certainly, possible) can allow you to decode that the memo about going drinking is actually a pre-arranged signal about embezzlement, because, specifically, this is a decoding charm, not a "I divine the intended message this was supposed to deliver to its intended recipient" charm. Did Steve encode information about the embezzlement scheme into his "let's go drinking" memo? He did not, yes? The embezzlement-related information is in Alex's head, and only the pre-existing, pre-arranged linkage between the information in Alex's head and this innocuous message allows their covert communication to work.
My position is, if you want to know that Steve is talking about embezzlement, you explicitly need a "I magically divine the intended..." charm, not a "I decode a message..." charm. Solar Linguistics is probably able to do this (at much greater cost), but not with that Charm, the same way you can't use Accuracy Without Distance to make your arrow catch on holy fire and do more damage to creatures of darkness, that's not what the charm is for. Even though Solar Archery can in fact do that with other charms, charms do only what they say they do. Pulling the information out of Alex's head, or the past conversation between Alex and Steve where they established this scheme, is not within the scope of a charm that lets you read "... coded, obscured, and hidden communication as if it were clear". There's no encoded, obscured or hidden embezzlement-related information in the content of the message.
Another example. If Alex sent Steve a memo to go open a sealed envelope marked "Order 66" and execute the order contained inside, would your decoding charm used on the memo spit out "Execute Order 66" (the plain, clear content of the memo) or "Kill the Jedi" (the content of the sealed order the memo is instructing Steve to open, and the ultimate intent of Alex's communication with Steve)?
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hls
War hamster
Setting aside all the other stuff being talked about, this isn't a good argument in and of itself. You're basically describing Letter-Within-a-Letter Technique here. And "This Charm lets the character [read/understand] coded, obscured, and hidden communication as if it were clear" 100% cracks (or at least goes to roll-off against, if we're talking 2e) Letter-Within-a-Letter. "If I send you a letter saying 'let's meet at the sushi place,' it means 'it's time to kill the Green Lord of Moat Cailin'" is the most textbook-basic example of coded communication in the world.
Let's say you're conspiring with your buddy Bob to, smuggling drugs into the Realm. Let's say your buddy Bob is about to pull into port with a ship filled to the brim with wyld cocaine or whatever. When you send him a message saying: 'We have been discovered, do what is necessary' , do charms pick up that you mean 'Our drug smuggling business has been discovered, dump the drugs into the sea', or what it actually says? Because Bob knows exactly what 'we have been discovered' means, but nobody else does. There's a sliding scale on how much or little a charm can tell you, imo. If I send my co-conspirator just a single message 'Fuck, we are dead', do you know if it means 'Our plan to assassinate the Scarlet Empress has been foiled,might as well commit suicide and escape her wrath' or 'oh no the teachers know we cheated on the exam, our parents are going to KILL us (figuratively)'.