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- Australia
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- She/Her
General Exalted Thread
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- United States
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MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
Yeah I've seen that happen to stories before. It's fucking lame.
I'm still going to have a trans character feature a very prominent role.
I 100% know I will not break SV rules on this in anyway. Like I can write full on sex scenes and it's perfectly fine. Also I just kind of fucking hate QQ with a burning passion. So I'm never posting it there.
Well all that's left is me needing to sit down and do the damn thing.
- Location
- my house
Just finished cobra kai seasons 1 and 2. That show is rife with story hooks/ideas/aesthetics you can take for your exalted game.
It's literally a show about two warring karate dojos, and miyagi-do and cobra kai are great examples of solar and infernal training respecitvely.
Seriously, at one point cobra kai ties their students arms together and throw them into the pool to increases their leg strength or drown. That's malfean as hell
It's literally a show about two warring karate dojos, and miyagi-do and cobra kai are great examples of solar and infernal training respecitvely.
Seriously, at one point cobra kai ties their students arms together and throw them into the pool to increases their leg strength or drown. That's malfean as hell
It was pretty heavily implied that Johnny would have dove in after Miguel if he really couldn't do it. But yeah, it's a surprisingly solid Martial Arts story, and I like the implication that Johnny's life ground to a halt after Daniel kicked him in the face.
Speaking of Martial Arts organizations though, I'm really enamored with the Shin Shin Kai in Grappler Baki, as a Martial Arts school that has so many members from so many levels of society that they qualify as a full on international conspiracy.
- Location
- my house
Well yeah, cause Johnny's an actually good person, but his training is rife for malfean ideas. Like when he has them roll a cement mixer from the inside, so that if they stop they get trapped
Tell me about shin shin kai?
In the Netflix series, there was a plot where an escaped convict sent a member of the Shin Shin Kai karate school to the hospital. So the approximately one million other members spread across Japan declared vengeance.
The Technocrats have finally found footage of the group of Exalts in my game. The local head immediately jumped to the only logical conclusion: anime is ruining the Consensus.
And then the two Virtual Adepts in an unmarked surveillance van a block away keep wondering why Inuyasha never fails to come up in these discussions.
Bonus convo:
And then the two Virtual Adepts in an unmarked surveillance van a block away keep wondering why Inuyasha never fails to come up in these discussions.
Bonus convo:
- Location
- Ottawa
If I ever run Exalted Modern, it will be heavily inspired by Baki the Grappler.
You talk as though those are Exalted problems, but from where I'm sitting they're just the basic problems of fictional religion. D&D, Star Wars, and various other settings with fictional religions have the same issues, except more so.
Google and my vocabulary have both failed me here.
You talk as though those are Exalted problems, but from where I'm sitting they're just the basic problems of fictional religion. D&D, Star Wars, and various other settings with fictional religions have the same issues, except more so.
Google and my vocabulary have both failed me here.
Blarg. Meant henotheism, sorry. To save you another google search, it's where you worship one deity but don't deny the existence of other deities.
Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
Your Google-Fu is weaaaak!
... Not that mine is any stronger, because the only thing that makes sense is something from a GoT wiki discussion page.
Other things around simply made my head spin. It also helps that i should be to bed...
Edit: basically the wiki page was right but at the same time wrong, as the original quoted realized that he spelled it wrong.
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- Location
- Denmark
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- She/Her
I talk about it as if its a specific problem to Exalted, because Exalted makes its reputation partially off of actually thinking about stuff like anthropology, religion and the like, but when it comes to religion, its capacity for thought seems to run out.
HamSandLich
MEAT WIZARD
- Location
- Somewhere in NOVA, possibly, maybe, presumably
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean, i agree with getting a more interesting take on religion, but the fact that Exalted's gods are objectively visible actors and part of the Celestial Bureaucracy, many of whom are overworked or corrupt in such a banal fashion, means that a lot of "mystery cults" are just gods talking out of their asses for that sweet sweet mortal worship. Case and point: Ahlat, who successfully duped Harborhead into providing an endless stream of unearned worship.
The majority of gods aren't distant and unknowable in this setting (the Yozis, Neverborn, and certain ghosts and demons are because they're so alien), they're office workers moonlighting
The majority of gods aren't distant and unknowable in this setting (the Yozis, Neverborn, and certain ghosts and demons are because they're so alien), they're office workers moonlighting
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Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Plus you know, they can actively intervene and visibly do stuff for you.
Like its a lot easier to accept worshiping someone when they breathe out a golden mist that fills your dying childs lungs and restores them to healthy state. Of course, it also can lead to many taking a more cynical attempt, trading their worship to whichever being gives them the best offer.
HamSandLich
MEAT WIZARD
- Location
- Somewhere in NOVA, possibly, maybe, presumably
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The nature of the Exalted setting is such that religion is a much more inherently transactional affair than IRL. Of course, IRL, religions attract believers by offering or claiming to offer a benefit that people want, whether that's temporal prosperity or spiritual enlightenment. In Exalted however, those benefits and their causes are easier to observe. Exalted has been great with the temporal benefit representation, so much so that its sort of a problem in-setting as it represents pervasive abuse of power. Its been less competent with spiritual enlightenment(especially since they got rid of enlightened mortals being a thing). The closest thing to the Abrahamic God are the Yozis, the closest things to Moksha and Nirvana are letting the Wyld dissolve you into chaos soup or submitting to Oblivion(and thus the closest thing to a bodhisattva is a nephwrack). Anything resembling cosmic revelation has been either super drugs or clumsily presented as objectively bad. Gaia's Shining Answer might not exist at all (and in any case, these days its more of an excuse to stay away from Creation)
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The fact that every interaction between the mortal and the divine has the baggage of "BUT AKSHUALLY THE GODS ARE ALL PART OF THE CELESTIAL BUREAUCRACY" is a major part of the problem, in my mind.
Religion being seen as transactional, too; or that transaction being boiled down to "insert prayer to receive good things." It is the issue that I think Manus was trying to get at when he said that religion in Exalted focuses on the God, and not the rituals and such. By doing so, it sets up the who's and why's of the relationship between a god and it's worshippers, but ignores the whats and the hows. Those are the things that would reflect how the worship of a god is are part of its worshipper's culture, rather than a mere business dealing. To use your example of Ahalt, his faith feeds into the culture of cattle raiding of his worshippers, and are thus intertwined; while in contrast Calida and Jorst are just sort of there as the prime deities of Halta and Linowan. And then you have the Mammoth Avatar, who has perhaps the most purely transactional relationship with her worshippers that I can think of, but that relationship is defined by mutually beneficial activities, rather than mortals inserting prayer to get her blessings.
- Location
- Spain
Honestly idk
If gods were visible people would invent invisible ones
HamSandLich
MEAT WIZARD
- Location
- Somewhere in NOVA, possibly, maybe, presumably
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The problem with Ahlat is that the entire culture of southern cattle raiding only exists because he duped some stone age tribes into screwing each other over for his favor, it is, from the ground up, a scheme by Ahlat to increase his standing. Creation is largely a bronze age existence, the majority of people are going to worship out of brutal necessity rather than as an expression of cultural ritual. Mystery cults tend to be either for the relatively wealthy or for small ethnic groups. Even ignoring that socio-economic barrier, transactional faith is some of the oldest types of faith IRL, "You sacrifice a cow and the gods grant you favor or stops chucking lightning bolts at your homes." Its why Rome made a point to worship as many gods as possible, as publicly as possible, all in an attempt to gain their favor (which is why it cracked down on judaism and early christianity b/c both were practiced indoors and rejected being incorporated into the greater system and in the former's case, was limited to a single ethnic group at the time). As science and understanding of cause and effect progressed, transactional faith got left by the wayside because it didn't offer the returns it promised, while the more spiritual aspects of faith offered something that couldn't be objectively disproved and thus gained prominence.
Evenstar
Triple Jump Unlocked
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, Her Mantle is Love is about sacred prostitution. It's Been Done. I remain unbanned.
Seriously, you have just about the strongest precedent possible on this.
I think the degree to which the average worshiper sees or gets concrete benefits from their gods has been overstated. Especially important gods rarely leave Yu-Shan and their miracles tend to be infrequent because they don't need to put on the show.
To give a minor example, take Ryzala. I expect that no one in Creation now alive has ever seen her outside of a handful of FA Lunar elders. But I also expect that the Creation equivalent of double entry bookkeeping has her name in necessary ritual formulas and probably appears to be another form of magic squares occultism to most people. But because it was created by people with excellencies and refined over centuries it is also the best way to actually record transactions. So worshiping her and doing good paperwork are almost inseparable.
There may even be "atheist" cultists of her that think the image of the thousand-armed mistress of paperwork who processes the accounts of Heaven is a visual metaphor for an abstract concept of properly formed systems and good organization. Which does not conflict with them thinking that their local god is a person they could theoretically talk to.
To give a minor example, take Ryzala. I expect that no one in Creation now alive has ever seen her outside of a handful of FA Lunar elders. But I also expect that the Creation equivalent of double entry bookkeeping has her name in necessary ritual formulas and probably appears to be another form of magic squares occultism to most people. But because it was created by people with excellencies and refined over centuries it is also the best way to actually record transactions. So worshiping her and doing good paperwork are almost inseparable.
There may even be "atheist" cultists of her that think the image of the thousand-armed mistress of paperwork who processes the accounts of Heaven is a visual metaphor for an abstract concept of properly formed systems and good organization. Which does not conflict with them thinking that their local god is a person they could theoretically talk to.
Sure, and then they get stepped on by an actually existent god for stupidly wasting prayer that could have been going to them instead of shooting off into the ether.
Except probably not.
A: It is probably already going to someone. It is an unsettled question on who gets the prayer if you worship a god for something they don't do, "Praise be to you Ahlat, god of underwater basket weaving" style. But one of those two is getting it. General prayer goes to Heaven anyway.
B: Terrestrial gods may not even know if there is a real god being prayed to. The local field god has never been to Yu-Shan, might only have the vaguest notions that it even exists, and didn't get a new employee handbook explaining the divine hierarchy when they spontaneously came into existence.
C: Gods, in general, do not get that involved in mortal affairs. Celestial gods would not leave their palaces and their office politics for something that petty unless it was a major disruption. Terrestrial gods are either in the background or already running divine protection rackets so the non-existence is less important than the not-themness.
First off, as an official deputy of the Detail Police, I must point out that Ahalt's scheme actually started out as a means to produce battle-ready warriors as part of the first generation of Exalts. After that, yeah, it's a system to perpetuate Ahalt's influence.
Still, this does not address the lack of attention Exalted pays to the nuances of the transaction. Even if the relationship is always transactional, what is being exchanged and how can differ; Harborhead, as the center of Ahalt's cult, offers him hecatombs as is the old and proper way, but else where in the South, or even elsewhere in Creation, Ahalt might be worshipped by throwing a colorfully dressed man into a ring, making him fight to the death with a very angry bull, and then offering up the loser. It still involves fighting and cows, but would inspire a very different sort of society.
Furthermore, sacrifices and prayers aren't the only means by which exchanges and interactions between the divine and mortals can occur, despite what Exalted seems to think. Performing contagion magic and rituals to gain divine blessings or protection are also very old; sometimes you consume crackers and wine to consume the flesh and blood of your deity by proxy, other times the king and high priestess of the fertility goddess get together every once in a while and fuck.
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- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
See this is what I mean when I say that all thought flies out of the window when religion comes into the picture. Cattle raiding was not practiced among the billions of tribes that did and do it on our earth because some god told them to, but because the amount of cattle possessed was deeply entwined with honour and wealth. People did not worship out of brutal necessity, they did so out of culture, tradition and ritual because those kinds of things actually matter to people and the default state of humanity is not an atheist without beliefs who knows that all the gods are just there to exploit him anyways, mystery cults were not the only kind of faith in the bronze age (and were in fact, literally imported to Rome by Greece; pre-Greek Roman faith was very different), Rome wasn't unique in worshipping as many gods as possible in order to gain some advantage, that was simply the standard of behaviour in Rome's age and time. Transactional faith did not decline with the increase of science; there was no scientific method in Rome, there was no industrial revolution. The Romans prided themselves on being the most pious people, pius is one of the epithets most consistently applied to Aeneas! The reason transactional faith was important in ancient Rome was because do ut des was the standard method of operating in Roman society! It is reductive and a refusal to properly engage with these kinds of things to simply say that all gods are assholes and people would be better off not worshipping it; if Exalted wants to be a smart game that thinks about this, it can be cynical and skeptical without being dumb.
(Also, the notion that just because Exalted Third Edition does not have enlightened mortals, it must have done away with spiritual enlightenment as a thing is stupid. I do not remember the part of the Gathas where Zarathushtra taught all the Zartoshti how to practice kung fu and cast sorcery after teaching them how to spend motes.)
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