General Exalted Thread
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Blah, I lack inspiration for a Lunar Exalt (of the Changing Moon caste) for a game I'm going to be playing in after the Dragon-blooded game I'm currently playing in wraps up. It's set in the North, but hmm, I never really liked much of the Northern locales and I usually start with "where was my character born" when making one. Nothing in that Direction really wows me like, say, Chiaroscuro does from the South. Maybe I'm just giving them a hard time since I do like more temperate climates in real life. I guess if any of you are fans of the North, please sell me on how it's good.
Salty
Shadow Cabal Assumptor Supreme
- Location
- Sun, Moon, Talia
- Pronouns
- I/Me
I mean, you don't have to make them from the north. Creation is a big place, but it has more than its fair share of migrants, nomads, vagrants, and wanderers. Especially if you're playing a Lunar or Sidereal.
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Yeah but also my brain's power-gaming node yells at me for devoting a merit dot to Language instead of Contacts or Artifacts or something, even if I'm playing a talky person where it would be fairly useful
I can probably mix in some "Hot old man DESTROYS Semen Demon with FACTS and LOGICS!!" for some diversity
I'm having the same problem of finding the North awfully boring too, currently it's still "Vikingland" in my mind.
Not to mention the husbando there are so low tier.
Diversity in trash talking is always funI can probably mix in some "Hot old man DESTROYS Semen Demon with FACTS and LOGICS!!" for some diversity
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3e tried to break out of viking stuff by doing a more Slavic-inspired aesthetic with Medo and even a bit of Arabic culture in Fajad, but sadly a lot of the old stuff was basically just, "Vikings on the ice! Vikings in a mountain! Vikings on airboats!" and that'll carry over.
Jon Chung
=][=
So I'm wondering if my Zenith should bully Infernal and Abyssal while they are doing their cliche villain rant or should he dEbaTes them on why genocide and mass murder isn't actually a good thing
wait for them to activate a simple charm, then shoot them with Accuracy Without Distance + Rain of Feathered Death + Thunderbolt Attack Prana
Then say "I think they got the point".
(Say that every time you shoot someone with a bow)
I wonder if people likes the Haslanti just for the airboat or is it specifically must be "Viking on Airboats"?
Sadly nobody in the party has Archery and the Shut-Your-Mouth Zenith is a brawler.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
Alas! I mostly associate this line with a Carry On film. Parachutes and a church spire were involved.
I didn't know Jen's character was named Archibald.
I like them because airboats and because their intelligence agency is run by grannies.
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I dunno about the North. Hopefully it comes off as less static and less mono-cultured when they release a few books about the Threshold and the Realm's satrapies. The West was really improved in core and has gotten more exciting with the Dragon-blooded book making note of how Houses Peleps and V'neef are sparring out there, so maybe the North will get a better shake when it gets the spotlight.
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Fajad is already a pretty good addition to the North, being full of adamant monotheists who are convinced that the actual gods are just a bunch of pricks out to trick or manipulate you. Surely the real, One God, somewhere out there, is not a venal bastard. Also all their current problems can be traced back to House Cathak specifically.
HamSandLich
MEAT WIZARD
- Location
- Somewhere in NOVA, possibly, maybe, presumably
- Pronouns
- He/Him
IDK the Haslanti always gave me the vibe of Siberians on Airboats, not vikings. Likewise the Icewalkers always seemed (linguistically) more Finnish than mongolian(and Creation already has two other mongol expys). Fajad is inspired by several islamic cultures, but given what we know of the setting's cosmology, their prophets are just the pantheon of gods(and one ghost) that they worship as proxies for the One God that may or may not exist.
The illustrations for the North have always been heavily viking, but that's cuz viking motifs are in vogue nowadays. The writing for the North has been surprisingly light on Viking-esque cultures. Whitewall is Shangri-La, the Haslanti are Siberian/post-Viking Scandinavia, the Deshaan Slave States are various Mamluk States, the Kunlun Region is the Gobi Desert, Iscomay is very Ainu inspired.
The illustrations for the North have always been heavily viking, but that's cuz viking motifs are in vogue nowadays. The writing for the North has been surprisingly light on Viking-esque cultures. Whitewall is Shangri-La, the Haslanti are Siberian/post-Viking Scandinavia, the Deshaan Slave States are various Mamluk States, the Kunlun Region is the Gobi Desert, Iscomay is very Ainu inspired.
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This recent talk of gods and of spiritual enlightenment/philosophy has me pondering that it could be very interesting to have people in Creation be asking themselves the questions: What makes a god, a god? What is divinity?
And by "people," I mean the gods themselves.
See, the Great Contagion and it's aftermath seems to me like fertile ground for even fairly static, immortal beings to have something of an existential crisis, especially among the Terrestrial Gods. So many spirits perished, and likely just as many lost their domains, undermining the very basis of their existence. Mortality being rubbed in their faces, loss of purpose and familiar structures, the central authorities proving unreliable...its the sort of stuff that would drive a person to reassess their understanding of themselves and the world around them.
Gods could consider forming pantheons to be a necessary alternative to being a part of a court, because they have found that the apparatus of the Celestial Bureaucracy to be barely functional at best and an active hinderance to accomplishing anything at worst. The unofficial trio of trios of dream/fate/snow gods that the Haslanti worship (in lieu of their "actual" gods) is a canon example; a lot of spirits go to them with their problems instead actual Celestial officials.
You could have one or more gods that created a God-blooded child(ren) that became the founders/leaders of the remnants of the people who worshipped them, and eventually those GBs died and became ghosts or ascended to godhood themselves. Later on the culture shifted to ancestor worship, and the gods were lumped together with, and worshipped alongside, the ghosts of their descendants. Regardless of being a different type of spirit, they would still be revered ancestors, and they may very well be perfectly content to be considered equal to their children and/or old allies.
Another angle I think would be very interesting would be that many of the gods who associate with or participate in the new 3e religions and philosophies that diverge from the "objectively correct" metaphysics of how life, death, spirits, etc., actually work in Creation, like the Pure Way and the Prophets of Fajad, actually buy into those ideas. After seeing so many perish in the Great Contagion, some gods might find comfort in the idea that lost friends and loved ones might be reborn, even though spirts aren't supposed to reincarnate. Who knows, maybe among the crop of new gods that have emerged since, some spirit followers of the Pure Way have met someone who seemed eerily similar to a spirit they used to know.
And really, who's to say that those religions aren't true in some fashion, and that the official metaphysics are wrong or outright fabricated? I find this idea more amusing than profound, though, because it immediately makes me imagine divine government conspiracy theorists.
How do we really know that gods are immortal and will never die of natural causes? Sure, the Celestial gods have been around for as long as I and anyone else I know can remember, but have you ever thought about how they have gardens up there growing Peaches of Immortality? Huh? Why would immortals need fruit that grants immortality? Think about it.
I am amused to no end whenever I imagine a group of Sidereals being sent to find out what happened to some town or village that appears to have vanished, only to discover that their god moved them all into caves; then when they show up to talk to him, he just screams at them about being shills for Big Heaven and needing to protect his people from the Court of Winds' chem trails.
And by "people," I mean the gods themselves.
See, the Great Contagion and it's aftermath seems to me like fertile ground for even fairly static, immortal beings to have something of an existential crisis, especially among the Terrestrial Gods. So many spirits perished, and likely just as many lost their domains, undermining the very basis of their existence. Mortality being rubbed in their faces, loss of purpose and familiar structures, the central authorities proving unreliable...its the sort of stuff that would drive a person to reassess their understanding of themselves and the world around them.
Gods could consider forming pantheons to be a necessary alternative to being a part of a court, because they have found that the apparatus of the Celestial Bureaucracy to be barely functional at best and an active hinderance to accomplishing anything at worst. The unofficial trio of trios of dream/fate/snow gods that the Haslanti worship (in lieu of their "actual" gods) is a canon example; a lot of spirits go to them with their problems instead actual Celestial officials.
You could have one or more gods that created a God-blooded child(ren) that became the founders/leaders of the remnants of the people who worshipped them, and eventually those GBs died and became ghosts or ascended to godhood themselves. Later on the culture shifted to ancestor worship, and the gods were lumped together with, and worshipped alongside, the ghosts of their descendants. Regardless of being a different type of spirit, they would still be revered ancestors, and they may very well be perfectly content to be considered equal to their children and/or old allies.
Another angle I think would be very interesting would be that many of the gods who associate with or participate in the new 3e religions and philosophies that diverge from the "objectively correct" metaphysics of how life, death, spirits, etc., actually work in Creation, like the Pure Way and the Prophets of Fajad, actually buy into those ideas. After seeing so many perish in the Great Contagion, some gods might find comfort in the idea that lost friends and loved ones might be reborn, even though spirts aren't supposed to reincarnate. Who knows, maybe among the crop of new gods that have emerged since, some spirit followers of the Pure Way have met someone who seemed eerily similar to a spirit they used to know.
And really, who's to say that those religions aren't true in some fashion, and that the official metaphysics are wrong or outright fabricated? I find this idea more amusing than profound, though, because it immediately makes me imagine divine government conspiracy theorists.
How do we really know that gods are immortal and will never die of natural causes? Sure, the Celestial gods have been around for as long as I and anyone else I know can remember, but have you ever thought about how they have gardens up there growing Peaches of Immortality? Huh? Why would immortals need fruit that grants immortality? Think about it.
I am amused to no end whenever I imagine a group of Sidereals being sent to find out what happened to some town or village that appears to have vanished, only to discover that their god moved them all into caves; then when they show up to talk to him, he just screams at them about being shills for Big Heaven and needing to protect his people from the Court of Winds' chem trails.
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HamSandLich
MEAT WIZARD
- Location
- Somewhere in NOVA, possibly, maybe, presumably
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, gods in 3e come about as a result of either divine reproduction or a mortal ascending via esoteric means, as opposed to spontaneously generating as part of the Celestial Bureaucracy. With that bureaucracy crippled by its own red tape, it could be very possible for gods to come about with no idea of how Creation's metaphysics work and cobble together a philosophy from their own experiences. The decay of the Celestial Bureaucracy makes this very likely(as the Haslanti example above proves). And that's not counting the Forbidden Gods and other weirdass Primordial creations that have differing worldviews and information than the standard god affiliated with Yu-Shan. Han-Tha(the Forbidden God of Necrophagy) may be insane and evil, but strictly speaking, his theology(that you can get stronger by consuming the essence of dead things) isn't wrong at all.
As the 3e corebook says, the "god" designation is the purview of savants, there's all sorts of weird unique stuff is out there that doesn't fit the mold of the average spirit, whose philosophies are more believable because there's less of a chance of them being a corrupt bureaucrat. What I'd prefer is a greater proliferation of religions that are like that or that are fundamentally "atheistic" (as in not worshipping a set deity). The Raksha have their Shinma reverence, the Nephwracks worship the Abyss, and Ancestor Cults are closer to veneration of saints than theistic worship.
As the 3e corebook says, the "god" designation is the purview of savants, there's all sorts of weird unique stuff is out there that doesn't fit the mold of the average spirit, whose philosophies are more believable because there's less of a chance of them being a corrupt bureaucrat. What I'd prefer is a greater proliferation of religions that are like that or that are fundamentally "atheistic" (as in not worshipping a set deity). The Raksha have their Shinma reverence, the Nephwracks worship the Abyss, and Ancestor Cults are closer to veneration of saints than theistic worship.
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Given the Haslanti League's emphasis on mercantilism, invention, and disputes with the setting's other major mercantile org that is The Guild, I always assumed they were a reference to the Hanseatic League
Hanseatic League - Wikipedia
HamSandLich
MEAT WIZARD
- Location
- Somewhere in NOVA, possibly, maybe, presumably
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The reference initially flew right over my head(pun not intended), but it makes so much sense now.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
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- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
You present this as a joke but I totes want to play it completely straight.
Rankan Thulio is a hero who rose against the tyranny of The Man.
Always remember that the Balorian Crusade was an inside job.
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dammit why are there no stats for spiders, I want to be a spider totem Lunar
Because spiders are tiny, and 3E Lunars can't have "monsters" for Totems so you can't have a giant spider either.
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Nah, I think they can have any totem so long as it's not magical. You could have a hellboar totem Lunar since it's possible (although unlikely, I'd think) for a giant boar to exist and an armored terror totem and so on, but you couldn't, say, take the form of something that has a natural mote pool or is a Wyld mutant like a fog shark. So giant bugs are totally cool, since they existed once in the good old days before humans showed up.
Also they have lots of very small stuff! There's stats for butterflies/moths and wasps, and little tiny jellyfishes.