- Pronouns
- she/her
Which I don't think is necessarily a good thing, Celestial Exalts are a risky inclusion to Dragon-Blooded games especially if they're not something that everyone expected from the start.
Last edited:
General Exalted Thread
- Location
- Oregon, USA
Non-sequiter:
What's your favorite wacky concept that you've never got to play?
Mine's probably a Sidereal with the one Bureaucracy charm that lets you kill gods and spirits permanently that uses the other mode of getting to boss them around for a year and a day to be a heavenly Pokémon trainer.
That charm is so abusable. It costs like 2 motes, and when the god's time is almost up, you can just make it imprison itself or whatever. Then you can just kill it again.
What's your favorite wacky concept that you've never got to play?
Mine's probably a Sidereal with the one Bureaucracy charm that lets you kill gods and spirits permanently that uses the other mode of getting to boss them around for a year and a day to be a heavenly Pokémon trainer.
That charm is so abusable. It costs like 2 motes, and when the god's time is almost up, you can just make it imprison itself or whatever. Then you can just kill it again.
It is not a bad thing, because it is not guaranteed unless the person running the game wants it to, and the situation should be set up so that Realm has a decent chance at winning anyway. A common enemy is a great way to unite a people. Depending on the game, it could lead to a lot of social stuff to unite everyone, and then it turns into a total war situation.
Yeah, but in a game where you're moving the Caul much closer to the Blessed Isle, everyone should know going in that Lunar infiltration of the Realm and preparation for invasion of the Blessed Isle itself is on the table. Lunars make for great antagonists. There are so many possibilities for intrigue! A Lunar could have assassinated and replaced an important magistrate or official, and now the players have to figure out why their superior is behaving oddly.
They also make for good ambiance. A silver saboteur burned down the military docks of Arjuf with sorcerous fire to keep them from maintaining the blockade around the Caul. Now the players need to arrange other transportation for themselves and their forces to An Teng, to shore up the Realm's hold on the satrapy. Sure, tracking down and killing that Anathema is someone else's job, but just existing in the same world as the Celestial Exalted has consequences. A cold war between the Realm and the Caul is a good setting to show that life goes on even though you might be eaten by a Faceless, in much the same way that everyone in the Cold War knew that nuclear war could break out, but they still needed to go to school, to pay their rent, to live their lives.
The Caul as Cuba brings salience to the threat that the Anathema pose to the Realm. It's an external threat that could very well inspire some cohesion among the Houses that are all vying for power in the wake of the Scarlet Empress's disappearance, even as Lunar infiltrators are trying to turn those Great Houses against each other and fan the flames of the brewing civil war.
Last edited:
Shadlith
Mad Magician
- Location
- The Universe
A Solar who used to be the childhood friend and servant of a DB. Upon Exalting, he decided... that actually, he's a faithful immaculate, and should turn himself in. His DB buddy basically went "right, you could do that, or you could continue being my minion in secret. Things are going to shit, so having you by my side would be great." He is now the DB's hypercompetent butler sidekick who's trying to avoid revealing he's a Solar, but is mostly skipping out on the angst on the grounds that if a DB said it's fine, it's fine, as per the perfected hierarchy.
I can think of basically no situation in which this would ever see play and it makes me sad.
How much have you ever played DBs versus Celestials? And how easy was your GM taking it on you? It works a lot better the other way around, especially if there might be more than one. DBs have extremely limited recourse against Lunar infiltrators, unless all the PCs are being unpleasantly paranoid, which brings it's own problem to the game.
HalfTangible
Only half sane (it's less cringe)
- Location
- Valkyrie, Primus
One day I want to play as a Full Moon Lunar who is basically just a WWE wrestler. She (or he, haven't decided yet) has a Solar mate waifu/husbando as that very tired 'yes dear' wojak.
Cuz you ain't ready for when I step into that ring. You ain't got what it takes to stand up to a FIVE TIME CHAMPION! YOU AIN'T READY FOR WHAT THE FULL MOON IS COOKIN'!! YOU AIN'T READY FOR WHEN LUNAMANIA COMES FOR YOOOOOOOOOOU!!
(Also this might not come up but i think it'd be funny to be an Anathema as a stage persona and have to explain to the deebs investigating me that no, it's just part of the performance, if I were actually a Lunar I wouldn't be dumb enough to announce it aloud to a cheering crowd of onlookers)
Last edited:
Critian Caceorte
Currently Suffering from Space-Time Narcolepsy
- Location
- Washington State
Zenith Solar that's a circus ringmaster, using Survival charms to train up a whole bunch of Familiars and his whole circus crew as his followers.
- Location
- The North
A second circle demon. I've just always wanted to play a second circle demon palling around with a circle of Exalts.
- Location
- my house
I really like this. An excellent and unique (sorta) god that can be used in a variety of ways as suits the campaign.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
There's a third circle demon who's been namedropped once in 3e but had a fun write-up in 2e: Suntarankal. Suntarankal is a supreme martial arts teacher, who brings humans to his school to learn there, in a very not-safe fashion.
One idea I've had bouncy around in my head for a while is a DB graduate of this Crucible of Brass and Iron, who is now ready to slot into some DB circle in whatever way and cheerfully explain how she trained in Hell and the many benefits of having done so. She's grateful for the opportunity and quite likely Suntarankal has some ongoing plans for her—an open-ended hook for the Storyteller to make use of.
The idea can be tweaked quite a lot within this, but it's one I think I'd really enjoy playing: this slightly hell-themed DB martial arts expert who is, nonetheless, fully acceptable to most DBs and the Immaculate Order. She's not Anathema, just... weirdly slightly hellish. Ideally, she'd use this to justify some oddball martial art: Crystal Chameleon or something that's tied into Shogunate history or Violet Bier of Sorrows or something; exact art could be picked to work with the party and vary by how much homebrew was accepted. I never give a ST any grief if they don't want to deal with that.
- Location
- Oregon, USA
Demons are cool. I definitely think more characters should engage with them, even if they don't have sorcery. After all, demons all have highly specific ways they can escape to Creation without needing to be properly summoned, so a character could have feasibly run across an unbound demon as a footnote in their backstory.
- Location
- United States
You are ignoring content by this member.
Show ignored content
This is less "concept I never got to play" and more horrible idea that immediately came to my head upon seeing the Sidereal Socialize charm, Gilded Cage Entrapment, which grants you benefits (most crucially, an extra cap-breaking dot of Appearance) in exchange for binding yourself to work for someone else as a courtesan, domestic servant, mistress, or so on.
sidereal catgirl maid
- Location
- Ottawa
I don't think that's so; people are concerned with high-stakes conflicts that allow one character to impose their will upon their enemies. Combat isn't the only way to do that, just the most prominent one.
There are many similar arguments about social skills, for example. How hard should it be for an Eclipse to bend the king and his court to her will? 2e often made it rather easy to mind-whammy individual mortals or whole societies; I for one am glad that in 3e persuading mortals can be a worthwhile task even for an Exalt.
And from time to time the big society-scale magic gets the same treatment. I vaguely remember some manse-design chicanery from 2e that made a mockery of all mortal economic efforts; people weren't exactly thrilled by that either.
On second thought, no need to go back to 2e. God-King's Shrike is a 3e mortal-vs-Solar balance problem that has nothing to do with combat.
If there was some way to subjugate ten thousand mortals by lifting stones, curing diseases, or hearing noises, I suspect people would discover a new interest in mortal - Exalt balance in Athletics, Medicine, and Awareness.
I've taken a couple of cracks at organization rules. I've gone back and forth on various aspects, but on this point I am immovably convinced: organizations need Intimacies.
Mm.
I get where you're coming from, but that kind of thing has always seemed faintly pathetic to me. Like the god-king equivalent of a child's macaroni art; it gets a place of honour on the fridge, but only because the person judging it is the kid's mother.
I don't know why it feels that way, which I guess also means I'm not sure how it could possibly be fixed...
Maybe it's because I don't really respect the Silver Pact as a concept. Probably the game's worst case of colour-code-based faction design. That'd naturally tend to undermine any Silver-Pact-based attempt at Lunar heat, I suppose.
Not just a you problem, unfortunately. Many / most online venues systemically promote ragebait, and this thread might be worse than average on that point.
Last edited:
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Would definitely work for a humorous campaign.
Why does the character get no respect? Arcane Fate wipes away their deeds and they need to start their employment again every session.
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I actually went back 'cause I wanted to reread the section and I love how simultaneously brilliant and totally dysfunctional the Ministries are. Like- in setting, it's very much a work of such staggering organizational scale and infrastructural scope that it's basically unmatched by any other polity in Creation. The sheer amount of information that the bureaucracy takes and records, the directions, the orders it dispenses, the flow of everything from goods to people to ideas that it manages- it's not as glamorous as the Legions but it's still pretty staggering. Especially considering how local and necessarily limited a lot of other nations and kingdoms in the setting are. How control for a lot of them is so narrow and so localized, and meanwhile the Realm has a city-sized ring of buildings around the already city-in-a-city sized Imperial Palace that houses the brain of its bureaucracy.
And now the Empress is gone and the Great Houses are making like jackals to bone and joint the whole thing, this work of generation after generation. It's genuinely a kind of tragedy.
My favorite, re-reading through the list is probably like-
Article: The Ministry of Prehistoric Recollection and Antiquities
This shabby, understaffed department oversees the collection of potentially volatile relics and caches them away in heavily secured museums open only to the Scarlet Dynasty — though some officials profit from tipping off Ragara and Ledaal contacts about such finds. The ministry also plays a vital role in censorship, suppressing the dissemination of information to the peasantry that would undermine the Realm's official history. Its obsessively studious head, Mnemon Korame, hasn't been seen in months; her subordinates assume she's holed up in a ministry museum researching one of her many projects.
I'm just a huge sucker for the "jank SCP Foundation on a shoestring budget"/Kung Fu Delta Green vibe. You're an (unfortunately) accomplished demonologist, occultist, exorcist, tomb robber, and pretty deft spy who actually manages to get some genuine archaeology done when you have the time. You have seen some profoundly fucked up things and probably know more about Anathema than anyone outside the Wyld Hunt or Immaculate Order. You're paid about half of what you would be if you'd just become a moderately corrupt Guardian of the Realm in some port city somewhere. There's a forbidden tome of arcane history written by a crazed poet crammed into the corner of your office in a leaning tower of paper because there isn't any room for it in the records hall. You have a sneaking suspicion an evil artifact ate your boss or, worse, she's trying to get another monograph published. You spend an upsetting amount of time thinking about the Niobraran League and nobody who isn't in the game knows what the fuck that is.
It's great.
They have that actually! I stumbled across it completely on accident.
Article: Entering the Thousand Scales
To ensure that all had the opportunity to seek a career in the ministries, the Empress created the Nine Rigorous Examinations. These are held twice annually: once in the Imperial City and once in another city on the Blessed Isle, varying from year to year. Many obstacles confront the would-be minister. A candidate must arrange transport and, if a peasant, travel papers for the year's location. The examinations are exceedingly difficult, and anyone hoping to do well should hire a tutor and purchase the requisite study materials. Even if a peasant takes the test and scores well, she'll still need to find someone to recommend her for a position — and to provide financial support. Securing a post requires a supply of inks and brushes, not to mention fine clothing befitting a minister of the Realm. These expenses prevent many peasants and poorer patricians from entering the Thousand Scales, despite the Nine Rigorous Examinations' egalitarian pretense. For well-to-do patricians and Dynasts, these costs are small inconveniences; for children of rural farmers, they seem insurmountable. Fortunately, there's no shortage of people looking to offer a hand up. Whether it's making introductions or offering loans, these individuals labor to ensure that promising candidates find their ways into the ministries. Having a minister who owes you a favor is often more valuable than whatever you had to spend to get her there
It's really interesting because the scale and scope of the Thousand Scales mean that the vast, vast, vast majority of the Ministries are not only not even Exalted, most aren't even Dynasts. And like Gaz said the Empress took an active hand in fostering the Scales as a bastion of patrician power- making it a kind of bulwark against naked Great House partisan interest. Now that she's gone that's started to falter and Bal Keraz (head of the Treasury) and Cathak Kuruk (head of the Tax Assessors) are increasingly working hand-in-glove to keep the ministries afloat and as independent of Dynastic control as they can.
It's a really compelling, imo, way of sketching out differing poles of influence and power in a fundamentally non-democratic system. There's the Deliberative sure, but the Legions and Navy too (complete with rogue dragons and missing Crown Marshalls), the Great Houses themselves and all their bullshit, the Immaculacy, and then the Thousand Scales; each of which is acting against the other and trying to assert their own influence and will. And each of which, while it has shared goals, is very much splintered into a great number of internal factions.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- she/her
Agree to disagree. I build and characterise my Dragon-Blooded very differently if I know we're up against Celestial Exalts.
This wasn't presented as a pitch for a Dragon-Blooded game though. It's primarily about Lunars getting a major win before RY768 and being poised to invade the Blessed Isle.
The other big problem is where the hearth ends up divided over what extent to treat a Celestial Exalt like a person because that can easily spill over into an out-of-character argument.
Last edited:
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I hadn't thought too much about the Ministry of Prehistoric Recollection and Antiquities, but I could see basing a player character concept on that. Love obscure little corners of the setting like this.
The White Registry is also a great plothook -- if I'm running a Blessed Isle game, I like to keep track of whether any sorcerers in the group are registered, and whether or not they've completed their Obligation previously. There's a lot of room to complicate someone's life in there.
This is a sentiment I've seen from some people who have been fans of Exalted for significantly longer than me, but not one I necessarily empathise with or think I've encountered from people who have gotten into the game through 3e content, if that makes sense.
I don't actually like the thought of moving the Caul toward the Blessed Isle like that either, though, even if it's not really got anything to do with a commitment to not having Lunars show up by surprise. It would drastically increase the urgency of the situation for all involved. Like, we're not just talking about a sacred-distant holding that the Great Houses can reasonably rank below the Civil War on their personal priority lists, we're talking about a small continent off the shores of the Blessed Isle that has been almost entirely conquered by Anathema. That would vastly change the situation, both with the Caul and the Realm Civil War; canonically, House Ledaal has been agitating to retake Thorns, but I think obviously they would be a lot more concerned with this. Why would Mnemon be sending her forces all the way to Jiara if there's a problem like this right on the Blessed Isle's doorstep, not even as far away as the Threshold?
It creates a situation where, yeah, it would make more sense for the houses to snap together to address this external threat. Which means the Realm Civil War is not a thing of irreconcilable incentives where it makes sense from each individual house's perspective to be doing this as a first priority, it's a thing that makes them look stupid and myopic for even considering this when there are Anathema on their doorstep engaging in open war, routinely infiltrating and sabotaging things on the Blessed Isle. The thing I like about the Realm Civil War as a plot point is that it feels really inexorable, preventing it or ending it early would be a massive undertaking. It's an unresolved problem left deliberately unresolved, the same as Lunars not having 100% conquered the Caul is.
Aw, I missed the Empire discussion.
I always find these convos a bit weird, because someone inevitably counters by saying "I'm glad the Realm is not written as cartoonishly evil" which seems to miss the point. The Realm is written as realistically evil. It's evil the same way the British Empire was evil, and the books don't come out and say "The Realm's evil" they just... y'know, write it realistically. It's a giant machine for grinding the wealth out of the world, powered by slaves and expanded at sword-point.
Are Dynasts sympathetic? Of course, because they're well-written, and because bad people are often sympathetic, and because empire is seductive. But they aren't sympathetic because the Scarlet Empire is doing good in the world.
I always find these convos a bit weird, because someone inevitably counters by saying "I'm glad the Realm is not written as cartoonishly evil" which seems to miss the point. The Realm is written as realistically evil. It's evil the same way the British Empire was evil, and the books don't come out and say "The Realm's evil" they just... y'know, write it realistically. It's a giant machine for grinding the wealth out of the world, powered by slaves and expanded at sword-point.
Are Dynasts sympathetic? Of course, because they're well-written, and because bad people are often sympathetic, and because empire is seductive. But they aren't sympathetic because the Scarlet Empire is doing good in the world.
- Location
- London, England
I adore Bal Keraz.
Just this incredibly sour old bureaucrat who wants nothing more than a well-run state apparatus and for everyone to pay their fucking taxes, and by extension proof that you cannot in fact hate someone to death, because if you could there would be no Scarlet Dynasty left.
Just this incredibly sour old bureaucrat who wants nothing more than a well-run state apparatus and for everyone to pay their fucking taxes, and by extension proof that you cannot in fact hate someone to death, because if you could there would be no Scarlet Dynasty left.
- Pronouns
- she/her
I'm pretty sure people who got into the game in Ex3 recognise that Dragon-Blooded have a lower dice cap than Solars or Lunars and that losing roll-offs can have negative consequences.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sure? But like, you're probably going to run into antagonists with a bigger dice pool than you at some point, and losing roll-offs is generally going to have negative consequences. The paranoia that the ST is going to have a Solar show up and kick sand in your DB's face and now this is a story about that feels like it comes out of bad experiences with bad STing in a different era of the game.
- Pronouns
- she/her
I wouldn't build a character for a game where I even considered that the ST was planning to do this.Lunars poised to invade the Blessed Isle isn't a game premise that automatically alienates me, but it would inform the kind of character I would play.
Last edited:
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Realm attitude on Sorcerers is actually very cool, I like how there's a whole section on the various secret societies and private social clubs they join (just so they can hang out and network with people who aren't constantly edging away) and how the Registry itself works. The fact that a lot of sorcerers who don't want to be embroiled in House intrigue and labyrinthine bullshit will deliberately enroll in the Registry so that they can't be used as intelligence assets, while there's plenty who don't so they can leverage their relative anonymity for big bucks.
The idea that pretty much every Sorcerer is some kind of somewhat out of context weirdo but also an incredibly valuable strategic asset is a lot of fun. And it provides fodder for a lot of conflicts and tension beyond the flatter, kind of trite "those superstitious luddite simpletons hate and fear me, big brain magic man and my enormous throbbing cortex, such is my lot in life" that crops up in other fantasy settings from time to time.
For me on my end it's not like- I don't think that the Realm is some net good in the world of the setting, I think it can do good things, and sometimes (often) even does do good things, but like I've said those things are impossible to separate from the whole bloody-handed machine of war and colonization and expansion.
But at the same time I don't feel particularly invested in proving or disproving how evil Exactly the Realm is y'know? Litigating how wicked it is exactly before saying that I like it, or appreciate it even. And the appeal for me isn't in it not being cartoonishly awful per se (although that's nice) so much as like- it's less of a shitty kludge of half-baked ideas spread over with a thick layer of Orientalism; made with the intent that Solars and Lunars can feel uncomplicatedly good about overthrowing it and DB's can-
Well rip to previous editions of DB's tbh, they had it rough all around. It's so funny being relatively new to the setting and a DB fan and hearing all the horror stories from 1e and 2e.
I guess what I'm saying on the whole is that I really appreciate that the Realm has been rebuilt as a place where people, ordinary and extraordinary people, make their lives. A place where things can actually happen. It's a place that carries with it a coherent set of ideas about itself y'know? A sense of loyalties and vision and priorities and a way of looking at the world that, even if often deeply deeply flawed, is still very compelling. It has its own independent identity. And with that there's just a sense of relief on not having to constantly qualify my thoughts and feelings or approval of it all with "ok so this is mostly homebrew but-", or the semi-recurring problem of "I want to write something set in the Realm or with Realm characters but I don't want it to be immediately and inextricably about We Must Therefore Overthrow The Realm Before Anything Else Can Happen, there can only be the one plot".
The man is the walking embodiment of "the only thing better than dying right now would be watching all these Dynasts die first" and honestly that's pretty valid.
I think he's actually got a write up in Heirs as being one of the dark horse candidates for the throne, along with the Immaculate Order and Saloy Himbo, if everyone else ahead of him trips and cuts their head off on their daiklave or manages to self-detonate. Yeah here it is.
Article: Bal Keraz
The Imperial Treasury's senior official, Bal Keraz (The Realm, p. 50) is far from a likely prospect, but may be the patrician with the best chance of ending up on the throne. Having spent the years since the Empress' disappearance struggling against the Realm's corruption, Keraz has made allies within both the Thousand Scales and the All-Seeing Eye. If a patrician uprising challenged the Dynasty or the Imperial ministries made a bid for control of the Realm, Keraz could offer them the Treasury's financial power and the All-Seeing Eye's intelligence-gathering network, perhaps providing the crucial edge needed for such an unlikely contender to prevail.
Even if he's pretty unlikely to ever be in a position to take that step I really like how, and by extension the bureaucracy and the patriciate, are both developed and consciously included as active agents/contending forces in the race for the throne.