General Exalted Thread

[Amidatelion]

It's funny that you mention Kilgrave because literally half an hour ago I was regalling Discord with the tale of HAVESH THE VANISHER and @TenfoldShields's reply was "yeah season 1 of Jessica Jones was alright"

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"Average Solar commits 300 atrocities per day" factoid is just a statistical error - Murders Havesh, who commits hundreds of such lurid acts every day before breakfast, was an outlier and should not have been counted.

(Does he show up in EX3 anywhere? I looked but did not find it.)

 

[mantovani]

The Fox's Punishment
A wild and mischievous fox-spirit, Wicked-Grin Shifune was once but a minor terrestrial god but cheated his way into a position in Heaven and the power that came with it, hoodwinking a god tasked with approving new hires. He lived a life of opulence unknown to earthly spirits — feasting on peaches of
immortality, lounging about in his manse while attended by countless servants, making fools of mighty gods with his shapeshifting pranks. In time, he angered the wrong god, and found himself haled into Heaven's courts.
Found guilty not only of troubling high-ranking gods but of committing a crime against Yu-Shan itself with his fraudulent hiring, Shifune was given an unprecedented sentence: he would be forced to create an Exigent, diminishing himself to create an Exigent who would act as his keeper. Much gossip and commotion spread through Yu-Shan in the verdict's wake; many were shocked the Unconquered Sun would bestow a spark upon the judge as an instrument of punishment. The Exaltation was sealed within a bejeweled collar and placed in the Immaculate Order's care along with Shifune

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Death by Exaltation is a thing that can happen in 3e, so this can of worms was already open.
And it was made worse by the fact that it was implied that this happened during the time were The Unconquered Sun turned his face from Creation.

 

[BossFight]

Like, I can always only speak for myself, but I think this contrast doesn't actually... exist?

Like, I started with 2e and went on to 3e, and "heroes in the classical sense of the word" is how Solars were sold to me. That aspect of them isn't obscured or otherwise cleverly hidden behind a facade of unambiguous niceness. The game always said that solars have done and can do horrible things.

But that's because the central dilemma of the Solars is overwhelming, realm-conquering power. They're Achilles in his tent, playing with the fates of millions in a fit of pique. Solars pose the question: Great Man Theory is Real, so what do these Great Men do? They can do anything if they put their minds to it. Will it be glorious or terrible? Will we create a Golden Age or burn the world? A Solar is as capable of slaying the evil dragon and saving the princess as they are of crushing the jeweled crowns of the earth beneath their feet. They're a glorious legend of ancient times returned to a diminished world, and their footsteps make kingdoms tremble.

The Horror of Solars has never been "Kilgrave" or whatever. The Horror of Solars (If that's the right term) is "you've given incredible divine power to people who are definitionally both flawed and ambitious."

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So I don't actually disagree with you here? I agree that the central dilemma is Solars is the question of "overwhelming power and how to use". I do however think the exalted is *critical* of people having that sort of overwhelming power, and wants you to examine what that power means. To peel back the layers of "protagonist aesthetic" and ask yourself if what you are doing is really right.

Kill grave+ is just an illustrative example of how that works by examining very specifically the Solars social charms and how easy it is to fall into the trap of not considering what your powers are actually doing to others because they don't *feel* like mind control.

I could just as easily have used their immense capacity for violence.

To clarify, you are maintaining a distance between ruling "super good" and ruling with charisma? What constitutes ruling super good?

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I would define good ruling as ruling which manages to improve the lives of the people under you in a way they can meaningfully consent to.

Sure. I just don't know about some of the arguments being made since they don't seem to be angled towards improving a ST's ability to create a narrative with the tools given, but are instead pedantic and disregard the themes of human behavior underlying everything the Exalted do. For an example from older days, the weird fixation on Dragon-blooded breeding tended to ignore the idea that each Dragon-blooded is a human being that enjoys things like reading, being able to go to the park on Sunsday, and so on in favor of treating them like battery chickens. The Exigents argument of "the setting does not make sense because clearly the UCS would maximize the amount of Exalts possible by making unemployed gods play the Exigent Roulette" also seems to disregard that the UCS made the Exigency in the first place so he'd have total control over who gets an Exaltation (rather than leaving it to open source) and he's already seen his own Exalts completely shit the bed and fuck everything up.

Like I said, I'm finding it hard to articulate what I'm finding distasteful about some of these arguments (and also I am just tired as all hell because i've been recovering from a week long bout of insomnia) and I've probably just contradicted my prior post with this one, so forgive me.

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TBC, Dragonblood breeding camps and other "SB competence" were problems with the discourse by I feel treating any critique of the game as falling into that category does nothing but silence discussion.

 

[Chehrazad]

I would define good ruling as ruling which manages to improve the lives of the people under you in a way they can meaningfully consent to.

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And this is in opposition to ruling by charisma? What is the alternative to ruling by charisma? How does one rule in such a fashion as to improve the lives of one's subjects?

 

[Blaque]

I personally don't care for Hearteaters, but that's why the concept of apocryphal splats is nice. I don't have to use them or think about them. If someone tries to use them as evidence to argue some point about the themes of the setting or the nature of the Exalted I can just say "Hearteatwhomst? Those guys don't exist in my reality."


See Gaz, you're overestimating the quality of the line's historical writing again. It's not just a fandom-side thing; I can pop up Caste Book: Dawn and there's Lyta, brainwashing hundreds of mortals into blood-crazed fanatics to throw against Dragon-Blood as sacrifical hordes to drown them in a sea of bodies!


The term 'Primordial' actually has been discontinued. It doesn't occur in any of the extant Ex3 books, except as an adjective (that is to say to mean 'old,' not anything related to the Yozis). But 'enemies of the gods' is indeed kind of burdensome and vague. As a result, the Sidereal manuscript has introduced the term 'Ancient', in lines such as 'Whether forged by the Ancients or the gods,' or "Outandish rumors claim that the dweomerforge is itself a cast-off fragmant of one of the Ancients.'

As for why, I suspect that it's to dissociate whatever Ex3 is doing with the Yozis and the Divine Revolution from the Primordials. The term 'Primordial' has a lot of baggage; we know who the Primordials were, we know how they functioned, we know them down to the specifics of their biology, we have an entire origin story for them... So just retire the term and call them something else that is slightly different enough that it could refer to a broader, vaguer category of beings that don't have all the same commonalities.


This does kinda run into one of the issues the 'no Charms to rule justly' thing has always had, which is that Charms explicitly make people superhuman at figuring a lot of stuff out, and that's apparent in the James C. Scott comparison. There is no Charm to decide wisely, but there are absolutely Charms that let you identify at a glance that the allegedly 'primitive' agriculture of your people is actually optimally designed for the nature of the soil you have and if you replace it all with massive wheat fields you will destroy the soil and everyone will starve. There is no Charm to tell you what a good ruler is, but there are absolutely Charms that will tell you that taxing households based on their number of windows is fucking stupid.

Solar Charms are very good at obtaining information and predicting outcomes. They can't make you a good person, but they strip away a lot of the mechanisms that make states awful by necessity of ensuring their functioning. They tell you how to efficiently obtain taxes, how to spend taxes effectively, what tax burden your population is capable of comfortably bearing, how to placate your warrior caste... Yeah, if you suddenly decide that trees are personally offensive to you and to go on a crusade to raze every forest, bad things will happen, so... don't do that?

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I mean, the thing to keep in mind is that the Solar who is a leader due to their Performance and Presence stuff might not be all that invested in Bureaucracy, Integrity, or Lore-style effects. Which is where you get the general situation of Really Charismatic People in charge offering Really Stupid Shit as ways to do things. Which I think is a bit that is mentioend wiht "no Charm to rule wisely". Part of it is using hte tools you have and developing htem. If you have a ruling style akin to Raksi, ie, "Let my Bureaucrats do it, but I want this statue by the next full moon prioritized" you get into some of the fun of things.

 

[Blaque]

IIRC it was made from fallen stars, but the only way to consistently ensure that a star would fall is for a god to die.

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So it was just fallen stars until Sidereals 1e, which is arguably one of the era-turns to the line that I think Chehr has mentioned about. Her breakdown of the timeline of things is pretty well-done. But in any case, yeah. Assassinating gods got a star to loosen and fall. And if I remember right this is continue din Savant & Sorcerer.

The 2e corebook doesn't bring it up though. But it comes back in Wonders of the Lost Age as speculation of where all the starmetal for the orrery in Rathess came from. And then it becomes straight-up the case in Oadenol's Codex and Abyssals. I'm not sure which came first, but they seem to have been gotten to independently anyhow.

 

[Imrix]

The game has traditionally been somewhat cynical of Solar power, but generally only by implication around the edges. Stuff like the flavour text of certain charms - like, the idea that a locked door is unrighteous for trying to bar a Solar's path is pretty clearly not meant to be taken on its face.

 

[Blaque]

The devs have said on the unofficial discord that of the three apocryphal exalted types listed in Exigents, Hearteaters are the least player facing. You certainly can make a Hearteater PC with some work, but as things stand they're there mostly for campaign villains.

None of the three are currently slated for a full comprehensive splat level writeup at the moment, what we have is basically a trial version to see which of the three are best recieved

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I kind of doubt we'll ever see full write-ups. If we did, it'd be a very late Shards of the Exalted Dream-style thing. Or something a writer would do in Storyteller's Vault. That's about it though at this point I think after we get the stuff in the Essence Companion.

 

[Blaque]

Death by Exaltation is a thing that can happen in 3e, so this can of worms was already open.
And it was made worse by the fact that it was implied that this happened during the time were The Unconquered Sun turned his face from Creation.

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I took it less 2e idiot plots and that kind of highlighted how much Shifune did All the Crimes. Like, literally all of them. And it took that to get him the Exigence-as-punishment thing.

 

[mantovani]

I took it less 2e idiot plots and that kind of highlighted how much Shifune did All the Crimes. Like, literally all of them. And it took that to get him the Exigence-as-punishment thing.

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If the Unconquered Sun has time to punish a petty corrupt god, why he did nothing during the balorian crusade? How many gods had their pleas for salvation unanswered?

 

[BossFight]

And this is in opposition to ruling by charisma? What is the alternative to ruling by charisma? How does one rule in such a fashion as to improve the lives of one's subjects?

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I'll be honest I don't get what you're going for here. Can you just get to the point?

 

[Sanctaphrax]

The term 'Primordial' actually has been discontinued. It doesn't occur in any of the extant Ex3 books, except as an adjective (that is to say to mean 'old,' not anything related to the Yozis). But 'enemies of the gods' is indeed kind of burdensome and vague. As a result, the Sidereal manuscript has introduced the term 'Ancient', in lines such as 'Whether forged by the Ancients or the gods,' or "Outandish rumors claim that the dweomerforge is itself a cast-off fragmant of one of the Ancients.'

As for why, I suspect that it's to dissociate whatever Ex3 is doing with the Yozis and the Divine Revolution from the Primordials. The term 'Primordial' has a lot of baggage; we know who the Primordials were, we know how they functioned, we know them down to the specifics of their biology, we have an entire origin story for them... So just retire the term and call them something else that is slightly different enough that it could refer to a broader, vaguer category of beings that don't have all the same commonalities.

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What a shame. If baggage was all bad, we'd be playing 1e of a new game. Godbound, maybe. Not 3e of this one.

No part of Exalted lore is all good, but the Primordials have some absolutely great baggage. I hope the baby doesn't go out with the bathwater here.

Ancients is an alright term, though.

Everything I know about Hearteaters come from this thread and maybe it's my natural rebelliousness but I love them.

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I think most people like them; I do. I just want to swap out their backstory.

I think it's the most interesting thing about them.
It's like if you made Lunars a group of unexalted shapeshifters you'd have removed most of what I liked about them.

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But Lunars are, well, Lunars. They work as Exalted. To me, making the Hearteaters Exalted feels like making hungry ghosts Exalted. And I say that as someone who really likes hungry ghosts.

C'mon, don't be like that.

I'm all for people changing the setting in ways that suit them! That's great! But the idea that the game/setting/whatever is skeptical of Solars is simply not there in second edition. A casual run through the corebook pulling out the most obvious stuff:

The corebook opens with an 8 page comic depicting our iconic Solars being heroic as they investigate a situation, fight a god, and save people. The second comic has a Solar being heroic against an Abyssal.

The chapter 1 comic features one of our iconic Solars standing up to a tyrant. On page 24, it tells us that the Solars were really cool ("a time of miracles beyond description") until they were turned to evil by the Neverborn's Great Curse, and lays out that maybe the curse could have been ameliorated if the Sidereals had been wiser—it's ostensibly neutral on this, but I don't think it's weird to read this as being supportive of Solars. On page 31, we get a brief description of Solars as "The Solar Exalted are the Chosen of the Unconquered Sun, created to be the rulers of the world and the leaders of the other Exalted. Solar Exalted come in one of five castes. The Dawn Castes are unparalleled warriors, the Zenith Castes are priests and mystics, the Twilight Castes are savants and sorcerers, the Night Castes are spies and assassins, and the Eclipse Castes are diplomats and ambassadors." This says explicitly from an omniscient point of view that they were created to be rightful kings, not that they have social-fu to do it.

Chapter 2 comic: a Solar resisting temptation to destroy an evil artifact. Chapter 3 comic: a Solar defeating a clearly villain-coded character (which becomes openly villainous if you know who 'Sondok' is). Chapter 4 comic: a DB is reflecting on how bad he feels for killing a Solar, who was a young boy who was trying to stop the drug trade from harming his home. Chapter 5 comic: a Solar is negotiating with a spirit to save people from pirates. Chapters 6 and 7 comics: not about Solars. Chapter 8 has a Solar being cool and he's probably more heroic-coded than not. Ending comic is Kejak ruminating on the Solars' return and thinking that Solars are definitely going to be just as bad as before, and Nara-O isn't depicted as agreeing with this perspective, so it reads like the authors aren't agreeing with him.

This all isn't out of line with Solar depictions later in the edition's lifecycle. The idea that Solars were any sort of Hearteater-alike or that the game's books have much skepticism about their legitimate rule isn't there. You can dig up some support, but it's vastly less than the fact that... well, it repeatedly puts front and center the fact that Solars are cool and good and it's basically not right that they are denied rightful rule.

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No, it's absolutely there. The closing comic of the same book has the near-omniscient wise man who kinda-sorta rules the world say,

In the beginning, they'll appear as heroes, which Creation so desperately seems to need.

But in the end they'll reveal their true colours for mortal and god alike to see.

Their power will grow... as will their hubris... until they once more become the terrors even I shudder to remember.

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The game went to great lengths to be ambivalent about the Usurpation. And it was always the plain text of the setting that Solars could be true monsters. That's where the Deathlords come from!

It's unambiguous that in the short term Solars will do a lot of good and heroic things. The game's skepticism has always been in the long term, particularly where Elder Essence is involved. The First Age pre-incarnations of 2e's iconic Solar heroes were bad bad people.

One of the best things about Exalted is that it has (almost) always resolutely refused to give anyone a moral pass based on the colour they glow. Everyone can do great things; everyone can do wicked ones.

 

[HalfTangible]

And this is in opposition to ruling by charisma? What is the alternative to ruling by charisma? How does one rule in such a fashion as to improve the lives of one's subjects?

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You can rule through manipulation and trickery. Put a puppet on the throne. Hold blackmail over the King's head. Rule through force by gathering an army and make yourself a dictator. Be a genius inventor who is so indispensable that you rule in all but name. Say "God said so" and rule because you know the religious texts the best. Make the entire country dependant upon your money and become the central bank.

There are a LOT of ways to rule, in no small part because you need a lot of different things to rule.

 

[The_Reptile_]

The 3e Sids book is pretty upfront that the Baloran Crusade and tge Contagion was a massive dereliction of duty by Yu Shan. It also at least heavily implies, if not outright states I din't remember off the top of my head, the Incarnae had removed themselves from most of the levers of power well before the Sun turned his gaze away, and the framing is much more 'Sol and the Incarnae fully settle into retirement' rather than 'The Incarnae abandoned their duty in the face of Exalted decadence'.

 

[Chehrazad]

I'll be honest I don't get what you're going for here. Can you just get to the point?

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Alright, I'll stop being insufferable: You are creating a distinction that does not exist. Charms to persuade are inherently also Charms to rule. Charms to foster and create bureaucratic institutions are not necessarily Charms to rule "super good". Your assertion was that Solars, in possessing Charms directed towards persuading and using persona charisma, did not have Charms for ruling super good. When challenged on this, you instead switched to saying that actually they could rule well but rather that they had a lot of Charms for being charismatic as opposed to being bureaucratic.

My point is this:

1. The assertion that Solars do not have Charms for ruling "super good" is false; the ability to be charismatic and to persuade is a vital aspect of rulership.
2. The implicit assumption that bureaucratic rule is foundational for establishing good life betrays a deeply modernist assumption that good rule is only brought about through large-scale bureaucratic projects.
3. The lack of Solar bureaucratic Charms tells us nothing about the setting, because there has not been a bureaucratic subsystem for them to hook into for three editions that hasn't sucked and/or been an afterthought.

In 1e, Solar War was grouped under Performance. Does this tell us that Solars are poor generals, but excellent dancers and singers. Is it perhaps, "telling" of the setting that the greatest ruler of the First Age had such supernal skill at pole-dancing, yet no independent skill at war? You are making an inference about the setting from a systemic triviality; the answer to "why do Solars lack Bureaucracy Charms?" is not, "because they were meant to rule by charisma and persuasion". It is because no one saw fit to write a system for this that didn't suck ass. @Sanctaphrax mentioned this a few pages ago, I believe.

You can rule through manipulation and trickery. Put a puppet on the throne. Hold blackmail over the King's head. Rule through force by gathering an army and make yourself a dictator. Be a genius inventor who is so indispensable that you rule in all but name. Say "God said so" and rule because you know the religious texts the best. Make the entire country dependant upon your money and become the central bank.

There are a LOT of ways to rule, in no small part because you need a lot of different things to rule.

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None of this is wrong, but the answer is not right for my question. I recommend reading my earlier questions again.

 

[BossFight]

Alright, I'll stop being insufferable: You are creating a distinction that does not exist. Charms to persuade are inherently also Charms to rule. Charms to foster and create bureaucratic institutions are not necessarily Charms to rule "super good". Your assertion was that Solars, in possessing Charms directed towards persuading and using persona charisma, did not have Charms for ruling super good. When challenged on this, you instead switched to saying that actually they could rule well but rather that they had a lot of Charms for being charismatic as opposed to being bureaucratic.

My point is this:

1. The assertion that Solars do not have Charms for ruling "super good" is false; the ability to be charismatic and to persuade is a vital aspect of rulership.
2. The implicit assumption that bureaucratic rule is foundational for establishing good life betrays a deeply modernist assumption that good rule is only brought about through large-scale bureaucratic projects.
3. The lack of Solar bureaucratic Charms tells us nothing about the setting, because there has not been a bureaucratic subsystem for them to hook into for three editions that hasn't sucked and/or been an afterthought.

In 1e, Solar War was grouped under Performance. Does this tell us that Solars are poor generals, but excellent dancers and singers. Is it perhaps, "telling" of the setting that the greatest ruler of the First Age had such supernal skill at pole-dancing, yet no independent skill at war? You are making an inference about the setting from a systemic triviality; the answer to "why do Solars lack Bureaucracy Charms?" is not, "because they were meant to rule by charisma and persuasion". It is because no one saw fit to write a system for this that didn't suck ass. @Sanctaphrax mentioned this a few pages ago, I believe.


None of this is wrong, but the answer is not right for my question. I recommend reading my earlier questions again.

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I mean, I just completely disagree with all of this, but if your admiting the last several posts were you trying to be insufferable then I'm just going to say fuck you and I'm done trying to have a conversation with you in good faith.

 

[VagueZ]

No, it's absolutely there. The closing comic of the same book has the near-omniscient wise man who kinda-sorta rules the world say,

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You... literally cut out the section where I spoke about that comic. I gave a direct and clear explanation of why that comic was framed in a pro-Solar way, and you cut it out to tell me that it's not there.

 

[mantovani]

So there's no difference between the incarna and the Ancients/Primordials now, both care the same amount for humanity.

 

[Chehrazad]

I mean, I just completely disagree with all of this, but if your admiting the last several posts were you trying to be insufferable then I'm just going to say fuck you and I'm done trying to have a conversation with you in good faith.

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I apologize, that part was sarcasm. I was not trying to be insufferable, I was asking Socratic questions, which is often insufferable to participate in, but not out of intent.

 

[Sanctaphrax]

I mean, I just completely disagree with all of this, but if your admiting the last several posts were you trying to be insufferable then I'm just going to say fuck you and I'm done trying to have a conversation with you in good faith.

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C'mon, don't be like that. Going about an argument in an elliptical way isn't deliberate trolling, even if you call yourself insufferable for it.

You... literally cut out the section where I spoke about that comic. I gave a direct and clear explanation of why that comic was framed in a pro-Solar way, and you cut it out to tell me that it's not there.

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To be clear, I'm disagreeing with you about the way it's framed. Sorry about the cutting, that was careless. And unnecessary, actually, because the forum automatically shortens long quotes. Bad habit of mine.

But seriously, Exalted isn't and hasn't ever been a straightforward good-vs-evil story.

EDIT: Fixed the quote. Again, I regret that.

 

[mantovani]

But seriously, Exalted isn't and hasn't ever been a straightforward good-vs-evil story.

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Unless you go out of your way to be a complate immoral monster, fighting against 1e The First and Forsaken Lion or 2e The Ebon Dragon is pretty much it.

 

[Amidatelion]

To be clear, I'm disagreeing with you about the way it's framed. Sorry about the cutting, that was careless. And unnecessary, actually, because the forum automatically shortens long quotes. Bad habit of mine.

But seriously, Exalted isn't and hasn't ever been a straightforward good-vs-evil story.

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Chejop Kejak is the least likely person in creation to be impartial about the Solars. He has all the motives in the world to reinforce his own biases.

The comic's framing isn't a sobering warning about the corruption that dwells in the hearts of our heroes, it's an implicit challenge to the newly returned Solars to prove him wrong.

 

[Sanctaphrax]

Proving him wrong would not be a meaningful challenge if he was completely full of it.

Do you think the Great Curse was included by accident?

 

[Amidatelion]

Proving him wrong would not be a meaningful challenge if he was completely full of it.

Do you think the Great Curse was included by accident?

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Well, of course. But I argue that the framing of the comic ultimately wants us to root for the solars, not be skeptical of them. Ketchup isn't portrayed as blustering or clearly full of shit, but instead as a cynical old man, set in his ways.

 

[mantovani]

Depiste the intentions of 1e writers, the great curse ended up as a scape goat for the Exalted Host.