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General Exalted Thread

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LaSquida said:
...I missed trireme drama?
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The trireme argument, in case anyone is not familiar with it, is a hundred-year-old argument in the Exalted fandom. Long ago, in the prehistory of Exalted First Edition, it was decided that the world should be inspired by classical antiquity. For this reason, the Realm's primary ship was made the trireme, because it was the ship used at the time of the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars in classical Greece. However, the map was expanded at a later date, leading not just to a bunch of cities with strange relationships that made no sense (the famous Paragon-Gem trade war in 1e-2e for example) but also to a ship designed for combat on the Mediterranean Sea. For long, strange internet nerds have fought a virtual war over the prominence of the trireme in Creation, and as a result some have ended up using all sorts of academic resources and studies on what triremes actually do for arguments they were most certainly not written with the intent of being used for. Due to the length of this argument, whether Creation should have triremes or not, people have really pushed themselves to the furthest of the corners and therefore—combined with a game of telephone with what the sources actually say—some have come away convinced that the trireme was actually just a bad ship all around. Just terrible. No reason to use one.

I say all of this using present tense, as if it is an ongoing fight, but the reality is that as far as I know, no one has cared about this for years.
 
SO I'm doing Infernal and I kinda need idea for what would be good Ebon Dragon Manse? Preferably high-rating, five dots one? I tried looking for example but only got one with complicated mechanic (the mechanic from Oadenol's Codex), and I have idea of 'basically speakeasy', but I want more and Search doesn't turn-up other fan-written Manses.
 
UrsaTempest said:
SO I'm doing Infernal and I kinda need idea for what would be good Ebon Dragon Manse? Preferably high-rating, five dots one? I tried looking for example but only got one with complicated mechanic (the mechanic from Oadenol's Codex), and I have idea of 'basically speakeasy', but I want more and Search doesn't turn-up other fan-written Manses.
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what's the purpose of the manse.

Is it meant to be custom or just one you found.
 
Sucal said:
what's the purpose of the manse.

Is it meant to be custom or just one you found.
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Given as gift for being Infernal. Beyond that, I have no idea. D:
Like I want to tie it together with factions and 3cd and such, plus whether it's on Creation or Malfeas, and so on. But like, I need examples before I can eyeball what I want, and there's only one (two?) examples of ED Manse plus general characteristics from Ink Monkeys so I kinda-sorta get it but not quite get it so I want more example you know?
 
LaSquida said:
I'm just flabbergasted I never heard of it. It was always about sail rigging!
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I mean on rigging the important part I thought was avoid what I think is called square-rigged ships and you're good to go.

On triremes, I'm kind of ambivilant since I kind of honeslty didn't at the time know what they were, Waterworld and other stuff broke what a trireme even was wehn I was checks notes 17. To me the hodgepodge tech thing is more important htan relaisitc boats at this point.
 
UrsaTempest said:
Given as gift for being Infernal. Beyond that, I have no idea. D:
Like I want to tie it together with factions and 3cd and such, plus whether it's on Creation or Malfeas, and so on. But like, I need examples before I can eyeball what I want, and there's only one (two?) examples of ED Manse plus general characteristics from Ink Monkeys so I kinda-sorta get it but not quite get it so I want more example you know?
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A five dot manse, you say?

The Dark House
The Demon City is nothing if not well-lit. A single perfect shining sun casts emerald radiance in all directions, through floors and ceilings, blasting through all things and creating a word where shame can never be hidden by darkness. A perfect panopticon, save when terrible celestial bodies drift before His Father's Son and block out a tiny sliver of his scornful light.

And also, in one single house, where the lights are all out. The House sits on a gentle rise overlooking a neighborhood of nautilus-shell tenements and warrens woven of black needles, the center of which has been arranged into a massive and well-furnished arcade by an errant fancy of The Flesh-Melting Gyre. The Dark House is a three story town home of gleaming black stone with smoky windows and curtains for doors. It is a breezy, comfortable dwelling, but unmistakably luxurious. And also, all the lights are out.

No one knows who made The Dark House, though rumors speak of secret dealings between That Which Calls to the Shadows and one of His Father's Sun's own siblings. The inner environs of The Dark House are unknown. Light does not penetrate its walls, and neither can information, sound, or memory. There are special charms that previous owners of the House have fashioned from cast-off bricks and shingles that, when worn close to the heart or brow, allow memories of events that have transpired inside The House to persist beyond it.

The House remains a place of clandestine dealings, passing from owner to owner as a useful bargaining chip. Actually taking up residence in the house is unthinkable for many, because the House's interior is clouded with all-consuming darkness and near impossible to navigate. Once or twice the House has been presented to Ligier by a gracious owner, but His Father's Sun has always politely refused. After all, he knows not what would become of his light were he to ever step inside. Would the House shatter under the weight of his condensed radiance, or would its stately dark walls hold, and plunge the Demon City into sacred, blessed, long-awaited night?
 
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Blaque said:
I mean on rigging the important part I thought was avoid what I think is called square-rigged ships and you're good to go.
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The really distinctive rigging pattern of the Age of Sail was hybrid rigging, with square-rigged sails on multiple masts, supplemented by fore-and-aft sails.

Single-mast square rigging is perfectly on-brand for an Antiquity vibe.
 
Chehrcuteriè said:
The trireme argument, in case anyone is not familiar with it, is a hundred-year-old argument in the Exalted fandom. Long ago, in the prehistory of Exalted First Edition, it was decided that the world should be inspired by classical antiquity. For this reason, the Realm's primary ship was made the trireme, because it was the ship used at the time of the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars in classical Greece. However, the map was expanded at a later date, leading not just to a bunch of cities with strange relationships that made no sense (the famous Paragon-Gem trade war in 1e-2e for example) but also to a ship designed for combat on the Mediterranean Sea. For long, strange internet nerds have fought a virtual war over the prominence of the trireme in Creation, and as a result some have ended up using all sorts of academic resources and studies on what triremes actually do for arguments they were most certainly not written with the intent of being used for. Due to the length of this argument, whether Creation should have triremes or not, people have really pushed themselves to the furthest of the corners and therefore—combined with a game of telephone with what the sources actually say—some have come away convinced that the trireme was actually just a bad ship all around. Just terrible. No reason to use one.

I say all of this using present tense, as if it is an ongoing fight, but the reality is that as far as I know, no one has cared about this for years.
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I genuinely don't know a lot about ships of antiquity in general or triremes in particular, which I sort of regret every time someone talks about the nuances and dimensions of it (and how it sometimes got real cracked out), it's a niche topic for sure but one that opens an almost intimate window into ancient lives. Ultimately a lot of my thoughts are just rooted in aesthetics, and there a lot of my taste is informed by the Falcresti Navy of the Masquerade series.

Which I know, I know isn't really compliant per se with what canon's sketched out (making this Unsolicited Fan Interpretation, a Cardinal sin), but it's still shaped a lot of how I think about Peleps and the Realm. The way the Imperial Navy is a bureaucratic animal, a singular institution, a distinct organism, within the larger Realm ecosystem. The way it prosecutes these like- cabinet wars and deliberately obfuscates it's inner workings from outsiders. Following its own ranks and command structure from the Rightly Guided Admiralty Board on down, even as it finds itself worryingly vulnerable to other institutions and Peleps's fellow great houses.

Also the like- imagery of its power, the awe and horror are compelling. And I think very much the right note (or a good note at least) for an instrument of Realm imperial control, of a vast and arcane military superiority to strike when seen from the outside.

Article:
Prelude

As the firestorm took his ships, as a monsoon rain of greasy incendiaries burnt his people like screaming human skewers, Abdumasi Abd tried his very damnedest to die.

"Fire parties to the port rail!" cried his battle captain, poor Zee Dbellu, who had come to war with Abdumasi to avenge his grandmother. He was a big dreadlocked man with a green flag bound to his war-spear and a false hope in his voice. He was already dead. Abdumasi had to join him.

"Turn the ship to sea!" Zee bellowed. "Run out the sweeps, soak the rowers, beat the drums! We'll get out of this yet, I promise you, I promise!"

The fire parties were all dead. The masts had toppled and the rowers lay suffocated at their broken oars. Masquerade rocket arrows had pinned all the corpses to the deck like rare butterflies.

Abdumasi looked up at Zee from under the fallen sail, where he'd crawled to hide. Beyond Zee he could see a sliver of the battle—burning masts and broken ships, arcs of hwacha-fire scratching terrible perfect curves out of the sky, war rockets that crashed down into wood and waves to bloom into blue-white fire. Dead gulls. Vortices of killed fish. The stink of Falcrest chemistry. The scream of fire and the groan of broken hullplanks and beneath it all the ebb and rush of the sea, tumbling the burning dead, stirring the pot of fire and wreckage.

A disaster. A catastrophe. And he had ordered it.

He'd brought his fleet to Aurdwynn to help their rebellion against the Masquerade. He'd joined the rebel armada at Welthony and together they'd struck Treatymont, the colonial capital: a gray cage of ironwork and stone to the north, and two burnt-out towers guarding the harbor like rotten dog teeth.

But the Masquerade had been waiting for them.

"Zee," Abdumasi whispered, "I'm so sorry."

And he put his sailing knife under his chin and tried to cut his own throat.

He couldn't do it. He was too afraid.

"Abdumasi!" Zee howled. "Abdu, where are you? We need you!"

Zee had gone mad when he realized they'd sailed into a trap. Abd saw it happen in his eyes, a meaty pop like a knuckle of lamb in the fire, and from that moment on Zee was mad with among, the rescue-fever that came over Oriati people, sometimes, when their friends and family needed them. A noble madness, the poets said, the best madness, who would not be glad to die in the throes of among?

At burnt Kutulbha, where Abdumasi's mother had died (now he sent his apologies to his mother Abdi-obdi with all his hopeless heart) whole mobs of good Oriati people had organized themselves with wet blankets and protective taboos and marched into the firestorm devouring the city, sworn to rescue parents, children, pets, books. There was no hope, of course. Falcrest's Burn munitions had created a wildfire so fierce that it sucked in the air from miles around, like a demon mouth in the city's heart, inhaling souls. No one rescued anyone. All perished. At the end of that day twenty-three years ago the rain fell on burnt Kutulbha and turned the mud and corpse-ash into concrete, and to this day Kutulbha was a gray disc on the coast of the Oriati Mbo, a dark mortar full of bone.

Into that mortar the Falcresti had inscribed two words in their dull blocky script: The Arc of History.

That horror was what Abdumasi had come to avenge—
Source: pg. 13-14, The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
 
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The best ship for your Exalted game is the one you think looks the coolest. Gigantic junk? Nice. Trireme with a screaming dragon battering ram? Dope. Longship crewed by summoned demons? Awesome. Modern cruise liner made possible by sorcery and charms? Super cool.

(I personally like the idea of the Realm's fleet being 19th century ships-of-the-line and equivalent trading vessels for the whole 'evil empire's ironclad nightmare fist' aesthetic.)
 
The Realm should have a two-tier fleet: something historicalesque that any old mortal crew can operate for day to day business and hangar-queen fantasy catamarans (I'm thinking Warhammer Fantasy high elf fleet) that are completely unmanageable without Deeb crew for when they need to Get Serious (or hold a gala :) )
 
This is more or less settled in 3e, anyway, where the Realm only really uses the triremes in the Inland Sea, and the ships in the Water or Air fleet that have to leave it are explicitly like, larger and more seaworthy for long voyages. The Realm doesn't specify what kind of ships those are, which is very funny, because it has the vibe of "someone is going to get really mad about this no matter what we say here if we give a real kind of ship".
 
I personally tend to envision the average Realm capital ship to be analogous to a galleass with a junk rig, with the lesser ships resembling junks or byzantine dromons. Real impressive flagships I think should resemble Treasure Vessels or many-masted Quinquiremes.
 
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So, anyway, i've been reading my way through Kengan Ashura and i'm thinking that the Annihilation Tournament is totally something that the Guild would do.
 
It's not canon, but I love ships of the line because it lets me play in the same space as a real world aircraft carrier.

Ships of the line are basically floating castles, and without canons they're nearly invincible.

So I love the idea that the realm can just... Park a castle next to your city of they want to besiege it. I love what that says about their ability to project force and their sheer military might
 
Got my Secret technique for Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style and its kinda psychotic. Here is hoping they accept it 🙏


Ie, deliberately twists your form for but a moment to take in the reflection of all realities of creation. Heaven, Malfeas, Underworld, etc. And power bomb someone through the glass with you both ending up in random reality in creation. One per a story and you cannot use Obsidian Shards for a while
 
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MiracleGrow said:
Got my Secret technique for Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style and its kinda psychotic. Here is hoping they accept it 🙏
Ie, deliberately twists your form for but a moment to take in the reflection of all realities of creation. Heaven, Malfeas, Underworld, etc. And power bomb someone through the glass with you both ending up in random reality in creation. One per a story and you cannot use Obsidian Shards for a while
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I am not familiar enough with 3e, but I have a big question:

Have they changed the rule that getting to Malfeas never takes less than five days?
 
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