azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Or you could, y'know, not assume that every Dynast is a zealot who blindly adheres to Immaculate doctrine. That's an option, too.
General Exalted Thread
Oh, indeed.
But, you know, I never argued that. At all. So maybe when you've finished punching your man of straw, you might like to think up a cogent response that doesn't equate "a considerable number of Dynasts genuinely do believe in the Immaculate faith and are going to be fucked up by believing that they have just been possessed by a demon which will slowly twist them and take control of them until there's nothing of them left as they carry out atrocities" and "every Dynast is a zealot who blindly adheres to Immaculate doctrine". That's an option too.
Anyway, "Oh I'm a Dynast but I don't really believe in the Dynastic religion" is the more dull way out, compared to handling your character's crisis of faith. At least as I see it, if you're going to play a Dynast, then why would you sacrifice the chance to root your character more in Dynastic culture? The Immaculate Faith is interesting, especially when it's competently handled and isn't just treated as a paper-thin thing which can be casually disproven.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Not really.
The Immaculate Cult is the state religion. Its tenets are taught to children as the pillars of their worlds, its words are preached by speakers whose voices sing with the power of the elements, its ideals shape the greatest empire in the world and support the rule of its demigod nobility. One of the reasons sorcerers are often thought of as strange, disgraceful madmen despite their utility is that many of them have some inkling that the Cult's history isn't completely literally accurate, and behave in a manner that reflects these suspicions - even if they remain devout themselves. Mnemon is one of the Immaculate Cult's proudest and most powerful supporters, and she has Second Circle Demons at her fingertips.
It's absurd to claim that any significant number of Dynasts would respond to Anathema with an open mind. If a man in medieval Christendom suddenly started babbling in tongues, stinking of brimstone, and grew horns, his neighbours would likely not take him in for a quiet chat to clear the air, even if they themselves had a poor opinion of the local priest, found the Church drafty on Sundays, and thought tithes were a bit much.
To distance oneself in any way from the Immaculate Cult is to court social disaster and isolation, followed by destruction. To doubt the Immaculate Cult in the quiet of one's own soul is to undergo a religious crisis that cracks the foundations of your upbringing and culture. These are interesting things to have as part of your backstory! Brushing them aside with "yeah, they just never really believed in that stuff, so they were cool with it when they turned into Satan" is boring cactus-wank.
Also, "I know I should kill myself but I'm too weak to do it because I'm a coward" is totally an awesome concept for a self-loathing Solar. Especially if she tries Suicide By Wyld Hunt or something at a climactic moment because they're Right but she can't manage it and it keeps wracking her with guilt, or if she just does Bad Things because she thinks it's not her fault etc etc.
Poor Talonlord Mnemon Walaka.
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
Okay, here's Autochton's root charm; the perception charm. I'm still working on the manifestation charm.
Divine-Craft Enlightenment
Cost: 2m
Mins: Essence 2
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Combo-OK
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: None
The God-Machine understands all things that have felt the touch of a craftsman, for he his both the Craftsman and the Tool.
An Infernal with this charm may automatically learns how to craft a mundane item he can touch; he merely needs to hold a non-artifact item to be able to craft on his own. A repurchase at Essence 4 extends this power to Artifacts up to the Infernal's Essence
==#
Now, if you were to go a few charms deeper, you'd get the first charms with the Cancerous Keyword. These add penalties equal to the level you have, but these ones allow you to do things that even Solars would struggle to do.
Divine-Craft Enlightenment
Cost: 2m
Mins: Essence 2
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Combo-OK
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: None
The God-Machine understands all things that have felt the touch of a craftsman, for he his both the Craftsman and the Tool.
An Infernal with this charm may automatically learns how to craft a mundane item he can touch; he merely needs to hold a non-artifact item to be able to craft on his own. A repurchase at Essence 4 extends this power to Artifacts up to the Infernal's Essence
==#
Now, if you were to go a few charms deeper, you'd get the first charms with the Cancerous Keyword. These add penalties equal to the level you have, but these ones allow you to do things that even Solars would struggle to do.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
How does an Infernal reach Malfeas if they don't know Hell Walker Technique?
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
An Infernal can sense where the nearest entrance to Cecelyne is as part of their anima power.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
Oh! Thanks. I missed that.
How does Infallible Messenger interact with the "Must cross Cecelyne for Five days" restriction on Travel into and out of Hell?
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
ES is saying this guy would probably commit suicide.
I am disagreeing.
What his neighbors do is irrelevant to him committing suicide because shit happened and he's "possessed by a demon" but as far as he can tell it's just him.
You don't need to be so devout that you would consider committing suicide to have a crisis of faith, or be rooted in Dynastic culture.
Hell, you don't need to be at all religious to be rooted in Dynastic culture. You just have to fake it - much like many people do in real life because to do otherwise would mean they're an outcast from the only part of society they know.
Your posts made it sound like you expect Dynast Celestials to have a reason they didn't commit suicide, which I find stupid. Unless I want that to be part of my backstory, there should be no expectation for its inclusion.
I mean, when you're bringing up how you expect "a considerable number of Dynasts" are zealous enough in their belief in the Immaculate doctrine that they kill themselves without proof that they're actually going to become a monster, yes, I'm going to point out that you're assuming Dynasts are largely religious zealots.
If you want to paint the entirety of the Realm as believing that strongly, feel free to do so in your games, but given that there is evidence that Terrestrials develop doubts about their moral superiority (and the villainous nature of Anathema) within the core book, I don't see a reason to do so.
It takes 5 days to cross Cecelyne.
Infallible Messenger has a given approximate speed ("hundreds of miles an hour").
It takes 5 days. Just like everything else.
(Also, then by RAW it has to find you in Malfeas, which may take several more days because Malfeas is HUEG)
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
It takes five days for the messenger to cross the desert. Simple as.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
You don't think your average ancient-to-medieval Christian would at least consider topping himself or turning himself in for a fatal exorcism if he'd obviously been possessed by the devil? Even the most cynical, skeptical, intelligent individual is now facing proof that Anathema are real and he is burning with the evil stolen demon-sunlight and oh fuck that wasn't his memory the demon is eating his brain right now and then it will brainwash or murder everyone he loves.
The Immaculate Cult isn't some multifaith youth club where you show up for tea and biscuits. It is serious religion, one that pervades every aspect of your culture and upbringing, in an era when people believe in their religion strongly and literally, and a setting where they have good reason to. There's record after record of people turning themselves in to the church or court of the land because they believed they'd become a werewolf or witch or been possessed, and everything they knew about the way the world worked told them that this meant they needed to be destroyed - and they were just mentally ill, these people are fucking glowing. This stuff is going to happen!
You'll run, you'll weep, you'll struggle, you'll agonize, you'll consider turning yourself in and being remembered nobly, or just killing yourself in some quiet place before the sun-demon takes over so no-one has to know that this happened to you. What you won't do is brush yourself off and go "well, guess everything I've ever believed is a lie, because I feel fine!" You will be messed up.
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See, I actually find this more interesting when combined with the quote I linked earlier! Because in your heart of hearts, you know you're not Anathema... but really, couldn't that just be the demon trying to influence you? The character gets pulled in two directions, and overall the situation becomes more interesting overall if he immediately has a reason to doubt the Immaculate philosophy.
I'm not saying suicide won't happen, but I don't think it's as likely as the picture ES is painting.
A counterpoint to that is, at least in the case of the Zenith cast, the short chat with the Unconquered Sun. Its kind of hard to angst about becoming a daemon when what amounts to God Himself setting you straight.
Edit: of course you then have to deal with the fact that everything you ever been told is likely a lie. But that is a different subject.
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Yes, but how do they know that was the Unconquered Sun? Demons are tricksy and false, after all!
Or in other words, the human capacity for self-deception isn't exactly small. And it's one of the things that Exaltation doesn't help you with.
But thats the thing about Unconquered Sun, when you see him, you know that this is god, you know that he is true and magnificent. They can be no self delusion is his presence. Now I'm not saying what you and ES are wrong, what I'm saying is that there are logical exception to what you are talking about. The fact that the signicher first edition Zenith was a devout inmaclent monk gives some validity to my point.
Fortuna
Graceful Topiary Artist
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Key phrase - when you see him. For a few minutes at most, maybe as little as a pair of sentences. And then you're back in the real world and your entire upbringing comes flooding back and, in the best case scenario, you're sort of confused.
It would be possible, if you didn't want to deal with this, for the US to social you into not worrying about it. And honestly, that's probably the best route if you're a newbie-ish player.
If you don't like the literal Deus ex Exaltation, though, roleplay the breakdown.
If you don't like the literal Deus ex Exaltation, though, roleplay the breakdown.
Or to put it another way, results may vary between Zeniths who Exalt in the Realm, or indeed Celestials in general who Exalt in the Realm.
Crazy, I know.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
Through a few poorly defined techniques and methods. At least, they are in 2e, 1e was much better about it.
The first method is the 16 paths that open on Calibration, three water based, 13 land based. Seven are generally known. You can also paddle off the edge of the world by heading west in a coracle, past the fae courts. That sometimes gets you there. You can ride up to the highest point in the sky, cut hole in it, go through the Wyld again, and arrive at Cecelyne. There's an artifact 4 key that you can use on a door to open to Cecelyne (it became an array of badly balanced keys that ignored to five day limit in 2e, but those tend to be ignored).
The simplest way is just to ride out into a place of desolation within the intent to reach Malfeas. You will get there... eventually. The catch is this take days to weeks to months. None to practical, to say the least.
Of the 2e methods worth talking about (meaning, not part of Infernals except for the charms chapter) the best method is probably using a manse. Note its an expensive power (5 dots of manse points) so its not going to come cheap. Further, you need to set some basic sanity restraints on. Things like preventing free travel for the Unquestionables to Creation, and even unlimited travel for 2CDs is sketchy. Further, you need to have restraint placed on keeping demons from spilling through your portal. 1CDs want out of Malfeas, but to many at once and Sidereals notice, and things end in explosions and Wyld Hunts (or just explosions, if the Sids move to disrupt/blow up your manse). Further, an open conduit to creation is something very valuable, even if beings like the Unquestionables can't use it themselves, so you'd be viaing with some powerful beings for the portal. Or owing some powerful favors for use of it.
(In short: plot hooks ahoy!)
Well, on that end of things you have the Surrender Oaths as a justification for why Second and Third Circles can't use a gate personally.
The Third Circles are probably flatly incapable of using it. The Gods and Exalts would have wanted them to have as few paths to Creation as possible, their release conditions and direct Summoning probably being the limit.
For Second Circles, they're likely less restricted and can maybe use the gate under certain restrictions or at certain times, but probably wouldn't be able to use it on a day to day basis.
Mhm.
Depends on how you get your hands on it and where the gate leads out, in my opinion.
If, for example, the Manse is one you built yourself or rediscovered/repaired, you've got a fairly hefty claim on it.
Then there's the Malfeas side portal to think of.
If, for example, the portal opens up in Ligier's domain, you'd probably be dealing with him in concerns of major trade, moving Magical Materials or raksha, for example. For comparably lesser things like spices, foods, general wealth, etc, I doubt that he'd be personally involved.
On the other hand, if the portal opens up in say Octavian's empire, he'll probably be the one you initially deal with, at least until one or more of the Third Circles finds out and decides to kick him out and then deal with you.
If the Manse is something preexisting and already owned, then there's probably some form of tax or another for its use since something like that is probably already owned by someone.
So yeah. Lots of fun stuff.
Matsci
Grash itsh griah! Rwar arr rawrrawrarar!
Also, if you're going off of a certain webcomic (*curses tendonitis with the fury of a thousand suns*) there'd be a set of keyblades that could probably help...
Actually, out of curiosity, has anyone ever written those up?
Jukashi actully had them written up at one point. Let me see if I can dig up the old page.
Nope, it's gone, and not even the wayback machine has it. If anyone has an archive of the old Lore5 site, it was on there.