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General Exalted Thread

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PBP Sidereals! Where the ritual's made up and side quests actually matter!

Something I think I mentioned in one of my earlier posts is that my Oracle is a sorcerer, and took Silent Words of Dreams and Nightmares as his control spell. Which means that meeting a person is enough to establish the empathetic link necessary to create a dream that can influence them. Something I didn't mention was our Shieldbearer was building towards Quicksilver Hand of Dreams. For those who aren't aware of the style (our GM ported it over from previous editions) QHoD is a Sidereal Martial Art centered around sleeping and dreams. Its first charm (The Quicksilver Staircase) allows the dreamer to perfectly control their own dreams and recall them perfectly, which (among other things that aren't relevant right now) makes our Battle Sid immune to any effect that manipulates her dreams.

No, we did not pvp, that's not where this is going.

See after the incident with the Caballerro, our Battlesid went back to heaven to recuperate, regroup, and reorganize her thoughts. When she came back, she had an idea for my Oracle. See, the Walker in Darkness reaches out to people through their dreams, so she wanted my Oracle to cast Silent Words of Dreams and Nightmares on her so she could entreat with the deathlord and see what the two Viziers could learn together (Oracle has a bunch of investigation dots and Shieldbearer has several of the 'ask a question plus more w/3 successes' charms.)

The spell doesn't actually work like this, but our GM is a swell guy and we all thought the idea was fun, so he let us create a ritual with that control spell as the base, imposing the cost of a Minor Sacrifice (since the Walker was by Gentian instead we needed a prayer to act as a direct link). In this case it was an Eclipse charm stored in our Shieldbearer's hearthstone (btw she has a hearthstone that can store an Eclipse charm).

My Oracle didn't actually show himself in the dream, acting more like terrain and figments of our shieldbearer's imagination rather than a "physical" presence. The sunset cloudscape he created was subsumed by darkness and towers of crystal and basalt, and we began to talk with the Walker in Darkness.

He's actually a pretty swell guy if you forget he seeks the annihilation of all things.

And so the dream went. He knew that he was dealing with Sidereals, and apparently had never had the occasion of "experiencing so many Viziers in such a short span of time", which ftr is I believe three in less than a month, four if he was aware my oracle was there. He played Gateway with our shieldbearer, commenting that he preferred going second because mercenaries almost always called into the middle of an already developing situation.

So, pleasantries aside (she introduced herself with her predecessor's name rather than her own), our Shieldbearer wanted to know how the deathlord saved the Cabalerro from lethe, saying she'd "expend a great many men" to figure out how he'd done so. He asked 'how many', because he was willing to tell her. One other piece of info he offered was how Rakan Thulio "turned Saturn's blade". After all, if we really wanted to know how to cheat death and were willing to offer lives to get it, all we had to do was set a number. Read Intentions showed that he never lies and would have told her, but that he was doing so because he wanted her to violate her morals and ideals, to sacrifice them on the altar of a good cause.

At one point he tried to instill her with respect, and succesfully hit one of her defining intimacies ("A general's duty is to her men") and got 17 successes. I was able to defend her mind with a 2 dot stunt I am inordinately proud of (Fury is my Oracle, the First Daughter is our shieldbearer, and Jewel is Fury's Efficient Secretary aka Spider google:

For a moment, the First Daughter's thoughts seem to settle. This man is a general, like herself, looking out for the well-being of her subordinates. He might be an enemy, but she could deal with him. A general like any other. Perhaps there was a deal-

First Daughter feels the shadows close in on the world, and though she is the master of her dreams, there's another here who created the dream, and though his will is not greater than hers, he is a friend, and she does not fight it.

There's a flash, and while she still sees the game board and hears the walker, she also sees the Black Chase, the ritual chamber, through Fury's eyes. Every detail, every mark, every grisly piece of evidence of the sacrifices and atrocities committed there. The blood of innocents, the bone of children, the howling screams of the disturbed dead. All in the name of this so-called 'general'.

She hears Ghrent, speaking in one of the Convention's first meetings after Thorns, telling the others what he'd managed to learn of the deathlords. The true extent of the threat they represented. The horrors of the Neverborn.

Another flash. She feels pain. The agony of her skeleton fighting her muscles, trying to rip its way out of her and tear her to pieces (approximated, of course; neither she nor Fury knows what that truly feels like). Ah, right; one of the Mask of Winter's tactics at Thorns had been releasing pigs infected with the Puppeteer's plague after starving the populace.

She hears her own voice, presenting the evidence of the Black Heron's allegiance to the Neverborn: the horrors she had wrought, the damning atrocities. She heard her own voice waver with horror, something she'd barely noticed herself at the time.

A final flash clears the images and sounds away. For the first time, she feels a sensation only Fury knew: a plucking of her fate string, and the voice of Jewel echoes in her mind.

The Deathlords must be contained, Daughter. says the spider. Do not deviate from our mission.

Eventually the Walker pressed to find out the real reason we'd called. Shieldbearer said she intended to visit the Veinous Stair and wanted to know what she'd find. He told her the experience was different for everyone, but she would hear the voices of the World's Creators, beings whose magnificence outshone even the Incarnae we'd surely met. He also told her that if she did hear the voices and heeded the ultimate truth of the Chivalry, he had a spot for her by his side. He likes Sidereals, and she'd introduced herself in part as the "foremost tactician of the age", something a mercenary like him would absolutely want.

They paused their game of Gateway, and our Shieldbearer promised to finish it later. She also promised that if she did descend into the labyrinth and heard the true whispers of the world's creators, then she might perhaps ask about the Sleepwalker. (She also said he was the greatest Gateway player she'd ever faced aside perhaps Plentimon but that's not a fair comparison)

Once she woke up, Shieldbearer and Oracle discussed things. It was disturbing that he knew of Rakan Thulio, and they decided they would keep that information a secret. If word got out that cheating death could be achieved by talking to the Walker, as opposed to a proven traitor against Heaven, it would doubtlessly tempt many off of the right path. The Convention on Death had a hard enough time convincing Heaven to take the Deathlords more seriously as a threat, they didn't need a carrot.

As part of that, Oracle gave Shieldbearer the Ascending Secrets Horoscope, which would penalize rolls made against her Guile to discover the secret. I took Mask and Treasure Trove, so she had to give him a secret he didn't already know. Namely, that when shieldbearer was a teenager, she refused to be friends with a certain member of a wealthy Heaven's Dragon family because she was a "spoiled brat." She was, in fact, so adamant about this that she ended up running away from home over it and never spoke to her mother again.

Imagine her surprise when said spoiled brat showed up to a convention of the dead meeting, freshly Exalted as a Heaven's Dragon and acting as my Oracle's employee. Which I find hilarious and amazing, because A) this wasn't established before now and I loved it, and B) I established my Air Aspect retainer as a professional, composed, very stringent individual ("She really puts my feet to the fire, she's half the reason I do my paperwork on time" [he does not do his paperwork on time]) and finding out she was a spoiled brat when she was young made me laugh both IC and IRL.

Unrelated commentary: This is more of an Experienced Exalt thing than a Sidereal thing, but the fact that the characters have history together, history that can connect to things in the Exalted setting (such as a previously hinted operation to uncover the Black Heron's status as a deathlord) is really cool and I enjoy it a lot.

Also Sidereal charms are fucking great and I love social sorcery.
 
Some of you may remember my exalted Shard the Siege of Y'danna. Well I now proudly present version 2.0 which has a cool new map and has been retooled around the idea that the empty space between Prasad and Y'danna is in fact a tropical steppe full of nomadic peoples.

docs.google.com

The Siege of Y'danna - V.2.0

The Lay of the Land Situated between Madara and Y’danna, the southern coast of the Dreaming Sea is inhabited by the Trade Kingdoms. These are a series of independent city states, coastal towns and petty kingdoms which make their fortune trading along the Dreaming Sea. To their south - separated b...
docs.google.com docs.google.com

EDIT: The link should work now.
 
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PBP Sidereals update! Now, where were we?

HalfTangible said:
"The Cabelerro rides again"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Oh right. Balls.

The fake attack we'd planned to have hit the city of Sijan became a very real attack by one of the Walker's deathknights. Our Battlesid hastily trained up some Blackguard to act as powerful back-up. But the Circle wasn't going to panic their way through this, oh no. Sidereals always have a plan.

Firstly, we laid down a pair of powerful prohecies: one to cause strife in the Walker's cult, and another to aid Silken Veil (the leader of the Morticians) in bringing them back into the fold and not worshipping the deathlord anymore. That would help deal with the Walker cult. But it left the now-returned deathknight.

At this point in time, the Sidereals don't know for certain what the Abyssals are or how they work; they're obviously a mockery of the Solar Exalted, but the idea that they're corrupted Solars is just one of many theories. Since we didn't know how to put the cabellerro down permanently, we decided we'd capture him and bring him to Lytek. That way we get someone who knows what he's talking about to look into the thing.

First round goes pretty well for our team. My Heaven's Dragon retainer unhorses the Abyssal. Our Serenity knocked the horse back through a charm I don't remember the name of (Crane something) and it botches trying to eat Samjo, one of its living allies (*snrk*). The zombies miss everyone.

Not all sunshine and rainbows, though. The Abyssal and two of his living cultists start laying down buffs, including but not limited to:
  • Dawn of Dead Stars: Undead Battle group under the Abyssal's command gain +1 might, double 9s on command rolls to issue orders. Enemies must roll Wits + Integrity, Difficulty 4 each turn before they act, and on a failure lose two initiative that the Abyssal gains and take -3 for all action that turn (Enemies crashed by this lose a point of willpower or gain a minor derangement if they have none to lose).

    The major problem with this being most of us didn't actually invest into Integrity.
  • Samjo sings a song that causes all who hear it (and fail the save) to lose 3i and take -1 to their actions until next turn.
  • Kersaka shapes necromancy.
  • Black breath of the abyss (but he got to use it reflexively when I approached) so now we're all at -3 on all our actions. Blinded!
... Oh, and zombies and war ghosts were there too I guess. They didn't do anything.

Despite having a -6 on my actions for the second round, I hit the Abyssal with a decisive attack that did 12 damage and popped the corpse like a soap bubble. Turns out it was NOT an Abyssal, but a Nephwrack possessing the Abyssal's corpse. Awww. =( Still gonna be cool to look at I guess. I also invoked the Greater and Lesser signs of Jupiter, giving everybody a +4 on their resolve and Guile. Which was important because these guys were stacking psyche effects like crazy (see above)

Our Endings used his Terminal Sanction to reveal a Nephwrack, a Sainted Sinner of the Company, those who joined solely to serve the Neverborn.

Round 3

Our Endings performed the Greater Sign of Saturn, which now makes three Greater Signs buffing us, as well as all of their lesser signs. This will also be important later. Our battlesid attacked the Sainted Sinner Nephwrack, and brought it down to its last -4 health level.

Now, I'd just reset to base, so I was at 5i, and then I failed my integrity roll so I was at 3. I was in melee with it, so I could potentially finish it off. It was also low enough that if I wanted I could hit it with a withering attack and crash it. Either way, as you may recall, I had a -6 to either action.

HOWEVER! Lesser sign of Saturn gives an automatic success on decisive damage rolls. So if I managed to hit the thing, even if I rolled terribly on damage, it would die. I was certain I'd regret it but FUCK IT WE BALL!

Fortunately with a massive onslaught penalty and its -4, its DV was 1, which made me feel silly for doubting it and spending so much time on a stunt. (Weaved in the Scripture of the Bride, too.)

Then I rolled damage, got 2, 3, and 4.

…

Yeah thank you Saturn.

After the battle I found one of the necromancers and told him to go home and make his girlfriend happy (by the way he had a girlfriend), and our Endings cut off the artifact arm of the other necromancer (by the way he had an artifact arm), and that necromancer WOULD have been finished off by Choral Tenure's Death of a Shadow: Amphibian Shinobi Death Strike*, but our Reckoner was apparently feeling merciful, took the arm and healed the stump.

*Choral Tenure was the Harbinger NPC's frog god familiar (by the way they were here too but we had so many actors in the scene already they essentially acted as background)

Dice penalties are a *pain* when so much of your Excellency's power is tied into TN reduction.
 
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I imagine that Elloge is technically one of the better Yozi at understanding and communicating with lesser beings. But she is also one of the least interested in doing so. The ones who I consider likely to sometimes communicate with specks would be TED, and Szoreny. Cythera has the skills necessary to observe and understand small things but in my headcanon her potent powers of communication were intentionally crippled by the Exalted host.

Hagar the Tomb Archivist is a third circle demon of Elloge I once came up with. He is a collector of stories with the capacity to manifest their contents in the real world. He tends to act friendly and generous to visitors offering great prizes to those who agree to take on a role in his plays. However this demeanor conceals his cruel controlling nature and inability to adapt to unexpected developments which drives him to torment and kill those who agree to his terms.

Also one idea I had for another third circle of Elloge is a sort of fairy queen type figure who stridently believes in the power of redemption and that in the end G will inevitably triumph over Evil. Also her Warden Soul is David Bowie.
 
Sharing a story from one of my games.
While traveling on a merchant boat from Tern to Champoor, my player characters were abruptly awoken in the dead of night by a commotion. The source of the disturbance was a strange, hauntingly beautiful flower, painted in silver and crystal, adorning the wall of the hallway. Some of the greatest minds in Creation quickly ruled out any connections to the underworld, the criminal syndicates, or Malfeas. Amid the tension, out-of-character jokes circulated about them potentially confronting the elusive street artist, Banksy.

The atmosphere turned deadly serious when the Zenith leaned in for a closer inspection. As she examined the intricate design, the flower began to siphon her essence. They went onto discover, to their collective horror, that the flower was once a person's body. Its core elements had been grotesquely separated and artfully rearranged: the silver paint was derived from calcium in its bones, and the crystals were formed from carbon.

The true terror lay in the revelation that the flower's creator, and the person's murderer, was still present. Unseen by the naked eye, these killers were a form of fae known as the Tiny Folk—wyld-based microorganisms with a deep-seated animosity towards anything larger than themselves, viewing them as tyrants. Their nature revealed both good news and bad news: the good news was that the Tiny Folk were relatively short-lived and would cease to be a threat once they could no longer agree on anything (afterall, any long-lasting consensus that would let them function like a single organism is tyranny to them). The downside, however, was that they were extremely difficult to kill, and any clumsy attempt to scrub them from the wall might inadvertently spread them throughout the ship.

There was one final, relatively minor complication but one that influenced the way the rest of this encounter went. If the Tiny Folk tried to siphon essence from an Exalt, it could result in a noticeable glow, potentially putting them on someone's radar for the duration of their time in the Dreaming Sea if one of the Solar Exalted attempted this. Fortunately, the Fire Aspect, best known for her sorcery, was also incredibly quick on her feet. Once the flower was cut from the wall, she raced down the hallway and deck (which were being kept clear by the alerted crew) before hurling it overboard. Though not before delivering a speech to the fae, declaring that their name was fitting because their ideology was small-minded, driven only by a desire to destroy what was different from them. In their final, lonely days floating on the ocean, the Tiny Folk reflected on these words, constructing tiny sculptures from sea salt before entropy finally claimed them.

There's now the question of how the Tiny Folk got onboard the ship and whose body was turned into the flower.
 
Encounters in Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro, opulent queen of the South, adorned in the silver and firedust and crowned in imperishable glass. Delzahn rough riders parade through her streets while their mothers, daughters, and wives gaze out across their domain from atop crystal towers. Their country kinsmen drive cattle, camels, and horses by the thousands to her markets for sale. Supplicants and merchants from across the world come to marvel at her grandeur and wealth, and even the grasping avarice of the Realm fails to tarnish her glory. Any number of stories might occur here, in the South's broken diadem.
  1. First Age defenses suddenly activate in the upper levels of an aristocrat's spire. The noble clan's head seeks to hire adventurers to clear out the constructs of living glass that now infest what was once her rooftop garden.
  2. The Tri-Khatun's brother testing a diving bell with viewports made of chiaroscuran glass in the harbor. Seeks volunteers, claiming that his preliminary expeditions have identified a sunken ship of significant archaeological import.
  3. Wyld hunt on the trail of an anathema, their quarry disappears into one of the pocket shadowlands that dot the ruins of the Old City.
  4. Visiting dynast has a mishap with an adamant artifact. Beams of killing light are now refracting throughout the surfaces of one of the glass spires.
  5. Slaves haul an immense red jade and bronze harbor cannon atop fortifications guarding the port. Locals start calling it The Hog. The Tri-Khan downplays any rumors that it's a sign of impending war.
  6. Grandmother Bright literally throws one of the residents of her plaza out on his backside. A man with an arm of porcelain and clockwork, none can recall seeing him leave the plaza for the last ten years. The pair make rude gestures at one another as they glare from across the street.
  7. You manage to save a Delzhan youth on their adulthood wilderness initiation from a leopard attack. On the way back to the city you both stumble on what appears to be firedust arms deal gone wrong.
  8. Wealthy Delzhan approaches you looking to hire a team for the Khanate Invitational, a prestigious five-day horse race across the countryside. Wants your services as jockey, bodyguard, or saboteur
  9. Plague ship called The Paramour's Purse limps into the harbor. The Tri-Khan forbids it from docking, and instead simply has provisions floated out to it on small dinghies. Archers and ballistae are posted nearby ready with fire arrows should any of the crew attempt to depart.
  10. Gang of Delzhan toughs on horseback accost you in the street, looking to shake you down for drinking money. They're young and inexperienced but also clearly belong to wealthy, influential families.
  11. A gala at the Tri-Khatun's palace is about to begin, local grandees congregating outside the gates. Aristocratic matriarchs are fussing over their ostentatiously dressed sons in the hopes that one catches the as of yet unmarried Tri-Khatun's eye. One of the suitors, a visiting prince from the far south, has brought twenty camels laden with gifts of gold-dust, ivory, and dreamstone crystal and has a tame cheetah on a leash
  12. Visiting scholar found murdered in his lodgings, daggers sticking out of his back. Rumor has it that he was developing a method to cut Chiaroscuran glass independent of the Faience and Glasswork Association.
  13. Fireworks festival, you notice cloaked figures sneaking around the edges of a crowd busy gawking at the display. Heading for the satrap's estate.
  14. Immaculates haul away a heretic street preacher proclaiming the Imminent Return of Iosis. The monks go blind days later, saying they can see nothing but incandescent white light.
  15. Phantom tower appears at night in one of the pocket shadowlands in the city, evidently the palace of some underworld grandee
  16. Mercenary band of Brides of Ahlat causing trouble in a local tavern, one of them either picks a fight with you or tries to make a pass, possibly both.
  17. Rural Delzhan driving their cattle and horses to the city for sale. One rancher appears to be selling stallions with zebra-blood, claims they're smarter and tougher than the average horse.
  18. You wake up in the middle of the night just in time to notice a scorpion crawling across your bedsheets, an old assassin's trick.
  19. Armor made of chiaroscuro glass shards cunningly held together by adhesive and wire catches your eye in an armorer's shop. Worth a small fortune
  20. Scavengers trading relics unearthed from the old city. One appears to be hawking a monkey statuette with crystal eyes. You must have it.
 
Encounters in The Lost Isles of Aiun

The Lost Isles, a failed paradise born of desperation, hubris, and the impossible magic of the Eye of Autochthon. Dredged from the sea long ago by the sorcerer-prophetess Aiun, the microcontinent teems with the cast off relics of her dead queendom and the flotsam of ten thousand shipwrecks. Here, the paranoid and unwelcoming descendants of her followers feud over ownership of windswept lands and hapless enslaved castaways. Below it all, the ineffable power known as The Spiral whirls and churns, slowly but surely returning the isles to the timeless sea.
  1. Walrusfolk raiders besieging a fishing hamlet. The reavers carry with them a twelve foot long enchanted narwhal tusk that grants them the power of frenzied rage in exchange for offerings of their blood.
  2. A beached kraken carcass. Horrid worm parasites burst forth from its flesh if you try to cut it open.
  3. Realm tribute ship, carrying the looted wealth of nations, runs aground on a jagged reef. Its surviving crew, led by dragonblooded, begin combing the nearby shore for material to repair it.
  4. Loathsome whelk-thing dredges itself ashore from the lightless depths. The giant gastropod's shell shines with mesmerizing witchlight, luring unlucky travelers towards its gaping maw
  5. Castaway immaculate missionary being cared for at a frogfolk settlement, attempting to figure out whether or not The Spiral is a spirit and thus in need of Immaculate oversight
  6. You meet a wandering frogfolk scholar called Weroun Who-Knows-He-Knows-Naught. He was once employed as a savant and tinkerer by an aristocratic clan, but was forced to flee after one of his inventions accidentally maimed the heir-apparent. Fascinated by clockwork and life outside the isles.
  7. Deathknight castaway, meditating atop the piled corpses of sealfolk warriors who tried and failed to enslave them. Non-hostile, offers to teach you the mystical secret of Death Gives Us Life.
  8. Hunched figure dressed in rags by the side of the road. It issues a dire prophecy about your future ambitions as you pass. Accosting it reveals it to be no more than a puppet-thing of wicker and twine.
  9. A voice issues from a conch shell while you walk along the beach. It claims to be a heavenly messenger spirit sent to the isles on a mission, but was forced to take refuge in the conch shell to avoid being consumed by the Spiral.
  10. Village built from the hollow, fossilized shells of giant nautiloids. Local shark gumbo festival is ongoing.
  11. After walking between two standing stones on a whim, you find yourself lost in a maze of misty dolmens.
  12. You come across a recent shipwreck, investigating it reveals it contains a curious man in tattered finery who claims to be the rightful heir to the throne of Uluriu. Says he can pay you an empress's ransom in gemstones if you help him return to his homeland.
  13. A mysterious sea monster has been slicing fishing boats in twain with its dorsal fin. The cuts are too regular to be made by an ordinary fin, and one fisherman swears the beast is made of metal.
  14. Delegation en route to the royal capital of Osoro. They carry with them the reliquary of a healing spirit, the godling enshrined within a miniature temple carried by sealfolk holy warriors
  15. Dueling sorcerers offshore. One sits atop a towering construct of enchanted coral and the other rides a massive hagfish-demon. Locals say the two used to be lovers, now they fight like this once every month.
  16. Coffle of escaped slaves, still chained together at the ankles. They flee when they see you. Shortly after, you encounter a group of sealfolk warriors asking after them. They're too heavily and richly armed to be ordinary slave catchers.
  17. Walrusfolk ascetic, practicing yoga atop a twenty foot tall stone pillar. He has not spoken a word in years but people still come to learn the wisdom in his ritual contortions.
  18. Eerie merchant with a too wide smile and too many joints in his fingers, a "purveyor of fine talismans and curios." Claims that his ship, a thing wrought from seamless stone and crewed by twenty identical sailors, can navigate the currents of the Spiral and sail beyond the isles.
  19. Small hamlet in the thrall of a charismatic prophet of The Spiral. His eyes shine with mesmerizing scintillation.
  20. A sonorous voice chimes out in song across the nighttime sea as you sleep. You begin to feel feverish and uncomfortable in your camp, but the voice promises that the water is very cool and refreshing.
 
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I got an idea for what freaked Oramus out about Getimians but I'm not entirely sure how coherent it is.

The possibility that the reality he lived in was yet another discarded destiny and he didn't know it. That existence didn't actually exist. Could one of those counterfactual nonexistent realities have made their own Getimians? What did that say about his reality? Or perhaps he was concerned about an uncountably infinite number of Getimians existing somehow across nonexistent realities due to recursion.
 
My Convention on the Dead Oracle is currently trying to navigate Heaven's tricky office politics. We decided as players to spend the next few sessions in Heaven, and so far he has arranged for a new cultural movement to take over Skullstone, begun an operation to investigate the Underworld, (both projects are going poorly because the Hardship rolls somehow BOTH got 4 successes on 4 dice), and even begun floating the idea of forming diplomatic ties to the Silver Pact. The Deathlords are too big a threat to leave uncontained. And that's leaving aside the personal and professional relationships he's been trying to build.

Smash cut to my Night Caste today seducing a Lunar lord's Literally Poisonous concubines because he kind of annoyed us.
 
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Afterlife - Tlan-Eneth, The Ziggurat of Requiem


In the wake of the Solar Purge, those newly Chosen who would once have been feted as heroes were hounded endlessly by the Wyld Hunt, condemned as devils and slain by fearful Dragon-Blooded who, in another era, might have been friends. In those early years of fear and flight, for every young Lunar or remaining Solar who escaped the hunt, scores fell but a handful of weeks, or days, after exalting, legends cut short and forgotten. No more would they each receive a champion's burial, as they did in the Old Realm, instead their remains were sealed beneath anonymous mounds of earth ringed with salt and warding talismans, given cold, impersonal funeral rites by their murderers. So it has been since the Usurpation.

In the Age of Sorrows, when the Wyld Hunt slays someone young or inexperienced, the victim may find themselves in Tlan-Eneth, an afterlife for those who might have been legends, but never were. They awaken there, in shallow graves amidst fields of translucent wheat at the foot of the great alabaster Ziggurat of Requiem, a necropolis large enough to dwarf mountains. Paeans of promised glory sound from garden-covered tiers, beckoning them upward to the peak wreathed in clouds and gentle white light. Here, they play out a facsimile of the lives they might have lived, sating their frustrated passions and coming to terms with their own deaths. Within The Ziggurat of Requiem are tombs, trials, and treasures, echoes of the adventures that never were. Throughout the great temple are shrines of refuge where wise winged rams and sage-faced lions tend to their needs. These councilors of the dead instruct their charges more than serve them, rarely giving the shades straight answers and instead using a socratic teaching method that encourages growth.

At the peak of the ziggurat, a false star called The Lambency shines, illuminating the rolling fields around the temple with a wan, tepid light in a meager approximation the living sun. Beneath The Lambency is the amber sarcophagus of Eneth, a daughter of the sun who in the wake of the Usurpation descended into the Underworld in a futile attempt to appease the victims of the Dragon-Blooded pogroms. Though the goddess has largely failed in this task, her incorruptible corpse generates the light and warmth of The Lambency, thus the Old Laws have decreed. Those who reach the star atop the ziggurat are offered no prize save to bask in its light and warmth. There is only reward in the seeking, only solace in the striving.


Inhabitants

Tlan-Eneth's memorial heights contain few shades compared to other afterlives, and the Exalted ghosts of this purgatory are by and large those who died but a handful of months after taking the Second Breath, the souls of elder Chosen are drawn elsewhere by the Old Laws. As they ascend the tower, some pass onto Lethe or the abyss, some find contentment in their seeking, some reforge themselves into different beings entirely, and some simply leave. For the last several hundred years, the most prolific inhabitants of Tlan-Eneth have been the ghosts of young Lunars, murdered before the Silver Pact could reach them, but the odd neophyte Solar, as well as the ghosts of mortal heretics and occasionally Dragon-Blooded slain by Wyld Hunts are welcomed by Tlan-Eneth. With the return of the Solar Exalted, Tlan-Eneth's population has swelled with many new almost-legends who fell before truly coming into their power. The Deathlords and other underworld prodigies have noticed this, and send their agents to the ziggurat to lure away potentially powerful shades for service in their own armies and households.

The Lady's Leal Servant was once a mouse of the sun who accompanied Eneth in her doomed quest. Though his mistress has lies entombed at the ziggurat's summit, The Servant persists, after a fashion. Grown to the size of a large dog, his milky white eyes shine with the wisdom of a prophet. Arrayed in a panoply of faded gold armor fitted to a mouse's frame, he appraises each new arrival as the local Judge of the Dead and directs them on the course he believes will satisfy their passions.

The Champion of Carnassials was once a berserker who earned the favor and Exaltation of Luna during the early Shogunate. Cut down by shikari but moments after taking the Second Breath, he awoke in Tlan-Eneth. He quickly grew bored of the ziggurat and departed to seek glory in the fighting pits of Kesundang and Tournament. He returned, centuries later, after finding enlightenment through violence, having moliated himself into a wolverine-devil with eight arms and two maws. Now The Champion presides over ritual combat between the shades of Tlan-Eneth, training them in the spirit arts of martial nature and teaching them the restraint he lacked earlier in his afterlife.

Esdras of Undecamon is a relatively new arrival to Tlan-Eneth, having arrived only five years ago. In life he was a scavenger-hero who Exalted as a Twilight Caste, only to be cornered and slain by the wyld hunt in the depths of the tomb of a prior incarnation. His killers left his body where it fell, and the impromptu burial meant he came to Tlan-Eneth with a larger amount of grave goods than most. Despite this, Esdras' spirit has been broken by his death, the former solar too dejected and self-doubting to climb the ziggurat. Instead the crestfallen warrior languishes at the base of the temple, playing merchant to those less defeated than himself. He's traded away all but a few of his own grave goods in exchange for the treasures of the tower, which he catalogs and studies with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.

The festival-masked specter calling herself Balm For The Riven is an agent of The Black Heron, sent to Tlan-Eneth to recruit worthies to join her mistress's court. The Deathlord has instructed Balm to select for those whose ruthlessness and guile would be useful in her eventual play for another foothold in Creation. Posing as a chronicler of heroes, she plies the doubts and frustrations of Tlan-Eneth's shades, playing on their resentment for the living world that denied them a future and offering the opulence of Stygia's Quarter Magnificent in contrast to the spartan ascent of the ziggurat. A favored tactic of Balm's is to task a potential recruit with tests of loyalty involving undermining another shade who rejected her offer.
 
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HamSandLich said:
Esdras of Undecamon is a relatively new arrival to Tlan-Eneth, having arrived only five years ago. In life he was a scavenger-hero who Exalted as a Twilight Caste, only to be cornered and slain by the wyld hunt in the depths of the tomb of a prior incarnation. His killers left his body where it fell, and the impromptu burial meant he came to Tlan-Eneth with a larger amount of grave goods than most. Despite this, Esdras' spirit has been broken by his death, the former solar too dejected and self-doubting to climb the ziggurat. Instead the crestfallen warrior languishes at the base of the temple, playing merchant to those less defeated than himself. He's traded away all but a few of his own grave goods in exchange for the treasures of the tower, which he catalogs and studies with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.
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Incredible Demon's Souls vibes from this guy, in the best way possible.
 

Afterlife - The Valley of August Waters


In the First Age, the ancestral Wàn people of the eastern Blessed Isle laid their dead to rest in great funeral urns packed with grave goods and river clay. The wealthy would have their urns wrought of bronze and sealed with stoppers of lead, gold, and tortoiseshell, while commoners made do with terracotta jars and wax seals. They would inter these urns in hills and cliffside caves overlooking rivers, and the families of the deceased would bring offerings of animal sacrifice, medicinal plants, and effigies of tools. Though the Shogunate put a stop to the Wàn's ancestor worship, the funeral jar practice itself was only sporadically suppressed until the years of the Contagion. It took the rise of the Scarlet Realm and the modern Immaculate Order for the burial culture of the Wàn to truly be eradicated. Today, while the Wàn are the Scarlet Realm's dominant cultural group, only a scattering of isolated hamlets practice the urn burials, and few remember the cultural afterlife associated with it: The Valley of August Waters.

In days of yore, the Valley of August Waters lay upon the Underworld's Stygian continent, a tranquil, fertile land bordered by misty, jagged peaks and bisected by the mighty River Di and its hundreds of canals, watermills, and dams. The churning currents of the river not only irrigated the fields of the Valley, but turned mystical prayer wheels and water clockworks that brought forth wonders for the inhabitants. The newly dead, their funeral jars washing ashore on the river banks, would be exhumed and taken by gondoliers to the necropolis-dam of Bulwark and brought before The Oracle Bone Marquis, a lieutenant of the Dual Monarchs and judge of the dead who would make a record of the histories, passions, and unfinished business of new arrivals. Once judged, they would be assigned roles and tasks according to their station, skills, and sins, sent to participate in the task of maintaining the monumental works along the River Di, patching the construction with the shards and clay of their funeral urns.

Those deemed virtuous or productive laborers would earn merits they would exchange for luxuries such as black plum wines, cinnabar torcs, access to wonders powered by the water mills, or an evening in the pleasure gardens of the Marquis. Those deemed wicked or slothful received backbreaking tasks meant to scour them clean of vice until they earned enough merits for reassignment. It was believed that this undying corvee and its system of rewards and punishments would relieve the dead of their passions and attachments and prepare them for reincarnation. Those who excelled in their duties but failed to reincarnate became the Meritorious Saints, ministers and local clergy of the Transcendent Course who assisted the Oracle Bone Marquis in his rule.

The years of the Dragon-Blooded Shogunate were not kind to the valley, but The Grand Tempest and the rise of The Scarlet Realm were perhaps fatal blows to an afterlife that has been long in dying. The Grand Tempest smashed centuries of work, and with the dominance of the Immaculate Order, the souls, prayer, and offerings that maintained this ritual afterlife have slowed to a trickle. Now the Valley of August Waters has begun to gradually sink back into the Underworld's depths, plagued by chronic storms, floods, and rockslides, the River Di swelling with rough currents of dark water and silt. The Meritorious Saints now oversee a land in crisis, their necropoli slowly losing to the flood in a death by inches. Maneater catfish and face-snaked ogres haunt the ruined waterways, while mad wraiths in the hinterlands stuff victims into giant urns by the dozen in a parody of the old Wàn funeral custom. Though seized by the Eternal Emerald Shogunate during the Conquest of Stygia, the Valley of August Waters is now a pitiful backwater in that undying empire, the Emerald Shogun viewing it as little more than a transit canal for their stygian fleet and letting all nonessential infrastructure fall into disrepair.

The Meritorious Saints do their best to restore the great works of old and shepherd the dead, but their dominion crumbles little by little every year. What's more, every shade who re-enters the cycle of rebirth is one less pair of hands to maintain the afterlife as a tranquil land for those seeking reincarnation. Aside from the penal labor the Emerald Shogunate brings from afar to maintain the important canals, there simply aren't enough souls to keep up with demand.

By some quirk of The Old Laws, the souls of the Wàn still arrive here occasionally, whether or not they receive the proper burial rites. These ghosts, most of whom spent their lives as devout immaculates and thus were not buried in urns, usually wash up on the rocky shores of the River Di, waterlogged and without grave goods or river clay to repair the construction. A number of the new shades are the souls of dragon-blooded dynasts, awakening as paupers in an unfamiliar land. The Emerald Shogunate shows preferential treatment to these exalted wraiths and attempts to recruit them into its armies, but leaves the commoners to the mud and despair.

Inhabitants

Once an immaculate monk, Ragara Dalan was at first scandalized by the Valley and its religion, but in time came to see the virtue of its philosophy, even in its state of decline. Now one of the remaining Meritorious Saints, the exalted shade performs the work of welcoming new souls to the Valley and helping them re-enter the cycle of reincarnation. To her surprise, she has been contacted by living relatives in House Ragara, occultists eager to learn about the sunless realm below. She exchanges news and underworld rarities with them in exchange for promises of grave offerings the Meritorious Saints can use in their work. She welcomes the company but remains suspicious of her former kin, after all, she knew better than most what they were capable of. Lately they have been asking her to provide them disturbing things from the Labyrinth, and in exchange offering to resume the old Wàn funeral rites in secret for deceased Ragara scions, tempting her with the promise of sorely needed heroes.

Nobody knows how long Old Man Quan has been in the Valley. The oldest surviving Meritorious Saints all claim he's been tasked to mid-level stonemasonry for as long as they can remember, refusing to either earn a promotion or reincarnate. Though clearly a skilled architect, Quan always binges whatever merits he accrues on cheap intoxicants and carnal companionship, his benders leading to incidents that earn him demerits, keeping him perpetually in the role of lower-middle management. Thus far, no amount of cajoling has been able to break him of this habit, and his superiors have learned to tolerate his eccentricities. They need every hand they can get now, and he's one of the most experienced foremen in the valley. Quan has survived and forgotten more crises than he can count, and his relative indifference to the flooding is taken as a sign by the hopeful that the disaster can be beaten.

The Daimyo of Gilded Hooks is the Emerald Shogun's appointed military governor, in practice ruling over little more than the naval fort at the River Di's delta and the remaining canals connecting it to the River Styx. Formerly a socialite and connoisseur of luxuries, she spends most of her time brooding over the political missteps that saw her exiled to the valley, one of the Emerald Shogunate's least desirable punishment postings. She takes out her frustration on non-Shogunate river traffic, funding a lifestyle of faded decadence with semi-legal shakedowns of the locals and passing merchant boats. Anybody who could offer a potential avenue back into the Shogun's favor, or at least a distraction from the endless gloom outside her fortress, would be richly rewarded by her. Her latest scheme is attempting to ingratiate herself towards the dynastic wraiths she sends to the Emerald Shogunate, hoping to accrue enough favors to get her reassigned, or possibly organize a coup against the Shogun.

The being known as the Oracle Bone Marquis was once an entity empowered by The Old Laws themselves. Formerly a stern but just philosopher-king and an adherent of Stygia's Transcendent Course, he is now a maddened husk of his former self, the calamity suffered by his domain reflected upon his body and mind. His gray flesh is crumbling like old mud brick and his once royal vestments are tarnished and tattered, the fine dyes of his robe endlessly bleeding from the fabric into the water at his ankles. Instead of his old crown of office, he now conceals his entire head beneath an overturned jar. The Marquis prowls the lower reaches of the broken Bulwark, corralled there by the Meritorious Saints who remained loyal to the lord he once was. There he wanders, alternatively attacking and issuing forth nonsensical work assignments to any he encounters.
 
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Afterlife - The Tenstar Breadth


Many Northern nomads and pastoralists bury their dead with effigies of riding beasts, or animal sacrifice for the wealthy, sending the deceased to the afterlife with a dependable steed to carry their soul into the next world. For some peoples, like the Touman Clans and the Tear Eaters, this is but a temporary journey, the ancestor ghost ideally riding back into the living world to advise their relatives, but for others, such as the Icewalker Nations, the Pyanda Nomads, the Anfelvuli Ranchers, and the Camel-Riders of the Tesij Wastes, the dead are expected to remain in the afterlife. When they do, it is often that their soul awakens on the vast and trackless plain of the Tenstar Breadth, a ritual afterlife shared by many northern nomadic cultures, some with overlapping ranges, others separated by seas or mountain ranges. The Breadth isn't the only northern pastoralist afterlife, even for individual cultures, but it is one of the largest and most widely known.

An untamed expanse that stretches beyond the horizon, the Tenstar Breadth is an ever shifting wilderness populated by the phantasmal echoes of long extinct herd beasts. As these phantom beasts graze and migrate, they shift the very land, changing taiga to tundra to mountain to prairie to river to desert. Only standing stones, certain landmarks, and the hillfort-necropoli of dead warlords remain fixed geography. In its sky lit by spectral auroras and erratic constellations, ten large stars hang in a regular orbit, shedding illumination ranging from bright night to ochre twilight in intensity. The dead of the Breadth use these stars to navigate, many following the phantom beast herds much as they did ordinary livestock in life. The borders of this immense afterlife are convoluted, touching upon underworld islands far apart from each other at different times, or leading into temporary shadowlands in the living world.

In accordance with The Old Laws of this land, those buried with effigies of steeds awaken with a phantom beast of their own, a loyal familiar and mount that heeds their every command. Those buried with a genuine animal sacrifice receive more powerful familiars, and sometimes learn spirit arts to transform their phantom beasts or fuse with them. Nomads buried without a riding beast or effigy, often disgraced outcasts or the phenomenally impoverished, form an underclass pejoratively called "Trudges" who eke out a living as serfs of the rider-ghosts unless they can somehow acquire a steed of their own. Forming small bands with those from similar enough cultures, the shades of The Breadth drive the extinct beast herds to move and graze in specific ways to create their preferred terrains. Often, they raid and trade with other bands for grave goods, rare materials, livestock, or plunder taken from sedentary afterlives.

Lone ghosts on The Breadth often seek to join up with a band as soon as possible, whether or not they share a similar culture. One ghost cannot effectively drive an entire herd of phantom beasts to reshape the land, so individuals cannot move as freely as a group would. Many underworld predators, dissuaded by large groups, eagerly stalk the isolated and alone; walkuren on raven wings, skull-faced mire beasts which dwell in bottomless tar pits, rotting sabercats which speak in the voices of their most recent victims, and slavering packs of double-jawed wolves which run across the skies. Most feared are the terrible Goadbeasts, a race of beings like dwarf mastodons whose twin trunks terminate in lamprey-mouths. Possessed of malevolent sapience, the goadbeasts enslave ghosts with magic and herd them as men herd animals, feeding on their identities and intelligence until nothing but instinct remains.

Empires of The Breadth

Over the years, countless nomadic war leaders have sought to build empires in the Breadth, leading to an ever shifting web of feuds, fealties, and alliances between the various bands and war leaders of the expanse. These petty emperors, many of whom were already wealthy in life, often build small necropoli atop fortified hills, ringed by palisade walls of colorless timber and bloodstained standing stones. These palatial tent-cities are little warrior heavens sustained by grave goods and plunder, the inhabitants feasting on regenerating boar and drinking from cornucopias of fermented mare's milk, an elixir that staves off the dissolution that comes with successive deaths. Canny kings offer protection to merchant caravans from beyond the Breadth, seeking foreign aid to gain an advantage over their rivals.

The arch-sorcerer Bagrash Kol massacred the semi-nomadic Gwynithtelli charioteers almost down to a man during his reign. The culture soon died out as the few survivors were absorbed by other peoples, but the shades of the slain arrived in the Tenstar Breadth alongside their spiral-horned antelopes in a great flood of souls. Now, the empire of Dead Gwynithan is one of the largest dominions on the expanse, ruled by a council of deceased queens who rotate the position of High Queen amongst themselves on a regular basis. The Gwynithtelli necropoli, protected by cyclopean stone walls, are industrial hubs where the Gwynithtelli work underworld metals into weapons, helical gold jewelry, and the scythed chariots and war wagons that their spirit-antelopes pull.

The Polestar Sultanate is the domain of The Sultan in Orpiment, a wraith who in life was a Chosen of Mercury. Buried with heavenly steeds that once pulled errant stars across Creation's firmament, the Sultan rides across phantom sky roads in his eternal quest to understand the Old Laws which govern the Underworld's false sky. The sultanate is little more than a means by which he accrues resources and power to continue his studies, providing him with labor and funds to construct observatories, pave sky roads, and plunder star maps from other underworld realms.

The Emirate of Jamuvar is backed by far off Dari's Four Quarters Company, a foothold and transit corridor through which it acquires ghost-rhino horn, heart-flint arrowheads, and grave gold honor belts. Emir Jamuvar has been trading with the Four Quarters Company ever since he was a living merchant-prince. Upon death he arrived in the afterlife phenomenally well prepared to carve out an empire, having arranged a lavish steppe funeral well in advance, including the sacrifice of a hundred fine stallions. Through their contacts in the living world, the Four Quarters Company arranges the sacrifice of funeral treasures and livestock in rites designed to ferry them to Jamuvars' domain, which he in turn uses to gather more wealth to sell to his allies in Dari.

Mammoth Nation Icewalkers are seldom buried with effigies and only the greatest among them receive a mammoth sacrifice upon death. Instead they're given sky burials and their bones interred at various mammoth graveyards that the Mammoth Nation hauls the remains of their kills to. When they awaken in the Breadth, they follow immense, many tusked spirit mammoths several times larger than the living beasts. Cunningly intelligent, these lesser behemoths go where they will and allow the icewalker dead to build howdah-settlements on their backs and nudge them in certain directions in exchange for worship and obeisance. These bands, in the interest of mutual defense against the rider-shades, have allied among each other in The Thunder-Trumpet Confederation. In the wake of the Battle of Futile Blood, the confederation's numbers have swelled with not only mammoth-nation dead, but other icewalkers and even Plenilunars from the Bull of the North's empire.

The nephwrack known as Lord Joy-In-Lamentation claims no necropoli save its own grim fastness, but chieftains and warlords for miles around all offer it yearly tribute in exchange for it not pillaging their own lands and herds. The mysterious specter arrived one day centuries ago with no explanation, leading an army of mortwights atop sleek eyeless steeds from the depths of the Labyrinth. When the stars are wrong, the Lord leads its nameless company on a mad hunt across the Breadth and the shadowlands it borders. Those the hunt encounters are given three choices: Join, Hide, or Die.
 
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I've been reading through EarthScorpion's style rules and thought I'd give it a try.

The Idle Academian Style

On the Blessed Isle, academics is a cut-throat field at the best of times, and teachers and researchers compete with papers and speeches to receive accolades and sponsorships. Certain academics, however, have the family connections to avoid this vicious struggle so long as they can avoid embarrassing their families.

+1 to convincing others to let you take credit for a project you were nominally involved with.
+1 when concealing idleness from a relative.
+1 Dodge MDV when being shamed for a lack of work.


The White-Jade Tower Style

While certain academics on the Blessed Isle may avoid any actual labor, most must bemoan their state and preform actual work, usually taking for granted the resources (and latitude) their station permits them.

+1 when attempting to access academic funding and resources through legal channels.
+1 when explaining or defending research to a sponsor or direct supervisor.
1 autosuccess when researching with an equipment bonus of at least 3.

Edit: I'd appreciate feedback if anyone has any.
 
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I've written up some research rules for 2e if anyone would like to weigh in. This won't come up in most games and is probably too clunky to include if it's not plot relevant, but if anyone wants to play a Dynastic Academia game here's my take.

Research

Research applies only to extended rolls. It might apply to learning how to summon a Neomah, or to learning the history of an area, but never directly applies bonuses to the roll itself, such as summoning a Neomah, or negotiating with a Lunar whose personality was revealed in this research. If ever applicable, such should be represented with situational bonuses (Thorough research might give up to three dice to such actions as writing a paper, which might itself be appropriate equipment for a thesis defense), or by applying an appropriate style.

For Neomah summoning, a highly relevant book might be Neomah Summoning for Idiots, several relevant books might include All About Neomah and Demonology 101, and a tangential book might be Neomah! The Bane of Virtuous Dynastic Sons!

Relevant books (1 highly relevant book, several relevant books, at least 5 tangential books.) +1 dice

Small Collection of Books (As the last, with several more relevant books and at least 5 additional tangential books.) +2 Dice

Small Library (A relevant section of a small library, as the last, with at last 5 additional relevant books and dozens of tangential books.) +3 Dice

Library (A professional library, including the previous requirements but containing either several highly relevant books or many relevant books, and a massive collection of tangential books. This is likely a collection kept by an extremely wealthy enthusiast or an academic institution.) +4 Dice

Note: The Modern Internet would likely qualify as a +5 library. Such collections do not exist in the Age of Sorrows. Such a library would permit a qualified librarian (at least 10 dice) to apply a 3 die bonus to research within such a collection.


Research Assistants

A skilled research assistant (~5 Dice) can provide an additional dice when using a Small Library. An extremely skilled librarian (~8 Dice) can provide up to 2 dice when using a Library.
 
Aria the Mage said:
It might apply to learning how to summon a Neomah,
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If you're a sorcerer with the spell Demon of the First Circle, you've almost certainly got at least three dots in Occult, so per the Obscurity rules in Books of Sorcery 5 p. 26 you'll automatically have heard of neomah, and thus be able to direct the spell to summon one rather than drawing randomly. A fourth dot in Occult, or certain types of Backing, or a difficulty 2 roll provides more comprehensive knowledge. Usual teamwork rolls apply to that academic knowledge roll, so any assistant with at least one dot in Occult could provide +1 bonus die, to a maximum of your Occult skill.
For a thaumaturge, summoning a first circle demon is an adept-level procedure, and the canon rules for inventing those are here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/...WWOQCPev4rXa4cyRQ/edit#heading=h.r2d1zvhs2xoa Assistants might need more qualifications to help with that type of research.
In either case, reference material extensive enough to add dice wouldn't just be a single book. Going by comparison to GURPS Low-Tech, mundane library small enough to fit in a backpack might actually be imposing penalties. For a bonus, you'd want a relevant specialty from the Archive manse power https://docs.google.com/document/d/...aA6iHXiLc_KwCuIRs/edit#heading=h.o6rowiv4jcf4 or the Library merit from scroll of heroes (which my houserules patched to use a compatible scale to manse archives), or some equivalent minor artifact, such as Gunzosha Tactical Manual Modules. Or there are books like A Lover Clad In Blue which include complete descriptions of thuamturgical procedures (encoded, in that case), bypassing the need to invent from scratch.
 
strange_person said:
If you're a sorcerer with the spell Demon of the First Circle, you've almost certainly got at least three dots in Occult, so per the Obscurity rules in Books of Sorcery 5 p. 26 you'll automatically have heard of neomah, and thus be able to direct the spell to summon one rather than drawing randomly. A fourth dot in Occult, or certain types of Backing, or a difficulty 2 roll provides more comprehensive knowledge. Usual teamwork rolls apply to that academic knowledge roll, so any assistant with at least one dot in Occult could provide +1 bonus die, to a maximum of your Occult skill.
For a thaumaturge, summoning a first circle demon is an adept-level procedure, and the canon rules for inventing those are here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/...WWOQCPev4rXa4cyRQ/edit#heading=h.r2d1zvhs2xoa Assistants might need more qualifications to help with that type of research.
In either case, reference material extensive enough to add dice wouldn't just be a single book. Going by comparison to GURPS Low-Tech, mundane library small enough to fit in a backpack might actually be imposing penalties. For a bonus, you'd want a relevant specialty from the Archive manse power https://docs.google.com/document/d/...aA6iHXiLc_KwCuIRs/edit#heading=h.o6rowiv4jcf4 or the Library merit from scroll of heroes (which my houserules patched to use a compatible scale to manse archives), or some equivalent minor artifact, such as Gunzosha Tactical Manual Modules. Or there are books like A Lover Clad In Blue which include complete descriptions of thuamturgical procedures (encoded, in that case), bypassing the need to invent from scratch.
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Thank you, but I meant it as more of a rhetorical example than a specific problem.
 
Okay... so... I was writing up a post about the "hot singles in your area" Abyssal concept from a while back, and when I was going over the Bureaucracy charms I lamented that Sidereals didn't have a charm like Efficacious Hierarchy of the Damned to cut down on project time.

Then I realized what I'd just said was ridiculous, surely they had something to that effect, Bureaucracy is a HUGE thing for Sids! And I went to go double check, and they do. Specifically, Record-Obtaining Inquiry. It reduces the time of a project by a step and while not as efficient as EHoD it DOES cut the the time down considerably at the cost of a loose end or two being left. Which is absolutely worth it when you've got projects that will take years otherwise.

To get it I need to first purchase Icy Hand, then raise Bureaucracy to 5, and then purchase Record-Obtaining Inquiry. Once that's done my monthly project to establish a foothold for underworld operations becomes a weekly project, and my yearly project to spread a new cultural movement in the skullstone dependency becomes seasonal!

It won't matter if my hardship rolls keep being so friggen awful but it helps get so much more done.
 
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