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General Exalted Thread

Reader mode
I get the impression that Dreaming Sea is very Mediterranean + South East Asia kind of mashed up in one spot, yeah.
 
It's a huge mix of all kinds of things, all told. I think the unifying thing is that it has a lot more like, Pulp Fantasy to (to me) than the rest of Creation in a weird way. Like, Creation as a whole is big, dark, pulp fantasy, but the Dreaming Sea to me as a whole feels the most like you could put that kind of high magic, weird stuff. It feels most like, Conan or Flat Earth of the different Directions.
 
Blaque said:
It's a huge mix of all kinds of things, all told. I think the unifying thing is that it has a lot more like, Pulp Fantasy to (to me) than the rest of Creation in a weird way. Like, Creation as a whole is big, dark, pulp fantasy, but the Dreaming Sea to me as a whole feels the most like you could put that kind of high magic, weird stuff. It feels most like, Conan or Flat Earth of the different Directions.
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It's definitely one of the Best Ideas from Third Edition's worldbuilding. The Southeast used to be boring as heck, now it's one of the more Interesting Directions!
 
The corners in general getting expansions is pretty neat, and I think that At8D also does a good job selling the different like, themes/vibes of each Direction too. Like, noting that the East is actually two Directions at this point, I think there's a good trend in 3e pushing a bit of the original idea that each Direction had a kind of motif/genre thing going.:

Blessed Isle: Well-established, state-centered, polity. It kind of does neat stories of being in the bounds of the great empire, "peace time" stories in a large area or the fraying of such peace. It kind of has this thing where while the First Age is there and informs a lot, the Realm is very much the place built on a foundation even if it's cracking. I also like how its so diverse environmentally but integrated too. So the "edges" can be just neglected rural areas that let you do Wild West or Samurai stories too.

North: I think there's a big Man v. Nature and Surviving Scarcity vibes going on. The empires feel defined a lot with how rough the land is but folks scrounging what they can from it, and lots of dangerous things preventing it. The Penninsular North shows how major cities handle this, the White Sea kind of does neat naval stories with it, and the Far North is very much survivalist hting or stories of places eeking out hard lives in farway colds pots. I think there's also a general vibe for things of "There use to be a greater culture, we're a continuation of it, and we can make it a thing again" Fortitude, Medo, Cherak, and the Bull all put there. Kind of where you can put some good Grimdark fantasy or survival stuff too.

Northeast: The survival element is different than the North to me. It's not resource-poor, but the resources are dangerous, or there's the subtle "Anything can go wrong' that the Second Contagion gives it. It also has this general frontier thing, I kind of like how there's a sesne of the native groups being more neolithic or copper age, while outside groups like Fray or Gapwood having this settler "On the edge of the world" story.

Scavenger Lands: I think this this was always meant to be the "intro to Exalted' Direction for sure. Very developed, interconnected by rivers, but bamillion smaller polities instead of the one big Realm one. And also oppositioned to the Realm to give a play space to Celestials. 3e I think it is ment to be where still the like, "Folks who know Faerun" are expected to be comfortable, but I think it works at that well.

Far East: Kind of felt "leftover' In prior editions. I think that it has this sense of "Civilization developed completley separate form teh Realm" is pretty neat. It almost has this vibe of exploring pre-Colonization stories, with either forms fo empire not typical to Eurasia, or preenting neat spots that feel like the weird shit Heroditus would have talked about that are actually out there. I think a big thing is it's developed like the Scavenger Lands and Blessed Isle, but still feels "Fresh" because it's so isoalted form the world liek the Norhteast, but without the "Everything died" bit.

Dreaming Sea: The Weird Fantasy Land as noted. I think again, the plce wehre you get necromancer-kings, Dragon-Blooded colonial empires, Ten-Fathered Superhumans, sorcerer-empires, variosu forms of pre-human weirdness, fairy pirates, all that. Just again the most blatently magical place where some of the more extoic fantasy stuff you can think of goes. And where there' always empire or polities on the rise, replacing ones that once ruled half the region and now are rump states.

South: I think the big thing is it is harsh, like the North, but while the North is about scraping by, teh South is finding wealth in the harshness. Even if it's just water or soemwhere seafe, there is to me a sense that the fight is with nature to get what you want, as much as it is to live. Or wealthy states with long history, but a lot of turmoil for folks wnating that wealth, like with Chiaroscuro, the Tsavo cities, Ember, or Zephyr having a lot of shifting local powers or foreign influence (versus Dreaming Sea Empires), or being founded or defined by outsiders finding a space.

Southwest: To me there's this sense of like, this place was glorious. It had the turmoil of empires and wealth and stuff of the the other Directions. But it's dusty, rugged, falling apart. Even the stable places like An-Teng or Zhaojun stand out ot me for having this whole "Use to be great, hten the Realm put us donw' You see in other areas, but feels kind of fitting with the rest of the Direciton. ANd how some fo the stuff that makes the Dreaming Sea active adn wild in teh Southwest feels more threatneing, and this sense of general decline or threat.

West: I think 3e making the West isolated as a whole and having htis "dsitant lands" thing is rpetty good. Taking into account how the different islands are also big also helped. Obviously the sailing stories too, but there's this also sense of a big area to explore and find weird cool stuff.

Northwest: I like generally how its Horrorland. And the bits on how Exalted due to their poewer, don't do horror through helplessnes as horror through the unknown. I like how just fucking creepy, eerie, and eldrich it is.

But yeah, I think this is one of the enat bits of Exalted's world design that was a neat idea: Six sub-settings that each has genre and aesthetic themes to present neat stories. I think 1e only really had four though. The Blessed Isle was kind of a non-place with how dull it was presented, and the Far East kind of just Wast There. Making the Blesseed Isle, corenrs, and Far East actual things, plus filling out and I think expanding the original main four, has been one of my favorite bits of 3e's world-building.
 
Has anyone here attempted a framework for making poisons and diseases? I'm poking at a craft rework that's addressing non-standard crafts and realised this is a potentially perilous design area.
 
Lioness said:
Has anyone here attempted a framework for making poisons and diseases? I'm poking at a craft rework that's addressing non-standard crafts and realised this is a potentially perilous design area.
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I'm partway through doing a rebuild of Citrine Poxes of Contagion Style, planning to make inventing new supernatural diseases work almost exactly like inventing sorcery or necromancy spells, and the charms which would (in the original version) allow doing so instantly, mid-battle, instead provide the equivalent of a workshop suitable for doing so.

Well, more specifically the post-form "invent a disease" charm provides a workshop, while the pre-form one works like a more sophisticated version of The Dragon Succumbs from White Veil Style, forcing somebody's next disease-or-poison resistance roll to botch. The more threshold successes you get on the attack roll, the more conditions you can put on when that botch will kick in, potentially creating the equivalent of an astrological curse rooted in their immune system rather than the Loom of Fate. Repeated application of that effect (in combination with other mundane factors) makes it possible to selectively cultivate variations on a disease's properties, including e.g. weakened strains which act as vaccines: find a test subject hardy (or lucky) enough to fend off the original version, then open a gap in their defenses which only the specific desired variant can fit through.
 
MiracleGrow said:
I been running a absolute fucking banger WhiteWall game so far. When my Saturday game finishes up I might open a game here Yipeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

I do voice games for the most part! Id be doing either a Westward heavily sea based game or something deep in the South. I been enjoying the city/nation building aspects a ton as a ST. So the future game I will be running leans into that rather than a roving adventure sort of game.
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Certainly registering my interest; my long-time abyssal pirate idea "The Admiral of Benthic Seas Whose Incarnadine Waves Cloak Ancient Leviathans And Stirs The Dead To Fury" sounds like she'd have a fun time in the west.
 
MiracleGrow said:
I do voice games for the most part! Id be doing either a Westward heavily sea based game or something deep in the South. I been enjoying the city/nation building aspects a ton as a ST. So the future game I will be running leans into that rather than a roving adventure sort of game.
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That sounds extremely fun, so add me to the lengthy list of interested people.
 
Me about an hour ago:

"Putting together behaviors for abilities for my game has been surprisingly fun. Maybe I should make the ability creation part of the gameplay loop... Hm, you'd probably need an ability base, but you could get little crystals or something that enhance abilities with new behaviors... But this feels less like a fantasy game and more scifi, so maybe they'll be superpowered robots... or I could put robots in the fantasy setting aaaaand this is just Alchemicals"

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Putting together the start of a new campaign with my previous group with the Realm Civil War game. We ended up going on hiatus and by the time everyone was ready to come back one of our three players was sick of their character and wanted to change things up. Problem being we couldn't get them to fit in with the group (I am trying VERY hard not to blame anyone for this) so we eventually just gave up and are doing a new campaign.

This time we're going around the inland sea to repair/reclaim various war manses for the Realm Defense Grid.

One of our players who also said he was more into "lower on the overall setting power scale" is bringing a warstrider that acts as artillery until we get near one of the manses and then becomes a giant fighting robot. Not objecting, I just found that funny.
 

Nim-Xedai, The City of Necromancers


Far to the Northwest, at the ends of the earth, there is a city of strangely cut black stone, whose unnerving spires loom above a bay of lifeless waters. Built by a forgotten empire that died in far antiquity, the city outlasted its makers, but it would be a stretch to say that it outlived them. By day, the city seems near abandoned, ruined even, its precincts filled with strange empty plots and half-finished buildings. When night falls however, strange lights rise from the surface of the bay as the city is revealed to stand entirely within a nameless shadowland. Phantom towers coalesce and become solid, the empty lots and unfinished buildings revealed to be the ground floors of crypt palaces built in the underworld. The city's original inhabitants, all centuries dead mummified revenants, emerge to mingle with an immigrant population of heretics, exiles, criminals, occultists, and madmen from Creation and the Underworld alike. Temples to myriad forbidden gods and alien powers throw open their doors to receive sacrifice and pilgrims. Assassins, dark sorcerers, and necromancers ply their trade openly here as they do nowhere else in Creation. Beyond the nocturnal city's landward walls is not the frigid desert of the day, but a web of narrow, deep canyons crisscrossing a plain of broken plateaus, a stretch of the Labyrinth that stands exposed to the underworld sky. Above it all, the city's undying tyrants gaze upon their domain by the light of a shriveled, false moon, and see that it is good. This is Nim-Xedai, The City of Necromancers.

The Harbor At The End of The World

Nim-Xedai is built within a rare shadowland that connects Creation directly to the Labyrinth. Beyond its walls is one of the most dangerous places in the universe, but by ancient pacts and powerful magics, the city itself is safe from the depredations of the nephwrack-kings and unliving abominations who lair in the tunnels nearby. Safe too is the city from the reach of living empires and princedoms, for the city recognizes only The Old Laws, which have decreed that Nim-Xedai is sovereign from the authority of the sunlit lands. For millennia, Nim-Xedai has maintained its independence from any would-be conqueror, living or dead, whether through its black sorcery or its own dread reputation.

This unique situation makes Nim-Xedai an appealing destination and home for outcasts, exiles, practitioners of marginalized religions, and most of all necromancers, who congregate here in numbers rivalled only by the dominions of the Deathlords. Misfits from across Creation gather here to mingle with the strange cultures and peoples of the afterlife; Abhari heretics share teahouses with Shining Way pilgrims, raksha captains haggle with spectral caravan masters, political exiles from across Creation rent out rooms across the street from temples to forbidden gods, and necromancers and demonists alike advertise their services with an openness found in few other places in Creation.

There is another reason that Nim-Xedai exists: trade. Positioned as it is, the city's merchants can acquire goods from the deep Underworld with phenomenal speed. Strange ghost ores, blood drinking flowers, fossilized behemoth bone, griefbee honey, barghest leather, labyrinth spider silk and more are all common in its market stalls. Rich too is Nim-Xedai in knowledge, and its libraries and booksellers hold texts both mundane and occult that are forbidden or lost elsewhere. In return for these treasures, the city's markets bring in silver, slaves, blood, corpses, prayer, fuel, and food from Creation.

Black Magic in Nim-Xedai

Necromancers find that Nim-Xedai sits atop a wellspring of power that they can tap to fuel their workings. Though the city has no singular occult institution, there are myriad smaller schools, academic societies, and cults that preserve necromantic traditions; Skull Diarists confer with their chattering familiars, Cultists of the Uppermost Eye practice occult trepanation, the Leech Speakers enter disturbing symbiosis with unliving worm-creatures, and Finality Theorists study equations of entropy and inevitability. Here too are sorcerers and thaumaturges who adhere to traditions considered debased or illicit elsewhere; akuma, yozi cultists, criminal alchemists, heretic exorcists, and more. These morbid intelligentsia correspond with peers elsewhere, such as in Skullstone, Sijan, Ysyr, Dajaz, or Stygia.

By the power of the Old Laws, no necromancer save the city's rulers may bind a citizen of Nim-Xedai or a lawful visitor in the city, but they are free to do what they will with the corpses and slaves that can be purchased in the markets or the shades outside the walls. No line of experimentation is expressly forbidden, save that which threatens the city or its rulers. In Nim-Xedai's learned districts one can purchase undead servants, oracular skulls, transformative surgeries, necrografted limbs, auguries of past lives, maps of the Labyrinth, elixirs of life (and undeath), black alchemies, bottled memories and passions, cursed artifacts, and more. All for a price, whether spoken or unspoken, for little is truly free in Nim-Xedai.

As a result of this, Nim-Xedai's citizens, living and dead alike, have become accustomed to the bizarre. The city's mysticism is not a monoculture, but a bewildering tapestry of folk beliefs, theologies, and sciences. Few natives bat an eye at the idea of midnight blood rituals, scholarly autopsies, assassin cults, flesh-sculpting, demon-hosts, or the hideous alien monoliths that double as landmarks throughout the city. Newcomers to Nim-Xedai quickly learn to become accustomed to the city's quirks, or to keep their objections to themselves.

The Unspeakable Synod

Since far antiquity, Nim-Xedai has been ruled with an iron fist by a cabal of five necromancer-princes; The Unspeakable Synod. In the days of Nim-Xedai's nameless progenitor-empire, they were mortal nobles, banished to the frontier city for some now forgotten political misstep. Today the ancient witch-kings no longer count among the ranks of the living, but nor are they ghosts in the traditional sense. Through black sciences and their own personal endeavors, each has cheated death to become a unique prodigy of unlife.

It is by the combined power of the Unspeakable Synod that Nim-Xedai exists. It is they who studied the Old Laws and used them to preserve Nim-Xedai against its motherland's destruction. It is they who pinned the souls of its original citizens to their bones, and it is they who keep their mummified shells renewed and free from decay. It is they who brokered pacts with the warlords and abominations of the Labyrinth to keep Nim-Xedai safe, and it is the threat of their retribution that prevents living nations from wiping their oasis of horrors from the map.

In exchange, the Synod demands absolute obedience to their decrees and the Old Laws that empower them. Gargoyle constructs loyal to them fly throughout the city on membranous wings, observing for any sign of rebellion. By the power of the Old Laws, they alone may bind the city's original mummified population, and they may freely break any necromantic binding created in the city. In addition to regular taxes, the Synod erratically demands that individuals perform bizarre obeisances and austerities in accordance with their own esoteric designs.

The Synod are not kind rulers, but they are pragmatic ones. Aside from their eccentric tax policies and surveillance, they largely refrain from micromanaging the city's affairs, delegating everyday governance to trusted bureaucrats and plebiscite tribunes. Most keep their public appearances brief, appearing only during Calibration or at necessary civic events. They are tolerant of the city's diversity because it enriches them and poses no threat to their position. Any cult, merchant, criminal, or wonder-worker who upsets this equilibrium earns the Synod's entirely undesirable attention.

The Synod are not without their internal conflicts, but the Old Laws that grant them control of the city also enslave them to it and to each other, preventing them from openly warring upon one another or knowingly endangering Nim-Xedai. Members still scheme and compete against each other, but they do so in a way nearly incomprehensible to anyone who isn't a specter, occultist, or similarly ancient prodigy. Shadow wars fought over the course of decades by armies of proxies and catspaws culminate around minutiae such as fine print on a contract or possession of a saint's fingerbones. Many of their rivalries are academic, disagreements in arcane theory or experimental results. Others are ritual conflicts, ceremonial archetypes adopted and discarded as needed to fuel some esoteric collective working.

Synod Members

Yedeneslib, The Immured and Open-Handed, is the most public of the Synod. Yedeneslib's body is encased entirely within an eight foot tall sarcophagus of soulsteel and amber, which floats several inches off the ground and hums with a dull reverberation that seems to dampen sound. Yedeneslib glides through Nim-Xedai's streets followed by its skeletal entourage, crowds hurriedly parting before it lest they obstruct its path. At times, the necromancer pauses before a business or market stall, silently purchasing some object of obscure provenance and paying with gilded infant's teeth.

Ussulmidimu, The Exquisite and Verminous, appears as a beautiful young adult of any gender but this is but a hollow deception. Long ago, Ussulmidimu transmogrified itself into a horrid man-sized worm creature that can compress its pellucid mass down to the size of an insect. Whilst in this form, it can slither into the skull of a mortal victim or corpse and puppeteer the body from within. It has become a fond pastime of Ussulmidimu to invite interesting visitors to its palace and pretend at humanity, pantomiming that it is a servant or slave to a sympathetic audience before revealing its identity at a dramatically appropriate moment.

Ghor-Meggedoth, The Bounteous and Pestilential, infected itself with a disease from the furthest reaches of the universe, cheating death by becoming an unliving cancer. Today the necromancer is an amorphous, rhino-sized mass of tumors and osseous horns that lairs deep underground. Almost sessile, Ghor-Meggedoth relies on constructs to ferry it about and enact its will while it projects its mind into the nightmare-realm of the Labyrinth or sculpts grotesque homunculi as appendages and playthings.

Im-Arat-Ekmath, The Enlightened and Debased, divided its higher soul from its lower soul and placed each within a specially prepared revenant body, one stately and refined, the other bestial and predatory. The higher soul presents the voice of reason and logic, while the lower soul intuits emotions and base desires. Each speaks in turn, stringing together sentences piecemeal from two voices. At times they seem to scheme against each other but in truth this is merely Im-Arat-Ekmath externalizing its inner conflicts and deliberations.

Zetenedesh, The Pitiless and Redeemed, replaced its skin with wrappings inscribed with arcane runes and then embalmed itself using entheogenic smoke. Today its tall form pulses with dull red luminescence, the inner fires shining through its bandages and acrid fumes leaking from the eyeholes in its malformed deathmask. Zetenedesh spends much of its time engaged in ritual austerities, its sanctums gauntlets of mechanical torment and terrible heat, caring little if such conditions are hazardous to its servants.

Gazetteer

The Hall Immemorial is a nine story high octagonal fortress that dominates the civic center and is the closest thing Nim-Xedai has to a city hall. Covered in glyphs from a dead tongue, the underworld manse is the oldest building in the city and is studiously avoided by most citizens. As far as anyone knows there is only one entrance, the yawning triangular portal that leads to the audience hall where the Unspeakable Synod holds court. Deeper within are the government offices, dungeons, laboratories, and stranger chambers kept by the Synod and their favorites.

Built from the yawning hold of a repurposed galleon, The Fane of The Necrophage is simultaneously the most prominent and most remote temple to Han-Tha, forbidden god of cannibalism and scavengers. At the ends of the earth, Nim-Xedai is one of the few places in Creation where worshippers of The Ghoul King may openly practice their religion, and the cult is in fact considered one of the more approachable and even keeled among the city's faiths. In accordance with Han-Tha's dominion over scavenging, the priesthood is a pillar in the local artifact trade, and are just as much antiquarians as they are cultists of a forbidden god of cannibalism.

A long stone hall with very thick walls, The Chatterhouse is one of the largest collections of Skull Diaries in the known world and a prominent center of necromantic learning. Over fifty ebon craniums sit on stately plinths, babbling occult teachings in an endless cacophony that occasionally syncs into a unified sermon. Membership in the Chatterhouse is open to any Skull Diarist who holds to its founding ethos: The Skull Diary must not only be reassembled, but expanded with new skulls. How these new skulls are acquired is left up to the discretion of individual members.

The Sunken Bazaar resembles the impression left by an inverted step pyramid, its tiers descending into the earth and becoming successively smaller in diameter with each level. In antediluvian times it was meant to be the tomb of a tyrannical wizard king, but its would-be occupant never finished it and today it serves as Nim-Xedai's largest public market. Each tier specializes in different goods, becoming less mundane the further one travels in. In the lower levels, chambers full of unmelting ice store rows of corpses, limbs, and organs that ghosts and necromancers purchase for their own weird purposes. At the bazaar's lowest level there is a pit of bruise-colored liquid into which the Synod throws a yearly sacrifice to appease some obscure power.

A strange hybrid of art gallery, inventor's expo, and gladiatorial ring, The Visceratarium is a domed building where the city's necromancers and nemissaries go to display their latest undead constructs to prospective buyers. In its gore-stained proving cages, stitched-together monstrosities fight each other, creatures brought in from the wyld or underworld, and occasionally foolhardy or puissant living warriors while crowds cheer and necromancers take notes.

The magnum opus of an exiled alchemist from Great Forks, The Glandworks is a converted warehouse that holds what locals call The Gland, a whale sized undead construct of stitched together organs and tubes. Animated by insane alchemies, the Gland is an unliving alembic and crucible that secretes rare reagents and drugs when properly prodded and nourished. The Gland's maker fed himself to his creation to complete his work, leaving the task of tending to the creature to his apprentices, who fund its continued growth by hawking the heroin and amphetamines that it extrudes.

Dramatis Personae

The Dragon-Blooded Nacreous Doe will claim to be an Immaculate missionary, but she does not preach and is in fact a frequent drinker and purveyor of the bordellos. When pressed on this flimsy cover, the Water Aspect will admit that she's actually Tepet Fereta, who fled her political enemies in the Realm after the Battle of Futile Blood. Both of these stories are lies, Doe fled to Nim-Xedai to escape the wyld hunt, having been declared anathema for consorting with the demon Mara. Mara has since abandoned her, but Doe remains infatuated with the Shadow Lover, and this obsession has become even more twisted here at the edge of the world. A sorcerer, Doe spends each month preparing to summon, murder, and dissect a particular First Circle Demon descended from Mara, ritually consuming one of her victim's organs when the stars are wrong. She believes that this will eventually catalyze a sorcerous working that will transform her into either Mara's own daughter or Mara herself.

The ambassador from Uluriu, the Sovereign Lacrimal Sindo is the most recent appointee to what was previously considered a hardship post. His rented villa a splash of riotous color in an otherwise consciously muted city, Sindo regularly hands out gemstone baubles and fireglass trinkets to impress the locals and gain allies. This charity is born of more than just good will, as Sindo sought the ambassadorship to secure arcane backing for his bid for Uluriu's throne. His agents peruse the antiquarians and libraries of Nim-Xedai for artifacts and esoteric knowledge while the Opal Aspect seeks audience with the Unspeakable Synod to purchase undead mercenaries should the contest among his kin turn bloody. Sindo shows particular interest in notable newcomers to Nim-Xedai, scouting them out as potential retainers by offering a bit of warmth in the cold city.

A former Zephyrite priestess, Yemhara fled from her homeland to escape punishment for grave-robbing. In her final heist, she accidentally broke a lead-sealed urn containing The Saintess Everse, a weakened nephwrack who proceeded to possess her. Too feeble from imprisonment to overpower Yemhara's will, the much diminished nephwrack latched to her soul like a chronic sickness, gradually overwriting her ego. Enlightened into necromancy by the possession, Yemhara washed up in Nim-Xedai to find a cure for her condition, but as the possession continues she feels less and less compelled to resolve it, the last dregs of the Saintess' dissolving soul slowly fusing with her own.

The necromancer-surgeon Sophonostes appears as an aristocratic dandy of no more than thirty but is actually well into his nineties, kept hale and youthful by a combination of occult workings and ingenious but mundane surgeries and medicines. In his younger days he studied necromancy for vanity's sake, terrified of aging, but he truly excelled in his craft due to his appreciation for aesthetics. He views each limb graft or nemissary body he creates as a work of art, comparable to that of a celebrated sculptor. As he reaches the end of his first century he has become consumed with the idea of creating one of the Chernozem on his own, intentionally birthing a liminal exalt where others have done so only by accident. He follows accounts of the Dark Mother's children with rapt attention, cataloging their actions as if to divine the secret of their creation from them.

One of the city's original inhabitants, Qor has been peddling odds-and-ends for as long as anybody can remember. Wealth and profit no longer have any true meaning for the revenant, they merely buy and sell to keep themself sane after endless years of existence. Recognizable for the giant bronze vessel strapped to their back in which they keep their wares, Qor's a fixture of the Sunken Bazaar despite not having much more than a hole in the wall for store. Qor does not specialize in any type of good, and both genuine treasures and worthless bric-a-brac can be bought and sold at their humble establishment.

The Jantiya were once holy mercenaries in the service of the Abhari warrior spirit Tawarmat the Winged Rebuke, now called The Murdered Prophet after her destruction during the Realm's conquest of Fajad. Having refused to surrender after their prophet's death, the Jantiya were declared heretics by the Grand Mosque and hounded into the wastes, where they underwent a grim metamorphosis into a cult of assassins. Now one of several assassin guilds that call Nim-Xedai home, the Jantiya specialize in throwing blades and rooftop infiltrations. In the wake of Tawarmat's death, they have come to believe that the false world of Creation is fundamentally pollute and abandoned by the One God of the Abhari, and thus most moral transgressions are permissible as long as ritual purity is maintained.
 
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Ho ho ho.

Have three non-sapient demons as a Christmas present for demonologists who feel bad about summoning self-aware beings and breaking them to their wills.


Nylitbika, the Bronze Steer
Demon of the First Circle
Progeny of the False Sun

With a great snorting and roaring of steam, the cavalry of the False Sun Asarin smash into her foes in the great wars of the Demon City. Their claws rend those they trample, and their horns can gouge even the basalt walls of demon-buildings. The nylitbikae hate all barriers and all obstacles, but most of all they hate all other beasts that permit others to ride them.

These demons take their names from their cattle-like heads, but their tails are those of a rattlesnake and their feet are feline. The brown fire of their creator burns within them, and when their ire is raised it boils their blood which escapes from their mouth and empty eyes as scalding steam. They are born in the forges that capture globules of flame that fall from Asarin, and the attempts of the neomah to replicate them fail without feeding some of the False Sun's flame to their own forges.

The nylitbikae are bestial-minded, incapable of higher thought. Those who would ride them must trick them into donning collars of iron, or otherwise overwhelm them with greater flames than their own. When dominated in this way, they are meek to that person, though it makes them no more affable. When their blood boils, they seek only destruction and chaos and the safest place to be is on their back.

Sorcerers call on these demons as riding beasts and line-breakers, for a binding can force them to accept an iron collar. Once shackled, and as long as their blood does not ride, they can even be made to pull a plough with their immense strength. Confinement enrages these demon-beasts and if penned in by walls they will dash themselves against the obstacle until they, or the wall, breaks. A nylitbika can enter Creation when the blood of a sacrificed steer no more than three years of age falls on hot metal, the demon errupting from the corpse of the sacrifice.

Gombacsiga, the Fungal Crawler
Demon of the First Circle
Progeny of the Midnight Scale Prince

Where the fungal crawlers grow, mushrooms sprout in their wake, born from the slime they trail. In rich soil they grow and grow and grow, sprouting their threads down into the ground, pulling out all of value. The fruiting bodies have mystic properties, depending on the soil they are born from. Fertile land produces mushrooms that are extraordinarily rich, a single bite able to nourish a man. Land rich in minerals extracts the valuable substances within the flesh of the mushroom, which takes on the hue of the purified metal. If the land is foul the mushrooms drain the toxins and concentrate them greatly, creating terrible poisons. On battlefields the mushrooms feed off the dead and so they are of great use to sorcerers; in demesnes a single mushroom grows which - if given enough time and the right circumstances - can become a strange fungal manse.

These demons know nothing of the value that follows in their wake, blind idiot slimy beasts whose shell is akin to a chicken egg and whose snake-like heads drip mucus and ooze. They are gluttons and their slime kills plants and burns the skin. They eat corpses, but have not the wit to fight to defend themselves. Once they were a breed of brave demon warriors, but their lord cursed them to their current mindless state after they dared condemn his deeds. Whether Resensit regrets this is not known, but the spite of this curse is all too common for him.

Sorcerers call upon the gombacsigae to plunder land, to feed their armies, and extract strange mystic substances. The manses that form around one of their mushrooms take decades to form, but to a long-lived sorcerer this might be no obstacle. A gombacsiga can enter Creation when an abandoned fortress sees the death of a traveller who ate a poisonous mushroom.

Uveghajoorr, the Ship-Piercing Fish
Demon of the First Circle
Progeny of the Forgotten Acolyte

There is nothing more that the uveghajoorr love more than the sound of the breaking of a ship. When the prospect seems close at hand they sing out with the harmonic melodies of glass, and the sailors on the Demon Sea shiver and cling close to their precious tokens of cinnabar which will ward off an attack.

This demon resembles a fish-lizard wrought in glass and silver, but only in the way of an abstract sketch; their snout an elongated mouth-less barb, their eyes over-sized bulbs, their tail a slash in the air and their scales as jagged as a pine-cone. They can swim through all materials as easily as water; air, stone, metal and even flame. Their bodies are large enough to ride, though without well-made harnesses a rider will slip and only a fool would sit upon this demon if ships are in the area.

They have no words, only their joyful song, and their reinforced heads have little space for thought. Thus, they have merely the brains of a bird such as a hawk. Pirates in Hell train them to wreck the ships of those they would plunder, while other demon lords lash them to their ships and only loose them when they see the fleet of their foes.

Sorcerers summon the uveghajoorr to wreck the foes of their vessels, for the men of Creation do not know that cinnabar repulses these demons. Their snouts can be broken off to make fine crystal blades, and the demons suffer only short-term inconvenience until they regrow. Sometimes a uveghajoorr escapes into Creation when a vessel carrying a cargo of fine glassware is caught in a terrible storm on the ninth day of a month and the captain lets loose three blasphemies in the midnight hour.
 
I just had an idea of a demon getting summoned by an Alchemical Exalt, and offering to help out however their summoner wants if they can get them metaphysically realigned to be an extension of Autochthon rather than having to go back to Malfeas as an extension of one of the Yozi.

Then they find out about all of the issues there, and start speculating about becoming part of Gaia.
 
So, I need some help with chargen.

I'm joining a game of Ex3 this weekend with a Dusk Caste Abyssal who has Apocalyptic Resistance. I just liked the sound of Chain-and-Armor Mortification and Iron Tomb Imprisonment. It helps that Resistance also has Corpse Needs Nothing so I could really just keep up ITI forever without a problem. I also splurged for Five Edicts Dominion since his backstory is that he's been haunted by Whispers since forever, so getting the haunted armor seemed appropriate.

All this takes up a lot of Charm space though, and I'm not sure what else I would need to be a viable Combat character.

Edit: I'm half sure that spending 7 out of 15 Charms just to cosplay Mordekaiser is a bad idea, but at the same time I refuse to go back on it.

Edit: Added link to charsheet.
 
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drearyArchon said:
So, I need some help with chargen.

I'm joining a game of Ex3 this weekend with a Dusk Caste Abyssal who has Apocalyptic Resistance. I just liked the sound of Chain-and-Armor Mortification and Iron Tomb Imprisonment. It helps that Resistance also has Corpse Needs Nothing so I could really just keep up ITI forever without a problem. I also splurged for Five Edicts Dominion since his backstory is that he's been haunted by Whispers since forever, so getting the haunted armor seemed appropriate.

All this takes up a lot of Charm space though, and I'm not sure what else I would need to be a viable Combat character.

Edit: I'm half sure that spending 7 out of 15 Charms just to cosplay Mordekaiser is a bad idea, but at the same time I refuse to go back on it.

Edit: Added link to charsheet.
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Well, you're already a viable Combat character, since high soak and grappling are both very powerful when things go well, but a few things I noticed:
  • If your plan of 'grapple the enemy' fails (for example, against legendary-sized opponents) or you don't have the init to get a grapple gambit off, your offensive potential goes down quite a bit. The chains help, but don't benefit from Brutish Violence Exercise so you'll have an attack pool of "only" 8 dice before weapon accuracy if using them, or be punching people with your (mundane) fist if not. You might struggle against high-Defence foes that you can't hit.
  • Do you really need the third purchase of Corpse Needs Nothing right out of Chargen? It makes sense to get the second so you don't have to sleep in the armor, but the armor should still allow breathing, right? I'd consider trimming the third purchase and spending it on some utility. If you really want it, you can pick it up later with xp. Which brings me to
  • You have almost nothing to do outside of combat. In the interest of not being bored or feeling useless when the Circle isn't in combat, I'd consider picking up some more non-combat Charms. A rule of thumb I've seen is spending half your charms on something other than combat, though that might make the Mordekaiser cosplay too hard to pull off.
 
Elero said:
If your plan of 'grapple the enemy' fails (for example, against legendary-sized opponents) or you don't have the init to get a grapple gambit off, your offensive potential goes down quite a bit. The chains help, but don't benefit from Brutish Violence Exercise so you'll have an attack pool of "only" 8 dice before weapon accuracy if using them, or be punching people with your (mundane) fist if not. You might struggle against high-Defence foes that you can't hit.
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I was hoping I'd either a) not encounter Legendary Sized enemies until I managed to get the charm that lets me grapple them or b) be able to Stunt grappling them using the chains as justification, though I admit that'd only go so far.

High Defense is a bit harder without just dumping a load of motes on the attack. I was planning on getting some counterattack Evocations through Wraith-Forged Armor, something similar to what Nightmare Cuirass has, or just working towards getting to Soul-Warping Whispers. Both would take a while though.

Elero said:
Do you really need the third purchase of Corpse Needs Nothing right out of Chargen? It makes sense to get the second so you don't have to sleep in the armor, but the armor should still allow breathing, right? I'd consider trimming the third purchase and spending it on some utility. If you really want it, you can pick it up later with xp. Which brings me to
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The Campaign is in the Dreaming Sea, and I want the third purchase in case I get thrown overboard. I could have just spent another BP on getting Mela's Coil instead of FED and be buoyant in water, getting an un-disarmable weapon, and no Mobility penalty on top of not needing to worry about breathing...

...but I don't like the color scheme, so the horrible god-haunted armor it is.

I will consider dropping the third purchase of CNN though.

Elero said:
You have almost nothing to do outside of combat. In the interest of not being bored or feeling useless when the Circle isn't in combat, I'd consider picking up some more non-combat Charms. A rule of thumb I've seen is spending half your charms on something other than combat, though that might make the Mordekaiser cosplay too hard to pull off.
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Most of what I'm intending to do beyond combat is to just be haunted by The Whispers, which is why I bought Howling Silence Meditation. I suppose I could drop either Brutish Violence Exercise or Corpse Needs Nothing III to get Screaming in Silence. Might be useful if we get separated for some reason, and I do have to get it to get at SWW anyway. I also have Sailing Favored so maybe Bleak Ocean Veteran (seem like a veteran sailor) or Benthic Depths Wisdom (Whale Facts)?
 
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Hello everyone! This is my first post here in the thread, but I've been lurking and running a game IRL for a long time. I got bit by the the inspiration bug recently for some Heretical Charms for one of the recurring characters, who's the first Infernal and has been rogue from the Unquestionable for a while now. I only have two written up and I decided to drop by and break the ice.
Kivera's two main themes are 1) Being the oldest and best-informed (though maybe not the strongest) Infernal, who maintains at least the appearance of being willing to deal with just about anyone opposed to Heaven, and 2) hating the Sidereals for consigning her to a miserable death as part of someone else's destiny before she became an Infernal.
Shamelessly inspired by EarthScorpion's Po trees, though Kivera wouldn't draw on her lower soul that way because of some deep-seated self-hatred.
Infernal Firstborn's Advantage
Cost: -; Mins: Essence 1; Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: None

Kivera was the first - the Exaltation that the Green Sun first laid his hands upon and the first fool to sell her destiny to the Demon Princes. Her experience with Exaltation left her well-equipped to recognize her own kind.

Any character who currently carries a blessing or labors under a curse cause by a Yozi charm is Obvious to her senses. She can discriminate between curse, blessing, and tainted gift, but full understanding of the particulars require further magic. This only applies to the powers of the Green Sun Princes, not sundry demonic miracles. A servant with a Magnanimous Warning Glyph, a king under a Verdant Emptiness Endowment debt, a man imbued with an Unfair Excellence Endowment, even someone altered with a Desecration Charm - all leap out to her sight.

In addition, she automatically recognizes Infernal Exalts upon perceiving them with any sense. If she spends an additional 2m to sharpen her senses, roll (Perception + Occult). Each success reveals one piece of information from the following list of her choice:
  • Their caste
  • Their Essence rating
  • One of their favored Yozis
  • How long they've been Exalted
  • If they have subsidiary souls
  • If they know Infernal sorcery
  • One relevant Charm they have learned that applies to the current scene (this option may be chosen multiple times, but it costs 1 additional success each time)
Should concealing magic contest this Charm's effect, add (Essence) automatic successes to the roll-off.
Face-And-Fate Pact Technique
Cost: 10m, 1wp; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-OK, Shaping, Sorcerous
Duration: Until pact broken, concluded, or ended; or until (possibly) Calibration
Prerequisite Charms: Infernal Firstborn's Advantage

Signing over even the smallest thing to a demon is an invitation for them to take a mile. The fraying of one's destiny that a flirtation with dark powers brings can be exploited.

Activating this Charm while making a pact, agreement, or similar with another character tacks on an additional clause to the agreement - Kivera takes hold of the strands of Fate she snaps with her pact, gaining a minor hold over the subject's destiny. This effect is Obvious to the signatory, but it's also Obvious that this doesn't involve direct harm or mental influence. Signing or otherwise finalizing the pact invokes the Charm, taking hold of the target's Fate.

At any time thereafter, Kivera may spend 5m, 1wp and wraps the target's Fate around her until she chooses to release it. This provides a perfect (to mundane scrutiny) disguise as the pact-bound character, cloaks Kivera's equipment as theirs where possible (the function remains the same), and beguiles Fate, stealing the target's destiny for her own. The Loom is tricked by the magic into reorganizing to follow her actions as best as it can, bringing her Inside of Fate for the duration. The unfortunate signatory is left Outside of Fate while Kivera claims their destiny, vulnerable to glitches in Fate and generally having an unlucky, terrible day. The Charm terminates when the pact is broken or otherwise ends.

Should the signatory die while the Charm is still active, threads of Infernal Essence grab ahold of the weave of the signatory's destiny as it snaps and weaves it into a knot around Kivera's prosthetic fate. As far as the Loom is concerned, the signatory is simply Outside of Fate, and Kivera may still wear their destiny and face as if they were alive. At Calibration, roll a die for each dead Fate Kivera possesses. On a success, she retains it for the next year; on a failure, the tattered remnants of their destiny finally corrode and snap violently, destroying it and producing a wave of omen weather and similar Fate glitches at the site of the character's death.

Kivera can maintain (Essence) pacts with this Charm at once.
 
eagle_II said:
Prerequisite Charms: None
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Meant to be one of the root charms of a Devil-Tiger set, rather than conventional heresy hybridizing two pre-existing yozi charmsets, i take it?
Seems like the second charm could save a lot of wordcount and potential confusion by leading with "this upgrades Loom-Snarling Deception, loosening the restriction against impersonating people who already exist." Long-term commitment of ten motes and cap of (Essence) fate-bound fake IDs seems harsh when Lunars can get a similar effect through the Flickering Star Infusion knack, at no extra cost and with no limit on numbers.
 
Elero said:
Well, you're already a viable Combat character, since high soak and grappling are both very powerful when things go well, but a few things I noticed:
  • If your plan of 'grapple the enemy' fails (for example, against legendary-sized opponents) or you don't have the init to get a grapple gambit off, your offensive potential goes down quite a bit. The chains help, but don't benefit from Brutish Violence Exercise so you'll have an attack pool of "only" 8 dice before weapon accuracy if using them, or be punching people with your (mundane) fist if not. You might struggle against high-Defence foes that you can't hit.
  • Do you really need the third purchase of Corpse Needs Nothing right out of Chargen? It makes sense to get the second so you don't have to sleep in the armor, but the armor should still allow breathing, right? I'd consider trimming the third purchase and spending it on some utility. If you really want it, you can pick it up later with xp. Which brings me to
  • You have almost nothing to do outside of combat. In the interest of not being bored or feeling useless when the Circle isn't in combat, I'd consider picking up some more non-combat Charms. A rule of thumb I've seen is spending half your charms on something other than combat, though that might make the Mordekaiser cosplay too hard to pull off.
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I've decided on swapping out Brutish Violence Exercise for Benthic Depths Wisdom. Some of the later charms that let me curse people appealed to me, plus introducing facts seems like a great time. I'm already planning on making my Manse the bermuda triangle as soon as I get to use it.

Thanks for the help.
 
All Quiet in Whitewall


After fifty years spent trapped in the deepest parts of the Imperial Manse, Robin was able to claw himself out on the faithful night of the Empress disappearance. The memories of that cold dark place, blueprints of the terrible machines that he was forced to build, and a endless gnawing rage at the one who put him there in the first place. All of it huants his every step as he eeks out a living as a lowly Thrall in Whitewall.

Preview of a Exalted story I am working on, this is cover art and synopsis :). Been wanting to try my hand at writing a Solar who has been through some shit.
 
eagle_II said:
Note the Sorcerous keyword on the Charm. It costs 10m to sanctify the pact, but that's not committed to it - in exchange, the disguise is vulnerable to countermagic.
I didn't upgrade any existing charms because I wanted a short, self-contained tree. Could probably clean up the wording a bit though.
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Still seems like a weird way to handle duration and repertoire cap. Somebody who doesn't want their face stolen could make a pact, then zap the infernal (or themselves?) with countermagic and, contrary to the flavor text, consider that threat solved. Compare original and errata'd versions of Destiny-Knitting Entanglement in the sidereal Craft tree. Instead of a random attrition roll per Calibration, needing to 'test-drive' disguises on an annual basis to maintain the claim over folks who otherwise died or vanished would fit the existing metaphysics of astrological blessings and curses lapsing after a fully year in the Deep Wyld, Demon Realm, Labyrinth, or otherwise outside fate, while also providing a method for someone to discover those stolen identities by heroic but mostly-mundane investigation.
 
Lioness said:
Has anyone here attempted a framework for making poisons and diseases? I'm poking at a craft rework that's addressing non-standard crafts and realised this is a potentially perilous design area.
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Closest I've come is a Charm-based medicine/vaccine-making framework. But I have some thoughts on how this could be done.

Anything with a points budget or a rigorous formula is susceptible to min-maxing. So you're probably better off rating poisons and diseases in broad and slightly vague categories, kinda like Artifacts. Sketch out the characteristics, judge them holistically, assign a rating. Maybe two or three mundane craft levels, with the rest being Artifact-equivalents. One idea from my own rework, that of "crafting" a recipe as an Artifact and then following it with mundane Craft, seems fitting here.

Creating diseases is inherently way more difficult / impressive than creating poisons, so they probably have a minimum level. The least impressive virus is a bigger accomplishment than an ordinary poison.

In any case, I'd be interested in hearing about this rework.
 
Plan is basically to handle crafting like martial arts with different styles tackling different professions and approaches to making stuff. I've wanted to do this for years but I recognised Solar Craft was a bad precedent for "Mastery" effects that stunlocked actually moving forward with this concept until I had the manuscripts for Abysssals and Alchemicals.
 
Lioness said:
Plan is basically to handle crafting like martial arts with different styles tackling different professions and approaches to making stuff. I've wanted to do this for years but I recognised Solar Craft was a bad precedent for "Mastery" effects that stunlocked actually moving forward with this concept until I had the manuscripts for Abysssals and Alchemicals.
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I actually like the craft system, but martial arts like abilities to spend my role exp on when I'm tired of just more craft dots sound like fun.
 
Lioness said:
Plan is basically to handle crafting like martial arts with different styles tackling different professions and approaches to making stuff. I've wanted to do this for years but I recognised Solar Craft was a bad precedent for "Mastery" effects that stunlocked actually moving forward with this concept until I had the manuscripts for Abysssals and Alchemicals.
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I like that idea. I guess that's unsurprising, since I did something very similar with all those specialization Charms. Which you're more than welcome to draw from, of course.

If you ask me the main problem with Craft has always been the fixation on Artifacts. Craft needs to do stuff in real time, not just provide a justification for additional background dots. And most of the interesting effects are subfield-specific.

Differentiating crafters is good too. A cook, a blacksmith, and a sculptor should not be doing the same things in the same ways.

Good luck!
 
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