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General Exalted Thread

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The trappings are too much like our modern First World culture. The father's uniform, the mother's dress, the home, the furniture, the fact that the little girl goes to a public school funded by apparently working class parents.

Also, the fact that anatomically, they're really thickly built humans who happen to have shark heads, with gills, which makes no biological sense.

Their culture (practically taken from the real world as we know it) doesn't seem to fit the world in which they live (Creation's Second Age), which is juxtaposed by shark heads that don't belong on human bodies. Also, their environment seems rather dry for sharkpeople, and not at all built for underwater inhabitation.

I understand why this comic twigs people so bad, because I see what twigs them and why, because these things twig me.

I just don't care. It's cute and heart-warming and funny.

Maybe that book should have had a completely different and much more appropos comic. I won't argue that.

But I'm just happier for having read it, so I appreciate its existence.
 
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Sunder the Gold said:
The trappings are too much like our modern First World culture. The father's uniform, the mother's dress, the home, the furniture, the fact that the little girl goes to a public school funded by apparently working class parents.

Also, the fact that anatomically, they're really thickly built humans who happen to have shark heads, with gills, which makes no biological sense.

Their culture (practically taken from the real world as we know it) doesn't seem to fit the world in which they live (Creation's Second Age), which is juxtaposed by human heads that don't belong on sharks. Also, their environment seems rather dry for sharkpeople, and not at all built for underwater inhabitation.

I understand why this comic twigs people so bad, because I see what twigs them and why, because these things twig me.

I just don't care. It's cute and heart-warming and funny.

Maybe that book should have had a completely different and much more appropos comic. I won't argue that.

But I'm just happier for having read it, so I appreciate its existence.
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Yes. All of this.
 
C.o.S.a.R said:
First off, people view it that way because it's a pretty standard scene in sitcoms.
Secondly, given that sitcoms are at least in part based off modern family practices, I'm not surprised that there are those who identify with those practices in real life. The issue there should be obvious though, as it's part of the name: modern family practices. Some people might find it out of place for modern family practices to be inserted into a Bronze age setting. Shocking, I know.

I'd also point out that it doesn't help that the character says a slightly mutated version of a common sitcom(or, more accurately, domcom) catchphrase(Family I'm Home vs Honey I'm home) while entering what looks to be a modern house.
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It's in a sunken First Age city that's been kept isolated from Creation since the Usurpation, so some cultural weirdness is reasonable, and the setting as a whole is hardly Bronze age. It's too advanced. Iron age would be more accurate, but doesn't account for the omnipresent fantasy elements.

Furthermore, this is a comic clearly taking place in Luthe, which is isolated from the rest of the setting - as it has been since the Usurpation. Luthe's culture does not reflect on Creation as a whole, it is very much a solitary instance. It's should stand separate from other cultures, because it should be jarring to see the result of more than a millennium of social engineering by a Lunar gone mad with desire for revenge against the Terrestrial Exalts.
 
azoicennead said:
Furthermore, this is a comic clearly taking place in Luthe, which is isolated from the rest of the setting - as it has been since the Usurpation. Luthe's culture does not reflect on Creation as a whole, it is very much a solitary instance.
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Which is why it's no good as a comic for a book about the entire Western Direction of Creation.

It's about a place that's too inaccessible and too unique, which already makes it too niche before taking into consideration that it is also about a story too small and mundane for players who choose to roleplay as titan-killing demigods.

If Exalts manage to find and invade Luthe, they're not going to look up Sharkdad to hang out and knock back a few beers while watching the game. They're not going to sit down to Sunday dinner and ask his daughter how school is going, or compliment Sharkmom on her dolphin tail steak.

Sharkdad is likely just going to be one of the many beastfolk extras they slaughter on their way to seize some vital infrastructural target. Sharkgirl will cry herself to sleep for years, completely offscreen with all of the other orphans.
 
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Sunder the Gold said:
Which is why it's no good as a comic for a book about the entire Western Direction of Creation.

It's about a place that's too inaccessible and too unique, which already makes it too niche before taking into consideration that it is also about a story too small and mundane for players who choose to roleplay as titan-killing demigods.

If Exalts manage to find and invade Luthe, they're not going to look up Sharkdad to hang out and knock back a few beers while watching the game. They're not going to sit down to Sunday dinner and ask his daughter how school is going, or compliment Sharkmom on her dolphin tail steak.

Sharkdad is likely just going to be one of the many beastfolk extras they slaughter on their way to seize some vital infrastructural target. Sharkgirl will cry herself to sleep for years, completely offscreen with all of the other orphans.
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That's really a problem with the book itself, not just the comic's depiction of the inhabitants of Luthe.
I mean, I was considering pointing out that this is one of the CoTD books, but that felt like a cheap shot at the book. I think strangely modern depictions of beastmen in a humorous comic are far from the biggest problem in the book.
Things like "there's fuck-all to work with in the book because everything is thousands of miles apart" are far more egregious problems.
 
azoicennead said:
It's in a sunken First Age city that's been kept isolated from Creation since the Usurpation, so some cultural weirdness is reasonable, and the setting as a whole is hardly Bronze age. It's too advanced. Iron age would be more accurate, but doesn't account for the omnipresent fantasy elements.

Furthermore, this is a comic clearly taking place in Luthe, which is isolated from the rest of the setting - as it has been since the Usurpation. Luthe's culture does not reflect on Creation as a whole, it is very much a solitary instance. It's should stand separate from other cultures, because it should be jarring to see the result of more than a millennium of social engineering by a Lunar gone mad with desire for revenge against the Terrestrial Exalts.
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There are different types of jarring: I and many others would argue that this is jarring not in a way that makes us think that this is a weird, cut off land, ruled by a mad God-King. Instead, it makes it look like something out of a sitcom or a modern family. Given that Luthe is ruled by a Lunar who has gone made in his desire for vengeance, with a society divided along strong caste lines, one would think a associations with the first world and modern day wouldn't be the ones they would look for.

The comic itself is alright, outside of context. Inside that context, though? It makes little sense.
 
C.o.S.a.R said:
There are different types of jarring: I and many others would argue that this is jarring not in a way that makes us think that this is a weird, cut off land, ruled by a mad God-King. Instead, it makes it look like something out of a sitcom or a modern family. Given that Luthe is ruled by a Lunar who has gone made in his desire for vengeance, with a society divided along strong caste lines, one would think a associations with the first world and modern day wouldn't be the ones they would look for.

The comic itself is alright, outside of context. Inside that context, though? It makes little sense.
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I guess? I don't see the comic as being meant to provide any serious insight into the culture of Luthe, beyond "yes, they're still people".
I just don't think it's particularly notable, given how flawed the book is.
 
azoicennead said:
I guess? I don't see the comic as being meant to provide any serious insight into the culture of Luthe, beyond "yes, they're still people".
I just don't think it's particularly notable, given how flawed the book is.
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Given that providing insight and illustrative examples is the entire point of the comics or chapter fictions, a comic which does not do so would be considered bad, would it not? Or, what other purpose does it serve beyond taking up a couple pages?

And what does it not being notable compared to the rest of the book have to do with anything? The discussion wasn't about the rest of the book, it was about this one comic.
 
Kerisgame part six! In which Keris decides not to attack the street-length rock-centipede, creates life (again) and discovers once more that Echo is utterly adorable.

Edit: You know, despite following the "Exaltations are weapons; Exalts were made as murder-machines designed to kill Primordials" view pretty heavily, Kerisgame is usually (ironically) fairly low-key and "mundane", insofar as that word can be applied to a girl who can hear the sound of machinery through twenty yards of solid concrete at the bottom of an 800-metre deep lake that used to be a mineshaft, and who is so lethal in combat that ES doesn't even bother asking me to roll to slaughter a group of mortal soldiers unless I'm trying to do it in total silence or without any of them noticing or something.

But the subtle things are still there that speak of really cool shit happening in the backstory. Case in point...
The water is thick with layer upon layer of silt, and Keris can taste it. It's like a taste map of history. She can taste the changes in the humans that must have been living upstream as she gets deeper and deeper. There's a layer of bamboo down here, rotten and decayed - maybe from a great storm. Down and down she goes, surrounded by sediment. She's glowing, but she can barely see her own hands because of all the dirt she's kicking up.

And then a thin layer which just tastes of pure wood.

And then death. So much death. Rot and death is all around her, bitter and vile in the sediment she's kicked up.
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A layer of death and rot from the Great Contagion still lingering in the geological record, just below a second layer from when the Pole of Wood reconnected with Creation after being knocked loose during the Balorian Crusade, sending out a wave of Wood Essence so potent that it lingers in the fossil record on the other side of Creation more than seven hundred years later. An Exalted parallel to the layer of iridium in Earth's geology from the KT impact.

So cool.

(That wave of Wood Essence was, incidentally, what prompted the hyper-rapid growth that let Creation recover so quickly from the mass-die-off of the Contagion, which is also why most Shogunate ruins are completely overgrown, especially as you get closer and closer to the East).
 
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Walker of the Yellow Path said:
Are there any charms in Melee or Martial Arts that upon successful blocking of a ranged attack allows you to send that attack back at the enemy?
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In 3E?
Feather-Stirred Arrow Deflection is a Crane-Style charm. It mechanically extends a Counterattacks range (using your own stats for the damage etc.) but fluff-wise it does so by reflecting the projectile from a ranged attack.

There are no other ways to extend the range of a Counter-attack beyond its normal range, and nothing that deals with reflecting projectiles (that I know of).
 
Serafina said:
In 3E?
Feather-Stirred Arrow Deflection is a Crane-Style charm. It mechanically extends a Counterattacks range (using your own stats for the damage etc.) but fluff-wise it does so by reflecting the projectile from a ranged attack.

There are no other ways to extend the range of a Counter-attack beyond its normal range, and nothing that deals with reflecting projectiles (that I know of).
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There are a few charms that let you clash at range, though.
 
I'll look at Crane Style, but I should have added 2nd Edition. My group doesn't want to play 3E until we have access to a legal copy of the rules, not just the leak.
 
Walker of the Yellow Path said:
I'll look at Crane Style, but I should have added 2nd Edition. My group doesn't want to play 3E until we have access to a legal copy of the rules, not just the leak.
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2e crane has that charm too, and it also counterattacks at range, IIRC.

Crane is really boss for Sids - it was published in glory: Maidens and is specifically intended to adress certain issues sidereals have - though it's still a good style for non-Sids.
 
There's also a Solar melee charm that allows you to counter attacks made at a distance. I can't remember the name, just that it allowed you to eventually counter social attacks, and could attack people even if they weren't in Creation.
 
Aleph said:
Edit: You know, despite following the "Exaltations are weapons; Exalts were made as murder-machines designed to kill Primordials" view pretty heavily, Kerisgame is usually (ironically) fairly low-key and "mundane", insofar as that word can be applied to a girl who can hear the sound of machinery through twenty yards of solid concrete at the bottom of an 800-metre deep lake that used to be a mineshaft, and who is so lethal in combat that ES doesn't even bother asking me to roll to slaughter a group of mortal soldiers unless I'm trying to do it in total silence or without any of them noticing or something.
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Honestly, it's one of the things I like about it. I think there should be room for the low-key in Exalted, perhaps even involving the Exalted themselves (although as a period of their lives rather than all of it).
 
horngeek said:
Honestly, it's one of the things I like about it. I think there should be room for the low-key in Exalted, perhaps even involving the Exalted themselves (although as a period of their lives rather than all of it).
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It is, largely, because - at least as I see it - the cynical, Exaltation-as-murder-weapon view of the world removes the moral necessity for "good guys" and "bad guys". The Exalted are heroes in the Greek sense of the word, because they have terrible power and the capacity to use this power to change the world - nothing more.

But that means there isn't room for your classical fantasy kingdom there. Matasque, Nexus, An Teng - in Kerisgame, they've all been very much places first, places built around trade and food and water and all the other basic dictats which shape a world. The Exalted exist within such settings. Keris can throw Nexus into chaos, but the reason it's in chaos is that a combination of economic and political uncertainty combined with the widespread civic unhappiness common to cities with massive economic inequality caused a breakdown in order. And yes, it happened to be kicked off by Keris killing one of the Council of Entities and the resulting reactions of big power players, but it probably wouldn't have gone that differently if someone else had been the one who killed the man.

Likewise, because in Kerisgame Creation is totally a post-apoc setting 700 years after the civilisation fell, there aren't the same High First Age ruins lying around. Because there was a really, really long time for the Shogunate to repurpose and subvert and accidentally blow up and salvage the ruins of the Solars, and because the Shogunate was actually, genuinely something Creation had never seen before [1]. The High First Age is buried much, much deeper in this game. It's the ruins of the Shogunate which dominate Creation. Societies are post-Shogunate, and the myths people tell of a golden age talk about the Shogunate, not the High First Age.

[1] A Creation where the rulers and the dominant elite were part of a mass-society rather than a few individuals? Revolutionary and radical, promoting diversity which had never been seen before. New schools of philosophy, art and music, created as a response and rejection of Solar hegemony and later created simply out of massive human diversity.
 
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