Actually, both the hun and po normally go on to reincarnate while still linked together- the current shortage of souls is because Autochthon eat the lower souls of some, and keeps the higher soul in storage.
General Exalted Thread
Actually, both the hun and po normally go on to reincarnate while still linked together- the current shortage of souls is because Autochthon eat the lower souls of some, and keeps the higher soul in storage.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Autochthonians basically have a Hindu caste system, which if you know anything about that, means that upward mobility in their culture is... limited.
It's worse, because their caste system is controlled by their government. Not some lofty higher power.
One of the five Sodalite branches, the Luminors, are responsible for managing souls. The books are fuzzy on how much control they have, but it works like this:
It's worse, because their caste system is controlled by their government. Not some lofty higher power.
One of the five Sodalite branches, the Luminors, are responsible for managing souls. The books are fuzzy on how much control they have, but it works like this:
- Child is born, takes their first breath and gets a soul!
- A soulgem is implanted very shortly after birth! There are different cuts/colors to define their Caste (Oval for Populat, Triangle for Estasian's Militate, etc)
- Person dies! Higher soul is sucked into the soulgem and lower soul goes off to the Radiant Amphora for part of the reincarnation process.
- Here inside the soulgem, the soul is tagged with information that lets the Luminors find it again using the Radiant Amphora. The Amphora is basically a metaphysical structure that can be interacted with via Autochthon's vast titan-organs.
- Luminors grab the soul, check it's readings. They know it's history of reincarnation, census data, etc. They know that the soul was really good in the factories, so they're back to being a populat again! Or maybe there's political pressure to push the soul into a lower caste, etc.
- This history btw is how they determine viability of Alchemical Exaltation- their mortal deeds of heroism which were usually fatal charges the soul up as the catalyst for the blank body the sodalites make. So one soul reincarnated 4-5 times with heroic deaths each time is a good candidate for a Jade Caste, for example.
- Now here's where it gets fuzzy- I say the Luminors can grab the soul, but they really don't have that much control I think. What I think happens is that Luminors keep an eye on souls as they come into life (kids are born) and decide their lives from that point on. So yes, an Estasian soul can show up in Claslat, die, go to Nurad, etc. But they'll likely always be whatever caste they were in the previous life because Stasis is Good in Autochthonia.
Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
The higher soul is called the hun, and it is the seat of reason and the identity of a person. The lower soul is called the po, and it is the seat of instinct and is basically an animal. Autochthon often eats the po soul, and the hun is shunted into the pole of metal for a time, striped of identity.
I just wanted to make sure that the whole system wasn't an "I have no mouth and I must scream" moment. The po soul doesn't really matter, and the hun soul is eventually reincarnated, right? When it says Auto is running out of souls, it means there's not enough po souls to go around?
I just wanted to make sure that the whole system wasn't an "I have no mouth and I must scream" moment. The po soul doesn't really matter, and the hun soul is eventually reincarnated, right? When it says Auto is running out of souls, it means there's not enough po souls to go around?
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
I'm actually pretty sure he eats higher souls at a rate of like, [some number] every year, it's just that he had a finite number of them, and by the time the game starts for players, they're starting to see statistical rises in stillbirths as not enough souls enter circulation. Part of the problem also is that the Tunnel folk continue to increase in population via unregulated births, so THAT's draining away from Autochthonian birth rates.
But yeah when you're a soul waiting for reincarnation, it's a very chill non-existence.
It's the po he eats. Om nom nom tasty seat of power. The huns go to the storage tanks, just waiting for a necromancer to break in and laugh maniacally.
Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
Source: MoEP p. 22 Alchemical sidebar "Ewer of Souls
Step 1: A new human is born, and takes its First Breath.
Step 2: Insert the Soulgem
Step 3: Die
Step 4: Soulgem takes souls into itself to be processed.
Step 5: Auto eats the processed po (seat of power/instinct), and the hun is put into holding tanks until it can be reincarnated.
Step 6: A new human is born, and takes its First Breath.
Since Auto eats the po, there's not enough full souls to go into the newborn population of Autochthonia, causing a ton of still births. There's a hard cap on the population at any given moment. Auto is running out of po souls, which means that the fuel for the engine of Autochton is about to stall.
Is there any solution other than Project Razor?
Step 1: A new human is born, and takes its First Breath.
Step 2: Insert the Soulgem
Step 3: Die
Step 4: Soulgem takes souls into itself to be processed.
Step 5: Auto eats the processed po (seat of power/instinct), and the hun is put into holding tanks until it can be reincarnated.
Step 6: A new human is born, and takes its First Breath.
Since Auto eats the po, there's not enough full souls to go into the newborn population of Autochthonia, causing a ton of still births. There's a hard cap on the population at any given moment. Auto is running out of po souls, which means that the fuel for the engine of Autochton is about to stall.
Is there any solution other than Project Razor?
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
The only canonical source of new souls is Wyld, which Autocthon explicitly sealed himself off from.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
And po souls aren't intelligent. Or rather, they don't have any higher reason. The bigass quetzalcoatl with razor-edged silver feathers and burning green eyes in Keris's Devil Domain? That's her po soul. That's about how much they can reason. It's not stupid, and it's even cunning in a sort of base, animalistic way, but there's no real sapience there; it's bestial. It does have all her Principles, though (which is why it got mad when she attacked it to get her stuff back, because she was feeling possessive and angry about her stuff being taken, so, uh, it got possessive and angry about her trying to take its stuff. So she tried to stab it, and it tried to eat her. From this we can once again take the lesson that Keris is not very smart sometimes.)
If you want to see that particular excerpt, incidentally, it occurred just after she robbed the tomb of her Past Life for the second time and had to fight (and kill) a First Age Lunar yidak that had woken up there in, uh, direct response to her robbing the place and desecrating the bodies the first time around. ^_^'
Because she stole literally everything in there that wasn't nailed down, plus the stuff that was nailed down, plus the nails this time, we had a choice - we could either catalogue literally everything (so many artifact doooots), or we could represent it some other way - more like a rolling pool of Artifact dots that she could only have a few of out at a time. But that raised the question of why she could only take out a few bits of the hoard at a time, and so...
The Background she got there is in her character sheet, but I'll copy it below for those interested:
Hoard said:
IIRC, there's an Unshaped or an Ishvara locked up somewhere between Autobot's lungs and colon that someone could mine Wyld stuff out of to create new souls/resources/whatever.
Or I suppose unleash it to wreck havoc on Autobot's guts.
But why would you want to do that?
Autochton has a habit of not quite thinking things through.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Location
- The end of all things
Project Razor is probably the easiest solution, but it is certainly not the only one. For all that Alchemicals are relatively inflexible, they are still Celestial Exalts with Solar dice caps, powerful charms and access to something between Celestial and Solar Circle Sorcery. There is precious little that hundreds of them working together could not achieve. The issue is actually getting them working together before it is too late instead of fighting over leaky lifeboats on a sinking ship. Compared to that, invading a relatively backwards region for resources and
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
What is Project Razor?
Solar dicecap is (Attribute+Ability). Alchemical dicecap is (Attribute) dice.
Alchemical Charms are roughly at the level between Lunar and Terrestrial Charms actually. Alchemicals are generally weaker than Celestial Exalted but stronger than the Dragonblooded, but can have some considerable efficiency bonuses from the way their infrastructural support mechanics work.
The God-Machine level Weaving Protocols are reskinned Celestial Circle Sorcery.
This much is true.
Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
Autochthonia opens a portal to Creation, connecting the two worlds again.
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
EDIT: Nevermind, I was wrong.
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Because of the existence of the 4th Augmentation, the Alchemical dicecap is effectively (Attribute + Essence) dice, +1 if Essence is odd. At Essence 5, an Alchemical has an effective dicecap of 11 to the Solar's 10, because the 4th Aug counts as natural for all purposes, including dice caps.
... That has got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. It's right there in the Charm text, I know, but still.
I mean, a permanent +1 die per purchase of the Charm that doesn't count towards the dice cap? Sure. Not requiring attunement for repurchases in the same Attribute? Iffy, but there's a limit of +3 to purchases in play unless you change the genre from humanoid(ish) machine Champions of the people to Super Robot Battles. Mind that the rules are somewhat unclear and can also be read as 'you pay 1 mote attunement in total for all installments of this Charm no matter the Attribute.'
But to give people what's basically +2 to their dice cap and a permanent boost to their dice pool fraction of a mote if the Exalt has any brains at all given that the Charm is competitive or cheaper compared to normal purchases from 3 dots onwards... Yeah.
I'd houserule it to 'have a permanent +1 die to a given attribute that doesn't count towards your cap at 1 personal mote per die.'
I've never read it that way, to be honest.
I think it was very deliberately designed that way to emphasize that the weakness of the Alchemicals was infrastructural, rather than some innate weakness of their shard.
Which, honestly, is a way nicer way to balance shit than "yeah you are entirely systemically shittier than everyone else forever Deal With It" when you have explicit crossovers and mixed parties being a common form of play, because you can then handwave away the weaknesses rather than tear your hair out if two players of different splats even consider dabbling in the same niche.
- Location
- The end of all things
The 4th Augmentation means that (Attribute) can be 7 (8 at Essence 5). If that weren't enough, Transpuissant (Attribute) Upgrade converts all specialty dice to successes(and optionally stunt dice as well, at the cost of gaining Clarity). At Essence 5, an Alchemical can effectively throw around 27 dice before stunts. An Essence 5 Solar can also wield 27 dice... but only if he is using cap-breaking charms, which Alchemicals don't get.
This competence does not come cheaply, as the Alchemical must commit 3 precious motes of personal essence and 5 charm slots to get this for just a single attribute. Specialization is their strength.
Their weakness is not so much in their charms, but rather in the fact that they can only install a very limited number of them at a time, making them relatively inflexible and dependent on infrastructure. The charms themselves are all over the place in strength. Many are effectively Solar charms weakened by their high costs. Others are weakened by their limited applicability, and yet others by the need to spend dozens of XP on their many sub-modules to bring them fully up to par.
True, to an extent, but God-Machine Protocols are explicitly said to be between Celestial Circle Sorcery and Solar Circle Sorcery in power. Most notably, Celestial Circle Sorcery does not let you Wyld-shape. God-Machine Protocols do.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
It also on costs considerably more XP to get to 'Solariod tier' for Alchemicals. I mean, Solars need one charm for full power (their baseline excellency), while Alchemicals need Essence 5 and three charms to slightly exceed that. And this isn't getting into I(A)M because Alchies again need E5, a charm and a submodual to the Solars one charm. This continues on like so through the charm set.
Also, blunt and brutal honesty? Alchemicals having a 1 die advantage over Solars at E5 does not melt the game in any way. Especially given the other limits Alchemicals labor under.
(Colossi might, but that's dealing with the Elder problem, and man, fuck the Elder Problem.)
Also, blunt and brutal honesty? Alchemicals having a 1 die advantage over Solars at E5 does not melt the game in any way. Especially given the other limits Alchemicals labor under.
(Colossi might, but that's dealing with the Elder problem, and man, fuck the Elder Problem.)
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
First step for making alchemical more mixed-party-outside-autochthon-friendly would be writing up an artifact that can transport alchemicals (and only the alchemical) to their repair bay and back.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
... that... basically removes the major limiting factor of Alchemicals. That's like making a handy Artifact that suppresses your Limit Break, or that lets people remember Sidereals, or that stops Abyssals getting Resonance.