General Exalted Thread
The idea isn't to besiege Whitewall but raid its territories. Sending in more undead means a faster resolution, but the final result should be the same so long as the undead are destroying its farms, pastures, and mines faster than it can rebuild them.
Dowager: And what do I get out of this?
The deathlords aren't buddy-buddy with each other by any measure.
More to the point, the Contagion would set off every panic button Heaven has.
Because a key plot point is that nobody has access to the Contagion any more/it's no longer as effective. If they could release it at it's original effectiveness there probably wouldn't be a Creation left afterwards.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
If the Contagion could be recreated, it already would have been. It was an Artifact N/A miracle plague; a phenomenon that was less a disease and more a Creation-wide fire, which spread through every vector imaginable and killed everything it touched.
Ah. It looks like we're dealing with the basic problem of "different Whitewalls" here.
Because the version which @azoicennead pontificates is not really recognisable as the Whitewall from Scavenger Sons. The Whitewall which "Currently Whitewall plays host to half a dozen outcaste Terrestrial Exalted" and "Understandably, Whitewall is not a safe place for the Solar Exalted - unless they happen to be natives of the place. Outsiders found to be Solars and apprehended are likely to be turned over to the Realm ambassador". The Whitewall which makes absolutely no mention of High First Age level health care where disease simply doesn't happen, but which is simply "ruled by a trio of powerful spirits" (who, incidentally, look like nearly identical figures of silver and ice). The Whitewall which, in fact, can be considered at least in part a milder version of Omphlas, where overall happiness is bought by harsh laws which make sure they have enough prisoners to sacrifice to the Dead and the Fae which is how they buy their safety, and where utterly inhuman spirits rule the city and treat individual humans as... statistics compared to the overall wellfare of the place.
The fact that later writers have gone "special" and decided to bloat the power way, way up means the elegance of Scavenger Sons is lost. And there's a certain point at which the original concept is lost behind the "making the city super special and shiny".
Because the version which @azoicennead pontificates is not really recognisable as the Whitewall from Scavenger Sons. The Whitewall which "Currently Whitewall plays host to half a dozen outcaste Terrestrial Exalted" and "Understandably, Whitewall is not a safe place for the Solar Exalted - unless they happen to be natives of the place. Outsiders found to be Solars and apprehended are likely to be turned over to the Realm ambassador". The Whitewall which makes absolutely no mention of High First Age level health care where disease simply doesn't happen, but which is simply "ruled by a trio of powerful spirits" (who, incidentally, look like nearly identical figures of silver and ice). The Whitewall which, in fact, can be considered at least in part a milder version of Omphlas, where overall happiness is bought by harsh laws which make sure they have enough prisoners to sacrifice to the Dead and the Fae which is how they buy their safety, and where utterly inhuman spirits rule the city and treat individual humans as... statistics compared to the overall wellfare of the place.
The fact that later writers have gone "special" and decided to bloat the power way, way up means the elegance of Scavenger Sons is lost. And there's a certain point at which the original concept is lost behind the "making the city super special and shiny".
Basically, it's a far less bloated version of the setting. It's cleaner, more focussed on the polities and the societies, and is written in a very "plot hook" focussed way - everything in it exists to be usable in a game. It's a setting where Lookshy is not magitech Amero-Sparta filled with power armour and VTOLs, but instead is special because it has a lot of daiklaives and suits of jade armour (enough that they equip entire elite formations with them), and a few siege weapons.
It also covers all four exterior Directions in one book, and has a Chapter on Nexus which is... like, exponentially better than the chapter in Scavenger Lands. Because Scavenger Lands thinks the most interesting think about Nexus is the Emissary, while Scavenger Sons thinks the most interesting thing about Nexus is Nexus. And the Council of Entities gets vastly more space than the Emissary, who's only really mentioned as the Council's enforcer. ScavSons is worth it for the Nexus chapter alone. Really.
(Fuck the ScavLands Nexus chapter)
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
The standard answer is that everything which survived the first Great Contagion is immune to it now. So unless you put some metaphysical ompf behind bringing it back you won't have any effect. At least one Abyssal Charm inflicts the Contagion on targets, but the version created is non-communicable.
More importantly, doing so would out them as in violation of the Mandate and allow the Sidereals to unseat them.
Destroying Shadowlands (or building them, for that matter) is a generational level infrastructure project. Mamara's Fell resisted the best efforts of Shogunate-era geomancy to cure it, a swoop from the Legion won't do any good and as long as the Deathlords can retreat to the Underworld they can't be safely targeted by the Legion.
- Location
- The end of all things
She actually doesn't, but that doesn't really matter. Theoretically, the Dowager could recreate it. But why? If she tries and fails, then she looses a huge amount of credibility and prestige. The Contagion failed to kill Creation the first time, there's no reason it would work better the second time, even ignoring the possibility of immunity or resistance. Before, it was entirely unexpected. Now, there would be countermeasures in place. That's not even considering that the Realm Defense Grid is now active, and it certainly has functions that would be useful, for sterilization if nothing else.
There's also the question of personal risk. Apocalyptic plagues get you placed on people's shit lists and lead to people paying attention to your actions. I doubt she could get away with such a massive and prolonged effort again without being noticed. She may be strong and relatively isolated, but she's not beyond the possibility of serious reprisal.
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There is one other thing mentioned as being able to cure it, although it is powerful enough your statement may still be true. Plants from the elemental pole of wood are simultaneously poison, and the cure for basically anything else. Both of these effects get stronger if they are consumed at the pole, to the point that it is called out as being able to cure the Contagion if eaten there.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Okay, so... I did a thing. Which largely came about as a result of me getting frustrated about the lack of a probability table ever since the wiki went down. So I got my friend @kythyria to whip me one up.
So, this is a cumulative probability table for heroic mortals -no extras table atm, and I probably won't bother [1]. The probabilities are for getting at least that many dice - hence why by 20 dice your chances of failing are less than one in ten thousand. Failure probability is shown in the dark column. If you wanna know how unlikely it was that you only got 6 successes on 22 goddamn dice, just subtract the next number up from 100%, since that's the same thing as failing to get 7 sux on 22 (a hair under 7%, for those interested).
I may do an analysisy post later on what Difficulties mean in practice, mechanically speaking (eg, most skilled mortals will have 4-6 in their chosen profession, so what Diff 2 "means", ignoring the fluff stuff, is that your average professional can do it three times out of four, while Diff 1 they'll get nine times out of ten, etc. Meanwhile, peak Exalted skill can reliably (nearly three quarters of the time) accomplish Diff 10 stuff, because Exalted are what is generally known as total bullshit hax.
[1] Edit: I bothered. Thanks @Eukie for pointing me to a place to get ze numberz from.
So, this is a cumulative probability table for heroic mortals -
I may do an analysisy post later on what Difficulties mean in practice, mechanically speaking (eg, most skilled mortals will have 4-6 in their chosen profession, so what Diff 2 "means", ignoring the fluff stuff, is that your average professional can do it three times out of four, while Diff 1 they'll get nine times out of ten, etc. Meanwhile, peak Exalted skill can reliably (nearly three quarters of the time) accomplish Diff 10 stuff, because Exalted are what is generally known as total bullshit hax.
[1] Edit: I bothered. Thanks @Eukie for pointing me to a place to get ze numberz from.
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- Location
- Gladstone, OR
As a suggestion, consider acknowledging (to whatever extent you feel comfortable) the importance of Threshold- Successes over Difficulty and the implied quality of succeeding on a given action. Food for thought!
Edit- I wrote DV instead of Difficulty, and threshold does not exist as a concept in excess of DV.
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Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Note that an extra's table would also calculate damage.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
... Why?
Unless I'm misreading @Aleph's statement, "extra" is being used as the Exalted term for character that don't get 2 successes from 10s.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
...because damage rolls don't count 2 successes from 10s.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Ah, I misunderstood your post, then.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
You know, thinking on the Whitewall debate and plagues, something occurred to me. Most of the plagues ES mentioned happened in fairly temperate zones, namely Greece, Middle East, China and Southern Europe, or at least that's the contexts I mainly recall hearing about them in. And while that works for most of Creation (or at least the East, disease hotspot as it must be, the Realm and the Northern parts of the South). But the North, particularly the semi deep North Whitewall occupies, is a fairly different situation, just because of the less developed travel networks and fairly brutal climate conditions (to say nothing of the various and prominent monsters, fae and dead wandering around killing people). Which in turn had me wondering how the Nordic countries or Russia weathered the plagues, because I suspect that the tale there is a bit different then the more common one, if only because of much more extreme winter.
Anyone got more region specific information about plagues in the northern parts of the world?
As a side note, as a a result of this discussion my head canon is the Violet Bier of Sorrows, among it other duties, functions as Creations high level Center for Disease Control. Because plagues are something the Sidereals have clear and vested interest in clamping down on (due to the whole 'stability of the world' thing) and it actually gives me fucking plot hooks to work with for what the Sidereals 'Agents of Heaven' job actually entails as practical matter that doesn't involve fucking Yu-Shan office politics.
Anyone got more region specific information about plagues in the northern parts of the world?
As a side note, as a a result of this discussion my head canon is the Violet Bier of Sorrows, among it other duties, functions as Creations high level Center for Disease Control. Because plagues are something the Sidereals have clear and vested interest in clamping down on (due to the whole 'stability of the world' thing) and it actually gives me fucking plot hooks to work with for what the Sidereals 'Agents of Heaven' job actually entails as practical matter that doesn't involve fucking Yu-Shan office politics.
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Looking at the first relevant book I found on google books (Bubonic Plague in Early Modern Russia : Public Health and Urban Disaster)... massive, devastating and pandemic. To quote from p14;
"The effects of the Black Death on Russia extended beyond the losses of its initial onslaught. Thenceforth, the disease became enzootic for a century or more, as outbreaks recurred at gradually lengthening intervals. Until the nineteenth century, the expanding Russian state rarely enjoyed respite from plague for a decade or more... After the violent eruptions of the 14th century, the plague rarely affected more than one region or locality, but its periodic recurrence compounded the pervasive insecurity of Russian life and sapped demographic growth, especially in urban areas."
Plague also apparently significantly led to the fall of the Golden Horde and spared Moscow from a Tartar attack, so it hit nomads too.
Or for the English example- actually, let me quote Wikipedia here, it's not the best source but it provides a dammed good idea of how nasty the Black Death was in its opening line:
"The Black Death in England was a bubonic plague pandemic, which reached England in 1348, and killed perhaps half the population, dying down in 1349."
Half the population.
In one year.
Now, it needs to be noted that a disease as staggeringly lethal as this actually can't last- it's too lethal, it'll end up killing hosts faster than it can infect new ones. But it can utterly devastate a society in the short term.
"The Black Death in England was a bubonic plague pandemic, which reached England in 1348, and killed perhaps half the population, dying down in 1349."
Half the population.
In one year.
Now, it needs to be noted that a disease as staggeringly lethal as this actually can't last- it's too lethal, it'll end up killing hosts faster than it can infect new ones. But it can utterly devastate a society in the short term.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
Huh. That actually fits with an idea I had about what sort of disease come out of each direction: the East gets entirely new/mutated ones, the West gets weird originally isolated to one island plagues, that sort of thing. My thought for the North was that it didn't get new disease so much as periodically recurring old ones, as people found plague devastated villages or nomad camps that died over the winter, zombies and skeletons wandering out shadowlands or just fair folk fucking around reintroducing disease (so much tasty despair and suffering) that mostly burned out among the general populace. The winter actually helps for that, freezing some diseases for hibernation until they get dethawed by some clueless explorer (thanks the Realm!) The shadowlands also contribute as some diseases that should be dead and gone... aren't, and that's in addition to the fun stuff like puppeteer's plague.
*Flips through link.* Hm. You know, just looking at this and how responses to plague evolved over time (from informal practices to standardized responses and inspection and quarantine stations on the borders) I think we're overlooking the 300 pound gorilla in the room: the Realm. Not in it's power to do anything directly about plagues (though if the Immaculate Order doesn't have specialist advisers they send out for plague prevention, possibly for a substantial fee, I'll be shocked) but as a holder for institutional knowledge: what worked, why it worked, and such. Moreover, just properly understanding how diseases works does wonders for stepping up how effective prevention measures are. I highly doubt that knowledge as faded into obscurity, seeing as people tend to move heaven and earth to keep medical knowledge going (not to mention Sidereals quietly reintroducing as much of it as they possibly can in the background). Given time, that's going to trickle out into other places (assuming they don't outright steal from the Realm SOP, which history suggests they would).
Overall, I think you'd see a lot more plague prevention measures in line with later plagues then the early devastating ones, or more advanced in some ways. Not in the technology used, but in the methodology used. Even ignoring whatever knowledge they've retained from past ages they can use, they've had 600 years to test and refine methodologies in real world conditions, and plague prevention improved rather a lot in Europe over a about half that time. Said methodology probably includes things not in the standard handbook, like 'get a group to punch the disease spirits in line', because it is Creation, but other then that you could probably transfer a lot. Given that, I'd imagine plagues are usually a frontier issue, and only occasionally penetrate into more central areas when they drop funding from perceived security and/or corruption of plague prevention measures.
(Thanks for the link ES.)
Honestly, wasn't terribly interested in England, because England is a terrible model for the North. Way to temperate (an average of -10C was an exceptionally, once a century cold year), and to small. Outside some of the coastal Threshold regions, England basically is not applicable as a comparison. They don't even have permafrost, for pities sake.
(It's probably a reasonably good model for The Isle of Voices, where the Heptagram is though. Or for isles off the northern coast of the Realm.)
No, you need places like Canada or Russia to really get a feel for the North. One of those two have rather better records about what old school plagues are like, and its not the one with maple syrup. You also probably don't want the initial or exceptionally bad plagues, but rather the more ongoing ones for gauging how plagues were fought/prevented since plague is not a new thing in Creation.
(I mean, if your an Abyssal plague maker and those kinds a mega-plagues are your goal, then yeah those are handy but more for why those plagues were so effective, and why they got less and less effective with time. Disease is devastating is something that is well established, but answer to the questions of 'why' and 'what can be done' are rather more helpful.)
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Hmm, yes.
The thought also occurs to me that in Creation, a plague doctor's outfit worn by an educated medical professional is probably actually a fairly effective biohazard suit, as long as they can identify the right herbs to put in the beak and the outfit is made from the right materials and has the proper thaumaturgical blessings. It won't totally safeguard you, but you can probably mostly reduce the risk of aerial transmission if you can get access to the proper herbs to fight off the bad odours.
Indeed, the plague doctor's outfit is probably a downgraded, "lower tech" version of Shogunate biohazard suits - they might not be able to carry a air supply and a sealed suit anymore, but instead they use an air-filtering mask using sweet-smelling herbs tailored to the disease in question.
(One of the interesting notable historical things is how well England coped with the Black Death compared to most of the continent, despite the fact that the death rate was higher than average. It can basically all be pinned down to better administration. They managed to maintain central government functionality and surprisingly quickly devise handling methods, and avoid the collapse which afflicted Valois France. So really, plague countering techniques should probably be focussed on management, handling and containment just as much as actual use of the Medicine skill. It may sound harsh to people invested in Medicine, but against a full-blown epidemic, Bureaucracy is probably going to be at least as much use once the Medicine people have worked out how it spreads and what kind of containment is needed.)
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Badaboom:
Edited into the previous post for ease of finding them both.
In any kind of large scale matter, organisation is going to be a major component in how well it's handled. It doesn't matter how good your masons are when you build a palace when they're all working from different designs, the result isn't going to be very functional anyway. Because of this, every Ability that has to deal with potentially large scale matters should have Charmtech that intrudes on Bureaucracy territory when it comes to organising an effective effort for a given job.
Maintaining such an effort would be Bureaucracy, but starting it up is just as much about finding the right people with the proper skills, and knowing what you are talking about in that case helps a lot when it comes to figuring out if someone can do what you need.
As for plague doctor outfits; AFAIK the consensus is that the heavy, oiled fabrics of plague doctor outfits, their completely enclosing nature and the primitive gas masks they wore stuffed with aromatic herbs went a long way to keeping doctors attending plague victims safe from infection. Not least of which because the fleas that carried the bubonic plague couldn't get to them. Unfortunately, the lack of proper cleaning of the outfits themselves meant that the patients they attended were not always so well protected.
Maintaining such an effort would be Bureaucracy, but starting it up is just as much about finding the right people with the proper skills, and knowing what you are talking about in that case helps a lot when it comes to figuring out if someone can do what you need.
As for plague doctor outfits; AFAIK the consensus is that the heavy, oiled fabrics of plague doctor outfits, their completely enclosing nature and the primitive gas masks they wore stuffed with aromatic herbs went a long way to keeping doctors attending plague victims safe from infection. Not least of which because the fleas that carried the bubonic plague couldn't get to them. Unfortunately, the lack of proper cleaning of the outfits themselves meant that the patients they attended were not always so well protected.