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General Exalted Thread

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In regards to the iron and silver talk, I like the idea that silver is the material for coin because of its association with protection from the wild and a remnant of the order confering pattern there.
Which also mean that there is a reason for people to travel further to try to obtain coins and that being rich makes you of course better able to do something. And it protect you from the Rakhsa paying you in unreal silver coins as you can test there burning effect on them.

And silver as the mercantil metal being associated with fickle Luna is also a nice commentary on the way that a market can behave.
 
Revlid said:
So make it silver. That's precious, but it's not "a sorcerer will round up your village and have everyone turn over their inherited jade talismans on pain of death so he can use it as ore to smelt an animated jade-alloy statue to crush his rivals" precious, or as rare as any magical material, and thanks to the Guild it's even more common in the Threshold than you might expect, perhaps as a way of helping to keep raksha from their clients (and thereby driving up the value of the slaves they sell to the fae). It's something that a mundane blacksmith can edge weapons with for when the Wyldstorms are blowing and the season for rakshasha arrives. It's something that can coincidentally save a human's life when their grandfather's silver bracelet burns the paw of the raksha trying to drag them away in the night. It's not something that any advanced society is going to quickly reforge into steel, making it useless somehow because iron+coal = not stable, not good. It's something that actually makes sense in the setting.
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Also, it's something you can use to play a Witcher in Exalted, A Sword For Monsters and all. I am totally on board with that.
 
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Malkavian said:
That's why it's usually stipulated that only 'cold iron' is effective against them so as to not defang them entirely in a more modern settings. Still not sure what makes that different from regular iron though.
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There is literally nothing different between cold iron and iron.

Seriously. Insisting that cold iron is different from iron is exactly the same as people in the future claiming that there was a special, magical kind of lead that people made bullets from that was super-special and amazing at killing people. All because people said "eat hot lead" when shooting people with guns.

"Cold iron" and "cold steel" are exactly the same kind of phrase as "hot lead".
 
Silver just fits so much better than Iron. It's a kind of controlled Chaos, which should be far more anathema to beings of Chaos than something that's just stable because Silver is actively working to pushing the beings of chaos into a more ordered pattern than something like Iron which even if we take the whole Pole of Earth shtick is just in a holding pattern for what is already stable. It works perfectly in theme with Lunars as well.
 
EarthScorpion said:
There is literally nothing different between cold iron and iron.
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Granted, you could make a difference about cold iron. If you held me down and forced me, I'd probably write something about 'cold iron' being the PR-friendly name for grave iron ('cold as the grave' and all), toxic to the Wyld because of its association with the Underworld. But, y'know, why bother when silver works better?

... Granted, I kinda like the idea of grave iron being a thing as well.
 
And if we apply a similar line of thought to gold, then it would probably more associated with prosperity and status, maybe health. Using the sun as a symbol of life and growth (in the sunny summer crops grow plentifully, while in colder and darker months they don't do as well), gold is not used in coinage, but in jewellery, decorations, amulets and the like as a status symbol and to bring health and wealth.

Which might be something that the Immaculate Faith disapproves of as being too close to Anathema worship.
 
Imrix said:
Granted, you could make a difference about cold iron. If you held me down and forced me, I'd probably write something about 'cold iron' being the PR-friendly name for grave iron ('cold as the grave' and all), toxic to the Wyld because of its association with the Underworld. But, y'know, why bother when silver works better?

... Granted, I kinda like the idea of grave iron being a thing as well.
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One of the ideas I've been throwing around is that, specifically, there's a range of things like that. Like lines of pure (element). Creatures of Darkness and Creatures of the Wyld find it hard to cross a line of salt, a flowing river, a line of fire, lines of freshly cut herbs, or... well, there are certain Shogunate defence systems used to contain Shadowlands and Wyldzones which channel lightning around them.

They're also burned by touching gold and suffer sunburn in sunlight (the dead are the most vulnerable - demons and wyldthings just find sunlight painful and so keep in the shade or cover up). Silver and moonlight, by contrast, make them stupid. Trick a demon into holding a silver coin or wearing a silver collar and its senses are dulled and its mind is slowed (a thing a lot of thaumaturges do - and demon hunters, who use silver-tipped arrows). And likewise, the dead are especially vulnerable to moonlight. During the full moon, ghosts tend to just repeat actions in life, and if they hide inside a corpse, they're shamblers, clumsy and dumb. In the new moon, however, they're fully smart and their animated corpses are runners.
 
Kuciwalker said:
The problem here is that transhumanism isn't intrinsically distinct from all these things even outside of RPGs. And yet we don't look at, I dunno, Avatar: The Last Airbender and identify it as transhumanist. Because it's a matter of emphasis and flavor. Infernals focuses a lot on becoming-something-else. Solars are far more subtle. So I think it's fair to describe Exalted as having transhumanist themes, and to identy those most strongly with Infernals and Alchemicals.
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If that is what the authors were specifically going toward, I can see this. If not, than I don't understand all the the hoopla about Infernals being a Fantasy version of the idea. I don't mean to shit on the idea and those who've embraced it, but speaking of ATLA, I've had to listen to someone try and say that was transhumanism and not fantasy or some BS. This is why I tend to roll my eyes now when transhumanism gets mentioned.
 
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That reminds me, did anyone ever made a explanation for why salt in exalted is warding of the (hungry) dead? It is interesting enough to maintain it but i was wondering. The reason why it does so in our world after all is one that only partially works in there.
 
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Scia said:
That reminds me, did anyone ever made a explanation for why salt in exalted is warding of the (hungry) dead? The reason why it does so in our world after all is one that only partially works in there.
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Because the Salt God threatened to come down and glass anyone stupid enough to ignore him.
 
EarthScorpion said:
One of the ideas I've been throwing around is that, specifically, there's a range of things like that. Like lines of pure (element). Creatures of Darkness and Creatures of the Wyld find it hard to cross a line of salt, a flowing river, a line of fire, lines of freshly cut herbs, or... well, there are certain Shogunate defence systems used to contain Shadowlands and Wyldzones which channel lightning around them.

They're also burned by touching gold and suffer sunburn in sunlight (the dead are the most vulnerable - demons and wyldthings just find sunlight painful and so keep in the shade or cover up). Silver and moonlight, by contrast, make them stupid. Trick a demon into holding a silver coin or wearing a silver collar and its senses are dulled and its mind is slowed (a thing a lot of thaumaturges do - and demon hunters, who use silver-tipped arrows). And likewise, the dead are especially vulnerable to moonlight. During the full moon, ghosts tend to just repeat actions in life, and if they hide inside a corpse, they're shamblers, clumsy and dumb. In the new moon, however, they're fully smart and their animated corpses are runners.
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I'm going to steal this if you don't mind.:D

Though I'm much more fond of the Lion shifting Fae of the South than Elven Bedouin, but I guess they could just be more nocturnal.
 
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Noctum said:
And if we apply a similar line of thought to gold, then it would probably more associated with prosperity and status, maybe health. Using the sun as a symbol of life and growth (in the sunny summer crops grow plentifully, while in colder and darker months they don't do as well), gold is not used in coinage, but in jewellery, decorations, amulets and the like as a status symbol and to bring health and wealth.

Which might be something that the Immaculate Faith disapproves of as being too close to Anathema worship.
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Also a real world example of gold having an alternate value comes from a lot of American indigenous cultures seeing gold and silver having spiritual rather than material worth. They were used in ceremonies, particularly those involving hallucinogenics since it enhanced the experiences by the glint they made in light and the sound they made when clanging together. So gold could possibly hold a more spiritual value in a similar regard.
 
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It's also a substance that can be refined through occult rituals into a material the Anathema seem particularly prone to using. It's very possible that gold, while not worthless, is looked at in askance when gathered in large amounts.
 
Omicron said:
I would wager that iron was picked because iron is common, thus making raksha power countered by something even a dirt-poor commoner from the Threshold might have on them, which feeds into the general "fuck you raksha" narrative the game has in places. Jade, by contrast, is precious and already magical.
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To only be weak against the great powers and grand tools of the Exalted is to be weak against nothing at all. It is only natural that the great Lords of Creation could meaningfully oppose the Princes of Chaos. It is something else entirely that a lowly mortal can wound a Fair Folk Noble with a blade of unalloyed iron, extort from her a ridiculous yet unbreakable promise, or even render her magic impotent and her soul and body naked to the world with the mere utterance of the wicked lie he claims is her name. For all their power and majesty, the Fair Folk are still vulnerable in very fundamental ways.

Fundamentally, they have the weaknesses of fae because they are the Fair Folk. They may have been the last remnants of a doomed and dwindling race trapped in the alien world that is Creation, but they were also fairies with all the trappings. Though similar in some ways, the Fair Folk of the early Exalted books are not the endless undifferentiated horde of Rakshasa that later became their replacement. Those are only weak against iron because of their uncomprehending imitation of their precursors. They themselves are also incomprehensible, both in-setting and out of it. Perhaps that is how they mask their inner hollowness.
 
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EarthScorpion said:
Silver and moonlight, by contrast, make them stupid. Trick a demon into holding a silver coin or wearing a silver collar and its senses are dulled and its mind is slowed (a thing a lot of thaumaturges do - and demon hunters, who use silver-tipped arrows).
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Wait, didn't you make a Third Circle that drops molten silver everywhere when he throws his bident? Iasestus? That probably doens't earn him many friends amongst his peers.

That and makes him double deadly to First Circles.
 
Revlid said:
Yeah, but this isn't Changeling. The Raksha don't actually work the way either of the Changelings do, though they have shared elements from both. As a result, it's nonsensical that they'd be harmed by iron for "breaking contract" with it, or because it's "boring" (which it isn't).
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I did spend the rest of that post talking about why it wasn't really applicable, but you did a much better job than I did.
Hell, gold and silver are both more "stable" than iron,
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Sorry, it was late and I wasn't thinking clearly. I meant to talk about the mass defect and nuclear binding energy, how you can get energy out of turning gold and silver into different things, but iron always takes energy to turn into something else.
EarthScorpion said:
The thing that always makes me laugh is that steel is purer iron than cast iron.
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Depends on the type of steel. Carbon steel and high-strength low-alloy steel? Sure. But the hot metal from a blast furnace has about 4% carbon (and a bit of other stuff) while a stainless steel has a bit of carbon and about 11% chromium. Other steels call for different alloying elements, so it wouldn't be surprising if First Age or Shogunate-era steel had on average had less iron than cast or wrought iron.
 
samdamandias said:
Sorry, it was late and I wasn't thinking clearly. I meant to talk about the mass defect and nuclear binding energy, how you can get energy out of turning gold and silver into different things, but iron always takes energy to turn into something else.
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You know, Exalted doesn't care about that kind of atomic physics - it's below the "physics works like the real world at the human scale" resolution limit. But chemically (and chemically matters a lot more) gold and silver certainly way, way less reactive than iron. Iron rusts and corrodes and changes - gold is perfect and incorruptible.

(this also implies that helium is the true fae-bane, which is entirely appropriate to a substance born of the sun)
 
Anasurimbor said:
Fundamentally, they have the weaknesses of fae because they were the Fair Folk. They may have been the last remnants of a doomed and dwindling race trapped on an alien world, but they were also fairies with all the trappings. Don't confuse them with the endless undifferentiated horde of ravenously reproducing Rakshasa that come later. They are only weak against iron because of their uncomprehending imitation of their precursors. If I didn't know better, I'd suspect they wrote their own books.
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This seems to really get forgotten about. Despite most hating the idea, and the devs backing away or outright doing away with it, part of Exalted's original design was it was the past of the OWoD. You'd have to be deluding yourself not to realize its roots are a Fantasy world version of the WoD with some anime and wuxia elements thrown into the mix.

The iron thing is something I never questioned until it was raised here. And it doesn't really make sense unless you take into account the source material. It seems more like a simple over site than outright imaginative negligence.
 
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EarthScorpion said:
You know, Exalted doesn't care about that kind of atomic physics - it's below the "physics works like the real world at the human scale" resolution limit. But chemically (and chemically matters a lot more) gold and silver certainly way, way less reactive than iron. Iron rusts and corrodes and changes - gold is perfect and incorruptible.

(this also implies that helium is the true fae-bane, which is entirely appropriate to a substance born of the sun)
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Squeaky voices! MY ONE WEAKNESS!
 
Wi'se said:
This seems to really get forgotten about. Despite most hating the idea, or the devs backing away or outright doing away with it, part of Exalted's original design was it was the past of the OWoD. You'd have to be deluding yourself not to realize its roots are a Fantasy world version of the WoD with some anime and wuxia elements thrown into the mix.

The iron thing is something I never questioned until it was raised here. And it doesn't really make sense unless you take into account the source material. It seems more like a simple over site than outright imaginative negligence.
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Nobody sane wants to tie a gameline to Changeling: The Dreaming, particularly a gameline that wanted to avoid generic eurofantasy (and failed).

Anasurimbor said:
To only be weak against the great powers and grand tools of the Exalted is to be weak against nothing at all. It is only natural that the great lords of creation could meaningfully oppose the princes of chaos. It is something else entirely that a lowly mortal can wound a Fair Folk Noble with a blade of unalloyed iron, extort from her a ridiculous yet unbreakable promise, or even render her magic impotent and her soul and body naked to the world with the mere utterance of the wicked lie he claims is her name.

Fundamentally, they have the weaknesses of fae because they were the Fair Folk. They may have been the last remnants of a doomed and dwindling race trapped on an alien world, but they were also fairies with all the trappings. Don't confuse them with the endless undifferentiated horde of ravenously reproducing Rakshasa that come later. They are only weak against iron because of their uncomprehending imitation of their precursors. If I didn't know better, I'd suspect they wrote their own books.
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This, meanwhile, is simply baffling in its incoherence.
 
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NonSequtur said:
Nobody sane wants to tie a gameline to Changeling: The Dreaming, particularly a gameline that wanted avoid generic eurofantasy (and failed).
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That's what it was originally though. It would be nice if 3E could try to get away from it further, but from what I hear the Realm is becoming even more of Rome with Chinese aesthetics rather than a blend of both. Thus I have little hope for the Fae.
 
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I think when I think of Iron versus the Fae, what always comes to mind is iron as the death of stars, the core of planets, the inevitable creeping entropy at the heart of all things.

Just my two cents.
 
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