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General Exalted Thread

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Not that I disagree that silver would be a good option, but from what I recall of books and authorial statements, Exalted doesn't do the "what even is iron" song and dance both Changeling games are so fond of - I recall steel specifically being a raksha bane just as much as cast iron.
 
Omicron said:
Not that I disagree that silver would be a good option, but from what I recall of books and authorial statements, Exalted doesn't do the "what even is iron" song and dance both Changeling games are so fond of - I recall steel specifically being a raksha bane just as much as cast iron.
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Yup. They even call this out in the raksha fiction, with various raksha being worried about soldiers fighting them with iron/steel swords.
 
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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Then Exalted was written by a madman. The Fair Folk were very much intended to evoke traditional eurofae (a la Changeling), while at their core being something weird and unique. This is not at all what we got with Exalted: the Fair Folk, which apparently had a major production issues and a not-entirely successful last-minute fix-job attempt. This is also where the Fair Folk become the Raksha.

One major element of the original Fair Folk that got left out of their implementation is that they were only supposed to be able to reproduce with great difficulty, a far cry from the endless horde they become.

Omicron said:
Not that I disagree that silver would be a good option, but from what I recall of books and authorial statements, Exalted doesn't do the "what even is iron" song and dance both Changeling games are so fond of - I recall steel specifically being a raksha bane just as much as cast iron.
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The original bit on the Fair Folk did mention unalloyed iron, so most steels should work just fine. Probably. But don't trust one that hasn't already killed a fairy.

Exalted pg. 79 said:
The Fair Folk are vulnerable to the bite of unalloyed iron and fear and hate those who wield it. Though they are adept liars, they are unable to break a sworn word, and a promise given is a promise kept. Similarly, though they are often master shapeshifters, the faerie do have a true form, which they must assume when someone speaks their true and secret name. To know a Fair One's name is to be proof against her magic, and she will plot and scheme endlessly to destroy those who can use her name against her and to obliterate the name from memory.
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Kerisgame 51! Now, see, some people might wonder why I insist on having Keris make hilarious problems for herself all the time (besides the fact that they are hilarious) that ES can use to torment me.

THIS. THIS IS WHY. THIS RIGHT HERE.

So yeah, Keris has now pissed off an Unquestionable. Dammit. And just as she starts to want infrastructure to support her manse's resource demands, too. Bleh. Hmm. Though I suppose in some respects, Keris is actually too small to be worth attacking right now. That is to say, Ululaya can destroy the Nests, sure. There's not much Keris can do about that - heck, even if she's there she probably couldn't stop it if Ululaya was really serious about it.

But... that's Keris's only real territory at the moment. Her townhouse is in the Conventicle; attacking that is far more trouble than it's worth. So destroying the Nests leaves Keris down one manse... and pissed, and without anything else that Ululaya can really threaten. And bluntly, the Blood-Red Moon is a social-focused demon. And Keris is a very stealthy assassin made of high-octane murderhobo. It is very probable she could get up to the moon or at least ambush Ululaya when she came down from it, and if it came to a fight... Keris would win. Actually perma-killing Ululaya would raise some very, very bad mojo, but Keris could certainly stab her and/or her Second Circles to mundane death that they'd come back from in a year or so, and cause her considerable discomfort that way, to say nothing of going "right, Ligier, I've decided to join in on this war of yours. What do you want me to break?"

So, hmm. Yeah. Taking this grudge into the territory of physical conflict is not something that is in Ululaya's best interests, because a) she has a lot more to lose, and b) Keris is better at stabbing than anything Ululaya can throw at her save another Infernal Exalt (and even then, there aren't many as optimised as she is) or a combat-focused Unquestionable (and I very much doubt any other 3CDs are going to help her out there). That isn't to say that she won't do it anyway, because the Blood Red Moon is craycray, yo. But I suspect her revenge will tale more subtle forms than just sending an army to wreck Keris's stuff.

... fuck. She may well go the route of making it very hard for Keris to find allies by poisoning the well and painting her as a cruel monstrous traitor who'll betray people and sell them out to Ligier. Hmm. Shit.

Well, bonus stuff as usual. Some reworking of the Project system, yo. Plus amusement.
EarthScorpion: So, I put some more thought into the scarcity system.
EarthScorpion: And then I realised we were still tied to extended rolls for maybe not the best reasons. If we're limiting the number of success you can take from each phase, then it's the phases that matter, not the successes. So really you can measure a project in terms of the successful rolls required.
EarthScorpion: Under the old system it was a 20 success project, and she had 5 of 20. Under the new one, I'm going to say 5 successes roughly maps to one successful skill check. So she's completed one point of the Theory phase, can take one point as either Theory or Experimentation, and then has a point of Experimentation and a Point of Refinement to do
Aleph: Experimentation is two weeks to a month of Theory, so I'll do two of those. Dammit Keris, so impatient.
EarthScorpion: Okay, so the first phase of Experimentation is a replacement for Theory. That means that it's going to be riskier and messier - and she only has one human test subject. She's probably going to want to get her hands on some demons for testing things on - just to make sure they're not lethal, and feeding it to stomach bottle bugs to see what they make of how poisonous it is, etc. However, she is also going to have to do some human testing on Kuha or herself. Therefore the base roll is Cog + Occult.
Aleph: Right. Uh, remind me, because recent things have made me unsure. Do successes added by Charms count towards my dice cap?
EarthScorpion: Only if the Charm explicitly says so, by RAW
Aleph: ...
Aleph: Huh.
Aleph: So Keris can in fact get (Resources)+(3 x exotic ingredients) successes from Destruction Begets Creation that I, uh, wasn't using on the assumption that I was limited by my dicecap.
Aleph: ... that's helpful. Okay, definitely getting Pelagic Muse Artistry in that case; moar sux for me~
EarthScorpion: Destruction Begets Creation also incentivises early human testing, lol.
Aleph: Hmm. So. What does she have that she's willing to smash up and feed into this? Demons, obviously. She can just go out and wait for something to commit suicide/volunteer as a test subject by attacking her.
EarthScorpion: She can't break her tools - that'd destablise the manse
Aleph: Yeah, obviously. Hmm. Though she does have that alchemical lab that she no longer strictly needs, now...
Aleph: So she can test things to destruction there.
Aleph: Oversaturating solutions and overstressing the ritual components on her volunteers until they break.
EarthScorpion: But then again, she won't have a workshop to hand stored in her soul. Sigh. Of course, Keris might forget that.
Aleph: She's getting a ship built for her by Ligier; she's totally going to have a lab put in there. The best that can be installed.
Aleph: ... and I think Kuha counts. She's "raw materials", and she's a living creature.
EarthScorpion: Yes, but you can't break her yet.
EarthScorpion: It'd kill her.
Aleph: Hmm. I could probably argue I'm basically remaking her from scratch, but I take your point. So, her spare lab plus an abstracted number of demon "volunteers".
EarthScorpion: Because you're trying to make a thaum thing here to produce these mutations.
...
Aleph: ... heh. She's focusing on what Keris likes, isn't she? Clever.
EarthScorpion: Just like how she looked like Keris when Keris showed up. Gotta have them identifying with you. So at first she was bouncy and easy going and ditzy. She's Kimbery's carmine-mantled emissary, after all.
EarthScorpion: Who... uh, just fucked up the roll she had arranged this entire meeting to make.
EarthScorpion: The dice fairies clearly considered themselves to owe you.
...
Aleph: WELP
Aleph: THAT HAPPENED
EarthScorpion: Yep.
EarthScorpion: And I've been setting that up for weeks. Ever since I started the Ligier-Ululuya war.
EarthScorpion: Keris had been keeping too clear from Unquestionable politics. But then she decided to effectively involve herself with Ligier.
Aleph: lolz
EarthScorpion: Which means that she suddenly stopped being just a neutral GSP. The neutral GSPs are the ones who just do the missions they're assigned. They can avoid this kind of trouble. As soon as you start doing side jobs for Unquestionable, you're playing a bigger scale job.
Aleph: le sigh
EarthScorpion: And
EarthScorpion: uh
EarthScorpion: Ululuya called Keris along because she found out Ligier had got his hands on /lots of fae/
Aleph: ...
Aleph: ah
Aleph: ...
Aleph: ...
Aleph: whoops
...
Aleph: ... 4 sux on 22 dice though
EarthScorpion: ikr
Aleph: lel
EarthScorpion: Hilarious dice fairies.
EarthScorpion: And yes, Ululuya is basically built around walking around with I'M SO MOE fields on. She changes personalities about as easily as Keris changes her clothes
Aleph: ... keris doesn't change her clothes though
Aleph: like, ever
EarthScorpion: She does so, at a thought whenever she needs to dress up for an Unquestionable.
Aleph: nuh uh, it's the same amulet~
...
EarthScorpion: Ululuya is very disappointed Keris turned down her offer of getting into a threeway marriage between her, Sasi and Keris.
EarthScorpion: It'd be the perfect relationship. Both of the two GSPs adore and serve her unquestionably. In return, they get to be the first among her adorers and revel in her presence personally.
Aleph: Sasi: "I have issues with this."
EarthScorpion: Keris: "Man, at least the Shashalme gives me stuff to make me love him."
EarthScorpion: Keris: "... I dunno why I'm more okay with that. Huh. If I'm more okay with being paid to love a demon prince, does that technically make me a whore?"
EarthScorpion: Keris: "..."
EarthScorpion: Keris: "No. I pay them back. That's just trading favours. That's totally different."
Aleph: lol
EarthScorpion: Keris: "I love them until I pay them back. That's way fairer, especially since I get lovely maps and wonderful manses."
EarthScorpion: Keris: "... bitch, I am so stealing the Lintha now."
Aleph: Hahahaha
Aleph: True. I mean, what's she going to do? Hate me more?
EarthScorpion: Keris: "I might have considered loving you if you'd given me my own fleet."
EarthScorpion: Keris: "That'd have been pretty sweet."
EarthScorpion: ... oh, Keris.
EarthScorpion: Love is what you do.
EarthScorpion: Expanded out, that means that she's much more inclined to think Ligier values her because she's useful to him and he does nice things for her because of that.
Aleph: Heh.
Aleph: And also.
Aleph: She really is unpredictable. It's hard to make her love you just by mimicking other people she loves.
Aleph: You need to be genuine.
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Also, I was watching clips of Sinbad recently, and... is it just me? Or is Eris totally a Third Circle of the Ebon Dragon? I mean, just look at her! I may write her up as one. And I love the way her hair stays constantly in motion all the time. Someday, Keris's hair is going to be like that. It'll take active, conscious effort to stop it moving, generally according to her mood.

... actually, given that her hair already twitches and shifts like real limbs and eats things without her conscious direction, this has already started. Dammit Keris, why does your hair appear to be wired into your po whenever you're not concentrating on it? Sigh.

Oh yeah, ENLIGHTENMENT 9 KERIS SEEKING FUCK YEAH is in progress and going nicely. Should be done in one or two weeks.
 
Aleph said:
Now, see, some people might wonder why I insist on having Keris make hilarious problems for herself all the time (besides the fact that they are hilarious) that ES can use to torment me.

THIS. THIS IS WHY. THIS RIGHT HERE.
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It's true. By making trouble for herself, it means I only have to make trouble for her on special occasions. Like when I'm bored, when I think it'd be funny, or I feel she's getting overconfident.

And here, incidentally, we see the way that Infernals in my Third Circle centric set up really are the nega-Sidereals. Rather than united Sidereal faction politics, instead they're drawn in separately into Third Circle politics. Even if they don't mean to explicitly side with them, other Third Circles watch and observe - and because Keris has extensive dealings with Ligier, she's making an enemy of Third Circles who don't like Ligier.

(This, obviously, is one of the major tensions in the current system the Unquestionables have for handling the Infernals - it assumes that Infernals spend most of their time working for the All-Thing and when Unquestionables want a thing done in Creation, they'll go through the All-Thing. Obviously, the demon princes are trying to cheat this system all the time - and Ligier, for all that he helped set it up, is at the forefront of cheating the system specifically because he's realised that by being paternalistic and providing his unique services for them, they don't use social defences to reject him. Why would they? He's the one who's providing them with a hellstrider or an army of automatons in return for their personal service.

He doesn't view it as cheating, though. As he'd put it, "They're not called Red Moon Princes".)
 
Roadie said:
Ahem.

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On a more serious note, Mêlée may be somewhat more personal-scale*, but it does share a certain form of non-self-reliance: it needs extrinsic stuff to work. Like lots of other skills when applied by mortals. As a mortal, you need a sword to be a swordsprincess. You need a disguise/make-up kit in order to disguise yourself as someone else. You need a network of propagandists to be the propaganda master. You need a horse to be a horseman. You need a lockpick to be a lockmaster. You need context to understand the intent behind some statement.
But Solars are self-reliant, and shed the needs for such extrinsic things to practice their mastery. They summon Glorious Solar Sabres of pure calcified sunlight. They use Perfect Mirror to perfectly disguise themselves as even human-Cthulhu without a single prosthetic tentacle. They Inflict a Taboo with their Diatribe to change the traditions of whole societies all by their own. They ride the Steeds of Phantomness. They Open Locks with a mere Touch. They Sagaciously Read the Intent from a single contextless "Yes." scribbled into a piece of paper.


* == Though I remember someone pointed out that a high-Essence Mêlée Charm is supposed to do stuff like "I swing so hard that I hit you in the infrastructure!". I don't remember who.
 
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vicky_molokh said:
On a more serious note, Mêlée may be somewhat more personal-scale*, but it does share a certain form of non-self-reliance: it needs extrinsic stuff to work. Like lots of other skills when applied by mortals. As a mortal, you need a sword to be a swordsprincess. You need a disguise/make-up kit in order to disguise yourself as someone else. You need a network of propagandists to be the propaganda master. You need a horse to be a horseman. You need a lockpick to be a lockmaster. You need context to understand the intent behind some statement.
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There is a difference between "you need a sword to sword things" and "you need a factory, a vast quantity of raw materials and multiple sets of very sophisticated tools to even maintain High First Age stuff, let alone make more", or "you need a city-state, a banking system, a treasury and a whole organisation of revenue agents in order to institute a taxation system". Some abilities are inherently infrastructural, and the Solar cannot pull Bureaucracy infrastructure out of their arse if they want to run a country-scale scheme. And bluntly put, anything that allows a crafter to sit in a cave crafting wonders at the Shogunate level or higher without needing to become a noticeable player on the nation-scale stage who is dependent on vulnerable infrastructure that can be broken is shit design. Because yes, that means your special snowflake crafter can turtle up in his manse and make all the things he wants to.

It also means that so can everyone else, and thus elder Exalts are sitting on piles of "Fuck You I Win" Artifact 5s as high as a yeddim. And you can't beat them by hitting their factories and territories and manses while they're not there, or by using asymmetric warfare and the power concentration of a circle of young Solars to slowly cripple all their infrastructural advantages and bring them down to your level where you can dogpile them alone and stab them to death, because they don't have any infrastructural dependencies and can therefore just go "lol" and fuck you over at full power if you try. Remember, the point of forcing you to play the nation-scale game isn't only that it makes you go out and do stuff and gives the ST a way to throw problems and challenges at you for you to overcome. It also means that the elder Exalted who are likely to be your enemies have to deal with the same thing, and thus you can beat them. If they don't have those vulnerabilities, then they have a massive time advantage on you and you have literally no way to reduce or subvert it, so they're Just Better Than You Are, Fuck You Lol.
 
Point of note on that, I was idly reading through the rules on warstriders just because, and I was reading up on the description of royal warstrider manufacture and you need a fully staffed factory cathedral under the spiritual equivalent of cleanroom conditions, and you have one year to complete the task with a full team or the whole thing just fails. At best you can maybe recycle some of the magical materials you used to make the damn thing, but you can't just fiddle around and take your time. No, you need thousands of workers going at it dawn to dusk for 419 days straight and be done the day before Calibration or it just doesn't work because of the spiritual conditions.

And remember, these were Solars with all the same access to Charms as the modern ones, so its not like they weren't making the project go at max speed with charms. It is just that damn hard to make a royal warstrider that you need an entire nation's worth of infrastructure to even hope to pull it off.
 
That's all fine and dandy but will we ever have warstrider rules that aren't literally so punitive and background-sinky that you're better off buying other artifact dots or just putting the XP/BP into charms?
 
Well 3e has made Promises, so... No, probably not.

I kid. Kyuedo made a Warstrider hack, and Emeris' old Skins of Steel rules are still out there. You might try those.
 
Exhack said:
That's all fine and dandy but will we ever have warstrider rules that aren't literally so punitive and background-sinky that you're better off buying other artifact dots or just putting the XP/BP into charms?
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The Warstrider Rules are just so terrible it's embarrassing, yeah.

Imrix said:
Well 3e has made Promises, so... No, probably not.

I kid. Kyuedo made a Warstrider hack, and Emeris' old Skins of Steel rules are still out there. You might try those.
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Link?
 
Aleph said:
There is a difference between "you need a sword to sword things" and "you need a factory, a vast quantity of raw materials and multiple sets of very sophisticated tools to even maintain High First Age stuff, let alone make more", or "you need a city-state, a banking system, a treasury and a whole organisation of revenue agents in order to institute a taxation system". Some abilities are inherently infrastructural, and the Solar cannot pull Bureaucracy infrastructure out of their arse if they want to run a country-scale scheme. And bluntly put, anything that allows a crafter to sit in a cave crafting wonders at the Shogunate level or higher without needing to become a noticeable player on the nation-scale stage who is dependent on vulnerable infrastructure that can be broken is shit design. Because yes, that means your special snowflake crafter can turtle up in his manse and make all the things he wants to.

It also means that so can everyone else, and thus elder Exalts are sitting on piles of "Fuck You I Win" Artifact 5s as high as a yeddim. And you can't beat them by hitting their factories and territories and manses while they're not there, or by using asymmetric warfare and the power concentration of a circle of young Solars to slowly cripple all their infrastructural advantages and bring them down to your level where you can dogpile them alone and stab them to death, because they don't have any infrastructural dependencies and can therefore just go "lol" and fuck you over at full power if you try. Remember, the point of forcing you to play the nation-scale game isn't only that it makes you go out and do stuff and gives the ST a way to throw problems and challenges at you for you to overcome. It also means that the elder Exalted who are likely to be your enemies have to deal with the same thing, and thus you can beat them. If they don't have those vulnerabilities, then they have a massive time advantage on you and you have literally no way to reduce or subvert it, so they're Just Better Than You Are, Fuck You Lol.
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A setting that makes the infrastructure the Elders' weakspot means that Elders won't be building kingdoms with convenient 2×2 exhaust ports for the Young'Uns to shoot for massie damage. No, the Elders worth their salt (i.e. capable of surviving until the Age of Sorrows etc.) will be the ones who managed to build a kingdom in whose low-security fortresses look like all of Lookshy.
Remember how at the end of Master of Orion II the protagonist race built a jump gate and destroyed Antarans' homeworld? And how in MoO III it turned out that the 'homeworld' was just a forward outpost with barely any defences? That is what sort of world will result from elders that die when they lose their infrastructure. It'll be a wolrd where a few Elders built their infrastructure to be extremely defensible, while others will be eliminated.

So I like the idea of having Elders be defeatable, but all the chosen approach does is shift priorities and enforce a different final template as a result of the survival of the fit[test].

Academia Nut said:
And remember, these were Solars with all the same access to Charms as the modern ones, so its not like they weren't making the project go at max speed with charms. It is just that damn hard to make a royal warstrider that you need an entire nation's worth of infrastructure to even hope to pull it off.
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This seems to highlight a certain problem with the design of Crafting Charms.
Basically, if you calibrate the crafting system such that crafting some stuff is de facto impossible without some Charms, then it makes for unhappy players, because Charms, instead of being "oh look, I am awesome because I craft stuff better than other Solars" turn into "You Must Be This Tall To Craft Warstriders; enjoy your speed bump!" Charms.
If you calibrate the crafting system such that everything is de facto craftable with just enough skill and an Exaltation, then you run the risk that Craft-boosting Charms will shoot through the roof and break the world.
If you calibrate the system such that everything is de facto craftable, and Craft-boosting Charms provide a boost that doesn't shoot through the roof, then you disappoint players because now the dedicated crafter can't be as over-the-top awesome and significantly better than other Solars who didn't get Crafting Charms.
 
vicky_molokh said:
A setting that makes the infrastructure the Elders' weakspot means that Elders won't be building kingdoms with convenient 2×2 exhaust ports for the Young'Uns to shoot for massie damage. No, the Elders worth their salt (i.e. capable of surviving until the Age of Sorrows etc.) will be the ones who managed to build a kingdom in whose low-security fortresses look like all of Lookshy.
Remember how at the end of Master of Orion II the protagonist race built a jump gate and destroyed Antarans' homeworld? And how in MoO III it turned out that the 'homeworld' was just a forward outpost with barely any defences? That is what sort of world will result from elders that die when they lose their infrastructure. It'll be a wolrd where a few Elders built their infrastructure to be extremely defensible, while others will be eliminated.

So I like the idea of having Elders be defeatable, but all the chosen approach does is shift priorities and enforce a different final template as a result of the survival of the fit[test].
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Aleph's premises:
  • Infrastructure is important and gives the user advantages
  • Infrastructure is spread out and massive, thus one person can't secure the entire thing
  • Exalted can overcome mortal opposition in the Exalted's areas of expertise
  • Infrastructure is vulnerable to attack
Your premises:
  • Infrastructure is important and gives the user advantages
  • Infrastructure is easy to make resistant to attack
  • One exalted can easily guard the all of their infrastructure

Your argument doesn't start from the same premises as Aleph's, so all it really proves is that if you start from different premises you get different results.
 
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vicky_molokh said:
No, the Elders worth their salt (i.e. capable of surviving until the Age of Sorrows etc.) will be the ones who managed to build a kingdom in whose low-security fortresses look like all of Lookshy.
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Uh huh. Only those elders do not exist, because an elder that has built something on that scale has conquered an entire Direction to build it, has hundreds or thousands of Dragonblooded working for them, and is both impossible to hide and a threat that the Realm Defence Grid gets used against. Boom; hundreds or thousands of years of work gone in one shot. And that's if I'm assuming you're using hyperbole. If you're being literal then that's just a moronic statement, because fucking hell, the High First Age didn't have that bullshit on "low-security fortresses". Are you even sanity-checking what you're typing?

Amazingly enough, you can't get Lookshy-level defences without, you know, the other traits of Lookshy. Such as the Dragonblooded Exalts who run it day-to-day, the taxes from half of the Scavenger Lands that fund it and the constant endless work and effort and Exalt-hours they put into supporting and maintaining an arsenal that is rapidly running dry despite all they're doing to maintain it. How, pray, is an elder Solar meant to put that into every low-security fortress they have? Either you concentrate your efforts to maximise defence - in which case you cannot grow and are strictly limited in resources, etc - or you spread out and can only afford mostly-mortal garrisons for all but your highest-security areas. Which means everything else is vulnerable.
 
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Incidentally, Lookshy is an odd choice given the very real vulnerabilities it has, as well as it's massive strengths. I mean, it has the second highest number of organized Exalted in the world as well as a much smaller region to defend compared to the top spot(the Realm). On the other hand, it has both massive internal vulnerabilities(the Helot society, manses) as well as external ones( it's position in the Confederation of Rivers, it's need for relics and materials). Lookshy is strong, and taking it down wouldn't be easy. But it's not unassailable.
 
Exhack said:
That's all fine and dandy but will we ever have warstrider rules that aren't literally so punitive and background-sinky that you're better off buying other artifact dots or just putting the XP/BP into charms?
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To be fair, warstrider rules are supposed to be punitive and background sinky. It's supposed to be almost impossible to begin play with one and even high experience Exalts will often consider investing in one less useful than just putting effort into Charms.

Warsriders are useful when you can get them for Backing 5 (Lookshy) or Backing 5 (First and Forsaken Lion) or Backing 5 (Bronze Faction) because those people will have the infrastructure to lend you one on an as needed basis.
 
C.o.S.a.R said:
Your premises:
  • Infrastructure is important and gives the user advantages
  • Infrastructure is easy to make resistant to attack
  • One exalted can easily guard the all of their infrastructure

Your argument doesn't start from the same premises as Aleph's, so all it really proves is that if you start from different premises you get different results.
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Not 'easy'. More like 'necessary, so Elders will do it until they either succeed or are eliminated, and of those who succeed, their success will be better than Lookshy by the same margins as a Solar infrastructure-builder is better than a bunch of DB infrastructure-builders'.

Basically, it's a creation of a situation where Elders either maintain an island of 'Mild First-Ageness' in their Dominion, or get wiped out by those who are closer to such an ideal and/or those who manage to sabotage their infrastructure. People like pointing out how "this had to happen before the PCs started doing it", and that's what happens. Of course, if that ultimately does result in a "Elders got wiped out before PCs were created; game without Elders", that's not an inherently bad thing.

C.o.S.a.R said:
Incidentally, Lookshy is an odd choice given the very real vulnerabilities it has, as well as it's massive strengths. I mean, it has the second highest number of organized Exalted in the world as well as a much smaller region to defend compared to the top spot(the Realm). On the other hand, it has both massive internal vulnerabilities(the Helot society, manses) as well as external ones( it's position in the Confederation of Rivers, it's need for relics and materials). Lookshy is strong, and taking it down wouldn't be easy. But it's not unassailable.
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It's largely an example of "Look, even mere Terrestrials can achieve this; now let's see how much better can a single Solar circle (or even a single Solar) get than that".
 
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