Remove ads

General Exalted Thread

Reader mode
azoicennead said:
... My preference, which is just that a character failed to be heroic at some point, includes yours.
You could take any character that fits your preference (which seems to be a flaw in their personality causing the failure; lack of skill is still a personal failing, even if the necessary level of skill is impossible for humans to achieve), slot it into a game using mine, and it would fit just fine.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't see how that's in contention with preferring to limit it so as to get more evocative concepts. "It's broader" doesn't mean "it's better."
 
azoicennead said:
My last character in Exalted was a Solar. She took her Second Breath while dueling a Dragon-blooded general for the fate of the kingdom she served*. He basically just took his half-assed sword training (he was a great general, but mediocre in personal combat [for an Exalt]) and when full anima flare, and expected that to take her down. But instead she cut off his arm and rammed her blade through his chest as she when Maximum Sunshine.

If, instead, he had beaten her down with his anima flux until she couldn't fight any longer, then had her taken prisoner with intent to [whatever] and kept alive/given proper medical treatment, that fits my perception of when an Infernal happens.

(If he had killed her, hello, Deathlords!)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
My view is that you get a Solar when a mortal Stands Up And Does The Thing - in this case, a futile assault on a demigod to save her nation.

You get an Abyssal when a mortal Stands Up And Dies - in this case, being butchered by a demigod while trying to save her nation.

You get an Infernal when a mortal Should Stand But Falls - in this case, backing down, letting the Realm take her kingdom, and agonizing over her failure (personal, if not practical) until a monster with eyes alight in green tells her that it has come so that she can set the world to rights.

There's a subtle but very distinct difference between a character who tries to do the right thing but just isn't powerful enough, and a character who tries to do the right thing but isn't strong enough, and I much prefer the impact that the latter has on Infernal personalities - especially when taken as a whole. I value Infernals being, on some level, fuckups . It works so well with a set of powers and patrons that both provide clear (and awful) direction. It works so well with the insecure horror of their mission and nature. It offers something quite different to any other Exalt's immediate story.

If the lone honest cop in a city refuses bribes and doesn't turn a blind eye to extortion, he might end up as a Solar. If he's murdered by his partner ahead of giving testimony to internal affairs, he might end up as an Abyssal. If he cracks one day - out of pressure, out of despair, out of fear for his family - and begins to define himself by that failure, he might end up as an Infernal. If he just... does his best, but finds that the IA case has evaporated and someone's thrown bribe money into his account, that's a very different kind of trigger. It's a failing of the world rather than a failing of the character.
 
Last edited:
I think that if you want to discuss this more, you'll have to make sure you have to make sure you're making it clear that you believe there is distinction between a failing of the character and a failure of character. @azoicennead accepts both as valid Infernal concepts because he doesn't make a significant distinction between the two. Both are valid viewpoints, though I lean towards @Revlid's.

At least, that's what I got out of it.
 
What about a failure due to lack of strength that a character perceives in themselves as a failure of character. This kind of thing happens ALL the time in real life. A DB comes to your town and claims it as part of the empire, and you fight him with your friends, but they all die and you get knocked out. If you'd been stronger, trained harder, been faster, they'd be alive today. It's your fault, your failure. Maybe if you were more pious your God would have blessed you, but no. You must have done something wrong. Weak, and everything you ever loved paid the ultimate price for your weakness.

Learning to accept that something like that was beyond your control, and it's not your fault, can be quite a journey for some people.

 
Last edited:
Ishem said:
What about a failure due to lack of strength that a character perceives in themselves as a failure of character. This kind of thing happens ALL the time in real life. A DB comes to your town and claims it as part of the empire, and you fight him with your friends, but they all die and you get knocked out. If you'd been stronger, trained harder, been faster, they'd be alive today. It's your fault, your failure. Maybe if you were more pious your God would have blessed you, but no. You must have done something wrong. Weak, and everything you ever loved paid the ultimate price for your weakness.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Why are you so sure that isn't a failure in character?

You and a bunch of hot-heads went out to fight a Terrestrial Exalt and the forces of the Imperial Legions. You were an at-best amateur group, up against a professional military army commanded by superhumans. If you'd tried to persuade them to keep quiet and work from within to maintain your independence, then none of this would have happened, but instead you marched out to attack them. Of course your friends got slaughtered. The Terrestrial let you live after maiming you, but only as an example of what happens to rebels. And as you're left, useless and crippled, blame and self-recrimination gnawing in your gut; why, then the demon with the spark of green in its eyes comes for you. Offers you power. Offers you revenge.

No one deserves an Exaltation. No one earns it. And that means that with narratively fitting moments for someone to get a surge of power and overcome the massively superior enemy, 99.9% of the time, that doesn't happen. With that in mind, rash heroics which probably won't work and which risks your lives and risks the Realm making an 'example' of your town are indeed a valid moral failing. Hubris is a thing, as is hot-headed wrath.
 
Omicron said:
Sure they do. The fact that not everyone who deserves an Exaltation gets one doesn't change the fact that the people who do get one earned and deserved it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Exaltation is not, and has never been merit-based, because characterizing it as-such would fly in the face of everything Exalted is attempting to speak to in regards to the availability and use/abuse of personal power. Good-hearted and deserving heroes die cold and unmourned in ditches all the time in Creation while tyrants eat hearty meals of stolen grains and livestock, which is both the point and part of what makes it the Age of Sorrows. Exaltation is a lottery by design, drawn from a small but more elite pool of mortals, but it remains a lottery nonetheless no different than circumstances of birth. This goes for every Exalt-type, whether they be Solar, Dragonblooded, Lunar or Infernal.

Now characters on the other hand, they might think themselves deserving, and it is certainly within their right to imagine so given the trials they have faced and the deeds they have performed. Its extremely easy once you own the power to control your own life to look back in hindsight and claim, "I got here by my own two hands." Which is also part of the point, because thinking that you have somehow Earned the right to an ineffable cosmic power beyond reckoning is the first step towards engineering your own downfall by it.
 
Dif said:
Exaltation is not, and has never been merit-based, because characterizing it as-such would fly in the face of everything Exalted is attempting to speak to in regards to the availability and use/abuse of personal power. Good-hearted and deserving heroes die cold and unmourned in ditches all the time in Creation while tyrants eat hearty meals of stolen grains and livestock, which is both the point and part of what makes it the Age of Sorrows. Exaltation is a lottery by design, drawn from a small but more elite pool of mortals, but it remains a lottery nonetheless no different than circumstances of birth. This goes for every Exalt-type, whether they be Solar, Dragonblooded, Lunar or Infernal.

Now characters on the other hand, they might think themselves deserving, and it is certainly within their right to imagine so given the trials they have faced and the deeds they have performed. Its extremely easy once you own the power to control your own life to look back in hindsight and claim, "I got here by my own two hands." Which is also part of the point, because thinking that you have somehow Earned the right to an ineffable cosmic power beyond reckoning is the first step towards engineering your own downfall by it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The fact that people who deserve Exaltation die in cold ditches clawing at dirts is part of what makes Creation a savage and ruthless place, no one's denying this. There simply is not enough divine empowerment to go around for all the worthy heroes of this world.

But those who do receive those few sparks of divine might are among those who deserved. They earned. They were fortunate, in that out of many who had deserved, they were singled out; but it does not retract from their merit.

To win at the lottery you have to buy a ticket. For (Solar) Exaltation, the ticket is heroism worthy of the Exaltation's favor. No one is Exalted who did not in some way deserve it.
 
Omicron said:
Sure they do. The fact that not everyone who deserves an Exaltation gets one doesn't change the fact that the people who do get one earned and deserved it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

When you say "not everyone", that radically underestimates the problem. It is not "not everyone". It is "almost no one". And that considerably changes the logic. Almost no one who could potentially get an Exaltation gets it, and that transforms it from something earned to a mere lottery. Was there a free Exaltation at the time? If not, no, tough luck. The free Exaltation is nothing you can control (barring the exceptional cases of Wyld Hunting mortals killing the Solar and then Exalting as their next host).

And so among the non-Sidereal, non-Terrestrial, non-Alchemical Exalts they no more earned it than a lottery winner earned their prize. All their heroism did, effectively, was buy them a ticket to a lottery - and almost anyone who gets a "ticket" not only won't win, but has no chance whatsoever of winning because there's no Exaltation looking for a new host at that moment. There are certainly people more worthy of an Exaltation than current Exalts who did not get it simply because there were no free Exaltations at the time.

And it's very hard to justify that they "deserved" such power in such circumstances, considering that the benefits granted by an Exaltation are completely out of line with many allegedly Exaltation-worthy deeds. But then again, Exaltations don't exist to be rewards. They exist to be weapons handed to those that'll use them. There's no moral worth in their assignation - merely utility.
 
I rather think what's going on here is that Omicron is using 'earned' to mean 'did something to buy in' and other people are using 'earned' to mean 'did something of roughly equivalent value to buy in'. No mortal deed can possibly earn the sheer might and potential of even a Terrestrial Exaltation in the latter sense - but there is nevertheless a nominally merit-based (depending on how you define 'merit') criterion, such that one might under some definitions call it 'earned'.
 
This isn't really some kind of ambiguous arguable thing. People who don't do things worthy of Exaltation don't get an Exaltation. People who do things worthy of an Exaltation have a chance, however tenous, of getting an Exaltation. Ergo Exaltation is not granted by luck or random chance; it is granted to a small portion of those who deserve it. Because they did things, and these things were worthy.
EarthScorpion said:
W They exist to be weapons handed to those that'll use them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
No, they exist to turn worthy people into heroes. They're not rewards and they're not weapons - they're power, and potential. They are the opportunity to use the will and drive and virtues that drew divine attention to their full potential beyond the limits of humanity.
 
Omicron said:
No, they exist to turn worthy people into heroes. They're not rewards and they're not weapons - they're power, and potential. They are the opportunity to use the will and drive and virtues that drew divine attention to their full potential beyond the limits of humanity.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You do remember the things were built by slaves to make war upon and kill their masters for them as they could not do themselves, right? I mean, that was the entire point of the exercise. Sol Invictus releases his pack of uncontrollable murder-shinies not to make people into heroes, but to make people who can gut Theion.

Being so badass you can make war on the world-titans that built Creation is pretty heroic, and in the course of doing so you will probably commit plenty of heroic deeds, but that's really a side effect.
 
Last edited:
Jon Chung said:
You do remember the things were built by slaves to make war upon and kill their masters for them as they could not do themselves, right? I mean, that was the entire point of the exercise. Sol Invictus releases his pack of uncontrollable murder-shinies not to make people into heroes, but to make people who can gut Theion.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The gods wished to defeat their enemies, and to do so they needed not mortal men but heroes, yes.
 
Omicron said:
The gods wished to defeat their enemies, and to do so they needed not mortal men but heroes, yes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Sure. As mentioned in the edit above, doing something as insanely audacious as making war on the architects of reality for being dicks takes enormous heroic balls. You are a classical hero by definition should you do this.

However, again, that's really a side-effect: you're able to do this because you just got a divine furnace of holy atomic fusion welded to your soul through sheer chance, a golden sword with power such that you can kill the souls of titans such that they may never rise again, block ICBMs, etc, etc. That little murder-widget is a weapon.
 
Last edited:
Panther was a jackass gladiator who killed people because it made for a better show, and drowned himself in drugs and women. He Exalted when he decided there must be more to life than this. That was all - just making an internal resolution to change, and who knows how long that would have lasted in the face of violence, addiction, and sponsor-pressure? Hell, in 2e he doesn't even do that, he works out he wants to change after the Exaltation.

Dace was Exalted for making a desperate tactical decision that would have killed him and everyone with him if he hadn't Exalted right there - i.e. a mistake. Demetheus Exalted for killing a bandit who was trying to kill him - and specifically not a very tough bandit. Jasara Exalted for exploring a ruin - not for finding anything, mind you, she was led to the actual good stuff by her past life memories. Sayn Exalted because his village was being destroyed and he prayed to the Unconquered Sun for help. Tremalion Exalted when he was thrown in a dungeon. Faka Kun Exalted when she was caught stealing something and decided to run away rather than surrender and go to prison.

Those are just the canon Solars. I'm not looking at Lunars (who get it for not dying), Dragon-Blooded (who get it for being born), Alchemicals (who get it for being made), Sidereals (who get it for [redacted]), Infernals (who get it for not getting it) and Abyssals (who canonically can get it because a Deathlord likes the colour of their hair). I'm not even looking at the inevitable "nobody farm boy who sees his village burn down/decides to go see the world/declares that someone needs to change things" and gets Exalted for his raw untapped potential huaaaah.

If you're Exalted, it's because some fragment of the Sun's power saw you and thought "yeah, they could put this to use". That applies to almost every human being, mind you - per developer statements stretching back to 1e, Exaltation is perfectly willing to lower their bar if necessary. The example Jenna Moran gave was, in a world of absolute comfort and decadence, a girl Exalting as a Lunar because her ice cream was colder than she expected but she ate it anyway. With that in mind, it's very difficult not to call Solar Exaltation a lottery, because out of the untold millions who might qualify for it, slightly over 100 actually receive it, and besides the qualia for this worthiness (if it's in any way consistent) is, by and large, a mystery.

Even without that in mind, even assuming there's a direct and objective cause-and-effect behind Exaltation, it's very difficult to say that anyone who achieved Solar Exaltation deserved it, much less everyone. This is because the power being offered is so wildly out of proportion with anything else a human being can possibly achieve. Arianna deserved the ability to reshape the world to her whims because she studied so hard? Really? She studied that hard, hard enough to deserve being an inheritor of the universe? Did she? Honestly? Is it possible to study hard enough that you actually, genuinely deserve to rule all that the sunlight touches and more besides?

She certainly thinks so. Divine Right of Kings is much easier to tout when the King of the Gods apparently saw you doing your homework and thought "yeah, she's earned phenomenal cosmic power". I don't believe it, personally, and I don't think readers are supposed to.

If I bought a lottery ticket - or had it bought for me, or picked it up off the street, or stole it from someone - then yes, I've entered the lottery. Does that mean I earned a jackpot of hundreds of millions, if I win?
 
Last edited:
Jon Chung said:
Sure. As mentioned in the edit above, doing something as insanely audacious as making war on the architects of reality for being dicks takes enormous heroic balls. You are a classical hero by definition should you do this.

However, again, that's really a side-effect: you're able to do this because you just got a divine furnace of holy atomic fusion welded to your soul through sheer chance, a golden sword with power such that you can kill the souls of titans such that they may never rise again. That little murder-widget is a weapon.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
No it's not. The Exaltation is not something you wield, it's something you are. It is not a weapon; it is a change in your nature, it's power, it's potential.

Is a soldier a weapon? Is a decorated war veteran a particularly powerful weapon? Is a lawyer, a diplomat, a spy a weapon?

There is a paradigm under which the answer is 'yes,' but that paradigm also diminished the point you're driving at. Sailor, soldier and spy are agents of a greater authority, empowered to fulfill its goals. But if they're weapons, then everyone is - and the term becomes meaningless. We are all, to an extent, tools of the society that wield us. But it's also a largely pointless definition.

The Exalted were soldiers, diplomats, spies, assassins, preachers, generals in a vast war against their enemies, who were also the enemies of the gods. They were only 'weapon' by a twee, cheeky definition that tries to boil down all of human endeavour to a state of tool-ness - they were 'weapons' to the extent that their own perfectly mortal followers were, to the extent that the farmers feeding their armies were.

Exaltation is a weapon under a standard by which every ploughshare is a sword. It is true from a certain point of view, and also completely useless to a productive discussion.

The Exalted were heroes; they were human doing human things, whom the gods empowered to do things beyond those, to become the heroes needed to win that war. They were champions.
 
Omicron said:
No it's not. The Exaltation is not something you wield, it's something you are. It is not a weapon; it is a change in your nature, it's power, it's potential.

Is a soldier a weapon? Is a decorated war veteran a particularly powerful weapon? Is a lawyer, a diplomat, a spy a weapon?

There is a paradigm under which the answer is 'yes,' but that paradigm also diminished the point you're driving at. Sailor, soldier and spy are agents of a greater authority, empowered to fulfill its goals. But if they're weapons, then everyone is - and the term becomes meaningless. We are all, to an extent, tools of the society that wield us. But it's also a largely pointless definition.

The Exalted were soldiers, diplomats, spies, assassins, preachers, generals in a vast war against their enemies, who were also the enemies of the gods. They were only 'weapon' by a twee, cheeky definition that tries to boil down all of human endeavour to a state of tool-ness - they were 'weapons' to the extent that their own perfectly mortal followers were, to the extent that the farmers feeding their armies were.

Exaltation is a weapon under a standard by which every ploughshare is a sword. It is true from a certain point of view, and also completely useless to a productive discussion.

The Exalted were heroes; they were human doing human things, whom the gods empowered to do things beyond those, to become the heroes needed to win that war. They were champions.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Most plowshares aren't specifically designed for the purpose of making your enemies die. Swords are.

It's a gross and irresponsible misrepresentation to say that the only paradigms under which a soldier is a weapon are extreme enough to requires a farmer to be a weapon. It's the sort of misrepresentation where you say that because I call an AK-47 a weapon, that I have to call a plowshare a weapon.

It's a matter of what purpose the tool was made to serve. The Exaltations were designed by Autochthon in order to make war against the Primordials and win. That makes them a weapon, not the fact that they were made to do anything whatsoever.
 
Quantumboost said:
Most plowshares aren't specifically designed for the purpose of making your enemies die. Swords are.

It's a gross and irresponsible misrepresentation to say that the only paradigms under which a soldier is a weapon are extreme enough to requires a farmer to be a weapon. It's the sort of misrepresentation where you say that because I call an AK-47 a weapon, that I have to call a plowshare a weapon.

It's a matter of what purpose the tool was made to serve. The Exaltations were designed by Autochthon in order to make war against the Primordials and win. That makes them a weapon, not the fact that they were made to do anything whatsoever.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If a soldier is a weapon, then a farmer is agricultural equipment. That still blurs the line between persons and equipment the way @Omicron said.
 
vicky_molokh said:
If a soldier is a weapon, then a farmer is agricultural equipment. That still blurs the line between persons and equipment the way @Omicron said.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You miss the point entirely.

The point was, that representation was a strawman, because "people are tools" is a position you can take without jumping to "people are weapons" or "humans aren't people". Moreover, one can talk about the authority and empowerment being a tool even if the person isn't - and Exaltations are effectively authority and empowerment.

There are plenty of entirely reasonable positions where "Exaltations are weapons" is true, without jumping to batshit insane troll logic.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Why are you so sure that isn't a failure in character?

You and a bunch of hot-heads went out to fight a Terrestrial Exalt and the forces of the Imperial Legions. You were an at-best amateur group, up against a professional military army commanded by superhumans. If you'd tried to persuade them to keep quiet and work from within to maintain your independence, then none of this would have happened, but instead you marched out to attack them. Of course your friends got slaughtered. The Terrestrial let you live after maiming you, but only as an example of what happens to rebels. And as you're left, useless and crippled, blame and self-recrimination gnawing in your gut; why, then the demon with the spark of green in its eyes comes for you. Offers you power. Offers you revenge.

No one deserves an Exaltation. No one earns it. And that means that with narratively fitting moments for someone to get a surge of power and overcome the massively superior enemy, 99.9% of the time, that doesn't happen. With that in mind, rash heroics which probably won't work and which risks your lives and risks the Realm making an 'example' of your town are indeed a valid moral failing. Hubris is a thing, as is hot-headed wrath.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Okay lets take something totally different then. You're out camping in the woods and a group of claw striders finds you and your friends and you just manage to live by diving under a fallen bushwillow. Was that cowardice? Is survivor's guilt always justified? I really don't think so. But survivors guilt is definitely a thing that happens, and it can make for a great story and something driving for the character.

They might even start to transfer that guilt they feel from the original tragedy to whatever they're currently doing, believing that if anything goes wrong for their coven that it's their fault. This actually has a name in psychology it's called the locus of control. People who have an external locus of control believe that success they achieve was due to luck, and failure is due to a task being too difficult. Sounds familiar right? People with an internal locus of control believe that success is due to ability, and failure is due to lack of effort.

Both of these can actually be a big problem.
 
Revlid said:
If you're Exalted, it's because some fragment of the Sun's power saw you and thought "yeah, they could put this to use". That applies to almost every human being, mind you - per developer statements stretching back to 1e, Exaltation is perfectly willing to lower their bar if necessary. The example Jenna Moran gave was, in a world of absolute comfort and decadence, a girl Exalting as a Lunar because her ice cream was colder than she expected but she ate it anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So, the solar exalted because he decided to delve into the abyss of weird tastes, the abyssal discovered a new allergy when trying a new flavor and the infernal backed down from the challenge?
 
xenondestroyer said:
So, the solar exalted because he decided to delve into the abyss of weird tastes, the abyssal discovered a new allergy when trying a new flavor and the infernal backed down from the challenge?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I doubt any of those would really work because the exaltation isn't going to look at a guy trying out all kinds of weird foods and think this guy is totally going to kill titans if given power. Unless he is hunting down monsters and demons for exotic ingredients, or something epic like that in the pursuit of his goal.
 
cyberswordsmen said:
I doubt any of those would really work because the exaltation isn't going to look at a guy trying out all kinds of weird foods and think this guy is totally going to kill titans if given power. Unless he is hunting down monsters and demons for exotic ingredients, or something epic like that in the pursuit of his goal.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The context is that in a world of peace and utter decadence, the Exaltations alter their selection criteria.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top