The intent seems to me that you can get another Hearthstone from the same Manse.
General Exalted Thread
The intent seems to me that you can get another Hearthstone from the same Manse.
- Location
- Virginia
Here's the thing, though: this changes a lot when you are talking about Infernal hearthstones, for someone like Keris. At five days travel, even with the speeds this vessel can attain Malfeas is closer than a big chunk of Creation. And more importantly, (as I understand it) your route back to Malfeas can't be interdicted. So that segment of your supply chain is actually very safe.
So if there's a vulnerable point it would have to be the actual manses in Malfeas, or transit within Malfeas. By nature these are going to be a lot harder for Creation's Exalts to interfere with, from unfamiliarity if nothing else. So even if Malfeas isn't exactly "friendly territory" it's still more secure from certain attacks.
But the kicker is that, if Malfeas is big and contains a gajillion manses and yadda yadda - and if hearthstones are like oil - then I'd expect there to be a functional market in these things. Rather than controlling and protecting the manse yourself, you just go to the marketplace and buy.
So a team of Dragon-blooded decides to go raze the Ligerian manses supplying this thing's hearthstones... and as a result, the price of Ligerian hearthstones rises moderately, Keris dials down the reactor a little bit and spends some extra $$$, and is otherwise unaffected. If the price goes up enough she just switches to other Malfean hearthstones.
By turning hearthstones into oil you actually simplify some supply chain issues and remove the need for a specific personal infrastructure (beyond wealth in some form).
edit: to be clear, I certainly don't object to this sort of thing! The genius of trade is the ability to render this sort of infrastructure fungible.
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Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
It's not very vulnerable to Creation side interdiction. But if Earthscorprion doesn't have Keris return to her Manse to find it having been trampled by Isidoros, scourged by Adorjan, crushed by Malfeas or whatever at least once then you may have a point.
Having a Manse in Malfeas is like having an oil derrick next to an active volcano. Not many people want to go there to take it out... because its an active volcano next to an oil well.
- Location
- Virginia
In that section I was talking strictly about the "traveling to and from Malfeas" bit. The rest of the post talks about why the rest of the supply chain should also be fairly secure.
Godzillaslayer10
I am ready for this quest!
- Location
- Somewhere
So for how long is Ligier going to be ticked with Keris? Also I love the story Aleph.
- Location
- Wellington, New Zealand
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ah, cool. That's an interesting touch, though does make some bits of 'still running since the fall' tech stuff a bit less viable (such as the 5-metal shrike), though it would not surprise me if that is 'working as intended'.
Hmmm, it makes something like the Shrike more interesting in many ways. Means instead of running around blowing up bits of the South at semi-random, it's probably sitting in a manse somewhere, so would come as a surprise to anyone that found it, but once you find it, on top of the 'talk the AI into working with you' issues, there is likely to be repair issues, and then given it's power levels, any PCs wanting to run it as the superweapon it is are going to really need to work for that toy.
Probably needs at least as much Hearthstones to operate as all as Memory of Baisha and that's just to get it in the air. Then you'll need more to run things like the weapon systems, high speed mode will burn stones like crazy, and firing up the nuclear weapon that is the Godspear? How many 5 dot stones?
Not that I expect the Shrike, in any way at all, to ever turn up in Kerisgame (or probably anything from Oadenol's Codex), but it is interesting to ponder it as a reference point for 'generic first age superweapon the PCs want to use' and just how much harder that would make it to run. Which is honestly an improvement, IMO. A lot of this stuff would require country scale infrastructure to run, let alone build or repair, and that's assuming you have a tech focused solar to start with.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Partly correct. But to the first point, Malfeas isn't united. Keris has enemies there who can deny her, and who a party can make a deal with to interfere with her efforts (cough Ululaya cough). On top of that, the route back to Malfeas isn't as safe as you're making it out to be - she doesn't have that Cecelyne Charm that lets you set off from anywhere, remember, so find the gate she uses and you can lay an ambush. And from Ligier's point of view, making her dependent on him for the 5-dot hearthstones she's been given as her first few months of fuel (which are much higher-grade than strictly necessary and thus don't necessitate nearly as much maintenance) is... working precisely as planned, good job, well done, exactly what he wants to happen. If she needs to keep coming back to Malfeas and getting hearthstones from him to power her ship, she needs to keep him happy.
Well, the Shrike is an even more bullshit Artifact N/A than the Baisha, so it might well be running on a trio of obnoxiously powerful essence capacitors or something. It's one of those things that's not just a "multiple Artifact 5s" N/A, but a "this is just plot-level bullshit" one, so who knows? That said, I wouldn't be surprised if it does have a manse somewhere that it uses as a roost, if it exists at all in Kerisgame.
Soooo... I'm probably just missing something obvious due to lack of familiarity with the material, but I'm actually wondering why the Baisha deserves the N/A rank?
Near as I can tell, the only really impressive effects it has are its speed and its fleet-killing Silent Windstorm. Which, sure, are pretty damn impressive - but not-applicable impressive? When I think "Artifact N/A," I'm thinking... well, the Shrike, the Eye of Autochthon, and so on. Maybe if you count the whole thing as one Artifact, but it really feels more like someone mounted a First Age area-denial weapon on a luxury liner to me.
Near as I can tell, the only really impressive effects it has are its speed and its fleet-killing Silent Windstorm. Which, sure, are pretty damn impressive - but not-applicable impressive? When I think "Artifact N/A," I'm thinking... well, the Shrike, the Eye of Autochthon, and so on. Maybe if you count the whole thing as one Artifact, but it really feels more like someone mounted a First Age area-denial weapon on a luxury liner to me.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
There are two kinds of N/A, really.
There is "This is some crazy bullshit I give up on ranking it" -- the Eye, the Shrike, and so on. These are your Total Plot McGuffins.
And there's "This is too big to be costed as an Artifact 5" -- things like Dawning Sun Indomitable-class heavy battlecruisers, for instance. While I haven't read the Kerisgame snippets, it sounds like Baisha is the latter, not the former.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Basically yeah, as said above, it's "multiple Artifact 5s combined into a single thing" level. Too expensive for an A5, and Keris basically got it as a plot thing which is balanced and adjudicated by the narrative, so it's N/A.
Okay, so here's the thing. First off, the Memory of Baisha is entirely Beyond Fate - this means that "temple" stuff and essence contamination probably won't propagate outward that much from its little self-contained Mythos bubble [1] [2]. The only effects that propagate outward are the ones caused by two causalities clashing at the edge of the bubble.
Second, it is not actually that big a bubble. The Baisha is 30 metres long from spike-tip to stern - it's statted as a light warship, yes, but it's basically a yacht. It will cause omen weather and Fate glitches, but not in massive amounts - about the same as an Outside Fate manse, probably. I suspect the net effect will be similar to an active Second Circle being out and about, and it may in fact literally have some Sidereals going "gods fucking dammit, who's bound a combat-focused Second Circle to attack ships, can we tell which one it is? Someone have the ambassador to Hell run a headcount!"
As for thirdly... well, here we come to the crux of the matter. "Subtle", the Aerial Legion is not. When they descend from on-high... well, usually they don't descend from on-high for anything less than a full-scale demonic invasion by a Third Circle, because shitloads of paperwork oh my fucking god do you even know. One Second Circle making waves in the Southwest isn't the sort of thing you call out the Legion for; they're "fuck fuck fuck Madelrada and an army of icy demonic warriors are overrunning An Teng". Third Circles are, after all, where you go in Kerisgame for the stereotypical "the ancient evils sealed within Hell are escaping to wreck havoc on the world" plot.
But even if Keris did make enough waves and did get the Legion called down on her... when they descend from on high, everyone in the fucking region knows about it. Keris will know they're coming long, long before they reach her, and probably before they even get a visual on her. At which point she will submerge to as fathomless and lightless a depth as the Baisha will go, which to all intents and purposes is "the seabed". Within an hour, she will be fifty kilometres away. Within a day, she could be anywhere within 750 miles. The Legion will try to track her down by Fate and... fail, because she's Beyond it, and not in a way where they can "track the hole" because that would rather remove the point. They may well raze any islands of hers that they find, in which case they will have started a guerilla war against everything they hold dear in which no quarter will be given, but Keris and the Baisha themselves will hole up under an island somewhere and - bluntly - wait for them to leave. Which, in the absence of any way to find a single 30-metre yacht in the entirety of the southwestern ocean [3], they will; grumbling and complaining about their wasted time and ambrosia.
TL,DR: The Legion is too big a stick to hit the Baisha with directly. It's great at stopping giant obvious invasions, but single warships are too fine-grained for a sieve of that scale to catch.
Honestly, I'm starting to consider - as one potential endgame plot - Keris eventually offering the Sidereals a deal. Something along the lines of:
- I'm already as lethal as I'm going to get, so this isn't a case of "kill me now or in six months I'll be far harder to assassinate".
- I am providing a useful function where I am - I'm in the far Threshold, shoring up the Southwest, wiping out raksha and taming the Lintha somewhat. Granted I'm also leaving hell-islands dotted around, but I have no intention of terraforming the entire region, and am willing to keep them small.
- A full-scale fight with me is not in your best interests. Taking me on yourselves is going to lose you valuable Sidereals. Sending the Realm after me is going to force them to overreach their navy - and I can just dodge their giant Shogunate battleships until they're forced to return home, because my boat is small and the ocean is big and you can't point them at me because I'm untrackable. And if you raze my islands, I'll raze yours.
- I do not particularly want a fight with you. And I'm treating my people pretty well - look, see? They're happy and healthy and okay some of the Lintha are still a little bit racist but I'm working on that, I swear. I'm not a total monster (like Raksi, who you also tolerate).
- So, how about a truce? I will promise to stay in my little box in the Southwest, generally shore up the region, not let any of the Unquestionable out and not make any moves to topple the Realm (I might try to kick them out of An Teng, but no big invasions, I promise). In return, you stay fairly hands-off, don't sic the Realm or Legions or any teacup assassins on me, and hey, you can even give me a heads-up if any Wyld behemoths start rampaging across islands or Dead Exalts start making giant shadowlands on my turf. I'll deal with them for you. Give it five years, go sort out that whole civil war thing you're dealing with, and see if I've held up my end by then, huh?
...
On another note, you've seen the Viper reference in Neride, I wonder if anyone can spot who the Helmsman is a homage to?
[1] Which is actually pretty similar to Keris's Mythos bubble, and which in fact harmonises with it when she's onboard.
[2] Now, propagating out from her demonic hellishly-terraformed Metagaos/Kimbery islands with Malfean towns in the middle, that might well happen.
[3] And I fully intend to have Keris branch out beyond An Teng and explore the southwest as a whole; @EarthScorpion and I spent the better part of an hour talking about it last night.
- Location
- Spain
You know, one of the reasons i dislike the despiction of Malfeas as an arbitrarily large place is that the amount of resources it produces is, simply put, absurd. It downplays the value of manses.
Let's say that Malfeas has ten trillion first circles. Let's also say that demesnes are really rare, with, say, only one per a hundred million demons.
That gives us a total of a hundred million manses.
Let's say that the 3th circles only actually control a 0,1 % of hell. That would still leave each one with ten thousand demesnes each. And therefore, giving a dozen demesnes as a bribe for a GSP would be a trivial prize for one of them.
Manses and Demesnes aren't a function of population, they are a function of Essence concentration and flow. Malfeas and other Yozi's bodies are also entirely unlike Creation's energy flows, so Demesnes might well be much rarer than normal, or far more prone to catastrophic failure as a result of Yozi and 3rd Circle Demons shifting around.
As we depict it, in a healthy Primordial worldbody, you'll tend to to get a fair-few demenses. However, the thing is that they're not very long-lived. A few decades, tops. Then the metabiological flows that caused their formation will shift, and the demense will dry up. They're not constant. They'll form in places where a whirlpool concentrates Kimbery's essence, or there's a great chasm in Malfeas which reflects Ligier's light back on itself forming an essence-irradiated zone. The Ebon Dragon will shed scales that form a demense. Keris owns an Elloge demense formed where drops of her blood fell. But Yozi landscapes are not fixed and they're not eternal. Even Keris' manse will become useless some day, when the blood of Elloge evaporates.
The end result of this is that not very many of the demenses are capped with manses, because the investment required to stabilise them is greater than their expected lifespan. Most manses are built by Second Circles or Third Circles who have the power and resources to carry out the extended geomantic work required to keep it stable. Most of the demenses are just harvested for unstable, volatile essence-fuel by slave labour. Who cares if the blood apes die from Green Sun Wasting in the irradiated Malfean essence despite their thick iron armour and breathing hoses? They're just blood apes. No one cares about them. Their lives are worth less than the shards of green-glowing glass they dig up from the crack in the ground.
And that kind of essence fuel is contaminated, unstable and volatile - and often vitriolic. Try feeding it to anything that needs purity or stability and watch as your complicated workings melt down and kill you before it can kill your enemy.
So, yes, while there's a lot of demenses in Malfeas, there's far, far fewer usable manses.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There's also the fact that, uh, violent or sudden geomantic upheaval tends to send manses into Power Failure, and manses sent into Power Failure tend to explode. And there are many, many, many sources of geomantic upheaval in Malfeas. Better hope the Ebon Dragon doesn't pass overhead. Or that there aren't any layerquakes. Or that the Grinding Wind doesn't pass through and erode all the stone in the area. Because that kind of thing is going to change the essence flows your manse was built on, and that's proooobably not good for you.
Maybe after Keris completely crushes an invading fleet of the dead?
Actually speaking of uber powerful artifacts in the south west does Keris even know about Leviathan[1], because having to face off against a giant glowing Lunar would be a great naval battle.
[1] glares at my subconscious that suggested Levi-tan instead)
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Leviathan is dead. He died in the Crusade, descending from the sun at the helm of the reactivated 22nd Aerial Fleet of the Deliberative - a trump card hoarded for thousands of years - and flying it into the heart of Xii with its engines flaring with coronal brightness and all weapons firing.
That said, the Helmsman is almost certainly going to find out about him and bring him up constantly as a bogeyman among his wild imaginings of what could go wrong with whatever it is they're going to do next.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Uh... that's not what the TAW doc you just linked says.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Location
- Virginia
Per your link... OR IS HE?
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I remember when... I think it was @Revlid wrote this and posted it on the WW forums? And at some point I got into a dispute with him or @Imrix about the fact that by author's intent Leviathan was dead and the last sentences were more about "yeah there are legends that he's still around," whereas from my point of view this couldn't have been a more blatant He Totally Is Dead You Guys Wink Wink if it had tried.
Yeah, by original intent he was meant to be deader than a dead doorknob.
Then some people wanted the possibility of him being alive, and then - sigh. Well, the way it came out gave me a very clear demonstration of how rumours in RPG settings turn into established fact.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Wait, it's supposed to not be a blatant He Totally Is Dead You Guys Wink Wink?
Huh. Yeah, I read it like you did.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
As I recall, it was me getting into a dispute with Revlid. This was before the revised TAW doc though, and at the time yes, the authorial intent was absolutely "Leviathan is totally dead." The revised version is actually a bit more ambiguous about the matter; I choose to believe Revlid decided to ease up on the idea of killing Leviathan, and open the door a crack to him being alive.
For reference, compare the revised version writeup to the original, which I still have on file;
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Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
Hey, the eventuality of a living Leviathan gave me a question: i know that Enlightment is limited in EarthScorpion rewrite of the rules, so high essence shenanigas aren't available, but what happens to really old Exalted?
Can they merely broaden their charm and conquer lands for resources and gain more artifacts and learn all the abilities, or they have other ways to get trickier to defeat? (Not stronger, trickier; i know that excessive dots in things are the bane and the cancer of the line and setting.)
Can they merely broaden their charm and conquer lands for resources and gain more artifacts and learn all the abilities, or they have other ways to get trickier to defeat? (Not stronger, trickier; i know that excessive dots in things are the bane and the cancer of the line and setting.)