- Location
- Ottawa
That just makes it weirder!
Usually threads derail because of arguments. Not because The Worst Thing comes up and everyone rushes to re-affirm their hatred.
Eric is. Dean doesn't seem to be.
General Exalted Thread
That just makes it weirder!
Usually threads derail because of arguments. Not because The Worst Thing comes up and everyone rushes to re-affirm their hatred.
Eric is. Dean doesn't seem to be.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Broken Fire
Long ago there was an age of cold and ruthless glory, where giants walked the earth that were beasts and worlds. Then the gods breathed fire into the souls of men, and lords rose among them; they led men into battle, conquered Heaven and built Hell. So that such a battle may never be forgotten, the lords chose to fashion a memorial; it would be a great everlasting fire, as a symbol of the fire of Exaltation with which they had been gifted. To house the fire they built a tower of silver and gold, and around the tower rose a city.
An age passed, and the world fell. The city crumbled, the tower decayed, and still the fire remained; pilgrims from all over the world came to inhabit the ruins and built a new city out of them, and they worshipped the fire. Princes warred over the rights to make obedience to the fire and earn its kiss; kingdoms were formed bound by an intricate lattice of rules surrounding their relationship to the flame.
An age passed, and the world fell. The city was overgrown, the tower crumbled, and still the fire remained. Disease swept through the streets, leaving them empty but for the hollow shells of the dead, moaning in the madness of death. Pilgrims came, and were devoured. Only a bare handful reached the fire, and gazed into it, and partook of it; and when they came out they were wiser and prouder, and the fire within was only embers.
Still the embers burn. The fire was scattered, but as long as it burns within one soul, it is not extinguished. A world away, its power is still felt.
Shaping Ritual: Flame of the Prime Kiln
You hold a spark of the Primal Fire, an everlasting fire of sorcery fashioned by the Exalted in an age long past. This flame is embedded in your soul, bound into your very being; it appears in the palm of your hand whenever you will it, allowing you to work your sorcery through it. The power of this flame is eternal; you may pass it onto another, losing it in the process - but if you die with it it will sit within the shell of your body, awaiting a mind that can see and claim it for itself.
Shaping Rituals
The flame is a bonfire of the soul, all passions and memories serving at its kindling. By drawing upon its power, the sorcerer consumes his sense of self until he blurs into the line of all those who have held the flame before. Once per scene, she may 'burn' one her Major or Defining Intimacies that is directly applicable to her current situation; the Intimacy is suppressed until she next awakens from a full night's rest, and she gains a number of sorcerous motes equal to the Intimacy's rating which last for the rest of the scene. Additionally, once per story, the sorcerer may draw a Defining Intimacy from the flame held by one of its prior holders; the Storyteller chooses that Intimacy and the character's behavior should reflect that attachment. In exchange, the user gains 5 sorcerous motes which, like the Intimacy, last for the rest of the day.
The primal fire consumes the flesh and reweaves into a more fitting vessel. Living bodies instinctively resist this intrusion, and sorcerers often feel the ache of burns and ulcers; but it is possible to give in to that warping power. Once per scene, the sorcerer may suffer up to (Essence) aggravated lethal damage, gaining a number of sorcerous motes equal to (1 + number of health levels lost + highest wound penalty inflicted). These motes last for the day (or until the wounds are healed, whichever comes sooner). Once per story, the sorcerer may accept a cosmetic mutation inflicted by the flame, whether it be a hand with charcoal-like skin or eyes that glow with fire or similar effects; depending on how visible, off-putting and dramatic the mutation is, it should be defined as Minor, Major or Defining, and the sorcerer accordingly receives 4, 6 or 8 sorcerous motes which last for the rest of the story.
When the sorcerer takes the first shape sorcery action to begin casting a spell and stunts it with a description of how she casts the spell through the flame or draws on its power, she gains (stunt rating + 2) sorcerous motes towards completing this spell. This benefit can only be received once per scene. Stunts to enhance the sorcerer's control spell do not count against the once per scene limit.
Special rules: It is possible for a sorcerer to slay another holder of the flame, absorbing their spark within their own to add to their power. In doing so, the sorcerer accepts a Major or Defining Intimacy held by their victim (at the victim's player's discretion), and gains another shaping ritual. Accordingly, more shaping rituals than the three above may be designed for sorcerers of sufficient power.
Other Benefits
Crucible of Flesh (Merit ● to ●●●●●): The sorcerer has extensively studied the twisting and weaving power of the prime flame, and learned to use it to burn flesh and cast it anew. She adds her rating in that Merit to the extended roll of any Sorcerous Working that aims at mutating a living being (including herself) or at giving them new powers, provided the changes follow the following themes or aesthetics: great size, extremes of beautiful or terrifying appearance, fire, magma, volcanic glass, smoke, ash.
The Burning Grasp (Merit ●●): Conjuring the flame from her palm, the sorcerer may wield it as a weapon, stoking, expanding and directing it, conjuring orbs and lances of fire to consume her opponents. This Merit is identical to The Burning Name (Exalted, p. 468), save in its aesthetics.
Suzerain of Endless Flame (Merit ●●): This Merit is identical to the Merit of the same name found on p. 468 of Exalted.
First Sin of Fire (Merit ●●●●●, Story): This Merit may only be taken at character creation (or acquired in-story, at which point it has no cost); it represents a character who has already slain another holder of the flame. The player and storyteller should come up with an appropriate Major or Defining Intimacy inherited from them, and the player may choose a second shaping ritual appropriate to his prime fire.
Those Who Hold Fire In Their Palm
That Which Roars
Once, That Which Roars was mortal, a man weak of body but strong of mind and well-learned, who dodged the dangers of the city and claimed a piece of the fire for himself. He ruled in the depths of the East in a city of charred wood, a lord of fire and lightning. All who told him that a mere mortal could not handle such power were wrong - his downfall was not due to his inherent frailty, but only to his hubris. Weaving fire into his flesh over and over, the king lost sight of who he had been, and was lost to a fire of his own making.
That Which Roars is ancient knowledge of sorcery contained within a chaos of emotions and shattered memories that has taken the form of fire and black glass in a shifting shape, often taking on leonine and avian features. It sits in the scorched remains of its throne room, at the heart of its temple-palace, now empty of men as is the city around it. It summons and binds elementals, but as loyal as they are they do not understand its will; it sends blazing cherubs with wings that trail ashes to speak to travellers and faraway lords, but their messages are cryptic and nonsensical when they are not mere cacophonies of sound without a single word in them; it haunts the dreams of those who sleep within what was once its kingdom, but the dreams it fashions have no comprehensible meaning.
That Which Roars sits in its throne and weeps molten lead; it roams the empty streets of its ruined city and sings to itself; some trespassers it hunts down and consumes with wrathful glee, others it blesses with the secret riches still stored away in its realm. It is wild and unpredictable as fire itself, and many are the would-be scavengers who would wish to see its flame quenched, so that they may crack the city open like an egg full of treasure.
Twig
Twig has once a grand name, for she was a Prince of the Earth, an Outcaste queen in the Threshold. But now the fire has passed through her, it has burned her, and she has given up her worldly pursuits for the contemplation of the flame. She is Twig, and she seeks to burn as bright as she can; so she wanders the north, seeking heat in the embrace of cold. She parlays with fire elementals, visits and studies fire demesnes, and occasionally confronts those who own precious red jade artifacts; all in a quest to gain true, final understanding of fire.
Twig was burnt in many ways, for good and ill. Her face remains unmarred, that of an aging aristocrat, tan of skin and her hair a deep dark-green; an Aspect of Wood, she once felt like fresh humus and upturned soil, but now she feels like precious woods in the hearthfire. Her hands and arms have the look and texture of bark, but the closer to her hands the more scorched-black they are, and her hands are still aglow with bright embers; she is over seven feet tall, and her heart glows like a furnace in her chest - which does not make it any easier to hit in battle, as her ribs are an intricate cage of petrified ash.
Legends are told in the North of the Burning Lady, and she is often mistaken for an elemental or a goddess of some sort, which she does little to clear up; she is friendly and amenable as long as one does not stand in the way of her study, and utterly ruthless when one does. It is her hope that by stoking her sorcerous flame to great enough heights, she can achieve immortality - then she will retrace her steps back to the Prime Kiln, and conquer the last of the embers to become the ruler of this city, which she will reforged with fire.
Should-Heavens-Fall
Should-Heavens-Fall's name is too ironic to be a coincidence; indeed he has taken it upon himself as a symbol of his coming-of-age when he stepped out of the Prime Kiln. This was centuries ago, for Fall is a Celestial Exalted, member of the Sidereal host. To his peers he is an abrasive, reclusive sage, a sorcerer of great skill and an influential negotiator in the spirit courts of the South. His many idiosyncrasies are forgotten in the name of 'as long as it works' - and the man has secured many places of secondary importance in the South of Creation that have effectively become his own private keepings, to which Heaven is blind.
Should-Heavens-Fall is an effective defender of Creation, but he is more than this. He is a man obsessed, consumed by flame. He bears no marks of his twisting on his body, for it is his soul that is branded. Fall believes that no job is done better than the one you do yourself, and so to be able to do the most, to be the most effective, to fulfill his duties, he needs power - which he claims by using the resources of Heaven to locate holders of the prime flame. Then, alone - for he does not trust the sensitive knowledge of his pursuits to the corruption of Heaven - he confronts these kindred sorcerers, and either extorts their fire from them or kills them and takes it himself.
Although Fall is known for the refinement and perfection of his many cover identities as Aspects of Fire, there is more than skill involved - there is need. Fire has so wholly taken his soul that he feels more affinity with it than with his birthright as a Sidereal. The fates he weaves are marked by cinder, consigning doomed cities to great fires and raising mortals to glory with crowns of garnet and ruby; he is as peerless a master of Fire Dragon as any Immaculate, perhaps even more; his twin short daiklaves, Rise and Fall, are of mixed red jade and starmetal and hold the power to burn conceptual things - memories, emotional ties, even skills and curses; but always they live a trail of ash behind them.
The Ash-Queen
There was once a mortal woman who held the power of the flame; and like few before she gave it up freely, to a worthy student, hoping to retire in peace. But she had woven herself too tightly to its power, and when it left her it hollowed her out, carving a hole where her heart once was; she was consumed by want, until she died - and rose again. Her wrathful shade lashed against a world that had loved her, seeking warmth, seeking power, and finding none. Trying to reignite the cold cinder of her heart, she sucked the flame from the garda birds who had once been her faithful servants - and doomed them to her own fate.
The Ash-Queen is a dead and charred body, a skeleton black with the remnants of scorched flesh pulled taut over her eyeless skull. Even so, her voice has all the warmth and softness it had in life - only her laughter is eerie, sounding like wind through leafless branches. She wraps her mutilated flesh into great coats of thick fur and necklaces of teeth and fangs, as well as hundreds of talismans worn on many strings. She is surrounded by her entourage of fallen garda; these once-beautiful birds of fire are now clouds of blackest ash twisting as they try to contort themselves into the shape of a bird and always fall short - their touch drains warmth from the living and lights embers in their heart, but never enough to spark them back to life.
The Ash-Queen is a prince in the Underworld; she wields echoes of the sorcery she once knew, now cast as shadow and ash, and she feeds on the souls of the weaker dead to sustain her ever-hungry essence. But the nature of her life-smothering powers and her craving for figurative and literal fire lead her to the world of the living, and so she obsesses over controlling shadowlands to allow her passage back and forth. Having existed for long, she no longer hopes to one day find a remedy for her eternal wound; she feeds on warmth and life for the same reason any living thing feeds, because it sates the hunger for a time and brings her pleasure. To her own mind, she has petty lords of Creation as her vassals, paying her tribute in strong slaves and first-born children; in the view of Creation she is a forsaken monster haunting the night and appeased with human sacrifices. In a way, both are true. She is not an unkind mistress, and those sacrifices she deems worthy are risen as might ash-wraiths, living voids whose power is proportionate to the life they lost.
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Lexica
Persevere
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You know, thinking about it, the Dark Souls origin story is exalted as fuck. You've got Gwyn Lord of Sunlight and the other gods overthrowing the old rulers of the world, given great souls by a divine fire, and aided by the betrayal of one of the old rulers' own. And Seath the Scaleless is like an almost one for one likeness of Autocthon.
Plus, there's themes of decay in there too- sure fire and disparity were very good for those shambling things underground who would become gods and men, but it also definitely broke the world, and things seem to always progress towards an inevitable decay, only ever barely staved off by the greatest heroes of an age; and even that seems to be a futile effort as time passes- where once a single great soul could link the fire and cast back the dark, now five lords must sit five thrones to accomplish a fraction of that feat.
Plus, there's themes of decay in there too- sure fire and disparity were very good for those shambling things underground who would become gods and men, but it also definitely broke the world, and things seem to always progress towards an inevitable decay, only ever barely staved off by the greatest heroes of an age; and even that seems to be a futile effort as time passes- where once a single great soul could link the fire and cast back the dark, now five lords must sit five thrones to accomplish a fraction of that feat.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
My first problem coming up with the Broken Fire was "how do I make an analog to the First Flame that is not literally Exaltation," because that's basically what the "Souls of the Lords" were.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I like that concept, but I have more trouble making Evocation trees than other homebrew. I'll try my hand at it anyway; if you don't hear back from me assume I didn't succeed.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
How does this work with mundane Contacts and Allies?
That would be when the GM makes a florid gesture, smiles at the player, and then asks them "I don't know, Player. How are you going to anchor this spell in these mortals? Explain it to me. Are you going to tie it to their lifeforce, so they're going to slowly sicken and die? Are you just going to kill them to fuel it? Hey, doesn't that Solar manse you found a few sessions ago have a gorgeous sacrificial altar on it, for carving out hearts and offering them to the sun? Did I mention that by burning Backgrounds rather than just committing them, you can increase the power you get out of them?"
If the player can't explain how they're managing it... well, they can't manage it.
Sorcerers are encouraged to be mad sorcerous god-kings (or power-hungry sorcerer-viziers). Human sacrifice being very useful for getting power out of mortal backgrounds is part of that encouragement.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
mortals are good at exactly one thing, generating motes through prayer so perhaps having them pray exclusively to some sort of artifact taking inspiration from idolatry? Though that'll piss off the local gods.
That would be using the Cult background, not Contacts or Allies.
(Honestly, I would note out that very few mortals count as Ally 1. Ally 1 is "starting Exalt" ballpark in terms of usefulness.)
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
But wouldn't it be easier to just pick up some schmucks and sacrifice them? Actually that could be how they power it, by grabbing schmucks to sacrifice.
- Location
- Spain
Beautiful princesses count!
Human sacrifices of random smucks are "priced" as Followers.
They're an excellent way of getting necrotic essence, incidentally. So if you're wanting to practice necromancy and you don't have access to a native source of necromancy, just take your enemies as slaves and sacrifice them to fuel your dark magic. It's win-win, right? You win because you get to use necromancy, and you also win because you're killing your enemy. That's the best kind of win-win.
Yes, they do! It's a wonderful side-effect that the sacrifice of "valuable" people is worth more to an evil sorcerer than of mere peasants. Things that encourage evil sorcerers to kidnap the princess are setting up the right kind of incentive.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Yeah. If you've got Followers 1, it's much more profitable to define that as "a gang of thugs who grab human sacrifices for me" than "a chain-gang of human sacrifices".
Super cool. Though I note a distinct lack of "hideous goddamn bugs" in the aesthetics description for Crucible of Flesh.
As for the Souls of the Lords and Exaltation, well... to be honest, I'd love to run a game where players finally crack open the Jade Pleasure Dome and just find the literally burned-out husk of Sol Invictus, wasted away from age and indulgence and the lost fires of Exaltation, wanting only to die so that a new sun might be born from one of his children... provided, of course, they can prove themselves worthy of his spear.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This sounds very neat, and pretty cool, but I'd definitely have an easier time conceptualizing this if you could provide some mechanical examples of this in play.
Also: How do Spells work in this paradigm of Sorcery, are they eliminated in favor of this large scale "Working" system or are they still a thing?
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
What if you killed them in thematic ways, or sacrificed them to a paticular entity? Then could you 'flavor' the essence to something other than death?
Pretty sure that's what this was about:
- Location
- NYC
Yes, my table's had a few sessions with it. It's been great so far, ran pretty smoothly, and overall did pretty much everything we wanted. Some stuff will get a little bit lost in translation, but you can port the main stuff over extremely easily (the book has rules for playing... well, basically all of 2E's Exalted types via Godbound), and it's been super fun!
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
How do the different power tiers work for you?
How do you manage to make Terrestrials weaker individually than Celestials for example?
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hmm. Well, one way I might try and justify it - for a certain kind of spell or working - is by having my Contacts and Spies gather close-held secrets and shameful truths from the cities and towns they live in, sending them to me and working to reveal them publicly so that I can feed the bubbling flame of Sorcery with the antinomian sacrifice of blackmail material and information, taking the fallings-out and humiliations and conflicts that break out as a result as further fuel. Since they're all published, I can't use the information for my own ends - the secrets are committed to the effect by being destroyed.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
@EarthScorpion
Would Dragons of Another Color count as a source of underworld energies under your rewrite?
Mostly curious because that would be a cool use of the retainer merit in 3e (DoAC apprentice/battery!)
Would Dragons of Another Color count as a source of underworld energies under your rewrite?
Mostly curious because that would be a cool use of the retainer merit in 3e (DoAC apprentice/battery!)
They're probably just plain out gone. There's no need for there to be special "Necromancer Dragonblooded" when any DB can practice "necromancy" if provided with a source of necrotic essence to work with. And the idea of a DB who runs off necrotic essence rather than (Elemental) essence is... problematic.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Oh, thats a shame. I quite liked the idea of them (though admittedly I can see where they'd be problematic in your rewrite).
Dunno, I've always thought that DoAC and Forest Witches were the coolest things about Dragon Blooded, them exceeding their original specifications like the other exalted did.
- Location
- NYC
It has them: the dev did pretty fun conversion for the big parts of Exalted (martial arts as distinct things, sorcery, splats as Godbound types) that's available in the backer pdf.
In general, the Exalt conversions are a bit weaker than Godbound, or at least, have substantially more constraints. The DB conversion is notably less powerful than the other conversions (limits on how they can spend Dominion, they can't buy Greater Gifts until level 6, and even then only in their Caste Word, and they don't get to do Miracles outside of their Caste powers). It works, though. It works well.