Remove ads

Glorious Shotgun Princess (ME/Exalted) Thread #2

Reader mode
Also, remember, the vast majority of gods aren't immune to Arcane Fate.

So Sidereals? They don't remember specific Sidereals. What they remember are the faceless, not-real people Sidereals make up under Resplendent Destinies, and whenever they talk to a Sidereal, they know that isn't what the Sidereal really looks like, and any Sidereal they talk to could be anyone else.

To most Celestial gods? Sidereals are the fucking Men in Black. Complete with making gods who cross them disappear. And Sidereals do and will make gods who cross them disappear, sometimes legally, and sometimes they're just... never seen again.
 
Synapse said:
Eh, too much emphasis on why sidereals are scary and hated. Their work maintaining the world running smooth does help things around, you know? It's just that almost no god is intersted in that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And Incubators work hard and steady to stave off the heat death of the entire universe.
Doesn't make Kyubey any better liked, does it?
 
Yeah? I don't think it was ever debated that the Sidereals do good, necessary work that keeps the universe ticking over as it's meant to.

That doesn't change the fact that to 99% of gods in Yu Shan (to say nothing of the Terrestrial Courts), they're the creepy, scary Men in Black whose origins are built on "killing things even more immortal than us" and who rather resemble chained wolverines that you can never be sure won't turn on you and rip your throat out.

After all. They've already engineered the fall of one Age, and that had no small share of casualties among the gods whose domains rested on the heights of the First Age. See the Shogun of Artificial Flight for a telling example of the type. That it saved All That Is from near-certain destruction at the hands of madmen is probably scant consolation to those (many) gods who lost both status and personal power in the Usurpation. Seeing the weakened Age that emerged get hit by the Twin Cataclysms, which killed nine in ten immortal gods hit with them and left most of the remainder shell-shocked veterans who'd seen all their friends of millennia past die, did not help the situation notably.
 
Synapse said:
No, it doesn't, but the QBs aren't the sidereals. Sids have a thankless, hard job, and it's no surprise if they do some serious crap on the way. It's rather inevitable. But the sidereals are human, with all that entails, bad and good. They are not a nearly-machinelike hive mind whose sole purpose in existence is to keep things existing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And gods outside the Bureau of Destiny can't really see that, because of Arcane Fate. Sure, with willpower you can remember that they exist, but without regular personal interactions, all most Celestial gods will remember is;

1) Sidereals exist, and can murder gods

2) Sidereals could be any human.

3) Sidereals are jerks who tell Dragonblooded to beat us up when we try to have Creation run for the benefit of the gods.

4) If you fuck with the Sidereals in any major way, the Bureau of Destiny fucks you back.

5) Fuckin' Sidereals.

Which is going to be an issue for Kal, because he's now in Creation and now operating under Arcane Fate. And doesn't know how to make Resplendent Destinies. He can walk through a town, and no one will remember him once he's gone. Though, admittedly, that might happen anyway because it's somewhat harder to remember the "somewhat Wyld mutated human" when there's a giant floaty eyeball and a blonde girl who's also a wind who ran through a funeral and stole all the bodies.
 
Bahumat said:
So as far as I understand it from ES's description, despite being tied to the Design and not the Loom, Kal is still classed as being under Creation's Fate, not as a being outside Fate? Interesting.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The Loom is designed to grab anything it can which goes into its area of influence, and go "OM NOM NOM NOW I CONTROL YOUR CAUSALITY". Like, that's the explicit design purpose of it. It specifically exists to go "FUCK YOU FAIRIES! GRAVITY IS DOWN" and force them to listen and have to actively spend motes to fly rather than just telling a story about how they're walking on clouds. And the Loom is the product of multiple Primordials, unlike the Design, so it's more robust and handles out-of-the-ordinary situations much better - look at how Loom Glitches produce minor causality quirks, while Design glitches get Blighted. Oh, certainly, in perfect conditions the Design might work better, but as soon as things go wrong you want the Loom.

But, yeah. The Loom absorbs everything it can which enters its area of influence. First Circles, ghosts, Raksha, and so on; all of them get absorbed into the Loom once they interact with things in Creation. Second and Third Circles don't, because they're a direct part of a Primordial [1], and Green Sun Princes are likewise baby Primordial-things and so maintain their own Fate (and Alchemicals are made in Autocthonia and through Clarity hooked up to Autocthon, but they can also transfer to the Loom), but all other Exalts are in Fate by default.

And Kal is a Sidereal. The Chosen of Fate.

Metaphyically, the Loom probably glomped Kal and went "Old buddy! You're back!" as soon as he stepped into Creation.

[1] Kamila might also run by default off Adorjan's Mythos, as her behemoth-daughter, which means that the pattern spiders will start complaining about bodies going missing, but Autobot will have been Loom-glomped as a god.
 
DBs being dangerous "only in groups" is a position held by the occasional combat-optimised Essence 5 Solaroid Exalt.

To gods? Average terrestrial gods, at that?

Dragonblooded are the Immaculate monks that turn up suddenly when you've just got your region working as you like it, punch you in the face, casually backhand all of your attempts to fight back out of the way, take away all of your shinies and prayer, and force you to do your fucking job again.

Oh, and they can murder you. Gods are used to being immortal. They do not react well to things that can murder them and make it stick. And when the Immaculate Cult has a policy of "if you fight to permanently kill us, we'll fight to permanently kill you... oh, what's that? You mean our Enlightened Mortal monks and Dragonblooded die permanently when you kill them normally, and don't come back like gods do? Well, I guess that's a reason for you to not to resist arrest, then", it makes for rather unpleasant relations as far as those Dragonblooded in the Immaculate Cult go.

More generally, a relatively experienced Dragonblooded who's playing smart can present a serious challenge to even a moderately experienced Solar, especially if the former is combat-focused and the latter is not. And gods, by and large, are not combat-focused. Not even war gods. They're bureaucrats before they're anything else, and while they have Charms that they can use to fight, they're not made to fight with.

However, Terrestrials not in the Immaculate Cult can be recruited. And having Dragonblooded working for you is a sweet, sweet deal. Half-castes and constructs and spirit-blooded and golems and engineered races and Tiger Warriors are all basically "half-price Dragonblooded knock-offs" as far as followers go, you cannot beat the Terrestrial Exaltation for effectiveness as troops, and just one Dragonblood working for a god represents a very powerful piece that god has on the board, with which they stand a much better chance of getting increased amounts of worship, respect and power.

To a god, then, a single Terrestrial Exalt is a combination of serious potential threat, valuable potential asset, and disturbing chaotic factor to account for in their plans. Some will see them as something to be exploited, some will see them as something to be feared, most will see them as something that must be accounted for in any plans or schemes they have going on.

But believe me, a single Terrestrial Exalt is a very, very dangerous and powerful player on the board. It is only next to those of the Celestial and Solaroid tiers that they seem less potent - and "seeming" is never a good thing to base your expectations on. Grouping them together only makes them more deadly and terrifying - they are plenty scary on their own.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top