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Memoirs of a Human Flashlight [Exalted/Worm]

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Mutton said:
Screw the Exalted crossover, you've just invented Worm Pokemon
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Thinking about it, the Pokemon approach makes it even easier.

Task bind each demon to act as a sidekick/bodyguard to an established hero, and adjust shticks as necessary to have at least a partial thematic connection. This way the issue of thematic distinctiveness limiting the number of viable Cults mostly goes away, because capes tend to be awfully distinctive and some of that'll rub off when it comes to cult-of-personality treatments of the weird sidekicks.

The trouble would be in managing Limit conditions and the quirks of behavior of a decentralized set of demons. It would be important to carefully screen the capes involved and make sure they very clearly understand how to handle those psychological distinctions and alien-behavior qualities.
Robotninja said:
I bet they would start acting differently, too. To get a larger fanbase. They cannot use brute force, or they get smashed. So they have to use cunning to appeal to humans. A 1st circles idea of what humans like and want is bound to be hilarious.
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It's important to keep in mind that a lot of demon mindsets are at tangents to normal human psychology. For example, agatae, horse-sized crystal wasps, all have wild mood swings, vicious jealousy of other mounts, and, despite being almost superhumanly intelligent, find no purpose in life greater than bearing a rider.

Also, the idea that Exalted demons would rely on "brute force" by default when it comes to interacting with humans is a bit silly. There are plenty of them that are bizarre but beautiful, social, empathic, and very intelligent, and who would be entirely happy to get along without being stuck in the middle of a cosmic cycle of eternal trauma and abuse.
 
this latest tangent you have gone on, with the devas, is a thing of beauty. Thank you so much for posting it, especially the sailor sesselja and worm pokemon comments.
 
For today's episode of Iron Chef, the secret ingredient is: sidesteps.
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I actually clapped when I read this line. Sure, it didn't work, but it was awesome. The rest of the fight was even better!

She apparently does have Immanent Solar Glory given how she recovered motes by doing paperwork, but maybe that's something different. I guess it'll be clarified once Taylor herself finally nails down how she can recover essence (other than by surfing on Glory Girl and being generally awesome, that is)

The Final Destination joke made me laugh out loud, that was a great idea.
 
tahu1809 said:
What part is that in?
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Assuming you are talking about the Immanent Solar Glory thing:
Golden Lark said:
Excellence 2.1.1

[Lightshow is looking at Glenn's survey on the various costume ideas]

I found myself feeling annoyed and jealous, and more than a bit disappointed in humanity as a whole- then I almost threw the stack of papers down when my power kicked in and I understood.

Leaving aside how my power activated just now despite the fact I was pretty sure I was empty, I knew what Glenn was getting at.
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It's definitely not a sure thing, but recovering essence through paperwork is a big aspect of this power and it appears to be wht happened here. It might be left over from an older stunt or something else.
 
Interesting....

Now, before you all start getting up in arms over my necromancy:

1. Last post was on 9/28, I'm posting on 10/10, or barely two weeks old.

2. I have a valid point or two to make:




Here goes:

1. Taylor's strength seems to be a jack of all trades, master of none, she's got relatively low ratings in the most common powersets, but nothing too fancy. Thing is though, that's also a weakness, because it means she can't really put out as much force as a dedicated expert. Or in layman's terms, in a head on fight against someone with higher ratings, she'll lose.

2. As a result of that though, she seems to be using her powers WELL. She deconstructed GG's combat tactics during their first sparring technique and noticed that her foe relied more on experience against unpowered foes and a bit of awe, I'd say. Then she exploited it, IIRC. If she can repeat that against Uber and Leet, then she'll be doing fairly solid.

3. Therefore, I recommend she learn Krav Maga, AKA, Israeli Martial art of winning at all costs. Just so she learns how to fight intelligently with her abilities.

4. The MAVVG thing reeks of a setup, on a few accounts:

A. A grand a head? Does not make any form of sense whatsoever. Unless they're catering to a really damn rich faction of people, or planned for surprise visitors.

B. Uber and Leet. Look, you don't do shit like this in a town with known Video Game villains. Especially if you go to the trouble of asking for Cape backup to be on hand.

C. Then we have the drones being on hand. That alone would be unusual, but add in the other factors....

Which leads me to think that this was a setup on the PRT/MAVVG's parts:

The PRT get to test out Lightshow's abilities in combat against fairly easy foes, with backup readily on hand, while the MAVVG get to be vindicated and free publicity.
 
Night_stalker said:
3. Therefore, I recommend she learn Krav Maga, AKA, Israeli Martial art of winning at all costs. Just so she learns how to fight intelligently with her abilities.
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No. If she's going to study a martial art style, it should be Fist of the Daystar Style and nothing else. It is worlds better than any silly mortal martial art made for weak and limited flesh and devoid of Essence.
Night_stalker said:
4. The MAVVG thing reeks of a setup, on a few accounts:
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Yes, this has already been mentionned. Coming all the way to the one town with video games themed villains to make a stand against video games? That was obviously a move made to get U&L to show up and support their point about video games causing violence.

The money isn't particularly surprising when you are hiring a celebrity like Glory Girl.
The drone are completely normal, and not even remotely unusual. They've been part of Kid Win's bag of tricks since the beginning of this story, and what could be more interesting to follow than Lightshow? She's the showiest around. Also, Kid Win isn't the PRT's pawn, if they wanted to manipulate Taylor like that they wouldn't need to go through him.
 
Night_stalker said:
3. Therefore, I recommend she learn Krav Maga, AKA, Israeli Martial art of winning at all costs. Just so she learns how to fight intelligently with her abilities.
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Taylor: "Let's see, on one hand I have a brutal style of fighting designed by military forces and meant to allow you to win a fight decisively against enemy combatants and would let me really hurt people. On the other hand, I have a martial art forged at the dawning of the world, designed by the divine champions of the most powerful god ever born and meant to defeat the creators of the world and would let me judo flip Behemoth. Yeah.....I'm gonna go for Fist of Daystar."
 
Sojiko said:
No. If she's going to study a martial art style, it should be Fist of the Daystar Style and nothing else. It is worlds better than any silly mortal martial art made for weak and limited flesh and devoid of Essence.

Yes, this has already been mentionned. Coming all the way to the one town with video games themed villains to make a stand against video games? That was obviously a move made to get U&L to show up and support their point about video games causing violence.

The money isn't particularly surprising when you are hiring a celebrity like Glory Girl.
The drone are completely normal, and not even remotely unusual. They've been part of Kid Win's bag of tricks since the beginning of this story, and what could be more interesting to follow than Lightshow? She's the showiest around. Also, Kid Win isn't the PRT's pawn, if they wanted to manipulate Taylor like that they wouldn't need to go through him.
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Ah, forgot about the whole Exalted thing.

Still, we're talking a grand per head. Unless you're advertising to millionaires, you ain't getting a lot of people showing up, and even with GG getting involved, who shouldn't be charging cash to protect them...

And sorry about retreading lost ground, I found this on the TV Tropes fanfic rec page, skimmed the updates, then with lag coming, didn't want to get bogged down following the discussion.

And regarding the drones, I'm probably being overparanoid, but something worries me about them. Don't ask for a explanation though.
 
Night_stalker said:
Still, we're talking a grand per head. Unless you're advertising to millionaires, you ain't getting a lot of people showing up, and even with GG getting involved, who shouldn't be charging cash to protect them...
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They are only paying 2 grand for superpowered security and celebrity appearances in one, frankly if anything they are under payed. Celebrity appearances are typically orders of magnitude more costly than that. If we assume it lasts 8 hours with two of them that is 16 working hours so they are being paid 2000/16=125 per hour. That is a lot by most peoples standards but keep in mind we are talking about superpowered celebrities that can take out threats that could defeat any amount of normal security. If we assume a rented security guard costs 25/hr then they are being given 5 normal guards with of pay which I would say they are worth as security not counting their role as celebrities and status symbols and the subtle implication that superheroes back their cause.
B.B. Rain said:
....Can she actually learn Fist of Daystar? I mean, IIRC, she doesn't seem to have a Creation-denizen and/or Past Life Memories to teach her...

If she can't learn FoD or another Exalted style, then she should look at Krav Maga, and maybe other local styles to at least start on something, and maybe she'll start feeling her way towards the instinctual Solar Hero Style while she's at it.

If she can learn FoD, on the other hand, then sure, go ahead and focus on the Essence-powered super martial art...And maybe learn Krav Maga anyway, taking advantage of super-Solar learning capabilities plus the comparative simplicity of a mortal Earth martial art, so she has something to fall back on when she'd rather use her Essence for something else.
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FoD is just the fancy name for the martial arts style solars instinctually learn as a part of their native charmset. It's scene long charms and stance last the entire fight and put her well beyond mortal limits.

Krav Magna is the perfect style to get Taylor kicked out of the wards and/or arrested. It if focuses on cruel crippling attacks to win. Fine for soldiers on the battlefield but for superpowered cops it is a blatant abuse of power. Not to mention the dirty tricks it relies on will straight out fail against many capes, and is excessive force on the rest. Why do you want Taylor to be known as an sadist eye gouger?
 
Oh god, Krav Maga fetishists. Just what this thread needed.

Yes, Taylor can learn Solar Hero/Fist of the Daystar Charms without a tutor. They're her native Martial Arts Charms.
 
LastChronicler said:
Now that this thread is active again, I'd like to take a moment to wonder about how Taylor's academic life is going to be handled. I don't know what Taylor's current feelings on Winslow High are now that Sophia won't be around, but she might not want to go back and have to deal with Emma and the rest of her friends. Particularly since her classmates are going to notice her dramatically different appearance, and probably draw the right conclusion from it.

On the other hand, the Wards just got a famous new recruit, so having a new girl who could fit the costume suddenly transfer to Arcadia wouldn't exactly be inconspicuous.

Home-schooling?
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Arcadia might be her best bet.

That is, after some time off with tutors at the PRT base.

Reminds me, how is Emma doing?
 
Catty Nebulart said:
She can also create them if she really wants to, though that takes a bit of extra time. What she can't learn without a sifu is sidy martial arts.
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The word "Can't" gets a little fuzzy around Solars. Can't do it before essence 7+ certainly though. So it's highly unlikely to happen in this story.
 
cyberswordsmen said:
Krav Magna is the perfect style to get Taylor kicked out of the wards and/or arrested. It if focuses on cruel crippling attacks to win. Fine for soldiers on the battlefield but for superpowered cops it is a blatant abuse of power. Not to mention the dirty tricks it relies on will straight out fail against many capes, and is excessive force on the rest. Why do you want Taylor to be known as an sadist eye gouger?
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Actually Krav Maga has been in part designed for non-lethal take down. After all if they want to go for the kill, the soldiers have knives which are going to do the job much better. So she could use it without getting herself thrown out of the ward (even if it isn't the best choice given that it is quite brutal).

Fundamentally Krav Maga is about taking out the opponent hard and fast. Which happens to be precisely what Fist of the Daystar is all about as well. And it is extremely tough to beat a Celestial Martial Art at what it sets out to do, so there are almost no styles anywhere that can rival FotD when it comes to straightforward and take downs (including SMAs) ... but when you learn the style as Solar Charms (which are much more powerful than mere CMAs), there's just no competing.
So Krav Maga is the wrong way to go because what little she could use is trying to do the same thing as her natural ability, except without being designed for her power (or using power at all).

If she were to learn a mundane style, something like Aikido would be much more likely to be useful.
 
horngeek said:
I thought this was a hard limit- a bit like how even though Eclipse Castes can learn Charms of other Exalted types, they can't invent said Charms.
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Actually they can invent non Solar Charms. It is very difficult and takes at least Essence 6, but they can do it.
horngeek said:
It... might be possible for a Solar to learm SMA by Past Life, but I don't think so. Certainly not otherwise.
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I'm pretty sure that this is completely beyond them. Unless they turn themselves into an Akuma, of course.

But given how little SMAs have to offer Solars, I'm going to go with "totally not worth it".
 
I don't know why we were even having this conversation.

Is it a mundane martial art? Then it falls under MA5 with maybe taking specialty dots in it. It fundamentally doesn't matter if you have Aikido +3, Krav Maga +3, Silat +3, Tae Kwon Do +3, whatever.
 
horngeek said:
I thought this was a hard limit- a bit like how even though Eclipse Castes can learn Charms of other Exalted types, they can't invent said Charms.

It... might be possible for a Solar to learm SMA by Past Life, but I don't think so. Certainly not otherwise.
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Actually, they can invent charms of other exalt types. They need the higher of essence 7, or the minimum essence of the charm to be invented + 4. (so essence 9 to invent an essence 5 SMA charm.)
 
darthdavid said:
From a pure crunch perspective this is true. This is a story though, not a game. Fluff/narrative matters here, not dice.
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Then she should not be wasting her time with mundane martial arts anyway and just learn whatever 'mortal' style she has shard access to.

Shit, learning Snake style would be preferable to anything from Earth. :p
 
darthdavid said:
I'm not saying she should be learning mundane martial arts, Celestial or even Terrestrial styles are clearly superior. I'm just saying that every mundane MA stye all falling under one ability is a simplification for the purposes of gameplay and that that shouldn't have any impact on a story.
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Yes, and what I am saying in response to that is that she shouldn't waste her time finding a teacher or whatever for Earth based styles. She can already learn the mundane Creation martial arts and from a story perspective, even those will flow better into whatever TMA/CMA she learns.
 
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