I have to believe you already had this much of the story written, because the only other explanation for this speed plus amazing quality is a Writing Exultation.
Last edited:
Reincarnation: May Come with Teething Problems (Exalted)
- Thread starter drakensis
- Start date
- Novel Fantasy
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
Well, that Exaltation story is going to give them Cool Points for life. Why did you exalt Udano? Oh, I exalted because I wouldn't let her win the fight. Why did you exalt Erika? I exalted because I wouldn't let Udano win the fight despite exalting in the middle of it!
Then there's the element of embarrassment in it to make it so it's not just dragging to the others. Udano: I also lost the fight because I didn't stop when the Sifu called it, so another student had to throw me out of the room after I took out the Side when he tried to stop the fight. Out of the room and thrown into the fishpond at that. Erika: You may have had to forfeit the fight, but at least you were thrown into the pond. I was fish-slapped in the face to make me stumble backwards into the pond!
Then there's the element of embarrassment in it to make it so it's not just dragging to the others. Udano: I also lost the fight because I didn't stop when the Sifu called it, so another student had to throw me out of the room after I took out the Side when he tried to stop the fight. Out of the room and thrown into the fishpond at that. Erika: You may have had to forfeit the fight, but at least you were thrown into the pond. I was fish-slapped in the face to make me stumble backwards into the pond!
Last edited:
- Location
- Probably at sea
Cathak Erika is Fire-aspected, breaking no stereotypes, but Udano is another rarity in the Tepet household. At least he won't feel awkward about it with Alina also being Earth and so obviously self-confident. Although Lyta might well feel a bit awkward now that one of her lackeys is a Prince of the Earth and she isn't.
Good to see Alina getting an early start on crafting excellence, even if its just Craft (Water) for now.
Good to see Alina getting an early start on crafting excellence, even if its just Craft (Water) for now.
This is getting me the vibes of the birth of a supervillainess backstory with the chekov's gun of the arrogant young mistress Lyta and foreshadowing of a solar exaltation (fated) and huge inferiority complex she's going to be operating under now that all of her 'allies' and rivals are leaving her behind.
Honestly, Alina is just being slightly reckless in not manipulating that girl to be better considering that she suspects she'll exalt as a bad solar.
Honestly, Alina is just being slightly reckless in not manipulating that girl to be better considering that she suspects she'll exalt as a bad solar.
Last edited:
*chef's kiss* You know a story is good when you end up reading every chapter twice!
Not just her possible marriage, but people are going to be looking into her mother's background, which could set off the Chekhov's Gun of Alina's Ragara heritage. Hell, imagine if the elders try to betroth her to one of Ragara Nova's sons!
Edit:
Jug?
Why do I get the feeling the family is already being barraged with offers for Alina's hand? Prevously I said I thought I remembered a terrestrial exalting at six, but I could only find references to that on fan wikis in regards to V'neef. If the Leedal at eight was the youngest that makes Alina the current record holder and her seemingly extraordinarily pure bloodline a subject of great interest to many.
Not just her possible marriage, but people are going to be looking into her mother's background, which could set off the Chekhov's Gun of Alina's Ragara heritage. Hell, imagine if the elders try to betroth her to one of Ragara Nova's sons!
Also, can I just say that I'm amused at the former male with a playboy reputation being the most interested in traditionally feminine skills out of her female peers? Cause I am
Edit:
Pond?
Last edited:
- Location
- Elsewhere
"Behold, an ancient artifact of a bygone Era!"
*Gasp* "Is that a... chair!?"
"Yes! No longer will we get our pants dirty sitting on floors! See how all the legs are even on the floor with no wobble at all!"
- Location
- Earth: Universe Meta - 1
Personally , I loved the whole part where people don't realize that Alina is already essence 3. To be fair, its insane, and breaks all the records.
Also, those two are super lucky they have a skilled Exalted there to stop them. I doubt the other kids are skilled enough to pull something like what she did off.
Also, those two are super lucky they have a skilled Exalted there to stop them. I doubt the other kids are skilled enough to pull something like what she did off.
Based on this bit, I think Iyuki at least realises that Alina is further along than reasonable.
I would guess she's been coaching Alina. Alina probably wouldn't bet Essence 3, but if told, she'd probably say something like "I really should've expected that".
- Location
- Earth: Universe Meta - 1
Nah, I could see them ending up unlocking essence 5. Only to then realize what they've done. Last chapter stated that most younger Terrestrial Exalted stop at essence 2, so she's already well beyond people several times her age.
Remember, this is someone known as the Bookworm, who's explicitly known for cheating. Plus, she used to know gods and has future knowledge. There's plenty of them she could bribe. Oh, and she ran with Solars. If fics have taught me anything, those don't dream small.
Well, that would be a con and a half, because honestly, essence is doylistically a GM tool to limit the biggatons, so higher levels are purposefully set to 'fulfill a character defining motivation' (ie: finish a chronicle) or 'spend 100 years as a hermit' (ie:retire from the fucking game to be a NPC).
Mechanically going 'do this and that to' to get bigger biggatons like the underage-drugs episode isn't supposed to work in higher essence levels, so she needs a 'worthy challenge' to fulfill just to get essence 4, and conning her family is not going to cut it.
Maybe smuggle Lyta into the hands of the gold faction/lunars or whatever after solar exaltation would work. Or first getting sorcery back as a motivation and then smuggling Lyta for the full 5.
Currently there are no or few signs of a 'character defining motivation'. Well the character is supposed to have been sort of gold faction adjacent, so there is that but that's all, no real goals yet.
Besides grinding the craft(cookie) and martial arts excellencies ofc.
Mechanically going 'do this and that to' to get bigger biggatons like the underage-drugs episode isn't supposed to work in higher essence levels, so she needs a 'worthy challenge' to fulfill just to get essence 4, and conning her family is not going to cut it.
Maybe smuggle Lyta into the hands of the gold faction/lunars or whatever after solar exaltation would work. Or first getting sorcery back as a motivation and then smuggling Lyta for the full 5.
Currently there are no or few signs of a 'character defining motivation'. Well the character is supposed to have been sort of gold faction adjacent, so there is that but that's all, no real goals yet.
Besides grinding the craft(cookie) and martial arts excellencies ofc.
Last edited:
Critian Caceorte
Currently Suffering from Space-Time Narcolepsy
- Location
- Washington State
Depends on the snobbery of the family in charge of the school. As a general rule, it's socially rude to not grant extra pay to instructors that have to deal with Exalting kids, but it's not law. Still, if an instructor is a good instructor, you still want to keep them around, so yeah, hazard pay is a likely thing.
The Froggy Ninja
The Blade Will Never Die
Don't forget the Dragon Kings.
I wonder if she knows about Taru Han. That's some high quality blackmail. Or just a good way to get in with Shining Barrator and set up the Gold Faction to get Lytek as branch head again.
You only need to meditate in an area that aligns with your Essence and only for a few months. She doesn't have full months to meditate, but training time can be split up and Lord's Crossing has absolute shitloads of Earth Manses. She can probably justify access to a one or two dot manse, and even with an average of an hour of meditation per day, it'll take less than a year and a half to hit E4 and a little less than two years to hit E5. That gives her four seasons to convince someone to let her squat in their country house on weekends for three hours of meditation if she wants to max out before primary school ends.
Last edited:
Yeah, that's in the 'it's not going to happen' folder. First because that's the kind of blatant munchkin technicality that a good GM would fall on like a pile of bricks, second because it doesn't advance narrative.
Honestly, it's things like that that discourage me from participating in quests where the players can 'choose' to train, instead of getting training as a reward for narrative.
You could potentially structure some narrative tension around 'let's get swole guys, let me mooch off your elemental manse and i'll teach you 10 simple ways to raise essence' and their families finding out and politics happening. But it's not exactly good narrative.
Honestly, it's things like that that discourage me from participating in quests where the players can 'choose' to train, instead of getting training as a reward for narrative.
You could potentially structure some narrative tension around 'let's get swole guys, let me mooch off your elemental manse and i'll teach you 10 simple ways to raise essence' and their families finding out and politics happening. But it's not exactly good narrative.
Last edited:
Eh, in the end it's about having fun. If you want to run a high powered game and everybody is fine with it, then it's a perfectly fine method of doing things.
By the same token, whether it works here depends on what story drakensis wants to write. If it's about preventing the collective awful shit waiting in the wings and fixing up creation in general, then moving her essence up quickly can make sense, because to actually do something at that scale it's kind of necessary. No matter what essence she's at, there'll be plenty of things capable of kicking her ass. As a terrestial, she's the underdog pretty much by default when dealing with the high-powered stuff like celestials or 2nd/3rd cycle demons.
Incidentally, that age restriction on maximum essence? There's a good chance she gets to count the Bookwyrm too.
It's not gonna happen, but the mental image of someone with essence sight (can't remember which charms do that right now) coming across a 12 year old girl at Essence 6 and being very confused amuses me a lot.
Wouldn't they immediately suspect possession?
It's not 'impossible' like the truth (time travel and reincarnation), so it'd be pretty much deductive reasoning.
So let's imagine that indeed happens, E6 superstar 12 year old dragonblooded. Suddenly all her very potent enemies and 'allies' have demon-y and bronze-faction-y and anathema-ny questions to ask.
It's not 'impossible' like the truth (time travel and reincarnation), so it'd be pretty much deductive reasoning.
So let's imagine that indeed happens, E6 superstar 12 year old dragonblooded. Suddenly all her very potent enemies and 'allies' have demon-y and bronze-faction-y and anathema-ny questions to ask.
Last edited:
Well, yeah, either that or a disguise charm. That's how it would go down realistically. But I frankly doubt we'd see that in the first place, so it's a funny mental image and doesn't have to be realistic.
Last edited:
I mean it could happen... when she's running around with a Solar circle again and tells them shit's fucked and the world's going to end and is blacklisted as traitor to the realm.
It would 'just' require the upending of nearly all the relationships on the realm-side and a transition to heroic quest story instead of young masters politics.
Being too cool even with a perfect cover is probably not quite as suicidal as it would be in other places like the world of darkness, but it's still pretty bad. Superpower political factions man.
It would 'just' require the upending of nearly all the relationships on the realm-side and a transition to heroic quest story instead of young masters politics.
Being too cool even with a perfect cover is probably not quite as suicidal as it would be in other places like the world of darkness, but it's still pretty bad. Superpower political factions man.
Last edited:
Alina knows three ways to reach essence 6. All have the same first step: reach essence 5.
For the purposes of the fic, I'm going with the age limit for higher essence levels being that you need a certain amount of metaphysical 'weight' and this takes time to accrue.
So the simplest path is simply wait until she's a century old and then meditate upon her essence until she reaches essence 6. This would take until RY 850.
The second plan would involve convincing a god or other spirit to confer a permanent increase to her essence. While the game rules don't seem to rule it out, I don't think it's reasonable for a spirit to be able to confer a higher essence level than they already have, so it would require a significant favour from a major power. (This is how the Bookwyrm made the jump, but the specific circumstances were... unusual, to say the least, and it's not likely Alina could benefit from them).
The third would be the method of breaking the age barrier that the Bookwyrm used to move up from Essence 6: learn (devise, but she has the benefit that her past life has already done that) a custom charm that expressly negates that limit. The Bookwyrm's charm is possible for an Essence 5 Dragonblood to learn... but what it does is replace the age limit with a limit based on the number of their living descendants (it's a dynasty charm that essentially 'borrows' the metaphysical weight of the descendants in lieu of aging into it). And the minimum number of descendants to reach Essence 6 is six hundred and fifty-one.
It would be difficult for Alina to have that many children - or any children - at any point in the near future at all, much less without drawing quite a lot of attention. She's not physically mature enough, for one thing. And Dragonblooded women have year long pregnancies, with noted health issues if they have too many children in too short a span of time. It's usually recommended for Dragonblooded women to have no more than one pregnancy every five years or so and they have excellent birth control methods.
This doesn't rule out potentially coming up with another cheat, but she's got no real reason to worry about it until she reaches the final mortal plateau anyway. The risk she ran just getting to Essence 2 was something of a warning against being too reckless, and as an Earth-aspect she tends naturally towards being methodical anyway. There are plenty of other things she can do to improve herself other than pushing into the immortal courts of essence mastery, at least right now.
For the purposes of the fic, I'm going with the age limit for higher essence levels being that you need a certain amount of metaphysical 'weight' and this takes time to accrue.
So the simplest path is simply wait until she's a century old and then meditate upon her essence until she reaches essence 6. This would take until RY 850.
The second plan would involve convincing a god or other spirit to confer a permanent increase to her essence. While the game rules don't seem to rule it out, I don't think it's reasonable for a spirit to be able to confer a higher essence level than they already have, so it would require a significant favour from a major power. (This is how the Bookwyrm made the jump, but the specific circumstances were... unusual, to say the least, and it's not likely Alina could benefit from them).
The third would be the method of breaking the age barrier that the Bookwyrm used to move up from Essence 6: learn (devise, but she has the benefit that her past life has already done that) a custom charm that expressly negates that limit. The Bookwyrm's charm is possible for an Essence 5 Dragonblood to learn... but what it does is replace the age limit with a limit based on the number of their living descendants (it's a dynasty charm that essentially 'borrows' the metaphysical weight of the descendants in lieu of aging into it). And the minimum number of descendants to reach Essence 6 is six hundred and fifty-one.
It would be difficult for Alina to have that many children - or any children - at any point in the near future at all, much less without drawing quite a lot of attention. She's not physically mature enough, for one thing. And Dragonblooded women have year long pregnancies, with noted health issues if they have too many children in too short a span of time. It's usually recommended for Dragonblooded women to have no more than one pregnancy every five years or so and they have excellent birth control methods.
This doesn't rule out potentially coming up with another cheat, but she's got no real reason to worry about it until she reaches the final mortal plateau anyway. The risk she ran just getting to Essence 2 was something of a warning against being too reckless, and as an Earth-aspect she tends naturally towards being methodical anyway. There are plenty of other things she can do to improve herself other than pushing into the immortal courts of essence mastery, at least right now.
- Location
- A place
what is a bookwyrm? is it on the wiki?
The Froggy Ninja
The Blade Will Never Die
Downtime can last years depending on the game style and access to compatible areas for essence training is super easy for Dragonblooded, especially on the Blessed Isle.
It was the MC's title in their past life. A bookish dragon.
I'd be surprised if no Deeb ever came up with a sex swap spell or charm for exactly that reason. Or even just an immaculate conception charm that lets you "father" a child with only your essence, no physical requirements required.
I suppose if she has a son she could raise them to be a playboy. That pushes it out a generation but is still viable... but potentially too manipulative to do to her own child.
That would work too.
Honestly, the value of her knowledge of which shitstorms are going to strike Creation, where and when, is orders of magnitude greater than her value as a face puncher could ever be. She needs to get into a social position where her advice will be followed and being a rising star in House Tepet and the Realm seems like a good path to being able to send entire armies of face punchers to the right time and place.
If these existed, the canonical gender dynamics in Dragon-Blooded society wouldn't. Hence they either don't exist, or they have some highly undesirable side effects.
Last edited:
Exalted has lots of those. There's a certain Water-Aspect Hearthstone...
Anyway; the problem there is really more the political and social, plus the possibility that reincarnation or not Alina might not find the execution of that strategy pleasant.
- Location
- Elsewhere
Well there's your problem.
Don't limit yourself to trivialities like linear counting.
You're Exalted!