Exalted

[bleak hazel]

that's silly

waiving that if it ever comes up

[velvet raft]

I guess this is oriented towards normal ballistae? But yes this charm is a whole lotta "why is this here"

[vestal dew]

There is a part of me that loves the idea of pulling out an integrated mega buster-esque implosion bow for a big-letter attack.

[limpid badge]

abyssals get war-ghosts who are, in my head, not dissimilar to the mortek guard in that fuck i don't wanna have to deal with a legion of those fuckers are you kidding

hi also im very late to that convo hiiii hiii

[bleak hazel]

yeah, individual war ghosts aren't anything to write home about but when you have a whole army of them leading squads of zombies it becomes very mean

Abyssal War is really spicy, if you carefully bite around the Solar legacies that remove the strategic system from the game it's probably my favourite War tree

has some nice Walker in Darkness theming

[limpid badge]

oh i should go dig into that...

BH has to become a mercenary captain doesn't she 😇

[bleak hazel]

issuing orders is exclusive with attacking, but there's some neat "defend the captain!" tech in there and various other stuff for training up independent cool troops

that or you just beeline to the one that resurrects everything you kill as a zombie, although I think that might be mutually exclusive with the Black Blade's statuary

[limpid badge]

it is!

i was looking at the defend the captain stuff tho yeah

something about summoning her horse and riding into a squad because she's Tired of Fighting You and needs to wake her sword up feels right

[bleak hazel]

that particular one is behind two Order charms, but giving orders to the Khan's horse archers while out of range seems like a reasonable use of actions

[limpid badge]

yeah honestly

Lookin at em it seems all good if bh just picks those up and makes it her War Suite

Cute!

[fierce star]

I somewhat hate this but was compelled to share it, because the way I show appreciation to a culture I belong to is mild amounts of psychic damage (never to exceed a mathematical average of 3.5, and therefore unlikely to kil the average 3.PF editiion dnd peasent unless something wacky happens or they're an elf)

[wise ocean]

they didn't have to say it in that much of a tf-coded way

[raw owl]

missed the chance to post this on Fat Tail Friday for increased effect

[tulip folio]

That's just the average Qud player.

[fierce star]

pfffft

[merry arch]

😭

[fierce star]

(also lunar fans are involved we definitely have to say it in that much of a tf-coded way. Either form TF, be thankful hats weren't involved.)

[fierce star]

... Hmm. Towering pile of hats artifact...

[bleak hazel]

Very good guide to the basics of chargen from a player I know is quite good at this

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wzvHdEBbNbKaFMGpRtClC-DRsRxttEH8ua2Ro0Plv9U/edit?usp=sharing

indicates the basics of what stats you need at not-terrible levels and some of the common pitfalls for newer players

[bleak hazel]

today I realised that Invocation of the Storm-Following Silence is a one tap for all mindless undead, and that almost certainly includes Thousand-Corpse Goliaths and their Resolve 1

total zombie atomisation

[wise ocean]

sid does finger gun, obliterates 10m tall corpsemech instantly

[velvet raft]

... I do admittedly find that kinda fitting

[bleak hazel]

it is made of zombies, this by all rights should work

[velvet raft]

The charm is also explicitly invoking the natural process of death as it existed before the Underworld was even a thing

[bleak hazel]

it's just one of those cases where the Sid deal of "hyperspecific, really powerful charms" lets you pull something that is actually "holy shit that's a big number"

those things have 40 HLs and a ton of soak, this is just a no sell

[velvet raft]

So it tracks that it would hard-counter them

Since, it reminds a corpse that it is a corpse, effectively

... Scholomance vibes to be tbh

[wise ocean]

"Thing that gets a full page spread in K6BD" type action

[bleak hazel]

it's even "destroyed instantly", so it doesn't care about Legendary Size

hardest counter I've yet seen

[prisma sun]

An Abyssal Necromancer's worst fear:

Doctor

[wise ocean]

solution: apple

... is it possible to make an anti-sid abyssal martial art involving apples

[velvet raft]

Also means Sids do have some extremely good anti-Underworld tech, despite generally finding it very much not their jam

[velvet raft]

Poison Apple Style

(I just made that up)

[wise ocean]

honestly, though, there might be something there

[prisma sun]

How To Make The Green Lady's Entrance Cool As Shit In Your Chronicle Charm

[wise ocean]

social/charisma abyssal MA around the trope of the spurned enchantress with the poisoned apple?

that has some juice

[velvet raft]

Yeah

[wise ocean]

does the Lady have one yet?

[velvet raft]

Might also work as a line of charms in one of the social abilities focused on making people choose between bad choices and worse choices

[bleak hazel]

I feel this is a good candidate for the Sorcerous Martial Art category we're going to get in the Sid companion

apparently Flying Guillotine and hypothetical others like it are a core spell, which you use to summon your Form Weapon, and then a short-ish tree of 4-5 charms that work with it

so you would have your Bad Apple spell and then a bunch of moves for it

whether this would work as normal punching, not sure

maybe a Black Claw secret technique

[wise ocean]

form weapon... spindle needle?

[prisma sun]

https://tenor.com/view/bad-apple-manu-touhou-gif-21182229

Casts this

[bleak hazel]

YOU BELONG DEAD, he said.

this admittedly works better because it's Discworld Death

[dense verge]

honestly by all rights this does get to one tap corpse goliath

[bleak hazel]

yeah

I don't actually have a problem with it, I was just surprised when I looked up its statblock and it had resolve 1, because it has the Mindless immunity to almost all social influence

[prisma sun]

How would you visualize this

[bleak hazel]

Dawns can spook it, Storm-Following Silence one taps it easily

[prisma sun]

would it be dramatic or would the thing just drop dead

wait

wait

does this work on Juggernaut

[bleak hazel]

the fluff is "brings stillness to the world", so it just loses all animation and crashes over forwards

jugg, luckily, does not have stats

but it would not work on Elnuet, who is our example of a Hekatonchiere

[prisma sun]

if the fluff describes Juggernaut as mindless at all

alternatively

Sid raid on Juggernaut to kick it's brain out of it's head

thus making it unable to resist

[bleak hazel]

abyssal book does not, although against any undead thing that doesn't have a bunch of non-trivial, non-mindless friends IOTSFS is still an Init+Charisma agg damge attack, that's pretty gucci

you can also buy two upgrades to include first stuff you've prophecied to die and then all enemies of fate in "undead" for the purposes of this

so you can use this to atomize mindless wyld-things, like the extremely annoying Grelidaka, or chunk through big demons

the instant goliath killer does have two prereqs that are just "Turn Undead" and "Mercy Kill", which are of limited use, but hey, three to five charms of "absolutely obliterate undead" are getting pretty spectacular value here

actually I guess Peaceable Conclusion does let you go up to anyone you just incapacitated and suck Essence + 2 motes out of them, that's not awful besides the other effects

[bleak hazel]

oh shit, if you get Foretold Epitaph Epiphany and land Descending Endings or a Prophecy on a completely normal target, you can then hit them with this, so you can set up for it in normal situations as part of standard Sidereal prep time

it resets your init, but it's still +5 damage with Cha 5, does agg and rolls against Resolve, so it's solid for battering combat monkeys with massive parry plus it has range

you do this off a pumped Join Battle and apply -1TN to the damage roll with Descending Endings and it'll seriously maul someone, because if it's a mortal army or a group of exalts or whatever it's likely the guy you tagged with D.E.H is the only valid target and eats all of your init

I'm sorry, Sid Medicine, I wasn't familiar with your game

[fierce star]

seems like half the time misc reads a new sid charmset and goes 'oh fuck this is really cool actually' lol

[bleak hazel]

I'd skimmed it before, I just saw "kills trivials" and didn't think about it much further

[mighty rover]

they keep being really cool!!

[bleak hazel]

now I just have to find the secret juice in Sid Sail, since it's the only one that hasn't at least made me go "ok, sure, I see why I'd get this"

Ride is not entirely my thing but it does have Yellow Path and Riding The Dragon, both of which bang

Sail has a hot capstone and the cool sail-to-anywhere charm but the rest I'm not convinced by

[prisma sun]

Sid Ride is unfortunately for kinksters

[mighty rover]

how so

[prisma sun]

You can give other people a bridle that let's you ride them

[winged swallow]

ponyplay..?

[velvet raft]

I would imagine it as the corpses slowing, stopping with just a quiver, and then just ... falling to the earth. Quietly, even, without a crash. They remember they are corpses, and that corpses don't get up and walk around.

[bleak hazel]

Sid Ride is the horny tree, yeah, which is surprising given Sid Socialize exists

[fierce star]

and sid craft having craft (wife)

... is the sid charmset hornier than the lunar one...?

[bleak hazel]

no, a fifth of the charm trees are just Venus

[fierce star]

pft

[velvet raft]

In general I like the idea that invoking a sign of a constellation is asserting something that the world thinks is true about itself

[bleak hazel]

Lunars are all horny all the time, Sids make time to write cutting commentary on the inevitable inequalities of love

and then throw Breaking the Wild Mortal on top, because it's still Venus

[velvet raft]

I don't know if there's been any mention of whether this lore has changed, but I always liked the bit of lore stating that nobody really has a good grasp of where the Maidens or the constellations came from

The Primordials created fate, sure

But its stewards just showed up one day

[bleak hazel]

we're going to get Sapphire Veil of Passions soon and that's the really horny martial art

[velvet raft]

Is this 2e or are they bringing back one-charm-per-stanza

[bleak hazel]

this is the 2e one, we have no idea what the 3e one looks like

but I like this formatting of charm name and sutra so I tend to crib it for conveying the deal of most SMAs

[velvet raft]

I miss one-charm-per-stanza

I don't think I've mentioned that yet today, I gotta fill in my quota

[prisma sun]

Its not been retconned explicitly but 3e has stepped away from cosmic facts

[bleak hazel]

there's a sidebar in the Sid book that says "the fact the Sids use the constellations like this doesn't mean any other culture's interpretation of the stars is wrong, they can also do divination" and while I see where they were going with that I also sometimes think "no, this should be some form of Deep Wisdom, if you want to write your own philosophically dueling koans that's for the SMA scriptures"

[velvet raft]

Aye, so pretty much what I figured, it just hasn't come up

[velvet raft]

I have mixed feelings there

[bleak hazel]

most of that sidebar is unobjectionable, but I feel that "yeah, this is a Deep Truth but also you get the exact same results from other interpretations" is kind of a cop-out

entirely understandable cop-out but still a cop-out

[mighty rover]

hmmmm

[fierce star]

iirc it's still canon in ex3 that after making fate the maidens showed upa nd it was Obvious And True they were creations of the Primordials even if none of hte Primordials remembered creating them yet

[bleak hazel]

yeah, that's still there

[velvet raft]

Cool, I like that as just like this weird little setting detail

It doesn't really matter but it does play into the way that Maiden-related stuff often feels mysteriously preordained

[velvet raft]

This isn't what is written, but I might personally adapt it to "the constellations used by sids are something that heaven and the sids came up with and that the Maidens collectively nodded and smiled at"

[bleak hazel]

that seems even less impactful honestly

at that point you're just handing out ice cream koans

[velvet raft]

I guess? I would see it more as them being small slices of a profound cosmic truth that is not truly expressible

But ymmv

[bleak hazel]

at that point it becomes more "we wrote neat little poems based on the powers you gave us", and that makes the sutras hit rather less hard than "yeah, these powers are derived from enlightenment of XYZ"

admittedly you get the enlightenment in a box with your Sidereal exaltation, but still

[velvet raft]

I dunno, for me personally the idea that they're enlightenment in the form of an interpretation doesn't feel less

The stars are there, the Corpse and the Sword and the Ewer are all there, they're real, but they're gateways to something deeper (as SMAs are) that is harder to talk about

But that also just vibes with how I approach this stuff

[next delta]

Maybe the poems the Sidereals came up with are the ones the maidens planned for them the entire time

[bleak hazel]

if it's strictly "scriptures are based off charms" then it does completely ruin the vibe of the SMA sutras for me, because at that point the scripture is strictly twiddly set dressing

rather than "we have derived this martial skill from this enlightenment about the nature of the universe, as expressed in this sutra"

Albicant Sepulcher has a sutra, because it's also that form of enlightenment, even if it doesn't hold to the same structure as the usual Sidereal ones

if it's the other way around then I guess the Bishop just likes poetry?

[velvet raft]

Aye, I'm not saying the scriptures would be seen as based off of the charms

[velvet raft]

How could you even know? XD

[next delta]

Well, Jupiter definitely isn't telling

[velvet raft]

Me asking the Maidens, seriously: "So did you plan all this from the start?"
The Maidens: "No."
Me: "Oh okay. Wait. Do you just mean that in the sense that 'planning' as a concept does not apply to you?"
The Maidens: "Not just in that sense. Also consider that we might be lying."

[bleak hazel]

I believe the way it currently works is that the ability scriptures are enlightenment based on the Maidens' understanding of the world and the SMA scriptures are enlightenment based on the SMA creator's understanding of the world, which is quite nice because it leaves room for martial-arts-duel-as-philosophical-argument

[next delta]

I think making it different for SMAs makes sense to me

[bleak hazel]

the bit about astrology working however you break it down does strike me as getting a bit close to "yeah, belief is just power in Exalted, and not in the usual prayer-based ways", but otherwise it's quite clean

[velvet raft]

See, I'm seeing it more as there being many roads to Rome

[bleak hazel]

I think it's mostly in there as a reaction to 2e's tendency to make a bunch of concrete metaphysical statements about the world and as such render 99.9% of the settings' ideologies Objectively Wrong

[next delta]

It would have been kind of neat if some of the stuff was like "weird that this translates so well between all the different languages"

[velvet raft]

That would also have been cool

[bleak hazel]

yeah, that would work better, or even "creation's cultures tend to group the same stars together for ineffable reasons, even if they call them different things"

rather than "yeah just go wild"

[velvet raft]

FWIW the box saying "the truth is not a singular thing" suggests that it's not just an interpretation but an objective truth and it's just that there can be more than one of those

[prisma sun]

I do find it more plausible that in 3e the Elemental Dragons actually were just guys

The first Deebs

[velvet raft]

Weren't they always?

[prisma sun]

No they were Gaiae fetches

[velvet raft]

Right but those weren't the first deebs

Maybe I'm misunderstanding

Creation being Gaia's body and the various elemental dragons and elementals being to her as various demon circles are to Yozi is well-established, no?

[prisma sun]

Well not in 3e

[bleak hazel]

lesser elemental dragons arise from elementals, so they're not 2CDs

the greater elemental dragons being her Third Circles makes sense, but not that

and Gaia I believe is not the body of creation in 3e

[prisma sun]

Im saying in 3e its entirely plausible the Immaculates are right and the elemental dragons are just 5 incredibly powerful guys

[velvet raft]

Right, this was more what I was pointing towards, but important to differentiate

I guess even greater elemental dragons are still more numerous and specific than just one per element, though

The Kukla was greater, right?

[bleak hazel]

I am not sure

Essence has it as a "small" Greater Elemental Dragon

[next delta]

Greater Elemental Dragons are the "bad news if they wake up" ones right?

[velvet raft]

Greater Elemental Dragons are roughly analogous to 3rd circle demons

Possibly even stronger

"The Kukla wakes up" is an extinction-level event

For at least an entire direction

IIRC most greater dragons are not exactly threats in that particular sense, the Kukla is a bit unusual

But they're not entities one has a conversation with

[next delta]

Are they also developed from extremely powerful or long-lived elementals? Or are they more primordial (err in the normal sense) than that?

[velvet raft]

Naw, you can't be promoted to one iirc

Lesser elemental dragon is basically as high as a normal elemental can go (and it is not a small thing, considering they run around with essence in the 6-7 range)

[bleak hazel]

every published LED is E7 at peak power, we have a generic statblock for them in Sidbook because Sids have a couple of ways to summon them

will fairly easily gobble up any starting exalt, even the majority of Dawns

the one exception is Charnavrix, a Wood L.E.D who is pining for his Solar boyfriend who came back to him over many lifetimes until the Usurpation, at which point he killed a bunch of deebs in his rage and then sat down and went to sleep

Charnavrix is E4, due to being too sad to fight properly, and if his Solar shows up again he goes back to E6

[winged swallow]

there is now One reason for me to play a solar

[velvet raft]

This is the pinnacle ride charm for sids

One can temporarily turn someone into a lesser elemental dragon, but when the effect expires the person effected suffers tremendous harm

[bleak hazel]

well, you could play an infernal, since all we know is that his boyfriend was in the Jade Prison

[velvet raft]

It's not an amount of power one can throw around safely

Or an abyssal!

[bleak hazel]

going back to malfeas with your new dragon and having to carefully hide him from Ebby

Riding the Dragon is notable for costing very little and having a one-day duration plus a one-day cooldown

[velvet raft]

Abyssal boyfriend could be good drama since Wood has such a strong thematic opposition to the Underworld and its powers

[bleak hazel]

you can easily hit it every day forever if you are willing to utterly ruin enough people

(which is basically the thesis of Sidereal Ride in a nutshell, it's great)

[velvet raft]

It's an extremely powerful charm with an extremely high ethical toll

Kinda like that one Brawl charm

[bleak hazel]

Bureaucracy gets it as an emergency button, which is great

classic Sid problem alchemy

[velvet raft]

"I defend myself, also a random person dies"

I would tragically never be able to convince myself to use these kinds of charms, they make me sad ;_;

[bleak hazel]

you can actually remove the uncertainty from that one, because the person who dies is the person you name, as long as they're Trivial

you get one (1) Kejak Point if you can gain an advantage in a fight by holding someone your opponent loves hostage with it

[velvet raft]

I really like the Godly Companion line from Ride though

If only familiars had better-defined non-charm rules

[bleak hazel]

I was never super into the godly familiar stuff, I like the other parts of Ride

it has been shined up since the manuscript - you used to have to pay XP for the charm and XP to use it, now you get the first use free

although if that one suffers a tragic dragon-related incident a replacement is not free

[velvet raft]

I like the idea of using it with Witch-Beast Pact from Many-Faced Strangers

But of course Witch-Beast suffers from this problem where What The Fuck Even Is A Three-Dot-Familiar

Other than "it could be a tyrant lizard"

[bleak hazel]

unicorns, apparently

[fierce star]

Creation was never gaia's world-body, atl east in ex2 or 3, nor were elementals her daevas/component souls. That was a fandom theory that was shot down by the devs during the ink monkies part of ex2's cycle iirc.

[bleak hazel]

tyrant lizard is an outlier and should not be counted

for anything

[velvet raft]

Are Unicorns 3-dot?

[bleak hazel]

yeah, their QC sheet mentions it

[fierce star]

now whether or not you consider ink monkies stuff canon, well

that's a bag of words

[bleak hazel]

corebook animal statblocks are just a little wonky in general

animals published after core and as such aware of how Lunars work are still very strong but Tyrant Lizard and Siege Lizard are just too large for the familiar merit, really

[mighty rover]

the scent of cinders and ash clings to this sentence

[velvet raft]

Explode

[fierce star]

lmao

[velvet raft]

I don't even know who I'm saying that to or why

It just felt like the thing to say

[fierce star]

but yeah creation is, I personally think, better off not being gaia's world-body and elementals not being her component-souls

otherwise you could summon them with demon of hte first circle, you know?

[velvet raft]

You couldn't

[fierce star]

Expressly could, you can summon Autochthon's component souls with the same spell (just can't bind them)

[velvet raft]

The demon-summoning spells are keyed into specific pacts, no?

[fierce star]

Only the binding portion of the spell

[velvet raft]

Oh, hm

[fierce star]

but like. Creation being seperate and elementals being this Weird Made Thing helps sell Creation itself as like

[winged swallow]

misc you know me so well

[fierce star]

this Divine Miracle pinned and penned by the Creators Of Everything who wrought Yes from Maybe and turned Everything into These Things

[velvet raft]

Fair

Although whatever it is does seem to be more strongly tied to Gaia than others

Here's my dumb fanon thought: Gaia doesn't have a world-body anymore in the proper sense, it was cut off to make Creation with

Her flesh but not her, at least not anymore

This is why she seems so much more capable of acting as an individual than primordials normally are

[prisma sun]

Demon summoning is part of the peace treaty made at the end of the revolution

So even if elementals were gaia demons you couldn't since Gaia was on the winning side

[velvet raft]

That's what I thought

[fierce star]

So was Autochthon, and, again, demon of the first circle is explicilty the spell fo rsummoning machine gods too

[velvet raft]

I recall reading that demon is mostly a political distinction, but I guess they've moved on that

[bleak hazel]

Creature of Darkness is a political distinction, Enemy of Fate is a political designation for an actual phenomenon (since you need a Sid charm to weave someone back in, most of the time) but Demon is "thing subject to the surrender oaths"

which in practice is exclusively primordials and primordial accessories

[velvet raft]

Looks like the demon-summoning spell is not just for demons, though

[fierce star]

Demon of the First/Second/Third circle can be used to summon machine gods, just not bind them becuase the binding part is due to the surrender oaths. You have to bargain with them normally to get them to do what you want.

[bleak hazel]

necromancy has similar but less significant restrictions, which is fun

[velvet raft]

I do like the idea that the Greater Dragons might still respect Gaia deeply and implicitly, and feel somewhat lost without her, but that she's enjoying being A Person

Going on her eternal quest in the Wyld

For some reason I always envision her windsurfing

But like, through chaos

[bleak hazel]

you can straightforwardly bind regular ghosts, but stronger ones need to be stuck in a special soul-cage which can be stolen, and can resist orders that go against their defining intimacies

which interestingly includes the defining tie of obedience to their summoner

if your ghost really likes you for other reasons they can spend willpower to disobey you for your own good

[fierce star]

I always liked the thought that the main reason gaia is out wandering the wyld in the modern era is because she feels her brother autochthon slowly dying of robot cancer and wants to beg him to come home so she can help tend his wounds, since she was one of (if not the only) primordial who wasn't a bully towards him

thse are not, of course, exclusive thoughts, just putting mine out there

[bleak hazel]

Hekatonchieres on the other hand don't get bound at all, they'll only serve for a few weeks and you need to make sacrifices or promises to get them to do anything important

[velvet raft]

I always figured there's some sort of grand cosmic question she's trying to answer

I could not tell you why I have that notion

[fierce star]

These are also not mutually exclusive I feel like, but it makes sense

[velvet raft]

Yeah, I sorrrrrta always imagined it related to the other primordials/yozi somehow?

Autochthon is one of those

:D

But I guess it feels thematically integral to Exalted in some ways that the spirit of the world itself is absent

Mother Earth is busy and in the interim everyone else has made a big fuckin' mess

[fierce star]

I also like the mental image of Luna doing the 'lovelost wife standing on a cliff overlooking the sea holding a lantern to guide her lost love home' trope

[velvet raft]

Yeah

The whole Gaia/Luna thing feels elemental to the whole setting of Exalted

No pun intended

[fierce star]

hot take if I had to pick one incarna to write out of the setting it'd be conky

[velvet raft]

I ... agree

[fierce star]

his role as Big Good Protector Guy is important, don't get me wrong, but

[winged swallow]

fascinating, say more

[velvet raft]

The Unconquered Sun ends up kinda being the face of a sort of ... god, I don't want to sound like that guy, but a masculine moral hegemony?

[fierce star]

there's just not a lot of interaction between him and the rest of the 'big divine' parts of the setting. Which makes sense--the sun stars apart from the moon, the stars, and the earth.

[velvet raft]

And you compare him to the other Incarnae, who coexist in the night sky

The Sun by his nature outshines everything and forces it into his model of the world

Even "creature of darkness" is just "designated enemy of the Sun"

There's some Nobilis vibes in this, I'm realizing

[prisma sun]

I feel like writing Conky out writes out a lot of like

[velvet raft]

Where the sun's nature is to witness and to judge

[prisma sun]

Idk, the good of the setting

You have nothing to contrast the eldritch weirdos

[fierce star]

Oh, I wouldn't write any of them out, but if you gun to my head told me to pick one of the incarna to snip

it's conky

[prisma sun]

Id write out the aurora

[velvet raft]

He's the one where I could imagine doing a game in which he has vanished

[prisma sun]

Easy choice

[velvet raft]

The aurora doesn't count :P

[dense verge]

I can def see sunboss as the most dispensable Incarnae, can shunt his role as instigator of the revolution to Luna, lawgiver to Gaia, and subsequent absence from Creation already filled by her as well

[fierce star]

Jokes on you i'm writing aurora back in

[dense verge]

aurora now the solar patron

[winged swallow]

lets gooo

aurora gameing

[fierce star]

Aurora: "I AM ENTIRELY UNPREPARED TO BE KING OF ANYTHING I'm literally just a muse and source of inspiration I dont' know how to make just decisions AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

"Quick fetch me advisors! Sidereals help!"

[velvet raft]

But I do think in an overall thematic sense, this works

[fierce star]

yeah, I'm picking up what you're putting down

[dense verge]

now if we want to do incarna swapsies, get trenchvoice in here

make solars wet

[velvet raft]

The sun is the eye that behold and the mind that evaluates

In Nobilis it's what literally creates objectivity in the relationship between things

[fierce star]

we're also all forgetting the other 'maybe doesn't actually exist' incarna, nocturne.

[bleak hazel]

I like sunboss but I also like the idea that he's completely done for at this point

[winged swallow]

what did they mean by this

[velvet raft]

The Not (essentially the Wyld) is referred to as "a far and sunless land", but it's not dark, it's that things are lit by the light of their own self-perception

[fierce star]

I am still very interested in the modern day creation that has Still Extant Aurorals and Nocturnals As They Were Meant To Be

[dense verge]

its the patron for the uhhhhhhhh Spoken, of the niobaran league

[winged swallow]

oooh

[dense verge]

they died

[fierce star]

was the niobharan league's patron explicitly an incarna?

[dense verge]

giving exaltations to whales

[winged swallow]

yeag

[fierce star]

I thought they were A Big Wet Spirit but not explcitly an incarna?

[bleak hazel]

The other incarnae occasionally tend to their day jobs of either being a gremlin or doing paperwork, but Conqy is fully retired and not capable of picking up his spear and murdering things anymore

[dense verge]

Alluded to iirc

[velvet raft]

I think like the Solars I would not want to do a setting in which they never existed, but a setting in which they are currently absent is interesting to me

[bleak hazel]

I like the Solars still being around but I also like the idea that producing 300 of the mightiest exalted weighed more heavily on Sol than the on the other Incarnae

[fierce star]

(further... hot? take: Aurorals and Nocturnals are more interesting than Getimians and Liminals at base concept levels)

[winged swallow]

low bar on liminals tbh

i do love the concept of aurorals tbh

hearteaters skeeve me out a bit but like

[bleak hazel]

I have warmed somewhat to Gets but honestly none of the new Exalted besides Exigents really catch my attention

they just feel like clutter

[winged swallow]

yeah same

Gets r neat, if not a particular fave of mine

[velvet raft]

I think I've shared this before but I like the idea of "the yozi and neverborn did actually get all or almost all of the exaltations, there are like maybe 10-15 solars around and everyone else is Abyssals and Infernals"

[dense verge]

Gets i will get mileage out of as antagonists

[chilly sluice]

I love Heart Eaters specifically because of their awful vibes tbh

[winged swallow]

i don’t hate them as much anymore but yeah

[fierce star]

Heart Eaters are great villians

and speaking as someone who has awful player character ideas that require a certain level of GM trust to even consider accepting or pitching

[velvet raft]

And not 10-15 solars in the sense that they are the big heroes of everything, 10-15 solars in the sense that it's impossible for them to assemble into a coherent faction

[fierce star]

I would never play one, nor allow a player ot play one

[prisma sun]

I like the other weird Exalts

I think Exigents kinda took too much oxygen from that idea

[velvet raft]

Heart Eaters feel too typecast

[fierce star]

Exigents I was cold on at first but came around on mostly because sovereigns and my ongoing 'chosen of being a mech pilot' project

[velvet raft]

It's hard for me to imagine a lot of Heart Eater variety

[dense verge]

exigents i really like as super-focusing on specific theming, as well as god politics

[fierce star]

I can off the top of head imagine like... four or five heart eater stereotype personalities?

[dense verge]

which is distinct from destiny politics

[velvet raft]

I like exigents so long as we think of them as very specific one-offs who are not really of a family

[bleak hazel]

I like Exigents as a catch-all for the Weird Exalts that doesn't lead to five million exalts of X running around all over the place

[velvet raft]

Like, okay, here are the rules for God of XYZ having a chosen one

That's what exigents do

[bleak hazel]

once you add liminals, gets, dream-souled, heart-eaters, spoken etc. it just starts feeling like they're Exalted because things that are important in Exalted are called Exalts

kind of a mess

[fierce star]

dream-souled are weird

[velvet raft]

Gets are so frustrating to me

[fierce star]

I think they're the apocryphal exalt I care the least about

[bleak hazel]

especially the Liminals and the Dream-Souled because their patrons are Literally Who

"yeah these guys are just more of a vibe actually"

[fierce star]

Nocturnals at least give me 'so this is what the sort of theme for the OG Soulsteel Exalts would be like' which is neat

[chilly sluice]

it's Umbrals for me

[velvet raft]

Dream-souled could be really interesting but aren't

[fierce star]

Umbrals, sorry

I keep calling them Nocturnals

[prisma sun]

Shouldn't there be a God of the Great Curse?

[bleak hazel]

nah

[fierce star]

there is, his name is Lytek

[bleak hazel]

gods are officially appointed to watch over a purview

the Great Curse is not a known thing and as such does not have a god appointed to it

[velvet raft]

The great curse is written into the law of the world as an act of eternal spite by dead primordials

[bleak hazel]

(and might not even if it was)

[velvet raft]

It's not administered

[chilly sluice]

though really I care less about Liminals than I do most of the apocryphal ones

[bleak hazel]

deeb, lunar, sid, alch, abyssal/infernal/solar and then Exigents as catch-all is my preferred list of splats

partly because it's neatly bounded

[velvet raft]

I agree

[fierce star]

I do miss like

[bleak hazel]

all of these have big obvious places in the setting besides Exigents

who are explicitly the grab-bag

[fierce star]

the concept of playing non-exalts who were still Somewhat Important

(playable dragon kings when?)

(yes I know essence but I mean in ex3)

[bleak hazel]

and even they have Great Forks, Exigent hollywood

[velvet raft]

Exigents let you tell a particular type of story in the setting, which is cool

[bleak hazel]

DKs and Raksha were both complete messes of splats, to be fair

[fierce star]

I did hae someone tell me once that my favorite type of Exigent didn't need to exist and could've just been a Dragonblooded dynasty

[bleak hazel]

Graceful Wicked Masqus is a fun book but not great to actually attempt to play

[velvet raft]

wat

[fierce star]

Sovereigns

[chilly sluice]

Getimians I actually like a lot, but that's mostly on their vibes
may partially also be from having Glitch on my mind, and Gets having a lot of Strategist vibes

[velvet raft]

Oh, "type of"

I missed the type of

[fierce star]

oh

[velvet raft]

I was very confused

[bleak hazel]

the Gets are honestly dragged down hugely by a) everyone seeing them and going "Isekai Exalt!" and b) the War on Heaven, which is just not something you need a whole splat to do

[velvet raft]

I could see dream-souled as functionally a type of slightly-weirder exigent

[fierce star]

basically the arguement is that you can get all the politics-play and vaguely earth/fire elemental stuff from an outcaste dynasty

and they didn't need to be a type of exigent

[bleak hazel]

the Getimian in the sid chapter fiction and the Getimian in Essence both told Thulio to go hang and are decent characters for it

[velvet raft]

Like I can imagine "fake exalt created by an unshaped raksha"

That works fine

[fierce star]

The problem is they can't be exigents because exigents come from a specific source, unfortunately

[bleak hazel]

sovereigns have Big Boy Anima, which I really like, so I'm a fan of them

I also think dream-souled are completely redundant because Raksha exist

[fierce star]

despite being The Grab Bag Exalts they all have a shared point of origin which makes 'exigent of a fae' hard to do becuase that fae would need to be a god too and have their prayers answered by conky

[bleak hazel]

they should just be raksha, that's what raksha are for

[velvet raft]

I can believe that an unshaped raksha would do something that stupid because they feel like it

[prisma sun]

I think a pamphlet on essence using mortals would be fine

[fierce star]

... though is there anything stopping a non-god spirit from stealing an dusing an exigence, thinking abou tit?

I mean it's very illegal but that doesn't stop gods from doing it

[prisma sun]

Nope

[velvet raft]

So what you're saying is raksha exigent is a go

:D

[bleak hazel]

pretty sure you've got to be a god to use it but I cannot be bothered to look it up so I may well be wrong

[prisma sun]

Other than I think conq' essence would kill them

[bleak hazel]

but I feel that dream-souled are basically a cop-out for "I want to play a raksha"

you have raksha and the Forest Witches already

[fierce star]

god forest witches are weird

but yeah dream-souled are just like... Kind Of There.

[bleak hazel]

Gets are kind of that for Paradox Spirits too, but they have more to them that you'd actually lose if compressed that much

[velvet raft]

I think there's a difference between "literally a soul-eating elf" and "mortal touched by primal chaos"

[wise ocean]

is there anything stopping gets from just being another flavor of sid and otherwise functioning in the sid splat, realistically speaking

[fierce star]

I mean. Faeblooded mortals also existed

[bleak hazel]

mortal touched by primal chaos is also a thing already

[lament owl]

The problem with making things other than Exalted playable is that the game is called Exalted

[prisma sun]

At current its how they're assumedly supposed to be run

[velvet raft]

Very touched by primal chaos

[lament owl]

so if you wanna add a playable splat
you have to make it into an exalted

[bleak hazel]

big faeblood with more wyld juice

wyld scales up to Balor, power is not really a problem

[fierce star]

Fluffy, that's like saying 'well everything in dungeons and dragons needs to be a dungeon or a dragon', unless you're shitposting in which case I apologize for not pickign up on that

I'm trying to study for an exam so my brain's split into four ways

[bleak hazel]

the dream-souled and liminals also irk me for having patrons who are total setting irrelevances in every regard, who exist entirely to exalt their lads

[lament owl]

I am not shitposting, but I geniunely think that is the impression the developers are under

[velvet raft]

The vibe is very different for "an unshaped grabbed me and put a chunk of itself in me in a fashion analogous to exaltation for shits and giggles" though

I do not like dream-souled

[lament owl]

like I would be fine with them making things other than Exalted playable in Exalted

but I feel like that is the setup they have put themselves in

[fierce star]

ah, fair

[velvet raft]

But I could see Wyld-flavored exigents working for given story types

[bleak hazel]

that's just a more-wyld-touched-than-normal mortal, though! why does it need an anima banner and a caste mark and charms split either nine or 25 ways?

[fierce star]

again, apologies for the misunderstanding, I hate bones so much

[bleak hazel]

"Fae imitating an exalt to the point of having anima and a caste mark and whatever" is a really good one-off gimmick for a raksha, though

might have to remember that

[fierce star]

at least non-spine/hip bones. I love those! They're simple! What vertabra is it? Fracture at C4! It's easy! Why does the humerous have os many parts?! why does it need this?!'

[lament owl]

Like Fuck It
Let a Million Fucked Up Raksha OCs bloom is what I say
But that doesn't seem to be developer intent

However, I will say, Exigents is a very good preemise for a book for Exalted, dedicated Homebrew book is very fitting for how the game is structured

[velvet raft]

Like, I guess here's my thing with new exalt types

[prisma sun]

I just kinda wish Exigents weren't tied to Unconquered

[lament owl]

I will say however, I have only ever read 3e books
so my perspective is very limited

[velvet raft]

I'm not big on the addition of new sources of supernatural power, but I'm happy to see existing stuff expanded upon a bit

I don't feel the need for extra incarnae or the mysterious Spirit of Frankenstein's Monsters or people from dead timelines

[lament owl]

So, my take is that it shouldn't be tied to the unconquered but I do like Gods needing a special resource for making them

"This is sorta a rare resource, and gods fight over it or try to obtain it illegally"

[velvet raft]

But in a game about big shot chosen ones

[lament owl]

is really interessting

[prisma sun]

Yea same

That's all fine

I just wish the source was just like

[lament owl]

a really cool rock

[prisma sun]

"The forge we made em all in"

Yeah

Orb

[velvet raft]

I can see big shot chosen ones from lesser deities and especially powerful elementals and the primal chaos as being things which show up

Since those are things that are around

Exigents feel like they can fill that role

[prisma sun]

I would be fine with another antag book

I also think God blooded merit does a lot

[bleak hazel]

I honestly like Raksha (and the undead in general) as things that can hang with Exalts without just being more exalts

[prisma sun]

Yeah

[lament owl]

I'm a big fan of the extra incarnae ones actually

Heart Eaters and even Umbrals do interesting things, they add to the politics of the war with the primordials

[velvet raft]

Raksha are a very specific taste, though

[bleak hazel]

an exalt is a highly specific Kind of Thing, the secret of which was derived by Autocthon, and when basically everyone just seems to go "oh yeah I'll have a few" it takes a bit of the mythic resonance away

you can add black, gold and silver to your power rangers but you probably can't swap them to hex codes

[velvet raft]

But again, like, I mean this in relation to one-off characters spread extremely thin throughout a very big Creation

Which, fortunately, is sorta what exigents are for

[lament owl]

Umbrals is "What if there was an Incarnae that didn't betray and got sealed away but made exalted to escape. Wouldn't that be fucked up"
and Heart Eaters are "What if an Incarnae got tortured to death during the war and all of their exalted distorted into weird monstrous versions of their original concept wouldn't that be fucked up"

and those are both really good pitches I think

that explain why that Incarnae hasn't come up much

[bleak hazel]

Gets I actually have less problems with because a) I like cultivators and b) their patrons are two existing Primordials who play with fate and predestination, so it fits

[velvet raft]

Wait is this new lore re: Gets?

[winged swallow]

i can fix the aurorals

[prisma sun]

I do like the Casualties of the Revolution Exalted

[bleak hazel]

no, they've been chosen of Oramus and Sacharavell for their whole careers

[lament owl]

The aurorals can make me worse

[winged swallow]

post-reforging project: healing the aurorals

[bleak hazel]

also possibly explains why Oramus and Sach are arguably the most fucked up of the Primordials

one imprisoned twice, one kept permanently asleep even by his siblings

[velvet raft]

But this has always been in 3e?

[prisma sun]

I can fix any of the fluff of any splat but fuck me if im writing a charm list

[velvet raft]

And I just completely glossed over it, I guess

That's ... better, at least

[bleak hazel]

yeah, although Core basically included nothing on Gets besides "hey! these exist!"

[winged swallow]

one must suffer for their delights

<-the sufferer

[velvet raft]

Oh okay

When did they clarify they're from two bullshit primordials?

[lament owl]

Essence, Probaby

[velvet raft]

(I mean bullshit in the best possible way)

Ah see that would explain why I didn't notice since that book infuriates me >_>

[bleak hazel]

mentioned in Essence, elaborated slightly on in Sids

Heart-Eaters and to a lesser extent Spoken do really fucky things to the post-Usurpation Long War, actually, because they are both cases of the exalted host collectively deciding "fuck this exalt type, damnation upon them lest the world burn" long before the Dragonblooded decided to enact the same upon the Solars

[prisma sun]

Which lmao

[lament owl]

Dream Souled are admittedly, pretty low on sauce, but I feel like they could have been written interestingly

Maybe this is headcanon leaking in because its been a second but Dream Souled are sorta "Conviction So Strong It Warps Reality", which I just eenjoy as a trope

[lament owl]

are The Spoken the fish guys?

[fierce star]

yeah

[bleak hazel]

spoken are the Essence-only whale exalts, yeah

[prisma sun]

I think Raksha making Exalta should just be Changelings

[bleak hazel]

not entirely sure about non-human exalts honestly, especially if they're written in just to Be Extinct

but hey, whales are cool

[prisma sun]

They yoink people and shove Wyld juice into them

[lament owl]

They are mentioned in the core book at one point to hype up Solar Sail

Which is why I know they exist

[bleak hazel]

hard to be mad about a splat that doesn't exist

[lament owl]

I didn't actually know they were exalts

[bleak hazel]

ah, Sid book Get lore

[velvet raft]

That does put it well, actually! There's a good "tortured chaos superpower haver" archetype to be had

[prisma sun]

Actually

[dense verge]

the spoken are the full 9 years later elaboration on what the fuck a niobaran league is, after being mentioned for 2 sentences in core 3e

[prisma sun]

I like the idea that Raksha wanted to forge their own heroes

[lament owl]

Honestly? Would be cool

you would just have to make sure they don't overlap too hard with Abyssals in how they play out I guess

[fierce star]

they were supposed to be like

[prisma sun]

But because the Exalted ARE the archetypal heroes in the bones of creation

[fierce star]

the third book to come out for ex3 under H+H apparently

[prisma sun]

Their champions turn into them

[velvet raft]

Hah

[prisma sun]

When in creation

[velvet raft]

That would be amusing

[bleak hazel]

that would be fun as "exalt-shaped Raksha, not actually a true exalt", yeah

[velvet raft]

Although that hews close to the idea of yes that

[fierce star]

hey super hot take

[bleak hazel]

to be fair if you're an unshaped raksha, do you really care about the diminishment from making exalts

[fierce star]

Raksha should have all the dice trick powers that got shoved into solars and it should be due to genre awareness

[prisma sun]

The Raksha literally are homebrewing their own Exalts

[bleak hazel]

you don't really have enough substance to be diminished

[velvet raft]

Partly it feels fitting because Unshaped are cosmic Primordial-esque beings when they occasionally notice themselves

[prisma sun]

I think its less diminishment

And more whim

You only notice things long enough to make a few guys

[bleak hazel]

although of course diminishment is already irrelevant for Ketu and the Dark Mother because they were invented only to make Liminals and Dream-Souled and do nothing otherwise

so they get to skip that part of how Exalts work

[lament owl]

I seeeee

Yeah I was just assuming the niobaran league were like... "Here is a faction of fish people you can bring up"

Because the core book does bring up a lot of just weird fucked up shit

Including that one island that has a Entity on it that can corrupt Dragon Blooded Exaltations
One day I wanna crack open the Exigent book and make an actual charm set for those guys

I have headcanons and a want to channel them

[prisma sun]

Remind me tonight to write these fae guys

[velvet raft]

There are very likely unshaped swimming around in the dark of the Wyld who could imagine themselves to be as powerful as every primordial put together, but at that scale things like "individual identity" becomes wonky even for law-beings

Lovecraftian shadows that occasionally bud the murder-elves we know and love

[bleak hazel]

the primordials also effortlessly owned [undefined infinity] unshaped Raksha by making Creation on top of them so that's probably bullshit

unshaped are very spooky if you're a smaller kind of wyld-thing that doesn't come with the wonderful powers of linear time and causality

[velvet raft]

The power-scaling question is mostly irrelevant to them in either direction, they're barely even entities

They have just enough self-awareness to do something very silly and then forget about it

[bleak hazel]

the more shape they take on the more defined (and lower) their power level gets

[lament owl]

I was gonna give them like....

"Alien Bodysnatcher/Invasion" aesthetics terrasterial power level
Guy who looks like a dragonblooded noble but in combat body horror transforms into a xenomorph or a weirdly phallic worm monster

[fierce star]

body horror you say

[bleak hazel]

and they are forced into more and more shape the closer they get to Creation, which is my personal preferred reason why Creation hasn't been casually blotted out by the unfeeling flip of a tail from some incredibly overpowered Conway's Game of Life entity out there in the deep wyld somewhere

[velvet raft]

But I like the idea of ... I guess a piece of unshaped-ness persisting inside a person, perhaps originally imagined as a shell of order and linear time around the bit of true wyld.

[lament owl]

Actually
A friend in VC just pointed something out to me
Slitterhead is a really good touchstone

if you hve seen the monsters in Slitterhead

[bleak hazel]

also lets you keep the interesting interpretation of Shaped Raksha as refugees from the arguably-greatest crime of the Primordials, the imposition of time and space and reality on the great game of make-believe

Shaped Raksha don't want to go back into the deep wyld, since they would lose what they are, and they can't go into creation because they'll freeze and die

[velvet raft]

They have to stay on the border

[bleak hazel]

which is more interesting to me than random chaos monsters you just have to stab

[fierce star]

what do we think of the raksha-as-p-zombies interpretation?

[bleak hazel]

Raksha are littoral fish, and sometimes something big gets beached

[bleak hazel]

kind of works but makes them less interesting characters

I could buy the lesser minions being that - the random invented hobgoblins and foot soldiers that cataphracts summon with a wave of their hand are just constructs, they don't have interiority

[velvet raft]

I think there could be room for raksha p-zombies here and there

But to be evil elves they have to be self-aware

[bleak hazel]

but there should be something morally resonant about going "right, we want the old manse here back" and wiping out a whole Court

even if it's "yeah, they were bastards, fuck 'em"

if they're just mindless constructs that happen to look like evil nobles it's just kind of "ah, for fuck's sake, the thingies are back"

[dense verge]

beached things. just like death stranding!

[fierce star]

yeah, that's pretty much where i'm at

[bleak hazel]

I have not played Death Stranding

wondering whether to steam sale it

[velvet raft]

Do you like hiking

[bleak hazel]

I don't mind hiking

[velvet raft]

Death Stranding is a game about walking around with a very large backpack

[prisma sun]

I don't know what a p zombie is tbh

[fierce star]

A thought experiment: basically the idea that som epeople do not have an internal presence/monologue, but ar eperfectly capable of mimicing people that do. The P stands for philosophical.

[prisma sun]

Oh I think thats an evil concept

[velvet raft]

It's a nonsense-concept from philosophy meant to prove that consciousness can't have a physical basis by saying, "if there were someone who were physically identical to a person, who behaved as if they were conscious but weren't, that would disprove the physical basis of consciousness

<- physicalist, for transparency's sake

It's an extremely bad argument that amounts to, "If this thing I just made up existed, I would be right!"

[fierce star]

See I like it as a thought experiment, but i'm also the sort of person who gets annoyed when people misunderstand the trolley problem

[velvet raft]

Well, prove that it can exist and then we can talk (this is me talking to the anti-physicalists)

[bleak hazel]

note: at no point does any philosopher talking about this go "I think some real people are p-zombies", this is purely in the realm of hypotheticals

[fierce star]

I like useless thought experiments that can be boiled down by 'wouldn't it be fucked up if'

(<-- was a philosophy major for like three years)

[bleak hazel]

not least because a p-zombie behaves exactly like a person, which means it talks about its own consciousness and writes papers on philosophy of mind

[velvet raft]

And is also physically identical to a person

As formulated originally, at least

[fierce star]

yeah

[next delta]

Maybe p-zombies exist, but they are exclusively philosophers who write about p-zombies

[fierce star]

🤔

[bleak hazel]

one of my many short story stubs on a shelf somewhere is "gun that removes target's qualia"

[velvet raft]

As Daniel Dennett has noted, the argument is circular

[bleak hazel]

it's extremely useless

[velvet raft]

"If I were right and this were coherent, I would be right and this would be coherent"

[bleak hazel]

I wrote it into one of my fucked-up Lancer corpo research programs, in that it's extremely useless until it was shot at an NHP, at which point it was discovered that it becomes an Unshackling Gun

[fierce star]

Okay Iv'e literaly given that to player characters in unknown armies before, though

[bleak hazel]

still, largely pointless other than as a joke

you menace a guy with it and they go "aah" but if you shoot them their new p-zombie body goes "well, that was surprisingly painless" and then kills you

normal gun much more productive

[fierce star]

It was actually quite helpful in unknown armies because the Violence checks were less (and replace dwith an Unnatural check) and also I ruled that you needed Qualia to be a Godwalker or Ascend to the Clergy

[next delta]

Needs a big bad that tries to remove the qualia from everyone

[fierce star]

They wanted to shoot the Freak with it but never got the chance, (cw: suicide? ish? attempt?) ||the guy who had it was about to be shoved into the room of renunciation but shot himself with it.||

[bleak hazel]

the research scientists who came up with it in my short story gave up after they realised it took too long to explain to be an effective threat, and instead started working on a harmless piece of metal that convinces the target that you can kill them at any time

which did the exact same thing with less talking

[fierce star]

i realize I may be talking nonsense to people unfamliar with UA and apologize

[velvet raft]

Anyway I think raksha having "minions" that are essentially just extensions of their weird narrative powers and aren't actually people is a solid notion, but the core raksha have gotta be people to quite work

[bleak hazel]

one of the core raksha powers is "aha, I summon dudes because I'm a knight, so I have retainers, right?!" so yeah, this is a pretty classic button for them

[velvet raft]

"Kill the elf king and his goblin armies fade away like morning mist" makes sense

[bleak hazel]

someone once pointed out that the Pirates of the Carribean movies make way more sense if you imagine they're a bunch of raksha shaping at each other

[velvet raft]

But the elf king is a guy

HAH

[bleak hazel]

"you're on land, you're not allowed to do that"
"I'm actually in a bucket, this does not violate my oath"
etc. etc.

[velvet raft]

And I do appreciate the delicious irony of shaped raksha not exactly being denizens of the true Wyld because if they were they definitionally would not be shaped

[prisma sun]

Isn't that why shaped Raksha can be consistent around creation

They can't go back into the deep wyld

[velvet raft]

Ye

It's questionable whether shaped raksha even exist outside of the context of Creation

And if they do it's certainly not as shaped raksha

[prisma sun]

My brain is churning these Fauxalts btw

I think im going to call them The Dreamt

[velvet raft]

Something that would be amusing is if they were immune to Wyld mutations

And can't be made from Wyld mutants

[prisma sun]

I don't like the latter

Since its player limiting

[velvet raft]

Fair

[prisma sun]

So too, do the Things in the Wild. 

Yet their dreams are tangible, their whimsical fantasies and idle daydreams enough to break every law and rule lesser beings abide by. And these figures they dream of must come from somewhere, and sometimes the deep Things are too impatient to be fed. 

The calcification of Creation can only do so much against so terrible a force on so singular a purpose. A single Tendril, a pinky's effort breaking into Creation. Those who study this call them the Threads, for lack of a better term. They are an infinite beings desires made finite for a fluttering moment, and nothing in this world may impede it. The Threads find their victim, hooking into them, and pulling them back into the Wyld to be remade.

One might assume this to be a phenomena relegated only to the fringes of Creation, but humanity has always been ignorant of that above and below. A noose of briars can descend  to abscond a mother into the night sky, a ring of fire dragging a pirate to the darkest sea.

There they are brought face to face with Everything. There is no time to mutate, or degrade from the Wyld. No fae would touch the claimed prey of a God. The taken are blasted clean of all but their most core personality traits. Memories, identity, all are pointless. An echo of a personality is all that is left, a role to fill in a distant thing's daydream. This is barely a conscious action, should such a being be capable of it. Its as much a malicious act as scratching an itch or sighing.

And just like that, the deep thing loses interest, the dream fades, the toy dropped.```

Still at work but had to get this out

[velvet raft]

Not sure about giving them the amnesia beam, but otherwise I dig it

[tulip folio]

Also ended up making Void Seer stuff less purely bad/inherently makes you evil for Jadeborn. It's now more about insane amounts of sensory overload.

[prisma sun]

I think they should be a dark parody of the Exalted

So it leans on "your patron just decides who you are, fuck what you think"

[tulip folio]

New Background: Flickers of Time (•• or ••••)
Prereqs: Making A Bad Decision
Somehow your character has unstable and highly disruptive flickers of times that were or might have been. For some exalts this might be the result of unnaturally strong past lives or too much experimentation with Temporal Sorcery, while for Jadeborn it can be result of interlinking with Pattern Spiders and the Loom of Fate shattering open caches of Pre-Geass Knowledge indiscriminately.
Rules - As Whispers. Replace mentions of Death with Geomancy and Time, Necromancy with Sorcery, Undead with Automatons and the Underworld with Manses and First Age Sites. When you invoke it for a decision point, rather than Nihilistic Despair, it is an Erratic Wonder as infinite possibilities fill a far too finite mind.

[velvet raft]

I dunno, I liked your earlier changeling thought

So I could see more variation

[winged swallow]

it’s just geas lol, geass is the anime

[mighty rover]

dnd demon vs daemon where geas and geass are slightly different magical commands

[winged swallow]

noooo

[velvet raft]

I would conceptualize it more as like ... a bit of pure, unshaped chaos placed inside a Creational shell to allow it to exist where it otherwise couldn't, for whatever inscrutable reason, with a pretty variable relationship between the person and the chaos in question

Possibly undergoing a sort of mutual corruption

As essence rises

[tulip folio]

To be fair the 2e version was very 'Do what the solar says, no choice'. XD

[winged swallow]

even so!

[prisma sun]

Im more drawn to the idea of a human shell being filled with the barest scribble of a character and as they grow more powerful they unlock more of their past self and become more three dimensional

Literally getting more personality as you level up

You do not start as a fully fledged character, you start as a doodle

[winged swallow]

i fuck with it

[velvet raft]

... what if the variations are the approximation of "castes"?

Scorched empty by chaos, seed of chaos planted within, and I dunno, three is a good number

Proper changeling who was exposed to chaos in a weird way and wound up with it incorporated into their being?

In all cases with some sort of submerged identity that becomes more real over time

[prisma sun]

I think the castes are dictated by the role you played in the dream

I do also have an idea that these roles can become self perpetuating to an extent

Less foolproof like exaltations

But a Mentor can bequeath you the role

Upon their death

[winged swallow]

if you had to associate a season with athletics and/or the virtue of justice (or the old virtue of conviction), what would it be

[wise ocean]

Summer

[winged swallow]

hmm

okay, if you couldn't pick summer because for some reason it had already been taken by another Night Ability

Calibration is an option here, for uh

not completion reasons but like

five is a better number to work with

and Calibration has interesting flavors to draw on

[wise ocean]

Winter

either one has an Olympics in it

[winged swallow]

lmao

true!

[tulip folio]

Glorious Snowboarding Method

[winged swallow]

fuck yeah

go my glorious solar snowboard

snowlar

[prisma sun]

Summer fits too much i think

To go "what if not that"

[winged swallow]

Awareness took Summer

[tulip folio]

BRB making an artifact shield snowboard

[prisma sun]

Awareness feels like an autumn thing to me

[winged swallow]

Well it's Summer Nights, right

where the night is actually shorter than normal

the Sun holds longer vigils

[prisma sun]

Hrmmm

[tulip folio]

Makes sense

[winged swallow]

Summer is a season of battles, so the Sun keeps longer watches over creation. But even as His vessel sets beneath the waves, His ears remain pricked for the prayers of the needy, His nose tuned to the scent of suffering, His eyes ready to peek across the horizon for those that need Him. you may thank delilah for this

[velvet raft]

Athletics could quite reasonably be spring

[winged swallow]

spring like a leap hehe

[velvet raft]

Spring is about growth and renewal

Athletics charms typically involve finding strength or agility one previously lacked

[bleak hazel]

they assigned the four seasons to virtues for the Get castes actually

except creation used to have five seasons

not sure what's going on with that

[winged swallow]

the seasons really just provide some flavor and the basis for ability tree intros

and also like

[bleak hazel]

Spring: Valour
Summer: Conviction
Autumn: Compassion
Winter: Temperance

apparently

[winged swallow]

seasons are pretty nominally tied to the sun

y'know

or rather, position in the sky

[velvet raft]

Larceny/Winter seems sensible

[winged swallow]

this is why Archery has a Winter Morning/Dawn theme to it!

[tulip folio]

Do the 'Convert battlegroup loses into zombies' charms for Abyssals work if the enemy isn't something that can be zombied?

[bleak hazel]

the old exalted calendar went Air/Water/Earth/Wood/Fire -> Calibration -> repeat

now I guess it's on a 365 day year

[winged swallow]

well Calibration is like

Still There

[velvet raft]

Isn't Calibration the five extra days

[bleak hazel]

yeah, it's possible it's 12x30 + calibration

assuming we have normal earth months now rather than the old 15-month 5-season structure

[winged swallow]

i have also largely changed back to the Seven Virtues they use in Crucible of Legend/Essence because i like the different direction

i think it's seven

hang on

[bleak hazel]

ah, no, months are still as they were

[winged swallow]

yeah it's seven

[bleak hazel]

so presumably there is a slightly janky method to assign the four seasons to fifteen months split across five elements

[winged swallow]

yeah that's a

hm

[bleak hazel]

I'll be real I liked the old ones more for Solars in particular, they were interestingly Conky-themed

[winged swallow]

that's fair, i am just interested in how i can use the new seven for charm themes

[prisma sun]

I would presume not

[winged swallow]

sometimes the conversion isn't very neat, but that's fine

we learn

[prisma sun]

can't turn statues into zombies

[winged swallow]

yeah i would just say it Does Not Work

[tulip folio]

Wondering for Jadeborn who have capital I immortal souls and collapse into dirt when they die.

[winged swallow]

sounds

anyway yeah

you are not reanimating jadeborn

[tulip folio]

Autocorrect!

XD

Cool. I'll note it in the quick stats but it's more 'just so it's clear' physiological stuff.

Jadeborn: Unenlightened Soldiers only require four hours sleep per day and are immune to Wyld Exposure. Their bodies become earth when they die and their souls return to the ground, preventing body or soul being raised as Undead.

[winged swallow]

yeah like

if there's no corpse to reanimate

how's it gonna work lol

[prisma sun]

I do think the soul thing is a bit trickier

[tulip folio]

I do like the little fact in the book that a lot of the statues commemorating great heroes of the Jadeborn just...are that Jadeborn.

[prisma sun]

since Abyssals can definitely 100% kill immortal souls

[winged swallow]

you don't generally raise souls as undead

lol

[tulip folio]

As high essence Jadeborn turn to stone instead of earth.

[winged swallow]

hm

[tulip folio]

'Dying...must...pose...heroically!'

[winged swallow]

i guess there's the melee charms that let you absorb souls into your blade

hard to return to the earth when you're in the Knockoff Frostmourne

[prisma sun]

The only thing to keep in mind is I think that does behoove you to go "Yes, Earth manipulation charms can fuck them up hard"

[tulip folio]

The book interestingly lists them alongside exaltations in the 'No you can't mess with them' list.

[winged swallow]

huh

interesting!

[tulip folio]

I imagine it's 'direct creation of Autocthon' related

[prisma sun]

That feels off?

I would imagine they should be more like gods

where they're theoretically immortal

[winged swallow]

i mean. i doubt it's that.

a lot of gods are creations of the primordials, no?

you can still very much God-Slaying Torment them

[tulip folio]

Well they also can't be made so i image there is an element of 'Making thier numbers last over time' from the writers.

You can just make more gods

Pretty easily. There's a Sid charm for it.

[bleak hazel]

gods also reproduce

in the usual manner

[winged swallow]

like from the forehead

[bleak hazel]

possibly for Mars

[tulip folio]

If i had to guestimate an explanation its likely due to them being forged alongside creation. They are the fey caught within reality as it formed and physical avatars of the unchanging nature of earth.

Like how they'll break apart and die rather than changing if Fae try to get them.

[velvet raft]

And in the thigh

[bleak hazel]

other thing I didn't notice had actually gotten more powerful since 2e - the capstone of Citrine Pox, the steadily expanding plague beam

it's now a steadily expanding plague dome, and doesn't cost motes/WP to keep expanding

so at the essence level you can learn that it's a five-mile radius area of death, or seven miles if you somehow learned Soulfire Shaper Form as well

I thought Solar Circle Sorcery was where you found the city-killers

[coral wraith]

I mean, even Celestial Circle Sorcery has Cantata of Empty Voices

which expands to "only" a mile of death wailing

[bleak hazel]

teeny baby kill zone

doesn't even infect you with dissolving plague or deal diff 5 agg damage

(dear god, Citrine Pox)

[coral wraith]

lmao

[bleak hazel]

also permanently infects the area with fuck-you disease

[prisma sun]

Aight

got an idea

Infect area with the fuck-you disease

Relocate the area into the center of a city

Caffa, two!

[bleak hazel]

oh fuck that does work doesn't it

and with Oedanol's Wheel you can do it with a great chariot leap so you don't have to slog in at walking pace

[prisma sun]

Or you can do the Resistance route

And just

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-wall-break-rage-gif-8957717

[bleak hazel]

reminds of an NPC sid that an acquaintance of mine named Falling Star Ground Zero, which is a bit technical of a name for Exalted but pretty cool

[prisma sun]

I won't lie my first thought was

"Bringer of Nine Woes and Eleven Tragedies"

[bleak hazel]

pff

[prisma sun]

I do think if I was to make a shorter-term Sid for funsies

[bleak hazel]

I measured out the 5-mile kill zone on a map of New York for kicks and it does take out basically all of the central city

[prisma sun]

I'd just make The Juggernaut Auditor

[bleak hazel]

very much nuclear-blast-map situation

[wise ocean]

my fuckign manhattan

[spring lynx]

yeah that's way more of an alch name

[prisma sun]

My idea is a guy who rides a triceratops, stocks entirely up on beuracracy and feats of strength

His entire job is to deliver subpoenas

He Shall Not Be Stopped From Doing This

Doesn't fight at all

just delivers paperwork

[spring lynx]

We Have Been Trying To Contact You

We Have Elected To Stop Trying

[bleak hazel]

hang on, nukemap exists

[spring lynx]

it does!

[bleak hazel]

yellow ring is the edge of the fuck-you zone

assuming Essence 5

[spring lynx]

what parameters you got set here

[prisma sun]

HOBOKEN STAYS WINNING

[bleak hazel]

520 of gods own kilotons, on the surface, but I just wiggled the number until it gave me a 5 mile radius circle, because you can run away from the 1mph wall of doom

casualty count for a nuke not relevant

and Neighborhood Relocation Scheme integrates the history, so it would be "oh, yeah, New York's always had the Containment Zone in the middle"

neatly snips out all of Central London if you start dancing in Waterloo Station

if you are Anys Syn, you get a 7 mile radius, and can neatly take out basically all of New York City rather than just the centre

[prisma sun]

https://tenor.com/view/jujutsu-kaisen-shibuya-arc-sukuna-shibuya-arc-fukuma-mizushi-sukuna-domain-expansion-gif-4902864608735534993

[bleak hazel]

if you are Anys Syn and really mad, enough to drop Soulfire Shaper Form on this for effective Essence 9, you can get a 9 mile radius, which is the whole Isle of Wight

[prisma sun]

Really genuinely

Gotta find a way to put Domain Expansions into Exalted

[bleak hazel]

you got two coming up in Getbook at least

Quicksilver Hand of Dreams has "this is now the dreamzone, I control all in here", although the 2e inspiration is very boring mechanically

Border of Kaleidoscopic Logic has Meditative Battlefield Escalation, which lets you throw the entire fight into a pocket dimension/reality marble where you choose the form of combat

the listed examples are "everyone becomes living mountain ranges fighting in a war of continental plates" and "everyone becomes city-states fighting a war over an unimaginably gigantic tree" but if you just want really big kung fu fight you can do that too

Infernal Shintai/Devil-Body has been pretty high on the area control, too

[prisma sun]

"Everyone must now Yu-Gi-Oh duel"

[bleak hazel]

I usually describe it as the Uno charm, yeah

it came free with your exaltation

[prisma sun]

Can you post that charm actually, I'm in darktide and cannot check the book

[bleak hazel]

what, Meditative Battlefield? it's colossal, so wait for post-mission

[prisma sun]

aighty

[bleak hazel]

no idea how it will work in 3e but it was probably the most maximalist capstone in all of 2e, and that's saying something

unfortunately there's a clause buried in there saying "pay 3 willpower to leave", making it functionally useless

but the vibe is amazing

[dense verge]

essence 8

2e was a time

[winged swallow]

essence 8 what the shit

[dense verge]

a time i am glad to not be in

[winged swallow]

martial arts 8????

[bleak hazel]

I cut a whole bunch of bullshit, this charm is 1250 words by itself

[bleak hazel]

almost every SMA was mostly at E6+, yeah

besides Sapphire Veil and Prismatic Arrangement

BOKL was the most SMA, though, it started at E6

I imagine it won't work quite like this but they managed to salvage Breathing on the Black Mirror, I have hope for at least one Domain Expansion

and of course Gets will almost certainly get one in their native charms, it feels like a shoe-in

https://youtu.be/UpnYJhUlhpA

relevant

Meditative Battlefield Escalation was 1200+ words, also known as half a Wyld-Shaping Technique

[tulip folio]

I should finish up those weird eclipse charms I was working on.

Gamble Your Life (10m, 1wp; Supplemental; Instant; Essence 3, Eclipse): This Charm supplements an opposed roll to Gamble (such as Survival to pick a winning horse or Socialize to play cards) against a character in medium range, Raising the stakes to their peak. The loser suffers one lethal damage per threshold success the other character received, which ignores hardness.

A character who attempts to cheat in this contest is treated as having automatically botched, though they gain a bad feeling before attempting to cheat that allows them to back down or change course. This does not apply to effects that merely tilt the odds, such as using an excellency to be more skilled than the opponent or the assistance of a Plentimon's Ladybug but does affect effects that would try to force a result.

[tulip folio]

Not sure if too expensive

[tulip folio]

Kinda tempted to make it scene long but focused on a specific instance. So like it keeps going if you play a second hand of cards but not to other random tables nearby.

[bleak hazel]

I would either take it down to maybe 5 motes or do that, yeah

Scenelong is good because everyone likes double or nothing in the lethal card game

[fierce star]

"I'm betting all my blood on mahjong"

[bleak hazel]

Is this Obvious, i.e. do you have to explain the stakes first, or can you just go up to someone and obliterate them with a friendly game of blackjack because murderdawn has Int 1 and no Larceny Excellency?

[tulip folio]

My intent is obvious.

Will make that more clear

[bleak hazel]

Funny as that assassination method might be

also, dice or levels of lethal

[tulip folio]

Currently dice.

[fierce star]

also I wonder if citrine poxes + abyssal medicine's disease-zone capstone would be overkill together

[bleak hazel]

I haven't read that one in PDF form

[bleak hazel]

but I imagine probably

[fierce star]

alas it specifies mundane diseases

[tulip folio]

Oh Abyssals can create the Brisbane River

[bleak hazel]

This can be done sneakily, as with most (maybe all? haven't checked) of the Abyssal plague charms

this is better for covert ops, since you don't need to stand there striking Shaw Brothers kung fu poses for five hours right in the middle of the expanding sphere of obvious hell

[tulip folio]

It would be very funny if the Sid expansion book comes with some extra diseases.

[fierce star]

yeah, I ended up not playing her but I still have my 'omni-poison/disease/environmental penalties' badtouch abyssal in my back pocket if I get a chance to play her

[bleak hazel]

but I believe Essence Typhoon is still unmatched as area devastation by everything except a Rain of Doom solar sorceror (size likely somewhat smaller, but control spell can move it around quite fast, so it gets more area) and maybe Void Circle

[fierce star]

so more diseasess would be like candy for me for her lol

[bleak hazel]

Void circle has AoE mega spookiness rather than unleashing the Flood

[tulip folio]

I still want to know if you can inflict sun mouse plague with citrine.

I think so

And it's a very fun 'I'm giving you an out' disease option.

As if they do what you want, they'll live.

[fierce star]

Poison:
Black Claw Poison (Damage 2i/Round, Duration Ess + Manip, Penalty -2)
Snake Style POison (Damage 1a/round, duration 1 round/2 dice of raw damage, penalty -2)
arrow frog poison (Damage 3i/round (L in crash), duration 5 rounds, -2 penalty)
centipede poison (Damage 3i/round, duration (essence or 3) + onslaught, -1 penalty)

Disease:
White Veil Disease (virulence manip + 1, morbidity 5, interval 1 day)
Infected Wounds (with +2 virulence and morbidity)
WHite Sun Fever (or other citrine pox supernatural ailment)
Any disease I've cured or been infected by

Environmental
-1 dexterity

Seriously this is all on a single successful decisive that, with the right setup, wouldn't even be able to be defended against

[bleak hazel]

Ah, Drowning in the Endless Dark is a cities skylines tsunami so that's probably a slightly better citykiller if you really do want to optimise for nuking things but doesn't ruin the area with megaplague

[prisma sun]

What about In The End As In The Beginning?

wait shit

no one reminded to keep writing those guys

[chilly sluice]

not the White Veil poison too?

[prisma sun]

I'm going to bed soon

[bleak hazel]

I don't have the deeb book here, can someone grab AsIn The Beginning if we're comparing nukes?

[fierce star]

shit I forgot about white viel's poison too

so yeah an extra poison on the lis ttoo, plus anything that I just put on my fingers

one sec misc

[prisma sun]

It's 2 pages

https://i.imgur.com/iadSFp7.png

but here's the math for AoE

[bleak hazel]

but it certainly seems like the Citrine Pox capstone is basically a Solar Circle area exploder that's also a combat charm if you go less hard on it

[fierce star]

lesse intelligence plus lore, succeses/2 miles radius

that can get pretty big

[tulip folio]

Sid prophecy support for doing it at reduced TN

[prisma sun]

true!!!

[bleak hazel]

Takes the same time to charge, too

[tulip folio]

Since it scales with successes

[bleak hazel]

Does the Deeb Lore Excellency reroll anything?

[wise ocean]

It's just a 5mi radius again

[prisma sun]

Actually is there any currently printed bullshit that would let this time go instantly

[fierce star]

no rerolling

what if htis was a roll to introduce a fact, 'everyone nearby is about to die' :V

[prisma sun]

"I introduce a fact:
Fire."

[bleak hazel]

Yeah this is also just "5 miles on average, if you stunt, spend wp and have a speciality in nuking"

a lot more variable though

[prisma sun]

Is it?

So let's say like

All that + full exellency

And max pool

[bleak hazel]

11 dice base, 2 dice stunt, +4 sux excellency + WP = 10.5 sux average, divide by 2 for 5.25 mile radius

[tulip folio]

Superior Tool for Lore (Anarchist's Cookbook)

[bleak hazel]

oh yeah, 5.5 miles then

[tulip folio]

As it's not a combat roll

[bleak hazel]

speciality in Nuking Makes Me Feel Good

[prisma sun]

https://i.imgur.com/uvXOUzJ.png

rerolling the 10s

2 more successes

What's the normal dice to beat

I'm braindead atm

[tulip folio]

...i should check merits. Lore feels like one of the skills they likely have ways to get some non-charm dice.

[bleak hazel]

Sid Prophecy -1TN, Auspicious Prospects for Explosions -1TN

(battles or endings, presumably)

[prisma sun]

5+ then?

[bleak hazel]

wait, do Adamant Alchs help with lore? They give NCD on many things

and yeah, TN 5+

[wise ocean]

Shadow Wizard Exalt Gang: We Love Casting Spells

You're Now Listening To Nuke Anima

[prisma sun]

9 miles on this roll then

[bleak hazel]

No, Alch anima doesn't boost this

[tulip folio]

Got to love the giant ticking clock it adds in the sky for it.

[bleak hazel]

shame

[prisma sun]

MMO casting bar

What if you're just in your city garrison eating lunch and then suddenly the entire room lights up in an AoE marker

[bleak hazel]

Where did the reroll 10s come from?

[prisma sun]

Do 10s not explode naturally

Oh wait

They double right

[bleak hazel]

10s are 2 sux

[prisma sun]

I'm tired

Okay so that's even morre

[bleak hazel]

but do not explode

[prisma sun]

So yeah

this is a 10 mile nuke

[bleak hazel]

actually wait we can use this rock to boost the nuclear explosion

[prisma sun]

ANATHEMA WANTED SOME INITATIVE

BLEW UP THEIR ENTIRE QUADRANT

I rerolled the 1 and got a 7

so another success

but I don't think 21 meaningfully changes the math?

Does it round up to 11 miles

[bleak hazel]

Wait, we can go bigger, we need a forest witch to nuke harder

So 14 dice (pool, spec, stunt) + 3 sux (excellency) + some nonsense, let me check

[tulip folio]

Oh?

[fierce star]

... Hmm

this is not TECHNICALLY an attack roll, right

with the right stunt...?

[prisma sun]

It isn't!

Does that count as non-charm tho

is the question

Cuz we're at Charm limit

[tulip folio]

Doing Nuclear Physics Math to nuke harder

[bleak hazel]

I don't think this qualifies, this is essencesplosion not nuclear targeteering

[prisma sun]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq1Kl1luIjA

The Hearth Of Fuck Yo City

[bleak hazel]

but this works

While the Sea of Mind cannot impact Creation di-
rectly, an attuned character’s idealized experience
of reality still conveys some benefits, guiding her
toward the best ways of achieving her goals. When
she spends Willpower to add a success to an action
that upholds one of her Intimacies, she may add
(Intimacy) non-Charm dice instead of a success.

[fierce star]

oooh

and yeah it's from a merit, it's non-charm

[bleak hazel]

Defining intimacy + specialty, nuking makes me feel good

[prisma sun]

So we'll add "Carthage must be destroyed: Defining"

Oh we didn't even add that to the first one either

[bleak hazel]

So 18 dice (pool, spec, stunt, sea of mind) + 3 sux (excellency) + TN5 rerolling 1s

[tulip folio]

Fire Dragonblooded Build: Nuclear Hell Raven

[bleak hazel]

8.5 mile radius on average

[prisma sun]

https://colin-fredericks.github.io/ex3-dice-roller/

Oh hey look what I found

[tulip folio]

Pretty solid nuke

[bleak hazel]

we have exceeded Anys Syn normally but not Anys Syn when unreasonably mad

[prisma sun]

13 successes. Roll = 4,6,4,10,4,7,2,6,5,5,5,9,5,2,10,2,7,3.

+4

[tulip folio]

Not bad for a DB nuke.

[bleak hazel]

If the lore merit does count, we're up to 10.4 miles, best in the game

[prisma sun]

Man this charm is so fucking sick

I do think it's the Coolest nuke

by far

[bleak hazel]

we just need Crimson One the forest witch plus an unhinged siddie