/exg/ - Exalted General

Guys I was wondering if anyone can tell me if they think this will break anything if I do it. It looks fine to me but I don't want to open a can of worms I can't close after I introduce it to my game as it is a major plot point if I do.

So a month or two ago I asked if anyone had any suggestions on what I should do to make the West more colonial where all the major world factions set up colonies in the West. I needed a macguffin to make that possible. So being unoriginal that I am I came up with the idea of Spice. A magical spice plant that can only grow in the west at higher elevations meaning that only the larger islands with mountains could support it.

Now the question is will the effects of the spice create a problem for me down the line if I do this.

So there is 12 types of Spice plant. 9 of them simply increase the ingestsers attributes by 1. So mortals, Exalts, gods what have you would get one additional strength dot from ingesting it for one week even if this raises them higher then 5. Spice of the same type does not stack but all 9 can be ingested for +1 to all 9 attributes. If ingested more often will only continue to work for 1 week from ingestion. Those with attribute based excellencies can not use this in excellency calculations as its not their dot but a artificial dot that does not interact with their Exaltation.

This of course would make beast mortals and has massive applications so all the major powers in the world are going to want it and fight over it. This is exactly what I want. Not to mention the horror of having to go through withdrawals of losing a dot in intelligence for example if they lose access to the greater mortal populations and the riots involved in that.

Now for the other 3 types of Spice.

One effectively halves training times and grants one specificity per month if you are continuously on it as it lets you learn faster and pick things up easier. (I may change that to a season)

One grants Exalted healing while on it and increases lifespan by mortals by 10% if they are always on it. Exalted are just granted an additional 5 motes per hour as this does very little for them but reinforces their bodies essence.

The last one increases willpower recovery at night by one and raises your cap one higher. Again you need to be on the spice for this to work.

So every house is trying to increase their stockpile for the upcoming war and deny the spice to the other houses. Some third party groups like Chirchousco, Paragon, Cherek, Whitewall, Coral, and a few custom city-states on a coast are all making colonies in the West to grow the stuff. This will later become a major plot point as the origins of the Spice is a bit of a trap for the Realm and will become a complete clusterfuck for the party later on. Right now they are probably just going to pirate spice shipments and cause issues for nearly all parties involved.

What you should do is put a big fat continent in the West, same as there's a giant inland ocean in the East.

>major world powers
These would be what? Only the Realm and the Guild really work on a global scale. Other major powers are regional players with no plausible way of establishing colonies in the West, no matter how desirable it would be.

Well the biggest players are the great houses in this endeavor but there are other interested parties that have minor stakes that the Houses are allowing to colonize for strategic and alliance reasons later on in the upcoming Realm Civil War.

Not yet user. Soon. Also the Caul is there. But there are reasons they are not directly involved in this.

No, he's dissing EarthScorpion's (homebrewer) version of the Realm because it reads like perfetct, well-oiled machine with only perfectly rational, efficient people being in charge. Empire as big as the Realm just can't be like that, even if you take DB's powers and lifespans into consideration. Actually, their longevity creates further internal problems and struggles.

Okay, fair enough. That makes sense.

There's the Timeless Order of Manacle and Coin.

That's not the part I was reading. The bits of his homebrew I picked up sounded dumb but it was the other discussion that caught my interest. Like someone was pointing out how the realm had actual legitimacy to its claim that it's the best option creation has. That's true in the base setting. Basically no one but the realm has the manpower and competence to actually stave off stuff like deathlords or fair folk invasions. Omicron made a post saying how that was dumb because it gave the realm moral legitimacy. But that's the whole point. That's how the actual setting actually works, the empress came to power literally saving the world from a gigantic demon army. What's more having a story of a big evil empire that needs to be done away with is boring and over done. The thing that makes the whole solar deliberative vs scarlet empire thing interesting is that there is no right answer.

You are repeating yourself. Please go in the place where this stuff is more appropriate.

Yeah, I've read to that part. Basically, Omicron is saying that Realm should protect itself and things it considers strategically valuable and, in doing so, screw other parts of Creation. So they shouldn't be the oasis of civilization and country-Jesus saving all of the world from certain doom and enlightening savages because they are that cool. They should be a big, expansionist empire focused on its own gain. Because that's how empires get big - by being selfish, greedy, cruel and efficient in funneling resources into their homeland. Of course that means they probably fight with the Raksha and Deathlords and all the other dangers. After all universal destruction screws them just like anyone else. But they are not the empire all the real-world empires claimed to be.

At least tha's how I understood it.

Which db aspect is survival in again?

Wood, though I seem to recall the devs mentioning that in 3E, Abilities will be less tied to one element.

>That's how the actual setting actually works, the empress came to power literally saving the world from a gigantic demon army.
She came to power doing that, yes. Except, oh right, she didn't actually do that by having a massive empire that sucked the whole world dry, did she? The Realm did not end the Balorian Crusade. The Scarlet Empress (and the Realm Defense Grid) did.

There has never been a Second Balorian Crusade, nor a Second Great Contagion, or anything else of the scale and scope of those two horrors, and they were never arrayed against "the Realm" because the Realm didn't exist when they happened. The Shogunate did, and frankly, the Shogunate was stronger than the Realm by an order of magnitude or two.

Frankly, the whole notion that the Realm should be "good" also strikes me as special pleading: the Guild, Ixcoatli, the Delzahn hordes, the Caul, etc, none of the other great powers gets these kind of excuses for being a rapacious greedy machine that absorbs every type of resource it can. Do I have to also make Ixcoatli a net good for the world, to make things "ambiguous"?

I have a fluff related question for an upcoming infernals game. What are some of the possible traits a demonblood (descended from a luminata) who also has a luminata as their unwoven coadjutor?

Hello.

Is your Twilight weaponizing demons for a brighter tomorrow?

I don't think there's anyone who wants the Realm to be "good". If cush people exist, they are in a small and not very vocal minority. THe Realm doing something positive is very different from the Realm being a force of good. It's, like, maybe the Realm does protect the world and maintain some kind of order and stability, but slavery and excesses of some of the Dragon-Blooded and sucking out the wealth of the Threshold aren't necessary for doing that. Doing some good things does nothing to justify all the horrible shit the Realm gets up to. Doing no good things would make the Realm ridiculously, one dimensionally, black-and-white evil in a way real world empires, horrible as they may have been, weren't and aren't.

After the whole ending of the crusade the empress set up the realm with kejack for the purpose of making sure something like that never happened again. Like if the empress just left I'm pretty sure there would be nothing then a second crusade or another deathlords just finishing the job. I'm not gonna say the realm is unambiguously good because it isn't but I'm not going to try and say it was set up with the express purpose of making everyone it's bitch
Also out of all those ive only heard the guild being called totally evil.

There's a vast space between "irredeemably evil monstrosity" and "though it has very significant flaws, on the whole, a net good for the world." I think that the Realm should be placed between them.

>needing to be a Twilight to summon demons
Literally every sorcerer does that, and most of them think they are making a better tomorrow and that their cause is just.

I want the realm to be placed in the space where 'is it good or bad' has no determinate answer.

Death to anthema

I think the idea that it's possible to balance good and evil to figure out the moral net value of something is kind of ridiculous. The important things about the Realm are that reasonable, decent people can feel loyalty and respect towards it while equally reasonable and decent people hate it and view it as an enemy, and that it sure as hell could be replaced by something better.

Lemme guess, for the ones who don't really think things through, this ends horribly.

Realm pls.

Actually, demon summoning in Exalted is easy, safe, and reliable. I mean, as long as you're cool with sucking somebody out of Malfeas and turning them into your mindfucked slave that has to obey the letter and spirit of your orders.

It ends horribly not because of demon summoning, but because of perfectly normal Exalt scheming and politics.

>I mean, as long as you're cool with sucking somebody out of Malfeas and turning them into your mindfucked slave that has to obey the letter and spirit of your orders.

It just so happens I am!

I think EarthScorpion, of all people, put it pretty well later in the thread - the Realm kills Creation slowly but protects it from dying quickly.

Then go ahead and summon demons to your heart's content. Nothing will go wrong as long as you don't fail your binding rolls or order a blood ape to entertain important guests.

The plot of DOOM doesn't generally happen in Creation unless the sorcerer is powerful, unskilled AND overly ambitious.

Otherwise, cheap, clean energy and easy, "moral" and maintenance-less slave labor.

Lunars aren't furries you shitter.

>easy, safe, and reliable

Well, reliable in the specifics you want for it, at least. One example given was that if you summon a Blood Ape and order it to sneak your young son safely out of the city and deliver him to a safehouse, the demon will do this... and if it fucks up the "stealthily" along the way and someone sees, the demon will probably attempt to murder the witness and offer your son a leg of witness as a courtesy.

It is still doing its best to carry out the task dutifully and obediently, not quibble over exact wording, and not sneak around your orders. It just is terrible at human customs.

>Deathlords who don't want to destroy the world would be a nice start

Thats funny because the problems the Neverborn have with Deathlords is that they are basically ignoring their orders to kill everything in lieu of dicking around.

They tried once to kill Creation, it almost worked, then most of them said "Fuck it".

>order a blood ape to entertain important guests.
You uh...you gonna tell us what happened there mate? I know Blood Apes are basically the Creation version of Strax, but still, it can't have been that bad, can it?
youtube.com/watch?v=yDjmUEplR1I

Not by default, yes.

>the demon will probably attempt to murder the witness and offer your son a leg of witness as a courtesy.
Why are Blood Apes so funny?

Plain simple brutes earnestly attempting to do something other than beating people up just is funny as fuck.

Wow. This blood ape is trying to be nice to your kid and you're laughing at it. Maybe you should be more respectful of their culture, bigot.

>Maybe you should be more respectful of their culture, bigot.
#NotAllBloodApes
#DemonLivesMatter

If I told a neomah to take a kid out of a city but didn't explicitly tell them not to have sex with him would they know not to?

Neomah don't really like sex, so it's a slim chance it even comes up. Someone else would have to force the issue.

What are the most cliched concepts for a Solar, after "dynast"?

They don't exist to have sex. They exist to make towers and babies. They could just take the kids hair or something by asking him. But I doubt they would rape the kid.

The critter mostly just wants to build towers and babies. It doesn't need to have sex. If it hasn't had the chance to indulge in its passion for a while, it might make the offer, but if the kid says no it'd probably try to find some other way to get paid.

Merela's reincarnation.

"I wanna rebuild the First Age" is babby's first Twilight. "I wanna bust up slavery" is babby's first Zenith.

Also Brigid's reincarnation.

What are the most complicated subsystems, outside of Social and Combat?

Craft.

I'd kind of love a Zenith who wants toimprove the way slaves are treated. Like, a compassionate goody two-shoes character who considers slavery such a natural and necessary, though possibly unpleasant, thing that he doesn't even consider abolishing it as an option, you know?

what're your thoughts on arms of the unconquered sun style?

"Teh realm kill meh parents, I haet tem"

If it's not 3e it's not worth talking about.

I don't remember enough to measure if its worth porting to 3e.

what do they do with the babies anyway? seems like a lot of work to go through bargaining for hunks of flesh to just ditch in hell's wasteland (and maybe the narcotic tentacles adopt the thing til it starves)

Would demons have an understanding of human age enough to know why /SS/ is bad?

That's how it's like for my character. He's the compassionate, merciful Dawn caste who gives everyone at least one chance but he ignores slavery unless the slaves are being viciously beaten or otherwise horribly abused.

Do we know what yozi they were attached to? It seems like a reasonable corruption of "Bring fertility and health" run through the wringer til you end up with succubus Franken Fran.

i think the sex is just one of the easiest ways to get paid in meat. the flesh is what they're after its like clay to them and they're a bit ocd about making tons of little 'clay figurines' (well...(mostly)human patchwork babies anyway) in their spare time. its more likely to try and barter a pinky off him

The yozi matters much less than the 2CD that spawned them.

Neomah are sorta playing Bio-Minecraft. They seek out lifeform samples and craft new lifeforms. And then their previous creations might be posted to MalFeasBook, but mostly their creations will be forgotten about as the neomah starts building a new project.

They're descended from Malfeas, if I recall correctly. Thus the fire and the brass.

Decent and flavourful, and could be used as is without breaking anything. The fact that it had five form charms was pretty weird, though.

Then it's either the twisting that's the important part, or they were deliberately made to make mockeries.
Which one of those, then? I was figuring on tracing the lineage anyway.

What does a painter do with a painting, or a sculptor with a sculpture, or a composer with a symphony?

>Then it's either the twisting that's the important part, or they were deliberately made to make mockeries.
What 'mockeries'? The children neomah create from their own volition are unique creatures, sometimes but not always monstrous, but not really mockeries of anything. The children they create on orders of a summoner or as a part of some bargain are whatever is required of them, possibly regular humans.

According to old wiki, Neomah descend from Berengiere, Weaver of Voices, who in turn is the Indulgent Soul of Ligier the Green Sun.

If the point of Solar XP is to make you not buy only Charms, why can you buy Charms and Charm-type shit with it?

So they're craftsman, basically

asking once more, then I'll stop.

Normal XP.

The point is to get you to buy something other than Solar Charms, and to take the pressure off your normal XP when buying those non-Solar Charm things.

Sorcery spells and MA styles being narrow isn't as big of a deal if they aren't coming out of you native-Charm budget, and Evocations being loseable isn't as big of a deal for the same reason.

If there was only one XP pool, MA Charms and Sorcery would lose out to native Charms every time, since they're broader, more flexible, and have higher combo potential.

IIRC you get back Evocation XP if you lose the artifact permanently.

It seemed fairly straightforward to me. They're driven by nature to make weird shit because Malfeas is buttmad about mortals on some level. I could even see the interpretation that they're a twisted version of skill at shaping people in the first place (assuming he had a hand in that.)
I haven't read too terribly much of the lore, I'm just throwing out ideas.

Solar XP can buy anything, except for Solar charms.
It's Normal XP that can buy anything, including Solar charms.

Sure, but that doesn't undo the unlock requirements, the time spent training, etc., even if you do find a new artifact or whatever.

The unlock requirements are just more evocations and Essence level IIRC.

I'm talking about
>Special activation rules: This Evocation cannot be purchased with experience. It awakens after the skycutter’s master uses it to kill a non-trivial opponent in direct support of a Major or Defining Principle.
type stuff.

The issue isn't just buying Charms, it's specifically buying up tons of Solar Charms. (1) they tend to be superefficient, so you outpace any competition faster, (2) players tend to keep buying Charms in their preferred Abilities, so there's no diversification of the character - you can sing super awesomely before and after buying your sixth Performance Charm.

Buying Evocations, MA, and sorcery all require outside influence too (artifact, sifu, initiation) and so you're giving mechanical incentive to chase NPCs or McGuffins that can get you there.

It's pretty unlikely your GM is gonna take your weapon away from you, and if they do, it would only be temporary with a short arc to take it back.

Look, I'm pretty sure killing a non-trivial opponent in direct support of a Major or Defining Principle is its own reward, you're basically just getting a bonus charm out of it.

It's still infinitely more likely than a GM taking away a Melee Charm.

No, they're driven to create shit because that's how Berengiere created them. Berengiere herself is driven to create shit because she is the indulgent soul of Ligier, and thus embodies Ligier's ability to indulge his nature, and because Ligier is a craftsman and creator of things first and foremost. Ligier himself doesn't really embody Malfeas' butthurt. I'd say he's more like the part of Malfeas that remembers and embodies his past glory and therefore loathes his current state. There is no particular spite or malice behind the neomah and their creations.

What would be a good Craft specialty for a Lara Croft (Tomb Raider 2013) type?

Jury rigging.

Most of what she does would probably fall under Survival, though.

Scavenged materials, I suppose?

Repairs?

What book do I need to use this stuff?

>legitimancy

definitely not gypsy stage magic. this stuff is legit. trust me.

iirc the example in the infernals book had the guy end up pale with writhing skin, but that sounds pretty extreme and came out of the semi-uncannon first few chapters so who knows.