Exalted General - /exg/

Been out of the loop for a while...is Arms of the Chosen out ?

Nope. Its been done since May but we need pretty pictures to be drawn over 3 months. Now we have to wait for them to layout the pretty pictures.

Speaking of pretty pictures, anyone got good art of Yozi cultists and evil killer monks?

You can always go and try if you can stomach Raksis hospitality.

What does the death of a Raksha in Creation look like?

They literally turn into salt.

How much of someone's personality is determined by their soul?

All of it?

People in creation still get brain damage though, right? Does it just not cause personality changes ever?

Idk, maybe?

where can I find the full wyld mutant "viability" rules for 2e?
what about 1?

how do these differ from each other and from 3e?

(how number of mutation points affect ability to live in creation, ability to breed and inherit, essence caps, etc)

cake lunar is best lunar and 2e has vastly better art of the scene than 3e

unspecified, up to the st

but the pics are gonna suck anyway. why bother :(

2e: CoCD: The Wyld, Chapter 7
1e: Exalted: The Lunar

The Fair Folk books mostly talk about new Mutations and how Mutations affect Fair Folk specifically.

2e char question: Since I'm off in the southern deserts, is an extra 2L/6B worth an extra -1 mobility and 1 fatigue? Making a fatigue check every hour (every half hour if doing something strenuous) is going to catch up, but that extra soak is pretty nice...

Optimally speaking, if you are taking any damage at all, you are honestly probably already dead, and the most efficient way to not take damage is to just Perfect, so there's really no point to wearing it.

But no, really. It's the fucking desert. No amount of protection can justify how chapped your balls will be.

Probably not all of it. People are still affected by their upbringing and experiences. Of course, you could view this as upbringing and experiences shaping the soul, but I assume the question was about how much intrinsic, unchanging traits of a specific soul affect personally. I'd say it's probably something akin to the influence of genes on personality in real life. That is, the influence is there and it's considerable, but nevertheless even identical twins usually don't end up as perfect copies of each other's personalities.

>even identical twins usually don't end up as perfect copies of each other's personalities.
Those are the failed ones tho.

Y u ded tho

Why Bother: The Exalted 3E Story

So, does anyone have the new Hundred Devils Parade? It's got elephants and the possessor demon that got cut from the corebook.

Are the Caste books worth reading?

Sure
>Oh jeez could you not honey?

>sailor beefsteak loses "her" guts

How are the Dragon Kings doing in Second Age?
Would a Zenith who supports the Dragonblooded Realm for the stability it brings be okay?

Dead and dying, and if it tickles your fancy.

I've made a Dawn who wants to rescue the Scarlet Empress from wherever she's disappeared to in the hopes that she'll name him a Realm Magistrate, since his backstory is that he's a peasant kid who was trained by one as a mortal apprentice by one, who then Exalted after his master was killed by Dragonblooded assassins.

I really want these elephants.
Please user! I'll give you corgies!

Caste? No.
Aspect? Yes

Apparently there's rules for kitting them out in barding and arming their tusks with blades, according to some of the comments in the Onyx Path forum thread on it.

But idgaf about DB
Except of course they have stuff about the Realm?

What's the best sorcerous working to give yourself and why is it Legendary Size at will?

Caste and Aspect books are about character concepts. Only difference is Caste books are mediocre and characters are uninteresting and plain. There are some bad concepts even in Aspect books but it is far superior in quality.

Can Solars/Exalted in general resist the Sidereal forget aura and/or Resplendent Destiny shenanigans?

if you're concerned about reincarnation, remember that a full half of this setting's soul is made from scratch for each specific lifetime and then dissolved back into "lifeforce" at the end.

The soul is two parts: Hun and Po, the higher and lower soul.
The higher soul drives the more noble aspects of your being and rational thought, while the lower soul brings it in contac with your bodily needs. As another user noted, the lower soul dissolves after death and the higher soul usually enters lethe, where ¨the spiritual strain¨ of the life is washed of a soul, lethe herself thusly renders all personality and memories down from your higher soul before you reincarnate so you don't carry your last life into your new one, but some lives cling to the soul, mostly when it was long or destiny held you in an important role or you got awakened essence by some shenanigans. eitherway, sometimes the spiritual residue of a live is strong enough that youget the past live background, though lethe is relatively efficient about that, as a mortal you will not notice much of that (iirc you can only get up to three dots in fringe cases), only exaltations can carry enough of a spiritual background that a live once lived completely subsumes the live you are living, i.e. 5 dots past life.
That said there are some ways to at least partially restore memory of a past life, though that is vague and not often talked about, after all, you live now.

No. Only Sidereals can naturally see through RDs, Solars need Eye of the UCS. However, anyone outside fate is resistant to fate fuckery like Avoidance Kata.

What about the forget aura?

Only other Sidereals tend to able to remember each other. Non-Sidereals only ever recognize them as some form of acquaintance.

and that that is more or less an entire dog soul(for example). so however much souls have influence over personality you'd have at least an entire dog's personality worth of difference between you and your past life. ,,,of course that means when ghosts go a bit nuts they'd have about that much personality drift built in...

Why is the thread so dead?

Nothing to talk about.

/exg/, I have a bit of an issue.
My group broached the subject of playing Abyssals, (Using the reflavored 3e rules for Solars) and honestly, running it sounds super fun, since it gives all of us a chance to finally indulge all the chunni edgelord concepts that we've refrained from using. However, I've never actually run, or even played in an evil campaign. Does anyone have experience with running an Abyssal game, and any tips or things they wish they had thought of beforehand?
As of now, we really haven't solidified concepts past them wanting to be loyalists following the Lover.

>running it sounds super fun, since it gives all of us a chance to finally indulge all the chunni edgelord concepts that we've refrained from using
If you're going to play an Abyssals game with that mindset, here's one piece of advice: Don't.

My circle is in the South, and we're opposing a Deathlord called the Reclaimer who sacked Chiaroscuro at the beginning of the campaign. On a permanent basis, we're excavating and living in an old, forgotten First Age city that the Shogunate abandoned.

I don't have any experience with Abyssal games, but I have been in some games where most characters have been more or less evil.I'd say the big question is just how edgy you want to make things. I mean, as a general rule, I'd say that it's important to keep in mind that bad guys are still people, not just blobs of evil. They have desires and personality traits aside from being assholes, they aren't necessarily evil just to be evil, and they might justify their actions to themselves one way or another rather than just not giving a shit about morality. If you want to go full edgelord, though, just playing villainous archetypes might be okay. Personally I wouldn't do that, though. I'd rather start by trying to figure out why a human being with normal human emtions would've ended up as a loyal servant of the Lover. Maybe they've fallen for her beauty and charm, maybe they're grateful to the one who Exalted them when they lay dying, maybe something's happened to them in the past that's made them willing to consider destroying the world as a reasonable course of action, maybe they're just enjoying their new power and status withotu considering the consequences of their actions.

Just don't. You'll find things, about you and people around you, that you didn't know existed and didn't want to know.

It starts with emo brooding and mustache twirling and ends with highly detailed human sacrifices and ethnic cleansing.

>It starts with emo brooding and mustache twirling and ends with highly detailed human sacrifices and ethnic cleansing.
There's nothing wrong with ethnic cleansing. :^)

I would agree with that but I'm trying to save user's innocence. I mean he is on Veeky Forums but still.

Has anyone the new Hundred Night Devils thingy?

The Realm has the Heptagram, Lookshy has an academy in an old Solar manse, the Sids just go to Department 112, a Lunar runs one in Great Forks, and the Silver Pack's No Moons have an organization that teaches Sorcery and tattoos people. Deathlords can teach their Abyssals if they think they should know, and anyone can initiate themselves if they have the White Treatise, and learn five spells from the Black Treatise, which are Resources 3.

> the Sids just go to Department 112
IIRC the Sids are also running a Sorcerous Academy in the Haslanti League that's open to mortals as well.

>Department 112
A what now?

...

Why does this trash get posted every thread?

Why not

not if you succeed maybe

Because it has nothing to do with Exalted and very little to do with myth. Why the fuck is Enkidu a woman?

>woman

Kek

>People are still affected by their upbringing
>still
Upbringing has zero impact on personality and life outcome

That is, both according to studies and pretty much everyone's everyday experiences, just plain false.

...

>That is, both according to studies
When properly controlled for genetics, the results are pretty unambiguous. Identical twins raised apart still grow up to be as similar to each other as any other pair of twins. Unrelated people raised under the same roof turn out no more similar to each other on average than complete strangers.

100% not Enkidu. What even is this shit?

Just two bros ruling the world.

Oh god, is this fate/shit?

Just getting that now huh

According to most studies, genetics explain around or less than half of the variability in personality traits between individuals. Sure, these results are reasonably unambiguous. They aren't unambiguous in a way that would support the view of personality as something unaffected by upbringing. Some things are more affected by genes than others, sure, but personality as a whole is known to be significantly affected by upbringing and by environment in general.

>. Some things are more affected by genes than others, sure, but personality as a whole is known to be significantly affected by upbringing and by environment in general

It being 'known' does not make it so.
>Shared environment
>No
>No
>no
.1
>no
>etc

That's a nice picture. Care to link the full study?

Not him, but:
>www18.homepage.villanova.edu/diego.fernandezduque/Teaching/PhysiologicalPsychology/zCurrDir4200/CurrDirGeneticsTraits.pdf
There's the paper in full if you want to read it.

So uh, hypothetically, if you happened to accidentally unleash a massive Hekatonkhire on the East (currently in Halta, where it'll probably wake up and go on a direction-spanning rampage relatively soon), and now you have to go on a quest all across the Scavenger Lands to recruit help in stopping it, what charms would be handy to have and where would you go first?

For reference, I'm a Presence supernal Eclipse. We've got a year-long timeskip in which the circle is going to go do their own things, and we're all able to take one major action each month of the timeskip (and mind, a year in Creation is 15 months). Calibration also has it's own space for a major action.

What kind of Hekantonkhire are we talking here? I assume someone in your circle has war charms, and if not, is planning on getting them.

What essence are you? Is this for character creation? Shedding Infinite Radiance and its pre-reqs seem like they'd be quite useful if you can find an underling you trust enough. Having a high-powered lieutenant will let you probably perform an additional number of slightly lower powered but still relevant actions within that timeframe.
Alternatively, if you don't have it already, Hypnotic Tongue Technique lets you just shortcut the whole social system for the duration of a couple of orders, which is great for dealing with any difficult to convince individuals, but not going to win you much in terms of long-term loyalty.
Honestly for most mundane social opponents, if you have a presence+manipulation or charisma of 10, the combination of Listener-Swaying Argument and Harmonious Presence Meditation will blow away most resolve pools, even faced with opposing intimacies. Even exalts and spirits without resolve-boosting charms will struggle with it.
As for places to start, Great Forks' gods are usually pretty amiable to the solar's aims, particularly when they also go along with one of the god's explicit goals (protecting Great Forks), and have a notable military of god-blooded and other essence users, though the fact that it's your fault in the first place will complicate things.
Honestly, you may actually be able to talk the Fair Folk into lending some sort of aid, since they're a pretty major faction in the east, depending on the nature of your Hekatonkhire. If it threatens their source of dreams, and you're willing to deal with them, they may actually be one of your more powerful allies.

Why the fuck aren't most of the far-east locales, even those listed in the 3e book, not on the 3e map? I had to find Halta on the 2e one.

>Why the fuck aren't most of the far-east locales, even those listed in the 3e book, not on the 3e map? I had to find Halta on the 2e one.

The map's an in-character map drawn by a cartographer from the Realm. The map thus doesn't include everything and has some bias towards locations a Realmie would consider important.

>What kind of Hekantonkhire are we talking here?
We...don't quite know. To make a very long story short, mistakes were made involving sorcery, a very powerful soulsteel artifact-shard, and a party member hitting Limit Break. Speaking of which, I'm at 10 Limit myself now, so that's gonna be fun.

What we -do- know is that the Hekatonkhire is massive, and apparently very old. It's called "The Beast", because it's original name was lost a very long time ago. It apparently is going to devour everything in it's path, both living, dead, and undead.

Fortunately, no one knows I did this yet...except maybe some Sidereals, I don't know. I'm, uh, gonna keep my personal involvement a secret for the sake of diplomacy.

>I assume someone in your circle has war charms, and if not, is planning on getting them.
Nope, none of us do. I'm planning to start buying up dots in it though since, mechanically, I'm in a perfect position to do so (high Charisma and Intelligence). I also know Sorcery, so I'm thinking about summoning an army of Blood Apes to help. We're Essence 2, very close to 3 (we'll actually be hitting it over the time skip, because we get some XP over the months), so I'm planning to grab Celestial Circle Sorcery and maybe summon some 2CD help too.

Game has been happening for a while, but we're rebooting the game after a hiatus so we're able to re-adjust our sheets appropriately, since a lot of us were new when we first started.

Already have Hypnotic Tongue Technique, and also Countenance of Vast Wrath. I figure Socialize charms might be more useful for speaking to leaders though, any suggestions there?

And yeah, Great Forks was one of the first stops I have in mind. You think it'd be safe for me to show up to a meeting of the Confederation of Rivers? Getting them to commit to helping would be a huge boost, but I don't think Lookshy will be happy having a Solar there. Also, planning to try and get help from the Silver Pact, they might not like that.

Also,
>Honestly, you may actually be able to talk the Fair Folk into lending some sort of aid, since they're a pretty major faction in the east, depending on the nature of your Hekatonkhire. If it threatens their source of dreams, and you're willing to deal with them, they may actually be one of your more powerful allies.

What Fair Folk groups are there in the East? I couldn't find anything about major Fey factions in the East when I looked.

I guess that makes sense, but it makes it a lot less useful.

> It apparently is going to devour everything in it's path, both living, dead, and undead.
Yeah, you may be able to get some Fae help here.
>I figure Socialize charms might be more useful for speaking to leaders though, any suggestions there?
Aspersions Cast Aside is fantastic in my experience, allowing you to completely sabotage anyone trying to block your proposals, and Asp Bites Its Tail kicks this even further over the top. Motive discerning technique is never bad, has a low investment and solid returns. If you're willing to put a large investment into it, Knowing the Soul's Price is great, but that requires an 8 charm investment, so it's a bit iffy unless you're already in Socialize.
>Celestial Circle Sorcery and maybe summon some 2CD help too
If you don't already have it, I would recommend Six Eternities Travail from the Miracles book before you start trying to summon 2CD's if only because cocking up the binding rolls is going put you in an even bigger mess.
Great Forks was one of the first stops I have in mind. You think it'd be safe for me to show up to a meeting of the Confederation of Rivers?
If you've interacted with them before positively, or rumors of you have reached them, they might allow it. Mastery of Small Manners may, depending on how you read it, help here.
Lookshy isn't going to like you much, no matter what, and the only way to avoid that is if they're in a clear and present danger.
>What Fair Folk groups are there in the East? I couldn't find anything about major Fey factions in the East when I looked.
I haven't actually had any games in the far east, so I can't remember what exactly book they're in from the 2e detailed material, but the 3e book talks about Halta having a pact with the Fair Folk exchanging protection for free feeding on anyone on the forest floor.

Since I haven't seen this version of the map before, and hadn't known about the Blue Silk Raiders, where can I go to get more info on them?

The Blue Silk Raiders are described in the Fair Folk fat splat, according to google.
I've only skimmed that one, because it's really dense, and doesn't play nicely with other splats, so I can't tell you much more.

>Why the fuck is Enkidu a woman?
Because in the Nasuverse, he's a shapechanger made out of mud who modeled his civilized appearance on the priestess who originally seduced him with alcohol.

Here is clean map of Creation

>2e map

Its 3e time now.

3rd edition did a few improvements on the map. for example look of North and East, South-East.

Remaining problems
>too much sand in South
>too much water in West

>too much water in West
Needs way more islands.

South east? A large sea between the elemental poles of wood and fire is bizzare.

Are fuckhuge rivers in the East also bizarre? Or dry deserts in the South, which is closer to the Pole of Water than the lush forests of the East? Any element becomes more and more dominant as you get closer to its Elemental Pole, but the abundance of the element doesn't linearly decrease as you get further away from the pole. A sea in the Southeast doesn't really break any of the Creation's laws of nature or anything like that.

Bigger thing is why is the sea not linked back to the pole of water. It's completely isolated and trails off the edge of the map. It just seems odd, if it didn't go off the edge of the map or was connected to the inner sea it wouldn't be.

I always thought it was just essentially a scar left behind by the Balorian Crusade, and that's why a lot of the civilizations around and on the Dreaming Sea are...weird.

I think it straight bleeds into the Wyld.