/exg/—Exalted General

I admire your taste in enforced political suicide, user. In all seriousness though, that would greatly depend on the intelligence of said god, and how influential or well connected they are at the moment.

And their position.
Something like a secretary or the prayer management centre might be let off fine, while a censor of a direction might find themselves a head shorter

I forget, is Prince of the Earth a title the Deebs made up for themselves, stole from Solars, their own title like Lawgiver for Solar, or one for Exalted in general?

Anybody have plague of hats' loom2.0 sideral edit for 2e?

because asians have straight hair

fixalted.bazzalisk.org/index.php?title=Plague_of_Hats_Loom_2.0
???

wouldn't binding a god against corruption be like forcing a wood king to be nice?

thanks

What would a Linguistics based Sorcery Initiation be like?

ike "learning the secret language the gods used to make the world" kind of thing that turns up in various fantasy series?

Don't know what it looks like. But I know the end result.

forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/1113383-shaping-ritual-sacred-geometry-peach
Except instead of math/geometry use writing

Celestial/Terrestrial MA divide isn't a thing in 3e, aside from the Terrestrial and Mastery tags, right?

Correct. SMA are still their own distinct thing, however.

What's the most impressive thing a single Primordial has done in 3e, other than participated in the creation of Creation or help inventing the Exaltations?

Why would they matter, they're long gone?

In Ex3? There doesn't seem to be any information on them doing anything yet. The only thing there is the Infernal Preview stating Oramus and Isidoros created their own Exaltations.

I think it's one for exalted in general.

I definitely know it applies to solars and dbs.

Because a good 75% of my interest in the game revolves around the century when Infernals comes out. I don't care what that cuck Morke thinks, Primordials will always be one of the most interesting parts of the setting.

Oh, just the preview then. I've read that.

>they're long gone
Except they're ALL still there, only changed a bit.

Also imprisoned and unable to touch the Creation.

"Do your job to the best of your ability without accepting bribes" still allows for a lot of latitude in interpretation. Like if the god of disease decides he needs to kill off rival gods in his bureau to do his job he can still do that. He can bribe others, trade favors, and extort prayer as long as he can rationalize that it's necessary for doing his job. And there are tons of gods who are so lacking in self awareness that they can perform those mental gymnastics.

Solars, Lunars, Sidereals, and Terrestrials are all Princes of the Earth. It's a metaphysically binding title too, every one of those Exalts is literally royalty. I just wonder what that means for Abyssals and Infernals, nobody ever commented on whether they retain that status. Infernals are Peers in hell, but not Unquestionable. Does that mean they're royalty in hell?

Except when they do touch creation constantly through means almost the same as they did before. Don't pretend that infernals, demons, the reason why solars were freed, and dozens of other things don't exist.

Infernals aren't an extension of the Yozis. They might obey them, or not. Even demons, on the rare occasion they maaanage to find their way to the world unbound, generally don't act under orders from their masters. They just do their own thing.

The fact that they might obey them already shows that the yozis are players in creation. What's more, they don't need to consciously obey to do what the yozi want.

Demons doing their own thing is what the yozi want, besides that. Even first circle demons are expressions of the yozi, albeint more free-form ones. That's what I meant when I said "through means almost the same as they did before".

Holden and Morke were very intent on rendering all of the Primordials irrelevant and I've read nothing that would indicate Minton and Vance are pursuing a different narrative. Creation of the Great Curse by the Neverborn is probably your best bet.

>The fact that they might obey them already shows that the yozis are players in creation.
"Players" with limited, indirect and unreliable influence, perhaps. In other words, not very impressive players.

>Demons doing their own thing is what the yozi want, besides that.
Not really. I mean, something like Stanewald dancing or Florivet drinking and womanizing does absolutely nothing to serve the goals and desires of the Yozis. Higher-circle demons are a part of their Yozi, but what a part of the whole wants isn't always what the whole wants.

>Even first circle demons are expressions of the yozi, albeint more free-form ones.
They really aren't. They're tools and toys, not a part of any Yozi's soul hierarchy.

> That's what I meant when I said "through means almost the same as they did before".
Except that before they could also affect the world directly, and their souls and the souls of their souls and their servants were in the world constantly. This is not remotely the same as their current situation.

>"Players" with limited, indirect and unreliable influence, perhaps. In other words, not very impressive players.
Well, when you say it like that. You have to remember that pretty much everyone is like that, including the incarnae.

>something like Stanewald dancing or Florivet drinking and womanizing does absolutely nothing to serve the goals and desires of the Yozis.
The Yozis were always very fractious creatures even within themselves. Just because on some higher level they want a reclamation doesn't mean they don't want all those little things too. That's just how it works for creatures with countless souls.

>They're tools and toys, not a part of any Yozi's soul hierarchy.
They don't need to be, their very existence is in line with the yozi.

>Except that before they could also affect the world directly, and their souls and the souls of their souls and their servants were in the world constantly. This is not remotely the same as their current situation.
Sure, they have to go through a layer of proxies, but that's pretty much it.

>Well, when you say it like that. You have to remember that pretty much everyone is like that, including the incarnae.
The Incarnae could take direct action, though. They mostly don't, because they're a bunch of piece of shit addicts, but they could. All the other goda are also capable of acting directly. So are elementals, the Fae, and to a somewhat more limited extent ghosts. So no, everyone isn't like that. It's just the Yozis. I guess the Neverborn have it even worse, though.

>Sure, they have to go through a layer of proxies, but that's pretty much it.
It's not just about having to go through a layer of proxies. It's that those proxies are in no way guaranteed to actually do what the Yozis would like them to do. For example, Malfeas probably wants shit to get wrecked in Creation so that his wrath is know there as in Hell, but even his own souls aren't necessarily inclined to make that happen. Yozis simply don't have the kind of means to exert their will on the Creation they used to have, and other beings of power still have.

>they totally could, they just don't want to
Yeah, no. They're as firmly shackled as the rest of them. All they have is more illusion of freedom to outside observers.

>It's that those proxies are in no way guaranteed to actually do what the Yozis would like them to do.
Wow, that sounds almost like gods or solars for the UCS. Oh wait, no, it's exactly like that.

>Wow, that sounds almost like gods or solars for the UCS. Oh wait, no, it's exactly like that.
Yes, the fact that any god and Solar can, you know, actually do things in Creation himself certainly doesn't matter at all. They're exactly like the Yozis!

Is ryebread a thing in the Realm?

>The Incarnae could take direct action, though.
Creation Ruling Mandate, no they can't.

You're comparing proxies to the main being now? Yeah, obviously there's a difference there. It's just that both of the main beings in the example are useless on their own and reduced to using unpredictable proxies. Just as demons and infernals fuck around, so do gods under ucs and solars.

It's almost certainly a thing somewhere in the Creation, but I don't know about the Realm. I've always imagined that wheat and barley are more commonly used in the Blessed Isle.

Creation Ruling Mandate doesn't physically bind the Incarnae, while the Yozis are very concretely bound by their imprisonment. Whether the Incarnae are even legally bound by a mandate given by themselves is debatable.

This discussion was, at least originally, about the Yozis' ability to influence the Creation in general.

Now that you mention it, rice and other crops like wheat have been somewhat confusing to me.

I often see descriptions of the blessed isle being primarily rice-based, but the scavenger lands are different, sometimes it's rice and sometimes it's more european food. So which is it?

And what about the other directions? Because of its watery associations, I'm guessing the west definitely does rice (when they aren't doing fish instead), but what about the south, north, and far east?

>This discussion was, at least originally, about the Yozis' ability to influence the Creation in general.
And then we arrived to this point, where I'm saying that they have a comparatively actually pretty decent level of control when compared to other beings of similar caliber like incarnae.

>And then we arrived to this point, where I'm saying that they have a comparatively actually pretty decent level of control when compared to other beings of similar caliber like incarnae.
Yes, but what I'm saying is that it isn't actually true. Aside from everything else, the Incarnae can take direct action. They currently don't, but it's more a matter of motivation than anything else.

Well, they can suck it too.

I don't care what the devs say, once Infernals comes out I'm bringing Yozis back to Creation whatever it takes out of spite for this bullshit. If they want MUH PLAYER AGENCY so bad, by their own logic putting Yozis everywhere is totally a thing I can do. Just gotta make enough sorcerous workings.

>Creation Ruling Mandate doesn't physically bind the Incarnae, while the Yozis are very concretely bound by their imprisonment. Whether the Incarnae are even legally bound by a mandate given by themselves is debatable.
I like to think they're stuck not doing anything until asked help by the Solar Deliberative.

You do realize that literally no one cares, right? Only people you have any potential to actually piss off with that are your own players.

>Sidereal hit squads in position

Like Sids are even credible as threat now the Realm is trashed AND they have terrorist Lunars AND they have rogue SPIDER SIDS. If the devs are so hellbent on making every single organization act like a crack whore bending over and begging Big Daddy Solar not to come in and take charge of them instead of, you know, presenting any sort of united challenge, then they don't deserve to be treated seriously.

>implying my players aren't yozifags too

Who would be stupid enough to purposefully That GM for their own game, let alone brag about it on Veeky Forums where for all they know their players are lurking in the same thread?

I imagine it'd have merits similar in fluff to the Burning Name, where speaking a specific word causes an effect to happen simply by virtue of that word/name being spoken.

Shaping rituals would probably be stuff like Iraja's "Write new knowledge to get motes for the day", or a variation on the Soul Perfecting Elixir in order to create Ofuda that can be burned for motes, or the Heptagram "Research for motes."

Building a Dawn, and I feel that even with the expanded caste abilities you're still going to end up with Dodge, Resistance, Awareness, and maybe War, regardless of your build. So what's a good setup for using War anyway? Do I surround myself with bodyguards so I can safely bark orders to my men? What other abilities go well with it?

Probably the kind of person who'd want to run a game about Yozi's escaping, as if RotSE wasn't the worst non-canonical adventure ever.

Sidereals were never united to begin with, their own Curse made it so it's incredibly hard for them to do so, and atop that, even if they do unite, it just makes them universally choose the worst possible option before then splintering once more.

> it just makes them universally choose the worst possible option before then splintering once more.
Second ed garbage I'm happy to see thrown out of a window.

>2nd ed

You mean 1st edition.

I think it was only stated in second edition? I might be wrong, I don't remember much from first

2nd edition shit, 1st edition shit, whatever. Shit is shit, and it doesn't improve with age.

That was always the only Sidereal Curse. Sidereals always cling to the worst idea and splinter. Only if you get them into big groups do they then begin to agree and choose the worst possible idea before splintering.

Thats literally why the Ursupation happened, and why the various factions exist, and why all of the factions might as well not exist because they can't even work together within that ideaology.

tl;dr Sidereals got one of the worst overall curses, because it damns their effectiveness to forever be shit.

I don't like hte implications that the Usurpation happened only because the Sidereals were cursed to make everything go to shit. Wasn't one of its narrative selling points that the Solars really were shit tier despots and it's impossible to know if Creation would be better or worse had they been allowed to keep on?

It doesn't really make sense either, considering that, you know, the Usurpation could've obviously happened even if the Curse wasn't a thing. I mean, there was definitely reason to consider it a necessary course of action, and that's all that was needed. Then again, I'm one of those guys who don't see any value in the Great Curse in general, so that obviously colors my views here.

That is the point. Great Curse is only there so faggots don't feel bad about themselves and their characters. It gives them a scapegoat explanation for atrocities they commit. Good guys would never do bad stuff.

The great curses in all the exalted, especially solars (like with everything else), were what set the scene for the usurpation. The sidereals merely set it into motion on their terms, but something like the usurpation or even worse was going to happen no matter what.

More like it's there because otherwise demigods with reality warping powers running around wouldn't make sense in a universe that's falling apart despite them, and even worse it wouldn't make an interesting setting or story, instead just being power fantasy wanking.

Fuck. I wasn't very clear what I was saying. Great Curse for normal people represents some sort of character flaw meter. In lot of myths and old stories heroes suffer and fail at some point because of that weakness.

Now there are people who for some reason can't process the possibility that their characters aren't the good guys. If you asked them they would never do horrible things while at the same they are killing thousands, destroying countries because selected few wronged them etc. It is hypocrisy and they aren't aware of it.

Because of people like them you have Great Curse meter. A play who wants to play a tragic hero would willingly make himself fail at a major part of a story because it make it more interesting. Meter is there so snowflakes are forced by the system to follow the desired narrative developers imagined.

>More like it's there because otherwise demigods with reality warping powers running around wouldn't make sense in a universe that's falling apart despite them
They make plenty of sense in a universe that's falling apart (partially) because of them, though.

> and even worse it wouldn't make an interesting setting or story, instead just being power fantasy wanking.
This is just silly. Why would you need a curse to have demigods fuck up, have flaws or just be plain bad apples?

That's the reason why they don't make sense. The universe wouldn't be falling apart because of them or even despite them, given what kind of powers they had, if they weren't intrinsically flawed. Remember that these are beings with not just inhuman magical powers but also inhuman virtue, willpower, and insight. Beings like that would not destroy the world they depend on if they weren't spilling their sanity spaghetti left and right.

>That's the reason why they don't make sense. The universe wouldn't be falling apart because of them or even despite them, given what kind of powers they had, if they weren't intrinsically flawed.
> if they weren't intrinsically flawed
Being intrinsically flawed is a human thing. This is not a particularly edgy or cynical view to hold, I think. Humans do a lot of good things, but also a lot of bad things, or dumb things, or things that are just incompatible with things other people want to do. Nothing more than that is needed to explain the past or present of the Creation.

>Remember that these are beings with not just inhuman magical powers but also inhuman virtue
They aren't, though. Well, in previous editions, where Virtues were strictly and objectively defined things, some individual Exalted were. Those Virtues explicitly had little to do with morality and even less with sanity, though.

Think of it like this. Just as the gods need the games of divinity for the setting to make sense, so the exalted need the great curse.

>Meter is there so snowflakes are forced by the system to follow the desired narrative developers imagined.

Except in the past few editions it's been less of a "slow descent into madness" and more of "retard switch", thanks to the shit rules behind it. You're perfectly fine for a long time, then suddenly, you go full retard for 20 minutes to a day (give or take), and then somehow no one is supposed to notice the shining example of rightness just raped a bakery. No, not the people in it, the actual building.

But user, they don't. I just explained to you why I don't think that's the case.

>Just as the gods need the games of divinity for the setting to make sense

They don't, though. The Gods were basically chained to their cubicles forever, forced to keep shit grinding on. That alone should've been enough to want a rebellion. Adding "Oh yeah, the Incarna also did this because they wanted to play 4th Dimensional AD&D" just seems like adding more gasoline to an already raging house fire.

Exalted aren't human after some point. Not in the sense we're talking about it here. Sure, while they're still essence 2 or 3 the difference isn't that big, but past that it becomes stark very quickly.

That would be a completely different rebellion that would lead to a completely different setting.

>That would be a completely different rebellion that would lead to a completely different setting.
The setting we already have isn't clear on what motivated the gods to rebel. At least not originally, not in 1E. So no, it wouldn't lead to a completely different setting, because it's already a possible reason for the Primordial War in the setting that exists.

Oh, I thought you meant the usurpation, not the primordial war.

Well in the case of the primordial war, I'm under the impression many gods didn't really want the games of divinity at all, particularly the UCS and likely other incarnae.

And what I meant in the first post in this tangent was to paint the games of divinity the factor which stops the gods from being useful, just as the exalted are stopped from being useful by the great curse. That's why it's needed, not as an excuse for the primordial war.

>And what I meant in the first post in this tangent was to paint the games of divinity the factor which stops the gods from being useful, just as the exalted are stopped from being useful by the great curse. That's why it's needed, not as an excuse for the primordial war.
Most gods never get to see or touvh the Games of Divinity. They can't be and aren't intended to be the explanation for why gods in general are as useless as they are. Laziness and short-sighted self-interest are the reason for that.

I absolutely think the games of divinity are the main explanation for why the incarnae are being useless fucks.

>Primordials will always be one of the most interesting parts of the setting

Only in how they are hell in addition to being imprisoned within it and kept away from Creation. Everything else is ultimately a less than stellar idea building off of this good initial start, particularly with the presentation of the Yozis in MoEP: Infernals, which went from a misstep to completely terrible.

I thought it was the millions of years of servitude to the Primordials, from which they wish to take an equally-long break.

(I so wanted to spin in a reference to Hellsing Abridged 8 there, but it just didn't work out...)

>I thought it was the millions of years of servitude to the Primordials, from which they wish to take an equally-long break.
Well you thought wrong. Resenting the perceived unjust rule may have been a driving factor for the primordial war, but it has nothing to do with the current state of the celestial bureaucracy. Pretty much the entire reason for why the gods in this setting are useless can be summed up as the games of divinity.

>Well you thought wrong. Resenting the perceived unjust rule may have been a driving factor for the primordial war, but it has nothing to do with the current state of the celestial bureaucracy. Pretty much the entire reason for why the gods in this setting are useless can be summed up as the games of divinity.
How exactly do they Games of Divinity make gods who aren't Incarnae jerks who slack off when their bosses aren't looking?

Only malfeas is hell, and he isn't even technically a primordial anymore. Gaia, Autochthon, and possibly any primordials which weren't present in creation during the primordial war and probably comparatively short time span since, are the only true primordials still around.

>when their bosses aren't looking
You answered it yourself.

No, I didn't. To clarify the already clear point, the rest of the gods could do their jobs. They choose not to. This is not because of the Games, as these gods don't play the Games. They're just lazy, selfish fuckers. The same explanation could be extended to the Incarane with very little effort and few chances to the setting. There's no particular reason why the Games of Divinity shouldn't be a thing, but they could be removed whil still having the setting make sense and be more or less the way it currently is.

You know.

I think the Exalted setting is cool.

But, I dislike or detest pretty much every type of person in it. Lunars, most spirits, sidereals (fuck them), fair folk (fuck them too), don't really care for abyssals and infernals, I want nothing to do with the Guild, and all of the dragonblood need to stay in their containment direction.

Anyone else have this problem?

They choose not to do their jobs because the most important jobs aren't being done either. After a few thousand years of that, it's no surprise it's every god for himself, even the most noble examples.

And not all gods are noble. They aren't supposed to be. They're smaller, and more limited creatures than the incarnae.

So yes, it ultimately all falls down to the games of divinity.

>They're just lazy, selfish fuckers.
Not all of them, but definitely many of them. That's what happens when being selfish is what you need to do to survive.

>The same explanation could be extended to the Incarane with very little effort
Nope. This would undermine the entire setting itself. The very reasons for why solars imbody perfection and virtue is because their god is the god of those things. The reason why lunars embody adaptability and survival is because their goddess is the goddess of those things. Removing all of that would be beyond shitty, and if you think it's a good idea I have no fucking clue what you even want out of exalted.

>There's no particular reason why the Games of Divinity shouldn't be a thing
Then you'd need to cripple the incarnae in some other way, and since we don't actually have any real explanation as to what the games actually are, it would be either exactly as contrived or more so. Which wouldn't do a fucking thing.

Thats why you kill them all outside of the 1 or 2 that aren't full retard when you play a Solar.

>This would undermine the entire setting itself. The very reasons for why solars imbody perfection and virtue is because their god is the god of those things.
Where exactly are the virtue themes to be found in Soalr Charmset, user? What does emodying virtue mean on a practical level? It cerainly doesn't meant that Solars are particularly morally upstanding, even without the Curse.

>The reason why lunars embody adaptability and survival is because their goddess is the goddess of those things
How would these qualities prevent Luna from being lazy and selfish, or just having a deserved vacation of a few millennia after a hard-fiught war?

How does it have nothing to do with it when the gods clearly don't think on a mayfly mortal time frame and still think of the Primordial War as being a recent development?

Because you don't need the GoD to explain indolence. The gods not thinking that centuries or millennia mattering all that much and lots of shit happening to the people that they gave Creation to in order to get out of the dull drudgery of maintaining Creation can do that quite well on its own.

Yozis are still definitely Primordials, and they all chip in to produce the landscape and features of of their own imprisonment through their inward-bent natures.

As for the others, the game's setup, as discerned from its word count, isn't supposed to be about them, or the Yozis, either. They're around to explain how the setting got to the point where it is. which you can then use as the stage of crazy adventures - and you, yourself, can add in Yozi breakout schemes if you want to, but that fruit hangs so low that you have to dig it up, and it's already petrified to boot.

Do you hate people? Because that's what all types of Exalted are, and they're as varied in terms of personality and morality as people in general.

So what, exactly, do you like about it?

We're talking about fluff, not the practical level, you dunce.

You need the games to explain the catastrophic indolence inherent in the celestial bureaucracy. The incarnae are too smart and powerful to just fall apart on their own without some sort of antagonist helping them along.

>The gods not thinking that centuries or millennia mattering all that much and lots of shit happening to the people that they gave Creation to in order to get out of the dull drudgery of maintaining Creation can do that quite well on its own.
The principles from which the exalted were created couldn't come from gods capable of such things.

Honestly, just the fact that they have awesome peaches and wine that they don't want to share tells me that they already don't want to pay attention to anything but their weeks-long office parties. And falling apart is all about stress and related pressures, having laid low the smart and the powerful time and again throughout history. In fact, if power goes to your head, it accelerates the process.

>We're talking about fluff, not the practical level, you dunce.
I wasn't asking for mechanics, dimwit. Just explain how Solars actually "embody virtue". What does it mean? How does it show in their behavior? How virtuous is Havesh, or Ophilis Ses, or even someone like Arianna or Harmonious Jade?

I think one thing everyone involved in this GoD discussion is that the Games aren't in some locked off room that no one but the Incarnae can access. They're open to viewing, provided you can pay the entry cost. And, if you're extremely extremely lucky, you may be able to make a single move in the Games. (Fewer still get an entire turns). Why the hell would you go out and do your job, when you could bribe your way into watching the Games?

Though I will admit, that only applies to Celestial and the most powerful Terrestrial gods. The rest of them are just capitalizing on the inattention of Heaven, I guess.

>and they're as varied in terms of personality and morality as people in general

Except due to the other Exalt types basically being defined by their "old boys clubs" (ie: Dynasty, Sid Factions, Silver Pact, etc) that pretty much set your roster of character concepts for you (either: "one of them", or "rebel against them"), they really don't have any diversity at all.

It's a thematic thing. A solar is potentially virtuous more than any other exalt. Of course, low-essence ones haven't had time to reach that, but I'll remind you of another way that this manifests in them. Their great curse also perverts their virtues the most directly.