Dragon Blooded Polygamy

Lol look up how that worked for the Ottomans. They basically had a civil war to determine their sultan every time the old one died, even if he had appointed a successor.

checked
When there were only two, it almost turned into a civil war. having an entire harem's worth of kids would destroy everything.

This was basically true of most pre-modern monarchies. Only rarely did a succession go without a war.

Did boomerang return?

Not that user but does birth order or whoever’s the mother factor in? It’s not like every king who has five or so kids with the same woman automatically has one.

Doesn't the Realm lean matriarchal? As a matriarch concerned with lineage you probably only want successors that personally came out of your body, so wives don't really help, and more husbands doesn't really help the rate, even if it's fun to have them.

I'd have thought dynasties were the most stable version of absolute monarchy that still allowed for meritocracy.

Mass-breeding doesn't work for them in EX3. The part of their Exaltation that can produce more Exaltations takes a decade and a half to replenish itself between conceptions.

I think direct lineage to the Empress counts more than matriarchy, so grandson of the Empress > distant female cousin. That said the Empress sired all the Great House founders so they're all going to be related to some extent.

Boomerang's not coming back, user...

Okay so harem of dragon blooded WOMEN as in pic related is still a go for glorious Terrestrial Horde yes?

That kind if mincing retardation is why your game is shit

>Why don't we see more of it considering how important having kids is to them?
What literature ever describes that as an important goal of dragons?

Is it normal for your own mother to be in the harem?

The crab bucket theory works really well for raising Terrestrial kids until you get old and they start killing each other until you're left with, at most, one supremely fucked-up kid.

Enjoy 2e, user. If you actually can.

No, because it's still giving you a watered-down man and also likely not politically tenable.

But that isn't necessarily desirable. Hell as far back as 1e the books say the empress didn't want to be constantly fighting wars, expanding, taking new strapsies, so on and so on. There were decades where nothing much happened and thats how she liked it. That approach you suggest /might/ get them more stuff, but these are still all elemental demi gods with their own ambitions, hubris, and of course this is aggravated by the great curse. The last fucking thing you want is some young dumbass getting in his head to make the second lookshy, let alone three or four people doing that at once.
Thats pretty basic stuff as far as lots of religions are concerned actually. Nutting and making a kid was like the most spiritual draining thing you could do for some reason.

>sakura anywhere in that image

I believe he's talking about the Dragon Blooded in Exalted.

Because of bloodlines? Like the whole reason the arranged marriges thing exists and they don't have DB's just fucking human after human its because its damaging in the long run to weaken the bloodlines like that, and also kind of messes with their whole immaculate faith thing if DB's just start popping up more and more and less of their kids exalt

How does this matter?
If all Dragonblooded are self-centered sociopaths with no regard to authority, does it matter who their biological father is? Not having a bloodline to tie them to the throne is not going to stop anyone from trying.
And if they are not, why would it matter? Everybody would know who the "true" heir is.
The only reason the succession crisis is a thing, it because the Empress deliberately engineered it, because she was too scared of her own kids.

"every time" being ~30% of cases
Compared to some periods in the (Eastern) Roman Empire, where the throne changed hands every 4 years, it's pretty good.
The presence or lack of civil wars has little to do with the number of heirs a ruler spawns and more to do with the overall stability of the institutions.

For fairly rational reasons, western monarchies didn't allow polygamy. This has effected a lot of fantasy. If the fantasy monarch has more then one wife it is generally the "exotic east" of the setting.

Which is hilarious, because Exalted as a setting is so carefully and thoroughly de-Tolkienized that "There are no white people in Exalted" is a persistent meme. Ignoring that the North is basically wall to wall Inuits fighting Russians fighting Vikings while Immigrant Song blares and is full of white people. The whole thing is "The exotic East". Assuming your definition of Exotic East starts at Italy and Greece, goes through the Ottoman Empire and India into China and Japan, and then drunkenly wanders through the Pacific Rim. With the aforementioned Northerners thrown in to boot.

christianity was a mistake

pagans had the right idea with concubines

Multiple partners plus a rigid patrilineal society is just begging for trouble, though. How do you *know* the kid you're giving your inheritance to is your kid and not Chad the Brewer's bastard? What happens if your one night stand turns up with a bastard of yours that's older than your firstborn? Etc. Which is why Western society insists on the nuclear family and rigid monogamy, to avoid those exact societal conflicts. Matrilinearity or inheritance from uncle to nephew makes much more sense, especially for a society that plans to get its screw on a lot. You don't necessarily know that your concubine's kid is yours, but your sister's kid is 100% certainly your nephew.

Now that I think about it, wouldn't the ideal succession be a matriarchy from daughter to daughter? You wouldn't need to worry about the male parentage, and the mother would always know that her daughter is hers because she gave birth to her. It solve a lot succession issues right quick.

>How do you *know* the kid you're giving your inheritance to is your kid and not Chad the Brewer's bastard?
because the concubine quarter's are kept under lock and key by eunech guards
>What happens if your one night stand turns up with a bastard of yours that's older than your firstborn
keep her as my mistress and make my "son" a priest

Yes but depending on the setting, matrilineal marriage is not put into place or ever considered. Don't know how prominent matrilineal marriages where in the actual feudal era of the world.

This is how matrilocal societies operate, yes. However, if you look at history, you might notice among them a tendency to get BTFO or driven to imperial margins as patrilocal mechanisms provid better, punchier incentives for expansion, conquest and rape-pillage.

A major problem with polygamy (at least irl) is simple maths. Men and women exist at a (very rough) 1:1 ratio. If some men are taking multiple wives (or the inverse, although this is historically uncommon), others of that gender are going without.

This can be worked around. If you're taking concubines from foreign nations, or a thoroughly-repressed lower class, who cares how their society deals with it? Or you can just try to cull the number of men - send the dregs off the army, holy jihad, a celibate priesthood, etc.

We're talking about Realm Dragon-Bloods, though. There's (comparatively) no gender inequality! How are you going to get a gender imbalance permitting one gender to gather many spouses of another, without causing deprivation (and inevitable resistance) from the leftovers?

As far as I remember, the 2e sourcebook simply claims it's 'soft polyamory' - DBs might have 'official' spouses who they mostly breed with, but adultery is super-common and rarely punished. A guy might have a wife, but also be fucking a bunch of other guy's wives (and vice versa). Close enough to a 'harem' for them, I guess

There just aren't that many matriarchal societies to choose from - plenty of individual female rulers, very accomplished ones, but I can't think of any examples of matrilineal inheritance being used repeatedly, over several generations. (that might just be ignorance on my part though)

>A guy might have a wife, but also be fucking a bunch of other guy's wives
Remember, the Realm is full of bisexuals, and soft homo is tacitly encouraged because it dodges potential bastards. Dude might fuck his wife and get her pregnant then go off to his bro's place to bro it up with a brojob while they lift and bitch about woman drama. Or the reverse. Or, you know, dude fucks his wife and gets her pregnant and then screws the tits off every maid in the estate.

Exactly. DBs are canonically hedonist sluts, so formalised harems seem unnecessary (if not counter-productive)

> Avatar harem.
This pleases my cock.

>But that isn't necessarily desirable. Hell as far back as 1e the books say the empress didn't want to be constantly fighting wars, expanding, taking new strapsies, so on and so on. There were decades where nothing much happened and thats how she liked it. That approach you suggest /might/ get them more stuff, but these are still all elemental demi gods with their own ambitions, hubris, and of course this is aggravated by the great curse. The last fucking thing you want is some young dumbass getting in his head to make the second lookshy, let alone three or four people doing that at once.
This. The Empress didn't want to maximize the Realm's Dragon-Blooded population in order to conquer the world. She wanted to maintain alarge enough Dragon-Blooded population for the Realm to remain the dominant power of the Creation, strong enough to not be truly threatened by any outside force. World domination isn't worth the trouble, and neither is having an overabundance of elemental supermen.

Okay but consider, Solar!Aang/Naruto or whoever WANTS to found a bunch of Dragon Blooded nations. What then? What if he WANTS a sudden explosion of DBs in the Threshold or beyond?

Then you're looking at a Lookshy type situation where you have a shit-ton of DBs at a significantly lower power level because their blood is watered down. With DBs, you get quantity or quality, never both.

Well, considering , he's shit out of luck.

>Then you're looking at a Lookshy type situation where you have a shit-ton of DBs at a significantly lower power level because their blood is watered down. With DBs, you get quantity or quality, never both.
That doesn't actually make sense, because has only a relatively minor effect of personal power of a Dragon-Blooded, but a fuckhuge effect on how many of his children are going to Exalt. Quantity and quality go at least partially hand in hand when it comes to DBs.

The problem is history is full of examples of 2nd sons still fucking shit up. I can't remember off top oh my head but I remember a story about the heir giving his little bro literally half of the country to rule and the little bro still started a civil war to get it all.

People are retarded.

Definitely.

It's one of those things that has never quite gelled in-setting, and is frankly one of the dodgier aspects of the writing.
>Lookshy breeds shittons of DBs as fast as they can, which is why their Breeding is shit.
>Except the Realm has a fuckton more DBs because they have a fucking continent worth of individuals to draw from, and still manage higher breeding because Her Redness is lolbreeding6/legendary breeding/whatever you want to call it.
>Also, ruleswise, better breeding makes DBs more likely to Exalt, best you can do with quantity is roll the dice a bunch more times at significantly worse odds
>Lookshy is still ultimately a Greece/Italy sized collection of city states and subjects vs a fucking continent, so clearly quantity is not fucking working out for them.

I honestly can't tell if you're being ironic or not, but literally that mentality is exactly why it's a terrible idea.

Throw dragon-blooded and mortals into the mix and you have thousands of dragon-blooded and millions of mortals.

Chad DragonBro has a Dragon-Blooded wife and a hundred mortal concubines.

>a hundred mortal concubines.
Concubines are expensive, dude. Unless we're talking slavegirls, and even then that's a bigass bill to just keep around hundreds of women as just walking fleshlights. He has six concubines that are the primo grade-A shit, and about a hundred maids, cooks, gardeners, armorers, tailors, beaters, bearers, and guides who he fucks for a quick screw on a moment's notice. Only Cynis shitters keep more than about half a dozen concubines.

Because
1. Relationships produce drama- and more people = more drama. Drama is really fuckin' bad when Exalted are involved.
2. The Realm is largely egalitarian with matriarchal leanings. Many men to one woman isn't super efficient.

I always figured Lookshy survived because they had enough Doomsday weapons that no huge military invasion was possible, but they were too short ranged/mutually assured destruction prevented them from using them against the Realm. So Lookshy couldn't really globally compete, but the realm couldn't destroy them or fight too hard.

>Concubines are expensive, dude.

Oh I agree, which is why the mortal patrician families might pay lodging fees for their daughter to stay with a dragon-blooded family.

Ostensibly for her to learn from an enlightened individual, make social connections etc.

But really, the plan is she comes back carrying a child of the dragons.

Horse breeders pay stable fees to owners of prize stallions all the time

Dynasty isn't really big on bastards, though. I don't see that being a common practice. Dynasts fucking patricians and patricians seducing Dynasts, sure, but odds are the Dynast is on Maiden's Tea.

>Why don't we see more of it
Borak, Ashradalon, the Blue Drake from NWNSOTU- yeah, you're full of shit OP, big surprise there- Dragon's in charge of not having sex with everything? Bitch there are literal Dragons that are actually just horses caused via dragonfucking- Wyrms stick their cocks in everything- except Klauth, because he's a closeted homosexual.

I mean, FR literally has a fucking Rogue Blowjob dragon call GLORYTONGUE who sneaks into people's campsites at night to "Lighten their loads", in addition to casting spells with her tongue and using it as a weapon.

Dude. You're kind of off-topic here. I'm not talking about dragon polygamy. I'm talking about dragon-blooded from Exalted. Read the thread dude. Also holy shit is that glorytongue thing for real???

You'll find her in the Dragon Magazine annual- next to a Were Dragon Drow that's a literal maneater in both ways.

Dragonblooded is also a thing in D&D- so making that mistake isn't unexpected.

>not being a sorceror
>not keeping a dozen or two sorcerously-bound demons and elementals as your concubines
Plebs. Just look at the variety you can get, with just two spells:
>shapeshifting purple girls
>ten pale human girls with a hivemind
>girls with loads of fingers who plays music on the air
>metal mermaid-lamia girls
>half-scorpion musclegirls
>horned girls with acid powers
>fire girls who are supernaturally skilled at dancing and thus also fucking
>girls with needles for hair, if you can make them your familiar so that they become sapient
>two different varieties of fire-elemental bird girls
>also, butterfly girls made of fire, if you want to deal with the drama they cause
>girls made of cloud-stuff
>girls with translucent blue-green skin and floating hair

Even female sorcerors can get their desires met, with big, studly blood apes and fervid smiths, multiple different tentacle demons, and living armor that can stimulate every erogenous zone on your body simultaneously.

It's probably because they've been using marriages to make alliances. The reason marriages CAN make alliances is because the children of said marriage literally unites the blood of the two families and (theoretically) produces a person who is equally part of both and can mediate between/is cared about by both of them. If you can't be sure which kid belongs to which father (or, at least, maintain a good pretense of it), then that breaks down. So every lady needs to have only one possible babydaddy.

When the DBs started off, it's canon that there were tons of ladies and only a tiny number of guys and they spent a few years before the primordial war doing nothing but popping out kids, so it can't be a physical/metaphysical impossibility.

>When the DBs started off, it's canon that there were tons of ladies and only a tiny number of guys and they spent a few years before the primordial war doing nothing but popping out kids
Not canon anymore, and it wouldn't work with how generative essence works now.

This was a recurring question pointedly ignored by 2e devs and the entire fandom. DB's breeding farms and Neomah cloning farms (especially cloning farms) were ignored with very shitty arguments like . The absolute retardation.

Then some devs more sane than others tackled on the problem with the stupidest solution they could find, but hey, it's still a solution.

Here's the retardation point by point:
1. We ignore the issue and provide rationalizations that don't work.
2. When we can't ignore the issue any more, we inject the most boring solution into the lore.
3. We call it a day.

That the sort of things that makes the Exalted fandom half as retarded as the 3.PF fandom, though no more than half.

Don't forget that some sorcerers can bind Raksha in 3e, probably by taking their heart grace or something equivalent. Good old Appearance 8 "pinnacle of inhumanly beauty" slave fairy.

'Satrapies'. 'Strapsies' sounds like an article of beachwear.

What would your preferred solution be?

No that's fucked up.

Oh hush up

Try running a society on them.

Gotta up the airbender population somehow!

>There was that problem with the Duk of Rodan's son, though. neither will soon forget their punnishments over that. too bad it was a scullery maid that caught them.

Not really an issue in Exalted but only if it's what I think it is.

Why am I not surprised

Because it was a dumb piece of fluff that was juts begging to be removed?

Toph is literally 11.

They are all VERY obviously aged up.

In the comic continuation, he got it back or got another one.

Because it's better gone? Having an exalt type defined by 'You are good at having babies' is stupid when every single exalt, Dragonblooded included, is supposed to be an epic hero.