Keychain of Creation IV: The Lore Thing

[Rockphed]

I would like to note that, when comparing Solars and Primordials, the only information on the capabilities of a Primordial is that they can be defeated by Solars and they could create ex nihilo. We have no knowledge on their Charms or their mentality. All the game stat information we have is on Yozis, who are not Primordials anymore. And when comparing Yozi Charms to Solar Charms, the former tend to be more specialized but more powerful in that specialty. Supposedly, there are going to be Yozi Charms that makes someone with that Charm a Yozi, but then the Reclamation should have succeeded as soon as the first akuma capable of summoning a Third Circle Sorcery did so to summon the fetich soul of a Yozi to Creation (as fetich souls have access to any of their parent Yozi's Charms the Yozi chooses to grants them).

Aren't Yozis, by definition, Primordials who have been trapped, bound, castrated or crippled by being forced to swear they were no longer Primordials or some such? If so, to turn into a proper primordial, emulating the Yozis won't work.

[The Rose Dragon]

Aren't Yozis, by definition, Primordials who have been trapped, bound, castrated or crippled by being forced to swear they were no longer Primordials or some such? If so, to turn into a proper primordial, emulating the Yozis won't work.

The Reclamation is not about becoming Primordials again; it's about returning to Creation and taking it back from the gods. The biggest issue is actually getting free from the confines of Malfeas.

[horngeek]

As before; the oaths they swore mean they can't get out by that method.

[RedScholarGypsy]

As before; the oaths they swore mean they can't get out by that method.

Have these oaths ever been in any way codified in the canon? I never found them, and I assume they haven't been written down as to foil rule lawyers, but I'm curious.

[Kyeudo]

The Ink Monkeys has even less editorial or developer insight than its writers have while writing the books. Considering how they have almost no editorial or developer insight while writing the books, and the developers are supposedly the persons who created the setting and should have the greatest say in what's going on, that is extremely jarring to me.

And speaking of editors, for all that Carl Bowen has the show for his setting-related work, rather than his presentation-related work (such as fixing typos and such), you could apparently replace him with a drunken brain-damaged monkey and not notice a difference. At least the monkey could notice that the same book has two mutually exclusive setting details (not minor ones, either - this is on the level of "This is what happens when a Monstrance is destroyed and anyone else who says otherwise is wrong") in two subsequent chapters and tell the writers of these chapters "Hey, there are mutually exclusive setting details in these two subsequent chapters which you guys wrote, apparently without consulting each other, the developers, or me. Care to explain that?". Carl Bowen doesn't seem to do that.

Basically, in TV Tropes terms (no links, sorry), this is Armed with Canon leading to Continuity Snarl leading to one Khantalas whose mind has been as screwed as Anjei Marama herself.

Only one thing to say about this: QFT. Especially about the Ink Monkeys. I've only read one thing they produced that made any sense at all in canon.

[golentan]

Secret is so perpetually huggable. It's good to see her dad trying to be there for her. I mean, the situation's got to be terrifying for him, but he's trying to comfort his daughter rather than getting caught up in that.

Rough Arc on everyone emotionally. Except maybe Ten. And he can cope the way he always does: Alcohol and Epic.

[Drascin]

Only one thing to say about this: QFT. Especially about the Ink Monkeys. I've only read one thing they produced that made any sense at all in canon.

Personally, I don't follow the Monkeys much, but I do owe them one for the Essence Cannon writeup, as my current Alchemical has one. I mean, what the hell. You have sentient robot Exalts and you scrap something so basic as the ability to have an arm cannon? What the deuce, WW?

[golentan]

Personally, I don't follow the Monkeys much, but I do owe them one for the Essence Cannon writeup, as my current Alchemical has one. I mean, what the hell. You have sentient robot Exalts and you scrap something so basic as the ability to have an arm cannon? What the deuce, WW?

Question: Why not simply use Transcendent Multimodal Artifact Matrix + an Essence Cannon (from Wonders of the Lost Age). Same end result, plus you can mount more and heavier gear, including Free essence cannons (buy a Capacitor and plug it in, or include it in the templates).

[Drascin]

Question: Why not simply use Transcendent Multimodal Artifact Matrix + an Essence Cannon (from Wonders of the Lost Age). Same end result, plus you can mount more and heavier gear, including Free essence cannons (buy a Capacitor and plug it in, or include it in the templates).

Because Concussive Essence Cannons, the ones in Wonders, are predominantly two-handed or downright huge, which is problematic for making an arm cannon . The one that isn't is the smallest one, which is more or less a personaly handgun that does 10B for a 3 mote per shot cost and has a rate of 1 - not exactly an X-buster, no .

[golentan]

Because Concussive Essence Cannons, the ones in Wonders, are predominantly two-handed or downright huge, which is problematic for making an arm cannon . The one that isn't is the smallest one, which is more or less a personaly handgun that does 10B for a 3 mote per shot cost and has a rate of 1 - not exactly an X-buster, no .

At 5 essence, you can use "Any magitech item whose size is not essential to it's functioning," and whose rating is equal to your essence-1. So a medium concussive essence cannon with a hearthstone socket would be fine, or a large without... As a colossus you could fit a Large or even a Very Large without mote cost to fire. That is some serious mobile artillery, much better than the Ink Monkey option...

[Revlid]

Only one thing to say about this: QFT. Especially about the Ink Monkeys. I've only read one thing they produced that made any sense at all in canon.

*Raises eyebrows*
Reads over Ink Monkeys stuff. Infernal Monster expansions seem fine, new Solar/Abyssal and Lunar Charms seem fine, new Infernal Charms seem fine, Black Claw style seems fine, Eastern Spotlight seems fine... What's the problem, here?

Note also that in most-if-not-all of those instances, "fine" translates to "really awesome".

BAAAW SECRET
Wait, is she stopping herself from grabbing her father's pendant in that one panel?
BAAAW SECRET

[horngeek]

*Raises eyebrows*
Reads over Ink Monkeys stuff. Infernal Monster expansions seem fine, new Solar/Abyssal and Lunar Charms seem fine, new Infernal Charms seem fine, Black Claw style seems fine, Eastern Spotlight seems fine... What's the problem, here?

Note also that in most-if-not-all of those instances, "fine" translates to "really awesome".

*agrees with this*

*loves the Daystar articles*

[Drascin]

At 5 essence, you can use "Any magitech item whose size is not essential to it's functioning," and whose rating is equal to your essence-1. So a medium concussive essence cannon with a hearthstone socket would be fine, or a large without... As a colossus you could fit a Large or even a Very Large without mote cost to fire. That is some serious mobile artillery, much better than the Ink Monkey option...

Well, yeah, at Essence 5 you can do all sorts of crazy stuff. But the Ink Monkeys version is something that characters under 100+ XP or thereabouts (nobody is going to spend all their XP in Essence upgrades, not the least because it takes months of downtime to do so, so you can only do it when the campaign gets a big interruption) can use, which makes it a lot more applicable and can be made a signature weapon from soon in the character's career. I certainly don't expect my current character to even reach Essence 5 before the campaign ends, so without Ink Monkeys it'd have been bow or bust.

[Xelloss]

At least the monkey could notice that the same book has two mutually exclusive setting details (not minor ones, either - this is on the level of "This is what happens when a Monstrance is destroyed and anyone else who says otherwise is wrong") in two subsequent chapters and tell the writers of these chapters "Hey, there are mutually exclusive setting details in these two subsequent chapters which you guys wrote, apparently without consulting each other, the developers, or me. Care to explain that?".

Holden has an almost exhaustive knowledge of published (and yet to be published) Exalted material, and Neph have the Holdenpedia hotline.

Well, I think it'd be perfectly reasonable to say that Solars could learn to make Exaltations of their own, and thus learn enough to fix the Abyssal and Infernal Exaltations... if they actually had an arbitrary amount of time in which to experiment and develop.

The fact they didn't do it in the First Age tells us that you can't do it just by throwing a bunch of dice.

I'm not a fan of "we have relics of past awesomeness that we've lost the ability to make ourselves and we can never regain it".

Almost everything that was "lost" after the First Age is a potential plot hook so it can be rediscovered (and even improved), especially by Solars. Even things previously impossible like making new Exaltation or destroying the Neverborn can be achieved (but not just by using a Charm, or it would already have been done, you have to be imaginative). The fact that the PCs are the ones the more likely to do it is not because they are suddenly better than equivalent PNCs, but because you tell the PCs' story. Other great things are made elsewhere in Creation in the mean time, just not mentioned.


About page 312 : damn, Secret's cuteness really as no limits ?

[Aquillion]

Aren't Yozis, by definition, Primordials who have been trapped, bound, castrated or crippled by being forced to swear they were no longer Primordials or some such? If so, to turn into a proper primordial, emulating the Yozis won't work.

The distinction is more political than anything else.

I would like to note that, when comparing Solars and Primordials, the only information on the capabilities of a Primordial is that they can be defeated by Solars and they could create ex nihilo. We have no knowledge on their Charms or their mentality. All the game stat information we have is on Yozis, who are not Primordials anymore. And when comparing Yozi Charms to Solar Charms, the former tend to be more specialized but more powerful in that specialty. Supposedly, there are going to be Yozi Charms that makes someone with that Charm a Yozi, but then the Reclamation should have succeeded as soon as the first akuma capable of summoning a Third Circle Sorcery did so to summon the fetich soul of a Yozi to Creation (as fetich souls have access to any of their parent Yozi's Charms the Yozi chooses to grants them).

The Primordials are no better at creating ex nihilio than the Solars. They created Creation out of the primal chaos of the Wyld, not out of nothingness, and we more or less know the charm they used to do it, which behaves more or less exactly like a comparable Solar charm. (They can Wyld Shape in Creation, but that's more of a 'you built it, so you can change it' thing -- Solars can use WST in areas they created with it, too.)

Yozi/Primordial charms are, according to Infernals, exactly equal in power to Solar charms. The "more specialized" thing is a bit confusing to some people. What it means is, for instance, while the Solar charm Memory-Reweaving Discipline lets you rewrite someone's memory to whatever you like, the Infernal one will only implant one specific type of memory or change the target's memory in one specific way, but will cost one more WP to resist or something. In other words, the Infernal charm exchanges generality for being good at one hyperspecific thing -- over all, the two charms are equal; any advantages Infernal charms get are paid for with trade-offs in applicability and such.

[Jukashi]

But the Yozis have an advantage in that they have infinity motes of essence and, being spirits (or at least, composed of spirits) can use any number of Charms at once without having to make a Combo to do it.

And although Yozi Charms have been listed, they're still left to the ST as potentially being able to do anything; at least, within the bounds of their individual nature. There are still things they can do that no-one else can, such as rewrite time (in a limited fashion, but still more than anyone else can), and I would say myself there are things Solars shouldn't be able to do - not without becoming a primordial themselves.

[Kyeudo]

*Raises eyebrows*
Reads over Ink Monkeys stuff. Infernal Monster expansions seem fine, new Solar/Abyssal and Lunar Charms seem fine, new Infernal Charms seem fine, Black Claw style seems fine, Eastern Spotlight seems fine... What's the problem, here?

Note also that in most-if-not-all of those instances, "fine" translates to "really awesome".

All of the Infernal Charms I've read are mechanically poor and don't properly fit into the flavor of the Yozi that they are supposed to be for. The artifacts I've seen are usually under or overpowered for their rating. Even the one article I liked, the explanation on how soulgems work inside Autochthonian society, has stuff that I'll have to cut out before I can use it in any of my own games. Basically, they don't give more than a cursory thought to the setting before throwing out an article.

[The Rose Dragon]

The distinction is more political than anything else.

It's actually entirely metaphysical. Being bound by the oaths of surrender is a thing all Yozis share, but it's also something other beings are bound by as well, such as several behemoths within Malfeas. A Yozi is a former Primordial who was spiritually castrated by the death of one of their Third Circle souls and transformed into something else. In some cases, such as Ebon Dragon, the transformation was very superficial: he transformed from the shadow of a dragon to a dragon made out of shadows. In other cases, it was much more profound: Adorjan turned from Adrian, the River of All Torments into the Silent Wind, and Malfeas was forcibly given a physical form to trap his cousins inside. In almost all cases, the castration was a degradation in power. A possible exception is Sachaverell, who gained the ability to determine the future for all beings if he is ever awakened, moving up from merely knowing all of the present.

[Skycroft]

All of the Infernal Charms I've read are mechanically poor and don't properly fit into the flavor of the Yozi that they are supposed to be for.

Really? For the Ebon Dragon Charms, to take one example, it seemed like they took the Essence (pun intended) of Dickery, smelted it free of all impurities, distilled it to extremely high levels of concentration and then condensed it into a sphere of pure Dickishness which they used to make Charms. Looks Ebon Dragon Flavored to me.

And the Daystar was awesome, if slightly weird at first glance (Dirigible?). But to each his own. At the very least, I am really bad at judging mechanics.

It's actually entirely metaphysical. Being bound by the oaths of surrender is a thing all Yozis share, but it's also something other beings are bound by as well, such as several behemoths within Malfeas. A Yozi is a former Primordial who was spiritually castrated by the death of one of their Third Circle souls and transformed into something else. In some cases, such as Ebon Dragon, the transformation was very superficial: he transformed from the shadow of a dragon to a dragon made out of shadows. In other cases, it was much more profound: Adorjan turned from Adrian, the River of All Torments into the Silent Wind, and Malfeas was forcibly given a physical form to trap his cousins inside. In almost all cases, the castration was a degradation in power. A possible exception is Sachaverell, who gained the ability to determine the future for all beings if he is ever awakened, moving up from merely knowing all of the present.

I have to agree with this. The Yozi are far weaker now than they were as Primordials. The fact that a Solar can equal a Yozi in power (subject to the limits Jukashi mentioned: having a finite Essence pool and having to learn Combos) does not mean that they can equal a Primordial.

That said, I am inclined to think that a Circle of Solars, given sufficient time and effort (and Essence) could surpass a Primordial not only in power but in ability. I don't recall the Primordials doing anything much that could not be classified as "something a Solar could do, except on a much, much bigger scale". Their creation of...um... Creation, wasn't much more than really really good Wyld Shaping. (There are things the Primordials can do to Creation that the Solars cannot, but that is primarily because, as Aquillion mentioned, they have creator's rights to the place.)

In fact, I'm pretty sure nothing in the setting can create ex nihilo, with the possible exception of the hypothetical Shinma of Destruction (unless Destruction is covered by Dharma, in which case there is no such Shinma). You need a lot of Essence, and raw materials (The Wyld). That, too, is probably because there is a local Shinma of Conservation of Energy, or something. Maybe it can create ex nihilo.

The fact they didn't do it in the First Age tells us that you can't do it just by throwing a bunch of dice.

True, but even the First Age was not that long, and it is possible they did not have enough time to reach the levels of power I'm talking about.

Besides, they perhaps didn't need more Exaltations. Only the Sidereals complain about there being not enough of them, Solars were perfectly happy with 300, the only reason they would need more is if they expanded the Borders to a much larger size, and if the First Age had lasted long enough for the size of Creation to (say) double, the Deliberative may well have developed ways of duplicating Solar Exaltation.

Or, you know, not. This is getting into speculation that is neither supported nor defied by canon, and so accepting it is a matter of personal taste.

...Also it is the middle of the night where I am, so this may not be the most well thought out post I have ever written.

[Teln]

True, but even the First Age was not that long, and it is possible they did not have enough time to reach the levels of power I'm talking about.

The Usurpation happened 4,000 years after the end of the Primordial War. Four. Thousand. Years. There's a timeline in "Compass of Celestial Directions Volume III: Yu-Shan", page 21. There are canonical Solar veterans of the Primordial War that got killed in the Usurpation. According to the sidebar on page 275 of the Second Edition core rulebook, 1,000 years old is the minimum age required to reach Essence 10. So yeah, they had the time.

[Kyeudo]

Really? For the Ebon Dragon Charms, to take one example, it seemed like they took the Essence (pun intended) of Dickery, smelted it free of all impurities, distilled it to extremely high levels of concentration and then condensed it into a sphere of pure Dickishness which they used to make Charms. Looks Ebon Dragon Flavored to me.

That's actually the problem. Yes, the Ebon Dragon is the prototypical jerk, but his Charms aren't about just jerking people's chains for the heck of it. The Ebon Dragon gets his jollies from a more thorough corruption than that.

Look at his Charms. He has a few major themes: Becoming the arch-rival of someone you hate, escaping confinement, poisoning life, darkness, and so on, but none of these include messing with people's memories and only one published Charm is any form of unnatural mental influence. This is because he wants you to really bleed from the betrayals he is about to impose.

He becomes your evil twin, ruins your reputation in any way that tickles his fancy, and laughs as you return to find the hollow shell of the life you once had. He will come to you at night and whisper in your ear about how your loved ones plot against you until you truly believe it.

What he doesn't do is turn your fondest memories into blackened copies of what they once were with a single word. That's Cecelyne's trick, or an Abyssal's. It's too immediately sadistic, too much a slasher's sort of cruelty. The Ebon Dragon wants those memories there, so you'll feel them stick you like a thousand needles when you poison your best friend for cheating on you with your wife, a deed he never commited but that you've been convinced he did.

[Revlid]

All of the Infernal Charms I've read are mechanically poor and don't properly fit into the flavor of the Yozi that they are supposed to be for.

...Such as?

The Fiendishness of Fiends is, quite frankly, the essence of Ebon Dickery distilled into a fine wine. The whole Golden Years tree of Charms just oozes his kind of slimy, enabling evil.

Hell's Chosen:
Malfeas' Charms are both awesome and fit his theme. "Witness my Infernal majesty!" indeed.
My Little Secret is a great Ebon Dragon Charm, especially if read in Jeremy Irons' voice.
The Cecelyne Charms are good, very visually appropriate, and allow your Infernal Gaara Moses to burst into a maelstrom of sand when infidels dare to confront him. I really like Swallowed in Eternity.
SWLIHN's Precison Thought-Force Exercise was necessary for someone wanting to mainly fight with his brain, and Orbital Impact Storm is a very cool image that totally fits her.
Both of Adorjan's Charms rock my socks. You can turn into wind to blow through things (cool and appropriate, an upgrade Charm will likely make you poisonous while doing so) and steal people's voices (also cool, I intend to become an Ursula-esque voice merchant).

Infernal Monster Style:
All good, all thematically appropriate to the theme of "Monster". We've got Freddy, Jason, Michael, Grendel, and Ringwraiths. What more do you want?

[Skycroft]

The Usurpation happened 4,000 years after the end of the Primordial War. Four. Thousand. Years. There's a timeline in "Compass of Celestial Directions Volume III: Yu-Shan", page 21. There are canonical Solar veterans of the Primordial War that got killed in the Usurpation. According to the sidebar on page 275 of the Second Edition core rulebook, 1,000 years old is the minimum age required to reach Essence 10. So yeah, they had the time.

All Essence 10s are not created equal. Just because Essence caps at 10 doesn't mean a 4000 year old solar isn't stronger than a 1000 year old Solar or that a 10,000-(with some form of immortality)-old one isn't even stronger than that. Just as a thought, there are canonical Charms that increase your Essence pools (eq. Immanent Solar Glory), and it should be possible to develop more.

More to the point, I was not really thinking of power but, as golentan pointed out, ability. Increases in ability are also caused by advances in sorcery, increases in knowledge, greater technology etc.

Did they have the time to reach Primordial levels of ability? It depends. In some areas, they already surpassed the Primordials before the First Age even began. Combat ability, to give the obvious example, otherwise they wouldn't have won in the first place. On the other hand, some things the Primordials can do the Solars never could and perhaps never should be able to do. Eg. mess with time, a la She Who Lives In Her Name*.

So the question of whether the Solars could ever be as powerful as the Primordials (please note that I am referring to the Solars as a whole vs. the Primordials as a whole) is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison. In some cases the answer is patently yes, in other cases the answer is a "probably not". Or even just a flat "NO" but I don't like to say that much.

With reference to the specific ability we have been discussing (the ability to alter/create the Exaltations), the Solars never achieved Primordial (or, you know, any) levels of ability, but as I argued earlier they might not have had the impetus to. And this is definitely a case where increased understanding of the world would help more than being Essence 10. 4000 years is not enough to unravel all the mysteries of Creation. I mean, the Twilights were just starting to experiment on the Loom of Fate before the Usurpation hit. Imagine what they could have discovered! Perhaps even the secret to creating a new one! Think of the potential!!! The fact that their idea of "experimentation" was to cause massive surges of Essence that damaged the Loom (which may have contributed to the Sidereals wanting to kill them. Maybe. Just a little bit.) is outside the point.

I do believe they have the potential to develop the ability to do mess with Exaltations, at least within limits. Can they create new ones, or perhaps new 'types' of Exaltations (perhaps if they had a new source of power)? I might draw the line there. Can they 'fix' an Infernal shard? I would say definitely, on the grounds that anything a mere god can do... Can they cure the Great Curse? Maaaybe.... maybe not. That's a tough one. Comes down do personal preference, really.

Aand, I should really go to sleep now and come back when I'm more coherent.

*though, as mentioned, this may come down to the fact that the Primordials made creation and its local concept of time/rules of physics (er... metaphysics). If a group of Primordial-level Solars (assuming for the sake of argument that this is possible) set off into the Wyld to make a new Creation, they may well be able to mess with it as much as the Primordials can mess around with this one.

That's actually the problem. Yes, the Ebon Dragon is the prototypical jerk, but his Charms aren't about just jerking people's chains for the heck of it. The Ebon Dragon gets his jollies from a more thorough corruption than that.

Look at his Charms. He has a few major themes: Becoming the arch-rival of someone you hate, escaping confinement, poisoning life, darkness, and so on, but none of these include messing with people's memories and only one published Charm is any form of unnatural mental influence. This is because he wants you to really bleed from the betrayals he is about to impose.

He become your evil twin, ruin your reputation in any way that tickles his fancy, and laugh as you return to find the hollow shell of the life you once had. He will come to you at night and whisper in your ear about how your loved ones plot against you until you truly believe it.

What he doesn't do is turn your fondest memories into blackened copies of what they once were with a single word. That's Cecelyne's trick, or an Abyssal's. It's too immediately sadistic, too much a slasher's sort of cruelty. The Ebon Dragon wants those memories there, so you'll feel them stick you like a thousand needles when you poison your best friend for cheating on you with your wife, a deed he never commited but that you've been convinced he did.

....I'm honestly not confident enough in my Understanding-The-Weirdness-That-Is-The-Yozis-Fu to debate with you on this, but I thought they were in flavor. For example, like most social charms, I saw them as enablers, not as ends in themselves. You use them to make your long, grand, weirdly pointless plan to utterly ruin someones life that much easier for you. You subvert his friends and allies, his family and his lover. You make the people who love him the most hate him the most, so that the look of shock on his face at the betrayal becomes all the sweeter when he learns that it wasn't their fault! (make sure he knows that, by the way) You don't actually use them on the target himself. That would be boring!

[Leliel]

What he doesn't do is turn your fondest memories into blackened copies of what they once were with a single word. That's Cecelyne's trick, or an Abyssal's. It's too immediately sadistic, too much a slasher's sort of cruelty. The Ebon Dragon wants those memories there, so you'll feel them stick you like a thousand needles when you poison your best friend for cheating on you with your wife, a deed he never commited but that you've been convinced he did.

...No.

That sound's exactly like the Ebon Dragon, specifically, his power to corrupt and despoil.

Cecelyne is really more the kind of person who offers to take the painful memories away, in return for memories of your devotion to her.

The Ebon Dragon corrupts those memories you already have so that you can suffer more. He is pointlessly cruel like that-almost as much as he is selfish.

[Leliel]

Aren't Yozis, by definition, Primordials who have been trapped, bound, castrated or crippled by being forced to swear they were no longer Primordials or some such? If so, to turn into a proper primordial, emulating the Yozis won't work.

Actually yeah, it would.

Simply put, it is only the oaths that make them Yozi, so emulating the Yozi while being unfettered yourself is very much a way to become a (rather scary, but whole and free) Primordial.

[Kyeudo]

...No.

That sound's exactly like the Ebon Dragon, specifically, his power to corrupt and despoil.

Power to corrupt and despoil? The Ebon Dragon doesn't cause things to rot, tarnish, corrode, or any other sort of broad thematic corruption. The only corruption he is interested in is the corruption of the heart, the twisting of a good man into a monster. Sure, he has a few poison-related Charms, but those are from his associations with backstabbing and assassins, with murders carried out in darkness.

Further, it violates his own obsession with freedom. The Ebon Dragon doesn't make you do or believe anything, as that would be something Malfeas or SWLIHN would do and far too direct for the Shadow of All Things. Instead, he will get you to act of your own free will, working at you until it is you who is doing it, not him. When you finally realize that you are damned, you also must admit that it is your own hand that sold your soul to the devil.

Yes, the Ebon Dragon is pointlessly cruel and selfish, but you fail to see how grandly cruel and selfish he is. The Ebon Dragon is not some petty vandal, splashing hate onto love in a mere moment, he is a connoisseur of jealousy and resentment, relishing both the making of the vintage and enjoying all the subtle flavors of betrayal as his masterpiece is finally sampled.

Still, this debate has caused me to go look back over some of their Charms and I am forced to admit that among the trash are a few gems here and there. Perhaps there is hope for them, especially if they could ever grasp that any Charm that takes more than one collum to explain it's rules should be rewritten as a spell.

[Xelloss]

But the Yozis have an advantage in that they have infinity motes of essence and, being spirits (or at least, composed of spirits) can use any number of Charms at once without having to make a Combo to do it.

In fact they can use Charms without combo not because they are made of spirits but because they have a Charm for that (probably somewhere after So Speak (Yozi)).

[The Rose Dragon]

Simply put, it is only the oaths that make them Yozi, so emulating the Yozi while being unfettered yourself is very much a way to become a (rather scary, but whole and free) Primordial.

No, they are not. It is the fact that one of their Third Circle souls was butchered to transform them into something else that makes them Yozi. The oaths are simply adding insult to injury.

[Skycroft]

No, they are not. It is the fact that one of their Third Circle souls was butchered to transform them into something else that makes them Yozi. The oaths are simply adding insult to injury.

Really? I was under the impression that killing a Primordial's fetich soul changes the nature of the Primordial but does not cause a (long-term, its probably quite crippling in the short term) loss of power. Though it does alter them intrinsically, it is something they can recover from. They would be a different Primordial, but still a Primordial for all that.

It was the oaths (sworn on their names) that limited them, that bound them, that changed the Primordials into something lesser than they were.

Or at least that's what I thought.

[Sanguine]

Really? I was under the impression that killing a Primordial's fetich soul changes the nature of the Primordial but does not cause a (long-term, its probably quite crippling in the short term) loss of power. Though it does alter them intrinsically, it is something they can recover from. They would be a different Primordial, but still a Primordial for all that.

It was the oaths (sworn on their names) that limited them, that bound them, that changed the Primordials into something lesser than they were.

Or at least that's what I thought.

My personal interpretation was that it's a little of both. I might be pulling this out of thin air but I interpreted Fetich Death as being able to increase or decrease a Primordials power. The Exalted were somehow in control of the effects the Fetich death had on the Yozis and in almost every case made them weaker*, maybe not significantly so in some cases but still some tiny bit weaker. This coupled with the Metaphysical effects of the Surrender Oaths are what made them Yozis.

*Sacheverell being the only exception I know of.