General Exalted Discussion Thread X: Playground Cosmic Principle

[horngeek]

On the 'very few Yozi loyalists' bit…

This sums up my opinion.

Tl;dr is that loyalist Infernals should be the hard ones to justify, not renegades. Even without the Devil-Tiger Charms.

[golentan]

Yeah, while Infernals were always popular because of having strong innate themes, the Devil-Tiger Charm tree seems to have caused an explosion of special snowflake characters. Solar were no longer the individualistic Exalted as far as many players were concerned. It's unfortunate, because that tree is actually metaphysically beautiful, but no one much thinks about the philosophical implications. Likewise, you can count the number of Yozi loyalists on one hand.

Me, I tend to take the Erekosë position - it's better for literally everyone if humans aren't the dominant species. And I mean literally everyone; it's better for humans if humans aren't the dominant species. The Exalted allowed Creation to be ravaged again and again (and done so themselves); better to restore the original, competent, rulers - even at the cost of humanity.

I will say I actually like the devil tiger tree for the implications more than anything else. The birth of (effectively) a new primordial not plagued by the monomania that limits its forebears is more interesting to me than any individual devil tiger, and if I could play a loyalist devil tiger under canon assumptions I would.

Because the Yozis mostly need to be subject to Solar tier Hug charms, and while I wouldn't trust them with unfettered power over creation they deserve better than they got.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Unfortunately, while I do want to play a Devil-Tiger….I am so bad at charm-making, that I'm sure I wouldn't make anything mechanically good for said Devil-Tiger….

I'm probably the other way. I'm good at making mechanically balanced stuff, but I find it hard to put out the sheer creativity needed for creating Devil-Tiger and Phoenix Charms. It would probably help if I played all the way from chargen.

[Gensh]

On the 'very few Yozi loyalists' bit…

This sums up my opinion.

Tl;dr is that loyalist Infernals should be the hard ones to justify, not renegades. Even without the Devil-Tiger Charms.

Eh...Most of that is bluh bluh hyperbole. It's mainly an issue with the personaliy of the typical Exalted player. To continue an example used, when Malfeas says "GO KILL LYTEK, or die!" I bow and reply "Yes, your Highness!" because it's not like I wasn't going to burn Yu-Shan to the ground anyway and bootlicking will get me everywhere. So what the Yozis are insane and mostly hostile to all humanity, myself included; they are the most efficient means to my ends. So what humanity is enslaved/destroyed; the Deathlords are humans. And still, there remains the option to redeem Babyslayer Desus; so too does that option exist for Malfeas - it just involves a lot more philosophy. He's still going to kill lots of people at the end of the day under the best of circumstances, but I can make sure that they're the right people.

Also we totally need a new thread title soon. What goes to 11 in Exalted?
...
"Elemental Thread of Middling Power"

[golentan]

Also we totally need a new thread title soon. What goes to 11 in Exalted?
...
"Elemental Thread of Middling Power"

General Exalted Thread XI: Beyond the Rules.

[Lord Raziere]

Whats goes to Eleven in Exalted?

The Houses of the Scarlet Dynasty methinks….

[Ganurath]

Lunar Attributes go to 11, if they have that one Charm from Lords of Creation.

As to Infernals v Solars, let me try to explain it in further detail. Both Exalt types have roughly the same number of Charms. However, from a fluff standpoint a lot of Solar Charms have a very "more of the same" feel to them: Stuff glows gold, and the Solar suddenly does stuff with more efficiency than humanly possible. Holiness may be involved. Abyssals get a bit of an edge in the inclusion of some psychic stuff, but other than that it's switching out glowing for shadows and Holiness for horror. Infernals, on the other hand, have a wide enough variety of Charms that you could create far more Infernals before they start to... Taste the same, I suppose is a fitting term. Even if one starts to get bored with the six canon Charmsets, there are plenty of homebrew Yozi to pick from as well: Isidoros, Szoreny, Cytherea, Metagaos, Elloge, Hegra, Qaf, Oramus... Not Sacheverell, though. Malfeas wouldn't allow it.

[Tavar]

Gensh, it never ceases to amaze me how you can consistently claim that mass murder, genocide, and slavery are good.

[Xefas]

Likewise, you can count the number of Yozi loyalists on one hand.

But at least we'll always have each other.

Gensh, it never ceases to amaze me how you can consistently claim that mass murder, genocide, and slavery are good.

Genociding harmful bacteria is both fun and healthy. What else gives you that perfect combo? Dance Dance Revolution, maybe? But the Primordials are all about that, too.

[Turalisj]

Adorjan and Ebon Dragon, yo!

[Gensh]

Gensh, it never ceases to amaze me how you can consistently claim that mass murder, genocide, and slavery are good.

Not good. Better than Oblivion. Murder is required in any revolution; the vast number that would arise from escaped Yozis is sadly unavoidable, simply due to their massive scale. And of course there are ways to minimize such casualties, especially for a GSP. Genocide in regards to the entirety of humanity is an outcome that ideally would be avoided but may be a necessity: Carthago delenda est. Not all humans are cruel, but it takes much more effort to react to evil than it is to commit it - the issue of the Deathlords vs the Solar ghosts who repented. Slavery is also not necessarily good, but not the evil thing American society makes it out to be. The gods have been free for five thousand years, and the vast majority are corrupt; better to bind them to their posts to improve the quality of life for all other things.

Ideally, the Reclamation would be ground to a halt because everyone knows the ED is the ED. Instead, one might create a vast geomantic array beneath dead Meru, cut off from Creation's Essence. Through this and likely other means, one might summon a fragment of the Demon City. Let him revel in taking his old foes' capital; give him human convicts to execute; pacify him while you work to spread his brazen touch, offering the wonders of the demon realm to all takers in exchange for embassies. All the while visit his second-circle souls and convince them of your worth and of humanity's; once this is complete, speak with the third circles. Change the bloodthirsty monster into a wrathful but self-disciplined despot; the static Neverborn may be convinced to abandon their hold on Creation with mundane negotiation, so why not Malfeas? And with the King, so comes his court, whether they like it or not.

Such is but one solution. I find it hard to believe that the pro-Yozi side can be considered the negative one; idealistic, yes, but no more impossible than killing the embodiment of perfection. Many will die with any return of the Yozis, yes, but I will sacrifice the happiness of one generation for that of those to come. What would establishing another Deliberative, another Shogunate, another Scarlet Empire do? The Primordials enjoyed aeons of relative peace under the Tyrant; how pathetic is the mayfly life of the shining Realm of the Solars in comparison. Thanks to humanity, both the Wyld and Oblivion washing into the ship of Creation; better to let the mad old cutthroats below deck steer most of the passengers to safety than to force everyone to go down with the ship.

But at least we'll always have each other.

And Malfeas!

Spoiler

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[golentan]

I don't endorse Gensh's position. I am all for freeing the yozis, because I think what was done to them was horrifically cruel, but step one in any reclamation should be intensive rehabilitation to make sure they won't do horrible things to creation. This is because of several things, some benefitting the denizens of creation and some the yozis themselves. First, I believe cruelty is not justification for retaliatory cruelty, and might does not make right (part of the reason I'm opposed to what was done to the yozis in the first place). The fact that malfeas was abused does not give him the right to abuse innocents, and especially as there are so few of those responsible for their state still alive in the modern age. What should be done with the Incarnae, Gaia, and Autochthon is a grey area, but I favor moderation and due process rather than blind revenge.

Secondly, preventing the full reclamation process helps preserve the yozis. The exalted are still capable of destroying them if need be. IT would be more difficult, to be sure, with the host divided, factionalized, and reduced. But it's still the most likely outcome: So long as any humans survive so will the exalted. And, depending what you believe, the lunars may be able to come back from even beyond that and repopulate the others. If the yozis are not rehabilitated, if they come in looking for revenge, the exalted will fight. And the yozis will die.

There are many other contributing minor points, but in general I don't believe supporting the reclamation in theory means you are against the rest of creation. And a dedicated infernal has the potential to effect real change: stretching a yozi's thematics over time with the use of custom charms. The most difficult yozis to rehabilitate of those we have written up would be Adorjan and the Ebon Dragon, but even that might not be impossible. For the others, She Who Lives in her Name can be brought over with the use of transcendent compassion and support of a divine order which embraces other beings, Malfeas's joy in dancing can be expanded to other fields and his leadership can be made righteous rather than self righteous, Cecelyne can be made to be freer with her gifts, and Kimbery can be made to have maternal love for the living things of creation. The most difficult in an absolute sense is probably Sacheverell: If he can't be awoken, he can't open his charmset. If he is awoken, the world is suddenly a worse place. This is a long term project, which to fully succeed might require dozens of collaborating infernals and hundreds or thousands of years before they're in a position where it would be justifiable to free them. And at least at first, they are almost certain to resist. But I think it's worth undertaking. The alleviation of the suffering of untold billions of demons, the yozis themselves (who, from a theoretical standpoint might not be morally accountable for the crimes for which they were imprisoned), the expansion of creation's defenses by those who historically best saw to them, and more.

[Xefas]

Someone should run a freeform Conventicle Malfeasant game!

Anyway,

I'm against the term "rehabilitation" because it seems to imply that there's something wrong with the Yozi, and that you can somehow fix them. Yeah, there's something wrong with them. But you can't fix them. Not entirely. Just hacking away at souls until they're something that can play nice is only slightly better than the atrocities committed by humanity.

I think the best solution vis-a-vis changing the Yozi would be to ask the Second/Third Circles who knew the pre-War Primordials, and still remember, what their pre-War selves would've wanted. You can't turn Malfeas back into Theion, but maybe Ligier can tell you that Theion wouldn't have wanted, say, Ipythmia defining him. And then you can slowly try to sculpt them back into something resembling what they should be.

Thoughts on that?

[Gensh]

I think the best solution vis-a-vis changing the Yozi would be to ask the Second/Third Circles who knew the pre-War Primordials, and still remember, what their pre-War selves would've wanted. You can't turn Malfeas back into Theion, but maybe Ligier can tell you that Theion wouldn't have wanted, say, Ipythmia defining him. And then you can slowly try to sculpt them back into something resembling what they should be.

Thoughts on that?

While doing so might make the Yozis less wrathful, it doesn't quite fix the issue regarding their treatment of non-Primordials. Better to find Gaia and ask her about that soul adoption thing she does in one ending for RotSE. Offer incentive for various Yozis to adopt certain trustworthy individuals. For example, the Golden Lord would make an excellent addition to either of Malfeas or Cecelyne.

[golentan]

I don't think it's fair to hold the yozi's nature against them (and yet I can't stop hating the Ebon Dragon for some reason), but I do think it's fair to judge how to treat them based on their interactions with others. I do think rehabilitation is the proper term for changing that nature so they can have safe interaction with other beings. I don't think that hacking out souls is the way to deal with rehabilitation, but if you notice I didn't suggest doing so. I think that getting the yozi's feedback on directions in which to shape them is important, but takes a backseat to the goal of shaping them into beings who aren't a danger to themselves and others, in the same way that a mental patient gets a say in their treatment only when they are capable of informed consent. When the yozis won't kill you for asking for their feedback, they can and should be brought in on the therapy progress planning, even if that means they choose to regress and not take part in the return to creation.

[Xefas]

Should we really be considering the welfare of Creation's inhabitants? Are they not, in the end, a simple failed experiment? Not even failed, but sabotaged!

If you grow a litter of productivity rats in a genesis vat, and your treacherous lab assistant poisons the batch so they come out a race of slavering monsters, incapable of protecting themselves, but fully capable of harming you and your loved ones, would you feel bad about ending them? Should you work to lobotomize yourself so that you can live in their world? And then be happy when given the chance to defend them? They're animals. Synthetic animals, made on a whim. And they came out wrong. Best to wipe the slate and start over.

Right after you've fed that lab assistant into the maw of Oblivion.

[KnightDisciple]

*Glances at the back-and-forth for a time.*

Man, forget those crazy Primordials, I'll stick with the Exalted and Autobot.

[golentan]

Should we really be considering the welfare of Creation's inhabitants? Are they not, in the end, a simple failed experiment? Not even failed, but sabotaged!

If you grow a litter of productivity rats in a genesis vat, and your treacherous lab assistant poisons the batch so they come out a race of slavering monsters, incapable of protecting themselves, but fully capable of harming you and your loved ones, would you feel bad about ending them? Should you work to lobotomize yourself so that you can live in their world? And then be happy when given the chance to defend them? They're animals. Synthetic animals, made on a whim. And they came out wrong. Best to wipe the slate and start over.

Right after you've fed that lab assistant into the maw of Oblivion.

The origins of life don't matter. It doesn't matter if life is artificial, or even if you personally are responsible for it, you have no more right over whether a living thing should die as a result of these. As far as I'm concerned, all that matters is whether a being is sentient. Humans may well be (and probably are) "less" people than primordials, or possibly even gods. But they're still people. If I created artificial people, including those who were less people than I, I as I am now would support their attempts to assert their rights as people. If this conflicted with my goals and they fought me, tried to kill me, tried to imprison me, did the same to others responsible for their position, forcibly forced me to consider their position or anything else to assert their rights as people they would be justified in doing so so long as they did not exceed their position to the point of treating me as less than a person. My rights to primacy over possessions does not extend to superceding the rights of people to be themselves and to attempt to control their own destinies, and never will.

If I didn't believe this with every fiber of my being, I wouldn't even be trying to interact with humanity at the moment.

[Xefas]

So, what exactly makes being "sentient" a trait so special that it merits a greater degree of consideration? Why draw the line there, and not at, say, having awakened Essence? Or having multiple sentiences? Or at some other arbitrary threshold in the gap between "sentient" and "cosmos-spanning existence"? Why no further in either direction? A few degrees one way, and now we have to give rights to turnips, and the same number of degrees the other way, and terminating humanity is okay. Why do humans occupy this miniscule gap between the two split hairs of your morality?

[Rhyvurg]

You guys mean sapient. A hamster is sentient, people are sapient. Well, most of them.

[golentan]

Because sentience is the level at which communication beyond instinctive, incredibly basic interactions can be carried out, allowing such diverse things as speech, art, the exchange of complex knowledge, etc. and the use of tools to effect significant change of the environment to suit their needs and desires beyond the capabilities endowed them by nature.

It's in effect the fundamental measure at which socialization and creativity matter, and in which a life's measure can extend beyond that life. In the world of exalted, perhaps (probably) a case can be made that the "significant change of the environment" criteria must involve essence manipulation, but humans can learn essence manipulation even discounting exaltation, and so even if they are on the lowest rung of that ladder they are on it.

Autochthon was certainly capable of acknowledging it, which I will cite as evidence. The gods acknowledge it, and the primordials in turn acknowledge them as mattering even if they don't treat them as truly being people. The fundamental gap between a green sun prince and a primordial (multiple sentience) is closable and thus even if we exclude all other criteria they must be acknowledged as people.

And in the final analysis, the green sun princes have been trusted with free will which they are expected to use, with at least some of their own judgement, on behalf of the greatest good of the yozis. They are also human, and can be expected to act on behalf of humanity out of their own interests if nothing else, because they have been entrusted by the yozis with free will twice (once in the creation of humanity, once in the creation of the infernal exalted). If their judgement on behalf of the yozis is trusted, why is their judgement on behalf of humanity any less so? If my characters decide that being loyalist means saving humanity from the yozis, and the yozis from themselves, how is that not using the gifts that the yozis gave them in the best way that they can?

[Kobold-Bard]

Does morality factor into a Solar exaltation?

One concept I've seen a few times is the slave who exalts while heroically standing against their slavers and freeing themselves and/or their fellow slaves.

But what about a slaver who heroically (if provably brutally) puts down a slave riot, standing his ground against the odds as his property tries to go through him to get free. Would he be eligible to exalt if there's a Solar shard floating around nearby?

[horngeek]

...to be frank, if you guys truly believe that, I don't really think we're going to get anywhere with this discussion. I'm of the opinion that several of the Yozi, and possibly all of them, cannot be made 'safe to release' without a further mutilation that's going to be worse than what the Solars did to them to imprison them. By several orders of magnitude. If it's even possible, which I rather doubt.

More to the point, you guys are discussing 'redeeming' them, when the main motivation of two of the Yozi in getting the Infernals was to be able to torment them forever.

Here's a quote from Hatewheel, explicitly stating that the Reclamation is Bad For Creation. Full stop. That's from a developer of the line.

So, if you want to play a Loyalist Infernal, you have to justify why they think releasing the Yozi is the 'thing to do'. And it'd better be a pretty good justification.

EDIT: Also, a couple of arguments seem to be based on morality, which I'll remind people is explicitly a relative term in Creation.

[Xefas]

stuff

Mmmm. Alright, I think if you could somehow awaken the Essence of all humanity, and carve up Autochthon and Gaia into something penitent, I could see myself possibly acknowledging the rights of humans to exist and not be murdered by rampaging Yozi.

Does morality factor into a Solar exaltation?

Nope. If you try to burn down a hospital, and the police try to stop you, and you triumph against all odds to murder a thousand innocent policemen who are just doing their jobs, and succeed in burning down the hospital without compromising yourself or your beliefs in a singular act of impossible strength and power, you can Exalt as a Solar from that act.

If you feel a moment of doubt, and your fear of committing murder causes you to stay your hand, and you fail to burn down that hospital, you can Exalt as an Infernal.

[Drascin]

Does morality factor into a Solar exaltation?

One concept I've seen a few times is the slave who exalts while heroically standing against their slavers and freeing themselves and/or their fellow slaves.

But what about a slaver who heroically (if provably brutally) puts down a slave riot, standing his ground against the odds as his property tries to go through him to get free. Would he be eligible to exalt if there's a Solar shard floating around nearby?

Yep. Being a total ******* does not disqualify you from Exalting. You just need to be dumb enough to risk your neck in impossible odds .

[Kyeudo]

"Heroic" in Exalted is based on how hard it is to do, not on how moral it is to do it.

[Rhyvurg]

Oh, justifying freeing the Yozis is easy, it just takes a certain mindset.

[Kobold-Bard]

Thanks for the answers.

They did raise another question though: How can a Solar Exalt have a low Conviction score, when by definition their Exaltation was brought on by the person being willing to stand their ground/stick to their beliefs against impossible odds? Surely they must all have a least a Conviction of 3 to have pulled that off?

[industrious]

I see Loyalists as the default, and Renegades as extremely rare, if restricted to PC only.

The reason for this is because of how the Infernal Exaltation works. A GSP had a chance for greatness. They had the chance to be incredible. And they backed down, lost their nerve, failed in some pretty important matter. They failed.

Enter the demons and Hell, who tell them that they still get points for trying. That they still matter. All encouraging the "you failed but it's okay" mindset and the "We're in the same boat" idea. Infernals are treated as the highest royalty in Malfeas. For most of them, that's a thing that's never happened before; they're living in a life of unbelievable luxury.

What are they going to do if they refuse? Strike out on their own? Turn their back on the people who cared about them when they were at their weakest, who gave them back their self-esteem in their darkest hour?

Thanks for the answers.

They did raise another question though: How can a Solar Exalt have a low Conviction score, when by definition their Exaltation was brought on by the person being willing to stand their ground/stick to their beliefs against impossible odds? Surely they must all have a least a Conviction of 3 to have pulled that off?

You can use other Virtues to do that, too.

Compassion is what forces mothers to lift cars for their children.

Temperance to rise above corruption and vice, and try to change the system from within.

Valor to throw yourself on a grenade for your comrades.

[horngeek]

Sure, but the Yozi hate the Green Sun Princes, to be honest. And they're very bad at hiding it. Gratitude only goes so far once you realise what kind of beings the Yozi are.

Which, as the developers have said iirc, is why the timetable for the Reclamation is so urgent. The Ebon Dragon, at least, has realised that the majority of Infernals will end up abandoning the Reclamation after a certain point.

I'm not trying to argue that an Infernal will instantly abandon the Reclamation after he or she comes out of the Chrysalis (although some might go 'hey, I've got this power, kthxbai'- they just wouldn't do it on 'oh god what did I just agree to' grounds like an Abyssal might). They don't know what exactly 'help the rightful rulers of the world escape from their wrongful prison' will actually mean for the world or for them personally. But eventually, even the most naive Infernal will realise how bad the Yozi escaping will be for Creation. And if that's not enough to make them take a good, hard look at why they're supporting these guys, they will probably realise the Yozi don't intend to keep them alive after the Reclamation suceeds.