General Exalted Discussion XII: One More and Get a Free Deathlord

[Kyeudo]

It goes down one level per scene (assuming you don't spend more Peripheral Essence during that scene) until it's completely hidden again.

Except the last level - that one lasts an hour.

[lord pringle]

It goes down one level per scene (assuming you don't spend more Peripheral Essence during that scene) until it's completely hidden again.

Except the last level - that one lasts an hour.

Alright thanks. On a different topic, I just watched Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog and I can't figure out whether Captain Hammer would be a nutty Dawn or a Malfean Slayer.

[vegetalss4]

Except the last level - that one lasts an hour.

Another exception: for long scenes the banner goes down a level every 20 minutes instead of each scene

Also captain hammer could be either, through I suspect he may be to pathetic to truly be either (after all the runs away, gives up and have a nervous breakdown the first time something manages to hurt him the slightest.)

[lord pringle]

Another exception: for long scenes the banner goes down a level every 20 minutes instead of each scene

Also captain hammer could be either, through I suspect he may be to pathetic to truly be either (after all the runs away, gives up and have a nervous breakdown the first time something manages to hurt him the slightest.)

I read that scene as a perfect soak failing for the first time. Maybe he's a dusk with the perfect defense flaw that makes it not work when you're with someone you have an intimacy for?

[Lix Lorn]

I read that scene as a perfect soak failing for the first time. Maybe he's a dusk with the perfect defense flaw that makes it not work when you're with someone you have an intimacy for?

That assumes his feelings were anything stronger than 'She's hot'...

I'd just assume he had really high soak and hardness, and the explosion penetrated it.

I'd place him as a Slayer, purely because the setting has enough jerkface solars. When there are more 'Actually he's a jerk!' characters than genuine heroes, the SHINING HERO splat starts being bad.

[Amechra]

Plus, it is in character for anyone with enough Malfean essence to be crushed if they actually get hurt.

Because no-one hurts the Empyreal Tyrant!Except that they did and it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts oh why oh why did they betray their rightful king? It didn't happen it does not happen it will not happen I am KING OVER ALL!

Because Malfeas is insane. And filling your body with crazy-person essence is probably not the best idea.

[Lix Lorn]

Don't be silly! Infernals are the protagonists, doncha know.

[Amechra]

And all great protagonists need a moment to sulk in their tents before going out and kicking more ass!

It's a balance, dontcha see?

Also, a weird pair of questions:

1. Is anyone here familiar with Nuke 'Em 'Til They Glow? The fanfic, not the fanfics for the fanfic.

2. How would you stat out Princess Terrible? I'm pretty sure she's part of some Primordial soul architecture (maybe the Fetich soul), due to having "spawned" at least one descendent (the Atomic Starlight Knight).

[Dragnar]

Solars? Infernals? Please, not to steal anyone's limelight *coughmeschlumcough* but he is quite obviously a Raksha.

1. Defines himself as a hero.
2. Is no such thing.
3. Can completely ignore non-magical attacks.
4. Has a complete breakdown when his image (and the story built around it) is tarnished.
5. No one notices/can admit that he's actually a jerk.

Does it get more fae-like than that?

[Exthalion]

Solars? Infernals? Please, not to steal anyone's limelight *coughmeschlumcough* but he is quite obviously a Raksha.

1. Defines himself as a hero.
2. Is no such thing.
3. Can completely ignore non-magical attacks.
4. Has a complete breakdown when his image (and the story built around it) is tarnished.
5. No one notices/can admit that he's actually a jerk.

Does it get more fae-like than that?

Exactly, nothing like Desus at all. Man, he is such a great guy.

[Amechra]

Praise Desus!

[Gensh]

I have divined the true reason the Scarlet Empress allowed herself to be captured by someone as incompetent as the Ebon Dragon.

Black Mirror Shintai. In bed.

That is all.

[Turalisj]

I have divined the true reason the Scarlet Empress allowed herself to be captured by someone as incompetent as the Ebon Dragon.

Black Mirror Shintai. In bed.

That is all.

The only one able to satisfy the Empress.... is the Empress.

[aetherialDawn]

I comment not, except that it is entirely reasonable.

Her Redness built a massive empire - except that it cannot function without her. The Realm is not a nation.
The Realm is a big monument to Her Redness's AWESOMENESS, which happens to be SO BIG that it can crush nations.
Some emperors are buried with statues of warriors, to have an army in the afterlife. The Scarlet Empress decided she wanted hers right now, and thus the Realm was born.
(I hear the superweapon helped. That superweapon that should be impossible for her to use. That nobody else has touched. That everyone else traveling with her died while trying to reach. That superweapon.)
We need Scarlet Empress Facts.


On another, sadly unrelated subject, I wrote up a bunch of variants of the Sphere of Courtesans' Constellation - 22 in all! Each with a name, a description, and a different set of bonuses. If anyone wants to look over them (or point out flaws, or ways the descriptions could be better done, etc.) I'd be quite appreciative.

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2-dot Hearthstones, obviously.
All of these are just redesigns of the Sphere of Courtesans' constellation, from Oadenol's Codex.
This also means that all the dice bonuses provided count against dice caps.

Format
(Name) - (Attribute set to 3 if lower) - (Abilities with a +2 bonus)

Solar
Sphere of Courtesans' Constellation - Appearance - Performance, Presence
It's an official stone! It menaces with spikes of canon!

Genius-Calling Cabochon - Intelligence - Lore, Occult
This red-and-purple gem does not heighten the mind directly as some other stones do; instead, it causes intense feelings of being watched - as if the holder's sifu or tutor were gazing just over their shoulder. Though more difficult to handle than other gems, it nevertheless drives the holder to mental greatness all the same.

Splinter of Righteous Fury - Strength - Melee, Integrity
This slender needle of gold is warm to the touch, but grows uncomfortably hot in the presence of those things that the bearer wishes to destroy. Placed in a weapon, it acts as if it were a fragment of a larger stone, though it still provides all its powers.

Stone of the Eternal Hero - Stamina - Resistance, Athletics
This egg-shaped stone is dull, almost brown, but occasionally sparkles with brilliant gold. Merely touching it is mildly tiring, but once the holder adapts to this feeling, it provides faint satisfaction instead.


Lunar
Gem of Trickery - Manipulation - Larceny, Socialize
This gem appears to be a round, slightly flattened opal - save that when struck by moonlight it turns translucent, revealing a grin-like silver crescent within.

Hunter's Clever Eye - Perception - Survival, Awareness
This utterly black stone seems to be a cat's eye carved out of dark obsidian, while held, it pulses faintly in the hand. Even looking at it engenders a sense of focus.

Mystery-Dispelling Gem - Intelligence - Investigation, Lore
This opalescent emerald-cut stone has a single silver face; which face is silver changes constantly when not watched, in a pattern known only to those attuned to it. Rather than improving skills conventionally, it serves as a font of new approaches whenever the holder is stymied by some intellectual problem.


Sidereal
Body-Vector Mazarin - Dexterity - Martial Arts, Dodge
This diamond is transparent to the point of invisibility, except where the faces meet and shine faintly. When held, one's body goes exactly where it ought to go, even without trying.

Divine Purity Jewel - Appearance - Resistance, Integrity
This teardrop-shaped jewel is immaculate white, and nothing can dirty it. The same impression transfers to the holder, making even ragged scars seem more like smooth, unusual tattoos.

Coil of Foresight - Intelligence - Investigation, Bureaucracy
This stone is a slightly-opaque spiral looping so closely as to be a disk. Gazing through it reveals 'afterimages' which illustrate what the holder expects to happen within the next few seconds.


Abyssal
Shattered Naivete Fragment - Perception - Integrity, Investigation
Touching this stone for the first time, it is bitingly cold to the touch and bitingly cynical to the soul. Over time, a holder will adapt to the cold - but the crimson stone has an infinite well of cynicism.

Tyrant's Regret Guide - Charisma - War, Bureaucracy
Each of these black, coin-shaped stones has an engraving of a face, but is always too worn to discern features. Touching it brings up old sorrows, but using it to aid others causes this to abate for a time, replaced by distant hope.

Stone of the Sudden End - Dexterity - Archery, Stealth
This icy blue stone blurs with even the slightest movement, difficult to keep an eye on - unless it is moving directly towards someone, allowing one to see its sharp edges in perfect detail.


Air
Gem of Lightness - Dexterity - Dodge, Stealth
This gem feels as if it will float away at any moment, and indeed it is more easily affected by a faint breeze than by gravity. Those who bear it find their own weight somewhat reduced, and what remains easier to bear.

Lightning-Mind Gem - Wits - Lore, Larceny
Looking at this painfully bright-blue gem causes the eyes to water, but holding it fills the mind with energy. Perhaps only one in three of the ideas it gives are good, but it is always prepared to instantly replace a discarded idea with another.


Earth
Lament of the Mountain Folk - Charisma - Craft, Performance
This lump of metal could have come from an ancient gear, but should always be handled with gloves because of the intense pangs of loss direct contact brings. It instead shines with a hopeful light during song and work.

Peaceful Balance Stone - Appearance - Integrity, Socialize
This oval stone will balance perfectly on a surface, no matter how it is placed. Its powers do not provide this physical balance, but it helps the holder's mind and words be reasonable in all things.


Fire
Coal of Deep Passion - Charisma - Integrity, Presence
This dull gray coal has only the faintest embers ever-visible, but it clings to these tenaciously. Touching it calls up that faint warmth, which increases as is spreads through the body.

Jewel of Leaping Flames - Stength - Melee, Athletics
This jewel, when touched, seems to leap away from the touch, and it bounces entirely too easily if dropped. It does not actually flee its bearer, no matter how much it might seem so, and while it can be kept ahold of that uncontained movement is granted to the holder.


Water
Mirror Droplet - Appearance - Martial Arts, Socialize
Looking into this silvery sphere shows not quite what is, but what the viewer wants to see. Looking at its holder is similar, save that what is seen is slightly towards what the holder wants that viewer to see.

Tear of the Prince - Charisma - Presence, Bureaucracy
This translucent red teardrop is said to call up the memories of an ancient prince - depending upon who tells the story, his kingdom was siezed by the Anathema or by a usurper-son. Both agree that one demense naturally inclined towards this gem was born for every one of his family who died before he could reclaim the throne.


Wood
Fruit of Health - Stamina - Resistance, Medicine
This 'stone' is not a stone at all, but a dense, living fruit of pinkish-orange color. It is so dense because of the life bound within it, which is granted to the bearer and those it is touched to. Should the stone be broken (as difficult as any other hearthstone!) it holds seeds for dozens of types of fruit trees.

Jewel of the Poet - Charisma - Performance, Linguistics
This emerald-appearing gem is also emerald-cut, and each face has tiny script in a different language, current or dead. Each tells a story about a particular maiden searching for happiness. The maiden is the same, but the story different, in each.

[Turalisj]

The Scarlet Empress has an ego so large, Swilly used it to replace one of her three spheres.

[Gensh]

The Scarlet Empress has an ego so large, Swilly used it to replace one of her three spheres.

Allow me to perfect segue into this little bit that I'd been neglecting to put to paper for a while now:

In the beginning, there was a perfect order. Born of the King of Kings, the Pyrian Queen enforced upon the titans a perfect Hierarchy descending from the Universe Emperor to the lowliest of his subjects. When the Exalted, a bunch of hairless apes so low as to be beneath this Hierarchy overthrew that absolute formation, it was if a crack had formed in a flawless diamond. Lest these new rulers cause further damage, she begged they allow her to serve them, to allow her to work to restore her perfect order. But the humans cared not for her rigid structures and condemned her to exile with the insane, gibbering living-corpse of what had once been her Hierarchy's, her very existence's focal point.

And that broke her.

In a fit of insanity matched not even by Oramus, she completely rebelled against her broken Mythos and shattered three of her spheres and her perfectly-calculated perfection, denying her greatest works to the mad Exalted, the shattered Emperor, and even to herself, for she had failed in preserving that which was her very meaning. From the bowels of her prison, she watched the new rulers in the Silver Forest's reflections even as she served the sick and raving King, hoping that they might beg her forgiveness. Yet she observed with greater and greater dispassion as the Exalted grew decadent and insane. She let loose a minor howl as she saw even those fools overthrown, even their crude attempts at ordering Creation fracturing under the usurpers and their own final retaliations. She cringed as the Contagion laid waste to what remained of the natural order and nearly looked away in despair as the hated raksha overwhelmed the last vestiges of order that she had wrought so long ago.

Then, something unfathomable happened.

A young Dragonblooded lieutenant had somehow seized control of the Solars' geomantic weaponry. By all rights, doing so should have been impossible - the controls should only respond to Solar Essence, and its sensors should have been able to pierce through even the lies of the Ebon Dragon. To have seized control of the Realm Defense Grid was impossible, but the Exalted had done the impossible before. This young woman, barely an adult in the eyes of the Dragonblooded, and less than an infant to the long gaze of the titans, seized control of Creation's greatest weapon through will alone and demanded fealty from those few survivors of the Contagion and the Crusade, each a hero in his own right. Yet she was greater, for she had done what none of them could; they were all beneath her.

She had no doubt; she had no mercy. She was a pure and ruthless tyrant the likes of which Creation had not seen in long, the likes of which Merela had failed to be. And the Pyrian Queen fell in love. She continued to pay overtures to the rotting Emperor but courted this new Empress in secret, never leaving any sign of her presence but her gifts. The young Scarlet Empress was strong and true but nevertheless vulnerable in her inexperience.

She had to be flawless like diamond: perfect, untouched by the ravages of disease, of treacherous poison, and of age most of all. Like the Holy Tyrant before her, she need must be eternal and untouchable by her peers. From the ill-thought blood ties of the traitor Gaia, the Pyrian Queen wove Hierarchy into the Empire expanding from the new singularity of the Empress' person. All would be subject to her Dynasty, and as the Blood of Dragons failed across Creation, only the blood strengthened by the Yozi Queen's love would remain strong forever. The Scarlet Empire would remain as the last beautiful monement to order in a dying world, focused upon a final reminder of past glories.

But then the Empress went missing. Perhaps you know what happened to her?

BAD END: THE EBON DRAGON HATES EVERYONE

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The Ebon Dragon is getting married. He does this sort of thing every other decade or so, and it would not be any call for celebration were it not for his choice of bride this time. Ordinarily, he chooses macabre, doomed souls, who cannot withstand him. The bodies of these victims he takes into his arms to be used as his playthings forevermore. But this bride might live, fears Erembour, who is so frequently the bridesmaid. This bride possesses power such that she might live forever despite any hardship, and the Shadow of All Things shall finally be sated with a doll to torment for the remainder of eternity.

The Pyrian Queen simply looks on in broken-hearted agony, unable to intervene lest she reveal her betrayal to the mad Emperor who clings to a throne no longer his.

NEUTRAL END: A QUEEN FOR THE PRINCE

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The Green Sun is getting married. Hell is in quite the uproar about it, for Erembour, who knows things none should, says the bride may be human. Malfeas may be mad, but he is no fool, having long watched his former confidante fawning over an Exalted ruler, barely restraining his rage. He could have destroyed her for her treachery, but in his heart, he knew that even this pathetic creature possessed something he has lost. And he wants it back.

So he shall bond this human ruler to him in the most intimate of ways. She shall become the Demon Queen and be Exalted no more, but with her soul returning to the King of Kings his heroism and pride not predicated on violence, who is to say what will become of the Yozis' prison?

GOOD END: TO RULE IN HELL

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The Scarlet Empress is getting married. She had known all along of her secret paramour, though it had taken the better part of a century to uncover her identity. After a time, the Empress finally went as far as the Demon City's gates for a secret rendevouz. With the Solars' return to Creation, the Pyrian Queen saw her love's power and the perfect order they had created together in danger. Not willing to lose everything again, she whisked the Empress to hell, where the human caused her to fall in love all over again as the former Empress immediately began a guerrilla campaign to overthrow the Demon Emperor as her latent Gaian Essence slowly evolves into a state not unlike that of a true Primordial. In response, the Pyrian Queen has publically declared her love and her loyalty, while the Silver Forest and the Black Boar in turn see in her a triumphant return to Creation and have fallen under her banner.

With the Reclamation in full swing, will the Yozis' champions succeed in hunting down this full-fledged rebellion, or will they too fall to the would-be Empress' charm and Charms?

[Tavar]

Point out that the descriptions of that journey don't really describe it as someone killing and betraying people who trusted them, but more of a party attempting to do the impossible, laying down their lives so that at least one may save the world.

[Maugan Ra]

It does, however, make an intriguing amount of sense. I can easily see She Who Lives in Her Name supporting the ruler of the single greatest hierarchical organization since the Primordial War. Even the Deliberative never had a single, defined ruler, after all - even Merela was closer to a First Amongst Equals than an unquestioned monarch.

[Tavar]

Merela was only first among equals in the first deliberative. In the second, it was the heirophant.

[Amechra]

I daresay, I can imagine a Yozi cultist singing this, with a few tweaks.

[Exthalion]

More like this.

This also happens to be why Ligier hates the Brass Dancer.

[Amechra]

True...

Also, I'm just going to throw out this song as something that you might here Swillin'... humming:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLRlnEav4No

[Lix Lorn]

And of course, the ED's theme tune...

[tonberrian]

And of course, the ED's theme tune...

Knew what that was without even looking.

[Agrippa]

And of course, the ED's theme tune...

That's theme number one. This is theme number two.

[golentan]

Isidoros of course spends all his time humming this.

The Reclamation as a whole might have this as their theme song.

Abyssals might collectively have the Theme Song of Slaughter your World (couldn't find a video of it that wasn't horribly graphic).

[Amechra]

I still hold that this is pretty appropriate for Steve Dragon.

Forgive my awful vocals.

And, this, of course, is Adorjan's favorite song, and the one that she hums constantly.

[TheCountAlucard]

Despite her hatred of sound, you mean?

Oh, I see what you did there.

[lord pringle]

I still hold that this is pretty appropriate for Steve Dragon.

Forgive my awful vocals.

And, this, of course, is Adorjan's favorite song, and the one that she hums constantly.

Was... was that the Bad Horse Chorus? So, if TED is Bad horse, then who is Fake Thomas Jefferson?

[Doran]

Was... was that the Bad Horse Chorus? So, if TED is Bad horse, then who is Fake Thomas Jefferson?

Szorney, maybe?