Celestial Essences moving on when the host is not dead.

[Guest]

The PCs in my game have a Manse. The thing that bugs them with it is that it still has the bodies of their former incarnatons in it.


See, in the first age, their manse was sort of a "forest research outpost", and it was somewhat remote. It was one of the last places hit. When the Dragon Blooded got there, they found that the SOlar and Lunar there we're apparenlty alredy dead, either by their own hand or some other fate. They were entombed in sarcophages on the floor below the hearthstone chamber. They had no vital signs, and the Sidereal withthem was able to confirm that their essences had moved on.


Being so, they left the Manse alone, sealed, and gave proper respect to the dead. Maybe a bit more, as the Dragon Blooded saw their apparent self sacraifice as a final acto fo redemption.


So, centuries passed, and eventually, the PCs found it. They Exalted within, withthe essences of the prior owners.


Problem is, as they have just discovered, they were not dead. They had been too scared to die, and so used something similar to Dragon King technology to put themselves in Stasis. They seemed, and were for all intents and purposes, dead. As such, their Essences moved on. And waited for their vessels to awaken, and take back their power.


But the PCs entered the Manse. They were fighting for their lives, and the lives of their friends against overwhelming Fae odds. And the esseces were tired of waiting.


But now, I am at a cliffhanger point in my game. The PCs have just opened the sarcophages, and next game they get to meet their still living prior incarnations. This is where I'm looking for some more advice.


Without the essences attached anymore, they no longer suffer form the great curse. They are now, for all intents and purposes, mortal, but mortals who once had great power and worship. How do you think they might take the loss of their powers to these comparative children?


Might they try and murder them to get back their power?


And, might there be some changes to them? Having had thatkind of power in them fo so long, even with the time in stasis, might have altered them beyond being normal heroic mortals.


Or, might the lack of the Great Curse now, maybe allow them to get some insight thatsomethign is wrong with their old essences, and maybe they want to help and guide these new Exalts?


So many options. So many ideas. But I want more! More I say!

 

[Jakk Bey]

Technically, they should still have a good deal of knowledge, and that might trigg them onto why the Shards were moved on--perhaps not tired of waiting, but the Stasis bubble that ensconsced them cut them off from the Creation, and fooled the Shards into thinking they were dead, and so, they moved on.


Having moved on, there is far from any guarantee that they'll ever be able to return to their former power--unless someone in the Celestial Bureacracy wants to slip them new Shards, and that is probably not very likely.  Possible, but it won't be their former selves, and that means they'll probably have to build their power back the old fashioned way, though, with a lot of Abilities that won't need a lot of maintenance to build up.


It will probably take them some time to figure out what happened.  But I wouldn't do more than let them be Heroic Mortals, or perhaps if you wanted to be extra nice to these NPCs, let them be still touched by the Shards, and let them keep a tiny bit of power as Half-Castes--their bodies altered by the power, and still retain a tiny bit of it.  Nothing more than that though, because they should be plot hooks, not all encompassing towers of might.


They are great resources though.  Their knowledge of the First Age is huge.  They know better than anyone else what is still out there, hidden and tucked away.  How to operate things.  Maybe even how to operate the Realm's Defense Grid, and get past the traps therein.  That makes them great Allies, albeit vulnerable.  


But then again, they also might know where to find some goodies to bulk up their powerz.  Maybe not to Exalted levels, but certainly above that of most Heroic Mortals--they know where the Artifacts might be hidden to give them access to all sorts of fun.


I would say that it would take them quite a while to figure out the workings of the Great Curse, if they even could.  It's been around a long while, and even the Heptagram, with all their goodies hasn't trigged onto it yet, save that the Solars went nuts.  Careful extrapoloation and data analysis might do it, but it would take a while for them to crunch the numbers and do the thinking neccessary to come to the conclusions.  As Savants, that might be something to throw out later, but not right off the bat.


And they might want to get on with their own lives at some point too.  Not their old lives, certainly, but onto a new life, certainly.  


Now then, they might also crave their old power, still a wee bit mad from their own years of dealing with the Great Curse, that they would want some of their former power back.  Which means possibly trucking with the Yozi or Neverborn to do so.  


It's wide open, but the key is that they have knowledge that has long passed, and a lot of folks will want to get their hands on, so secrecy is going to be paramount. For them.  For the Solars who found them.  Because the Neverborn would love to talk to the Solars about the goodies they might be able to provide access to.  As would the Yozi.  As would the Realm.  As would even the Lunars--who might want to kill them just to keep it out of other folks' hands, to say nothing about Gods and Spirits who might have a bone to pick with them--their souls that is--about wrongs done in the past while they were batshit crazy.  Or other critters who might still be owed favors, and want some interest on them...


Engineering an accident for the ones who hold their Shards probably won't get the power back--they gave that up when they went into their Stasis, but who knows if they might know of ways to graft it back, or at least optimize their chances of being selected again--who knows what favors they're owed back in Yu-Shan...

 

[Jukashi]

I think I once said before that an Exalt who somehow lost their shard without dying would become a "max power" half-caste. I believe I said something about the shard being the tap, and the body the bucket- when the bucket is removed from the source of water (for example, when the child of an Exalt is born, removing their body from their parent's shard), the water within remains.


So, I think they'd be half-caste, and very powerful ones; all the appropriate merits for free. But, also, all the appropriate flaws without recompense... such as a lingering touch of the Curse...

 

[Persell]

If you want to emphasize the great curse you could make them... quite happy to be rid of that power, they could talk about the responsiblity that came with it, the helplessness they felt when not being able to live up to their ideals besides being one of the mightiest individuals in creation and it could need a good deal of persuasion before they might help the player characters...

 

[Obsidian Soul]

Question.  Would the old Exalts get back their shards if the new exalts died?

 

[Jukashi]

If Lytek's doing his job, probably not. Unless the old guys happened to do something appropriately heroic at exactly the right time and place.


But then... perhaps they wouldn't have the Destiny to accept Exaltation again? Exaltation causes the strands of your Destiny to collapse into freedom of choice. Since their first Exaltation would have eaten up three dots of Destiny, they wouldn't have enough Destiny left to accomodate any more.

 

[Guest]

Been a long time, but I finally actually got to run the next game.


It was fun, a whole session dedicated to culture shock, and the fun of the fact that only one PC spoke Old Realm to understand these people.


After a 4 hour game session, this is what the characters have gleaned from them;


1) Power may not be good. Seems to have driven them nuts with stress.


2) Ok, Deathknights and Deathlords did not exist back then. So where the hell did they come from?


3) So that's how the stove works.