Deathknights, doing the math...

I have to say, I like how the novels flesh out the setting and ideas of the game. They may not always flow how you would expect, but I never judge a good story on how the dice "should" have rolled out.


As for Ratcatcher...you just gotta feel sorry for the guy. He's like a character played by a retarded parakeet. If he wants to be an Abyssal-turned-dead-turned-Nemissary-turned-Abyssal again...you just gotta let it slide out of pity.


So I suppose the verdict on Prince of Shadows is "really powerful Abyssal"?
 
Well, in his Exaltation scene he seemed relatively young and inexperienced, so it's likely he wasn't old and powerful at the point he Exalted. Lover's only had Abyssal Essences to hand out for 5 years...so...it's likely the 5 year thing. Though admittedly, he, and a number of the other Abyssals, seem to act as if they've been what they are for more than those 5 years...and some of them are frankly probably too powerful for having been around that length of time, without a good explanation how they recieved all that power so fast. However, this is far from limited to just Abyssals, many characters are portrayed as more powerful than is reasonable in the time they've had to attain their abilities.
 
Well, they have had intensive training, which only DB and sidereal can pretend to have.
 
The Lover may have been an Eclipse Caste in life, so she may have access to the Endowment Charm to pump up her favorite pets' Essence scores.
 
I'm under the impression that she was a Twilight in life. But anyways.


I don't think there's anything that prevents a Deathlord from learning a ghostly version of Endowment from their two thousand year careers. Before they had Abyssals, Endowment might have been the only way to produce servants strong enough.
 
Hmm, the talk about some Abyssals acting much older then 5 years of exaltation give me an idea. What if a Deathlord could remove the Higher soul as part of the exaltation process, replacing it with a soul of choice.


Since if I remember right the lower soul has the exaltation it seems like it doens't break the (really waky) metaphysical rules of exalted.


That way instead of a cronie you have to get to know, you can choice a healthy (mostly dead) person, add soul of favored cronie with lots of ghostly skills and experiance, and Wala Abyssal that would be much more useful.
 
From what I've gathered, splitting off the higher soul would count as "death" and the Exaltation would leave. The lower soul doesn't really contain the Exaltation, it just stores the power the Exaltation grants. So the higher soul could be thought of as the top half, and the Exaltation is sort of squeezed in between them.


But it's vague enough. Personally, I wouldn't allow that kind of hax to be possible with Exaltations, since it was too likely that the primordials could have just done the same thing, and Auto would have planned against it.
 
I do find it strange to find Abyssals who are far more powerful then their age would suggest, training or no. However, one reason I might put forth is what I like to call the 'proto-Abyssal'.


The Deathlords received the majority of their shards five years ago when they cracked open the Jade Prison, but they presumably had the Monstrances made before that, and knew the general concept of how to corrupt a shard. However, what if, before they opened the Prison, they tested out the process, by capturing and converting some of the few free Solar shards that escaped imprisonment? These original Abyssals would be considerably older than the rest, considerably more powerful, and probably a lot crazier, given they were experimented on by the Deathlords working in tandem.


However, these Abyssals would be, by necessity, incredibly rare: I can`t imagine there being more than three of them, at most, due to the rarity of free shards, and the efficiency of the Wyld Hunt before the Empress vanished.
 
We know a few did. The most famous canon example is the Bull of the North himself, who Exalted years before the Prison broke.
 
Oh, that's right. Nice to know.


However, weren't the Deathlords only taught by the Yozis about how to corrupt Solars after they handed them the 50 shards?
 
There's also Filial Wisdom, the Goblin King from Rathess. He Exalted Dawn over 100 years ago in canon. I know RoR is 1st Ed, but they haven't changed much else storyline-wise so I doubt this would get changed in 2nd Ed.


I would attribute some of the more powerful Abyssals out there to First Age training charms that the Deathlords probably posses. The new Abyssal could be trained up very quickly to Essence 4 or 5, even being allowed to rack up experience debt if need be. Just imagine necrotic versions of the charms in Dreams of the First Age and Deathlords get pretty limitless.
 
Arthur said:
Oh, that's right. Nice to know.
However, weren't the Deathlords only taught by the Yozis about how to corrupt Solars after they handed them the 50 shards?
Click to expand...
I was under the impression that the Deathlords prepared everything in advance, so they could begin corrupting Solars shards as soon as they got their hands on the shards. After all, it takes a long time and a lot of resources to make a monstrance, I'd imagine, so it'd be best to have them set up beforehand. Otherwise, your captive Solar shards might escape, as they seem pretty good at that. This may also explain what the Deathlords were doing in the Underworld in the period between the Contagion and the present.


It would also mean that the Deathlords have a huge surplus of Monstrances on hand, since they would have made 250, but only used 100ish. It's 'pretty funny, in my opinion, and it also explains why a Deathlord always seems to have a monstrance or five on hand whenever they manage to catch a Solar.


(edit: Oh yeah, forgot about Filial Wisdom. He`s definitely another one of the free Solars. What`s more, he was in The East book, so he`s still in 2e)
 
I was under the impression that the Deathlords prepared everything in advance, so they could begin corrupting Solars shards as soon as they got their hands on the shards.
Click to expand...
Which makes me wonder... if in the timeline they had monstrances built before they had the shards... the Lover might (who supposedly created the first deathknight) could have corrupted a solar as a test before.
I mean you always run a test before you launch a campaign for a product... I'm sure the deathlords would have made some tests to confirm that the technique worked before building the thing that destroyed the Jade Prison.


I'd like to see a deathlord reveal the truth one day to a solar like "you think your god has freed you and chosen you to be his hero... poor soul... your god just stood by and watch when they slaughtered you and put your soul in the first age and it is because of me that you exist today... I freed your soul, not your excuse for a god, I made you possible..."


Use sagacious reading of intent for a dramatic result :lol:
 
I'd probably envision the Solar saying something akin to..."..and now I'm about to make you and all your ilk extinct...thanks for making that possible."
 
hmm...I wonder how many First Age Solars were curse-crazy and how many were just plain Abyssals...


If there were Abyssals, most of them were Twilights, for sure.
 
In the first age there were only Akumas and infernalists (and judging by DotFA, Eclipses too can be turned), the Neverborn were too passive and their servants not powerful enough to represent a serious threat to the living.


Which is why no one, even the guys who knew about the deathlords rising, suspected they would be a threat one day... they even managed to screw Creation undetected with the Contagion (I think that two this day, apart from the Green Lady and maybe one or two siddies and the DLs of course, no one knows the origins of the Contagion), and the world only rmeasured the threat 800 years later, when Thorns was sacked, but by then it was already too late.
 
Well, technically, you could get virtual Abyssals in the First Age. DotFA had that awesome Black Mirror artifact, which caused any Solar who touched it to suddenly get Whispers 5, and have all of their charms turn to their Abyssal Mirrors. The effect lasted until their next Limit Break, I believe. However, it specifically noted that these weren't real Abyssals, just Solars that have been temporarily 'changed'. A neat concept, nonetheless.
 
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