Exalted... In... Space!

TWENTY DICE! TWE... Ow!


gah! What have you done to me! Where's my character sheet?!


I was HAPPY!!


*whimper*...I was happy.. my fromage..
 
We've determined that black holes go to the underworld and all that jazz, but nobody's tried to go in. I'm working on statting Essence Storms. Mweeheeheeheehee.
 
Essence storms are fun yes, we've also dreamed up DK and human FTL drives. Humanity's normal traffic follows the dragon lines as space lanes for FTL.
 
Hi, I'm Rynel's partner in crime and the guy who usually ends up writing the rules to make the ideas work.


Our goal was a bit different than a total conversion, and some of our work may not be useful to your Shattered Skies project.  We only aimed to invent the material we needed to support a literal Exalted in space chronicle.  Skyships and Voidships became basically the same thing, with a few assumed powers installed in the latter.

Essence storms are fun yes' date=' we've also dreamed up DK and human FTL drives. Humanity's normal traffic follows the dragon lines as space lanes for FTL.[/quote']
This about the same solution we came up with.  The space versions of dragon lines are MUCH bigger and faster moving than the essence streams on planets and other celestial bodies though.  They also shift around and move, making them unreliable to follow over many years (the Guild makes a killing selling the most recent navigation charts).


However, there is one surefire way to lock essence streams in place:  you build a manse somewhere along its length.  You have a waystation, home, fortress, and outpost all in one.  Obviously the essence streams around the Blessed System and the Pole of Earth have been tamed so systematically and thoroughly that there are reliable routes through those systems.


We also borrowed and modified the Gates of Auspicious Passage from Wonders of the Lost Age.  They are instead imperishable and require a prayer and sacrifice to the god of the gate, who uses the results of the prayer to power it.  The gates that would essentially be in and around the "Blessed Isle" work perfectly every time, since the Immaculates make darn sure the gods of those gates don't misbehave.  Outside of that... things aren't as reliable as the gods clammed up, went mad, or demand more than the fair toll from travelers...


Anyhoo, my two cents.
Click to expand...
 
Why gentlemen, we've done the same ;P Though I believe Jukashi is usually better at describing this x.x
 
Our system of gates use huge, circular manses built around space demenses. Diverting most of the power that would go to create a hearthstone, they instead form a gateway through which people may teleport across Creation. Perhaps lesser, planetside manses can do something similar, but that hasn't been decided upon yet.


This ties in with the defense system of the Realm. Against the advance of the Fair Folk, the empress threw open all the manse gates, using them to drain away the unshaped fae's essence. Because of the raw amounts of essence they had to contain, however, most of those furthest into the fae incursion, and generally furthest from the core of earth, exploded, reverting back to demenses.


This also ties into a system we created for the Autobots, where they use a device to temporarily collapse a demense into a portal and use it to cross Creation instantaneously.
 
This is starting to sound like Stargate: Atlantis.


I would have linked to one of the many Stargate sites, but they were too nerdy, even for me.
 
As with the original setting, we're designing shatttered skies in large part as a vessel for people to live their space-age or similar fantasies.
 
Ship engines can be a tricky thing.  How do you power something that's really an oversized skyship and keep things reasonable for the players?


I came up with several methods.  One involves many essence-users feeding the ship motes like living batteries, rotating around in shifts as to who's powering it.  Bind an elemental, demon, ghost, raksha, or spirit into the engine as its power core (may require you to replace it once in awhile though). Hearthstone driven engines with essence collecting sails or vanes.  And finally, just sticking a bunch of hearthstones in something and hoping it works.


For weapons, we just adapt warstrider-scale stuff as needed.
 
Speaking of human bateries, I'm sure CW would be keen on the idea of borrowing from Earthdawn, where many big ships were powered by sapping the life force from slaves.


-S
 
You know, I've always liked how Babylon 5 used gates that allowed access to a hyperspace dimension just beyond this one that allowed someone to travel faster without the need for an FTL drive.  Maybe you guys could use that instead.  Rather than FTL drives you could have Elsewhere gates that allow ships to enter Elsewhere and travel faster than they would through space.  This would create shipping lanes in space and in Elsewhere that could be targets of pirate attacks.
 
Spacecraft (and normal airships for that matter, but less so) can be easily powered by essence vanes, a la Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors or that gimpy ship Dooku used in SW episode 2.
 
And I believe our networks transited through the void, but as the true, nasty void is a much bigger theme in space exalted, sometimes ships don't arrive at their destinations in the threshold... And one might be able to divert transits through manipulation of relay stations, if one had lore.
 
Actually, we have several means of FTL travel! Autocthonian, Realm, Haltan, and other human ships use raw essence to power warp-drive-like engines, and in the case of modern ships, must remain close to the higher essence field connected to the Dragon Lines. The Autocthonians can also collapse demenses into portals to Elsewhere and use those for much more rapid travel, while huge circular manse Gates from the First Age provide the same service permanently. The forces of the Underworld use the Void, the Fair Folk use the Wyld, and the Dragon Kings "tunnel" through space using the light of suns as navigational anchors.


In addition to giving variety, these different methods of achieving FTL can also serve as plot devices. By limiting modern ships to Dragon Lines, for example, we create the same possibility of ambush and blockades as with the Gate system. At the same time, we allow players to achieve perfect FTL travel through the use of Artifact Ships or other technology more advanced than their own.
 
I did a bit on Autocthonians today... and I expanded a bit on Dragon King culture and history. The Fallen Dragon Kings are really really cool. Great for sci-fi horror stories. They've got that whole "alien race out to kill us" thing that no doubt so many people will want to experience themselves.


I'm thinking of giving them a kinda dark egyptian theme, to contrast with the more aztec theme of the ancient DKs.
 
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