Random Word
Three Thousand Club
Amongst the peoples who eke out a living in the depths of the burning sands, on the wind-scoured freezing wastes of the north, who cling to tiny islands amongst the great open stretches of ocean in the furthest west, there is a saying shared: 'Man plans, and the Gods laugh'. Amongst the small folk who eke out a living on the Blessed Isle it is, 'Women plan, and the Dragons laugh'. Amongst the harried servants of the Bureau of Destiny, 'Gods plan, and Creation laughs.' So it is you come to find yourself looking down upon a gaping ragged hole in the perfection of the loom, a pattern spider tasked full time with preventing the damage from rippling outwards into the rest of the Direction, long since having given up any effort of weaving any sort of coherent pattern into strands of destiny unravelling before your very eyes.
There is a remote village thought too small and unimportant to be on any map fit to grace the tables of lords and queens. Destiny had a plan for this village: that it remain an unremarkable, accursed, xenophobic backwater until the end of time itself, as uninteresting to outsiders as it was hostile, for this unremarkable village sits atop the tomb of a purged Solar despot and their Lunar mate, both of great and terrible power, at the heart of their long forgotten empire. That plan lies in tatters. A Manse unknown to Heaven has awakened, in the process reshaping the surrounding geomancy with no regard for local spirit courts. Scavenger princes returning from the village, wagons of priceless ancient treasures in tow, bear tales of caches unearthed, heroes with the strength of ten men able to shrug off grievous wounds in a heartbeat, a Sorcerer on retainer, and a competition open to any willing to brave great dangers to win the hands of suddenly very eligible scions of the most prominent of local families.
Situated on a once-neglected border between an impoverished Satrapy and its neighbour, the village has suddenly become a flashpoint; betrothal requests, intrigues, and diplomatic missives flying fast and furious before a backdrop of soldiers arming for war. House Ragara has dispatched occultists who smell power to be unearthed and exploited. House Ledaal has dispatched witch hunters who cannot quite decide if the stench of Anathema influence overpowers that of Ragara heresy. They will have ample opportunity to find out, as already rumours swirl that a Lunar warlord has been roused, their host soon to march to seize the site before the Dragons can get it in their grubby grasping claws. Local powers too dispatch agents, in the hopes of securing wealth and power for their masters and deny it to the Realm.
The Gauntlet teaches triage is a dispassionate thing, cold in its calculus. This is a not a large problem in the grand scheme of Destiny. It cannot be ignored, but this is an Age of Sorrows, and the best and brightest of the Bureau are busy elsewhere. It is perhaps beyond the abilities of a single novice Sidereal, but not beyond a small team with support. Your betters argue about a permanent solution: A war, a plague, a curse, an earthquake, but all agree (in public, anyway) that more information is needed, and the orchestrators of what can only be considered a brazen defiance of Destiny be identified and terminated with extreme prejudice. If at all possible, the town should be returned to a boring backwater no one wants anything to do with. Above all else, the denizens of Creation must be prevented from awakening the furious ghost of a mad Celestial by plundering their tomb. You'd have thought that would be obvious to everyone, but if your short tenure in the Bureau of Destiny has taught you anything, it's that saving Creation from itself is half your job, and the work is never ending. The other half is paperwork.
There is a remote village thought too small and unimportant to be on any map fit to grace the tables of lords and queens. Destiny had a plan for this village: that it remain an unremarkable, accursed, xenophobic backwater until the end of time itself, as uninteresting to outsiders as it was hostile, for this unremarkable village sits atop the tomb of a purged Solar despot and their Lunar mate, both of great and terrible power, at the heart of their long forgotten empire. That plan lies in tatters. A Manse unknown to Heaven has awakened, in the process reshaping the surrounding geomancy with no regard for local spirit courts. Scavenger princes returning from the village, wagons of priceless ancient treasures in tow, bear tales of caches unearthed, heroes with the strength of ten men able to shrug off grievous wounds in a heartbeat, a Sorcerer on retainer, and a competition open to any willing to brave great dangers to win the hands of suddenly very eligible scions of the most prominent of local families.
Situated on a once-neglected border between an impoverished Satrapy and its neighbour, the village has suddenly become a flashpoint; betrothal requests, intrigues, and diplomatic missives flying fast and furious before a backdrop of soldiers arming for war. House Ragara has dispatched occultists who smell power to be unearthed and exploited. House Ledaal has dispatched witch hunters who cannot quite decide if the stench of Anathema influence overpowers that of Ragara heresy. They will have ample opportunity to find out, as already rumours swirl that a Lunar warlord has been roused, their host soon to march to seize the site before the Dragons can get it in their grubby grasping claws. Local powers too dispatch agents, in the hopes of securing wealth and power for their masters and deny it to the Realm.
The Gauntlet teaches triage is a dispassionate thing, cold in its calculus. This is a not a large problem in the grand scheme of Destiny. It cannot be ignored, but this is an Age of Sorrows, and the best and brightest of the Bureau are busy elsewhere. It is perhaps beyond the abilities of a single novice Sidereal, but not beyond a small team with support. Your betters argue about a permanent solution: A war, a plague, a curse, an earthquake, but all agree (in public, anyway) that more information is needed, and the orchestrators of what can only be considered a brazen defiance of Destiny be identified and terminated with extreme prejudice. If at all possible, the town should be returned to a boring backwater no one wants anything to do with. Above all else, the denizens of Creation must be prevented from awakening the furious ghost of a mad Celestial by plundering their tomb. You'd have thought that would be obvious to everyone, but if your short tenure in the Bureau of Destiny has taught you anything, it's that saving Creation from itself is half your job, and the work is never ending. The other half is paperwork.
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The Sidereals book is here! Yay! I adore Sidereals. Let's kick the tires and see how fun this awesome charmset is in play. I'm looking to see if there are a few players interested in picking their favourite direction, helping me flesh out the setting as we go, and getting up to some good old fashioned kung fu fate-wizard-ninja hijinks while trying to prevent all the other Exalted from breaking Creation. I will have to put the game on hiatus when I'm travelling (next at the end of February), or if I burn out, but I'll do my best to always set a clear date for when it will resume, and that will usually be in 2-3 weeks at most.
I'm going to bring back one previous experiment that I liked:
Flags are scenes you want your character to experience and events you want to see come to pass. Think of them as how you define your personal character arc. They can be very specific or very general, but it's always up to you to decide when they're satisfied. They're not guaranteed to happen, but fate will bend over backwards to give you opportunities to fulfill them, and in general I won't bother to set up any scene that doesn't either directly further a narrative goal you've chosen to fulfill, set up one of your Flags, or explore the consequences of your actions. Flags should generally specify situations rather than outcomes - outcomes are less certain than situations, but they'll still get a nudge from fate. Examples of flags:
I want to find out exactly how far my character is willing to go to fulfill their goal of abolishing slavery.
I want an establishing scene that sets up how much of a badass my character is (tavern brawl, bandit raid, extortion attempt, etc).
I want an establishing scene that sets up my character as a trusted and respected mediator of disputes in the community.
I want my character's belief that all Anathema are baby-eating monsters to be challenged.
I want someone to threaten my character's sister so I can drop everything and go berserk on them.
I want my character to be captured by the enemy, learn something important, and escape or be rescued by allies.
I want my character to have a chance to show off their incredible dance skills. It doesn't have to be a dance-off with a Deathlord, but I wouldn't say no.
I want my character to duel their nemesis over a waterfall, and have one of them fall dramatically to their 'death'.
I want my character to have dinner with their magnificent bastard affably evil nemesis and play you know I know you know I know over fine wine.
I want my character to meet their Abyssal Mate Husbando, get off on the wrong foot, cut that sexual tension with a Daiklave, and hate-flirt-fight until dramatically interrupted and they have to retreat.
I want my character to discover an important secret about NPC X.
I want to make a glorious last stand on the walls of the city, hopelessly outnumbered by the enemies of Creation.
etc etc etc
I want to find out exactly how far my character is willing to go to fulfill their goal of abolishing slavery.
I want an establishing scene that sets up how much of a badass my character is (tavern brawl, bandit raid, extortion attempt, etc).
I want an establishing scene that sets up my character as a trusted and respected mediator of disputes in the community.
I want my character's belief that all Anathema are baby-eating monsters to be challenged.
I want someone to threaten my character's sister so I can drop everything and go berserk on them.
I want my character to be captured by the enemy, learn something important, and escape or be rescued by allies.
I want my character to have a chance to show off their incredible dance skills. It doesn't have to be a dance-off with a Deathlord, but I wouldn't say no.
I want my character to duel their nemesis over a waterfall, and have one of them fall dramatically to their 'death'.
I want my character to have dinner with their magnificent bastard affably evil nemesis and play you know I know you know I know over fine wine.
I want my character to meet their Abyssal Mate Husbando, get off on the wrong foot, cut that sexual tension with a Daiklave, and hate-flirt-fight until dramatically interrupted and they have to retreat.
I want my character to discover an important secret about NPC X.
I want to make a glorious last stand on the walls of the city, hopelessly outnumbered by the enemies of Creation.
etc etc etc
Everyone will get 3 Sidereal XP whenever everyone has ticked off at least one Flag, then the count will reset. This is to encourage everyone to help each other hit the character moments they want to see in the game. If I like a Flag enough and it fits a caste theme of one of the players, I will probably make it an Auspicious Prospect.
Regular XP will be handed out for overcoming obstacles on the path to the goals the party establishes.
I'm open to character creation being for Essence 1 or Essence 2 Sidereals, depending on what players unanimously agree.
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Well, so far the West is in the lead, so let's see. Running a Sidereals game is kind of neat, because for most splats in Exalted most of the campaign notes are lost to history until someone goes digging, but you're the secret masters of the universe, and you Have a File on That (I'm going to consider that a special rule for the game. I'll tell you if destiny predicted an NPC might be involved in your mission and you were provided with a dossier on them, and you're always considered to have a relevant lore background for declaring facts about someone the Bureau has a file on), so you get to read it straight 'cause your predecessors probably did it:
All subject to change as I (or you! I strongly encourage people to declare fun facts to make the game better) have better ideas, but how about an ancient sunken Solar city, capital of a great Western empire, its tallest spires entombed in mountains that now form an archipelago. The cracked and ruined remains of once mighty structures, now encrusted with bright corals and teeming with fish, can be seen jutting from the seafloor at odd angles through crystal clear water from the shoreline. We'll need some volcanoes. Every good Western archipelago has to have volcanoes. Some of the spires are damaged Manses, their fire essence leaking out into the mountains, periodically leading to catastrophic eruptions that further damage the Manses and bury yet more of the sunken city in ash and cooling basalt, extending the islands in the process. The old City Goddess has become a Volcano Goddess through millennia of veneration for the wrong thing. She's still far down the list for reassignment after all these millenia, and it's an open secret she's never moving.
Some of the shoals between the islands are so shallow you can walk across them if you pick your way carefully, but the people who live there know the waters are full of dangers. A vicious water court whose name I'll come up with later hunts the lagoons, and their favourite prey is human. It's safer to ride the overgrown turtle elementals the size of small islands themselves as they migrate around the archipelago. A powerful coven of Storm Mothers maintain an endless hurricane with the entire archipelago within its eye, commanded by Heaven to keep all unsanctioned ships from entering until the seas boil away. Over the millennia they have come to loathe one another, and compete for worship, collections of the finest treasures, power over the local elemental courts, and other petty distractions from their never ending toil. They lash the islands with fierce storms to drive the people to pray for their forbearance, and to punish those who worship their sisters.
The people of the island are the descendants of those who lived in the city long ago, clans still drawing lineage back to their Solar or Lunar patron, or the Gentes that laid them low. They were allowed to live in an act of mercy after they surrendered in the waning days of the great Western Campaign of the Purge, some fifty years after the Calibration feast. Centuries later a group of Sidereals sunk what remained of the city and entombed the most important towers in mountains to quash a foolhardy conspiracy by the Solar descendents to overthrow the Gentes descended aristocracy by breaking into the lavish tomb at the heart of the city to commune with what remains of their progenitor, leading some to question if they should be allowed to live at all.
The central chamber of the Solar tomb, and beyond it the terrible work of almost-complete sorcerous artifice they died defending, are sealed with powerful wards that require a full complement of Sidereals, one of each Caste, to open. Beyond lies what appears to be an attempt to create an alternate Loom in preparation for a full scale retreat from Creation into the Wyld to escape the Purge. Were it ever to come online, it could prove every bit the colossal headache of the Caul. The tomb is watched over by a disgraced former Western God of War, under the pretext that, having overseen the campaign that led to their purge, he was the only one strong enough to keep them contained. It also has a powerful bound demon, a living labyrinth that constantly rearranges itself and draws interlopers deeper into its endlessly twisting halls with their most fervent desires. That's pretty tame and boring for a Second Circle demon, but we don't need all the details until we do.
All subject to change as I (or you! I strongly encourage people to declare fun facts to make the game better) have better ideas, but how about an ancient sunken Solar city, capital of a great Western empire, its tallest spires entombed in mountains that now form an archipelago. The cracked and ruined remains of once mighty structures, now encrusted with bright corals and teeming with fish, can be seen jutting from the seafloor at odd angles through crystal clear water from the shoreline. We'll need some volcanoes. Every good Western archipelago has to have volcanoes. Some of the spires are damaged Manses, their fire essence leaking out into the mountains, periodically leading to catastrophic eruptions that further damage the Manses and bury yet more of the sunken city in ash and cooling basalt, extending the islands in the process. The old City Goddess has become a Volcano Goddess through millennia of veneration for the wrong thing. She's still far down the list for reassignment after all these millenia, and it's an open secret she's never moving.
Some of the shoals between the islands are so shallow you can walk across them if you pick your way carefully, but the people who live there know the waters are full of dangers. A vicious water court whose name I'll come up with later hunts the lagoons, and their favourite prey is human. It's safer to ride the overgrown turtle elementals the size of small islands themselves as they migrate around the archipelago. A powerful coven of Storm Mothers maintain an endless hurricane with the entire archipelago within its eye, commanded by Heaven to keep all unsanctioned ships from entering until the seas boil away. Over the millennia they have come to loathe one another, and compete for worship, collections of the finest treasures, power over the local elemental courts, and other petty distractions from their never ending toil. They lash the islands with fierce storms to drive the people to pray for their forbearance, and to punish those who worship their sisters.
The people of the island are the descendants of those who lived in the city long ago, clans still drawing lineage back to their Solar or Lunar patron, or the Gentes that laid them low. They were allowed to live in an act of mercy after they surrendered in the waning days of the great Western Campaign of the Purge, some fifty years after the Calibration feast. Centuries later a group of Sidereals sunk what remained of the city and entombed the most important towers in mountains to quash a foolhardy conspiracy by the Solar descendents to overthrow the Gentes descended aristocracy by breaking into the lavish tomb at the heart of the city to commune with what remains of their progenitor, leading some to question if they should be allowed to live at all.
The central chamber of the Solar tomb, and beyond it the terrible work of almost-complete sorcerous artifice they died defending, are sealed with powerful wards that require a full complement of Sidereals, one of each Caste, to open. Beyond lies what appears to be an attempt to create an alternate Loom in preparation for a full scale retreat from Creation into the Wyld to escape the Purge. Were it ever to come online, it could prove every bit the colossal headache of the Caul. The tomb is watched over by a disgraced former Western God of War, under the pretext that, having overseen the campaign that led to their purge, he was the only one strong enough to keep them contained. It also has a powerful bound demon, a living labyrinth that constantly rearranges itself and draws interlopers deeper into its endlessly twisting halls with their most fervent desires. That's pretty tame and boring for a Second Circle demon, but we don't need all the details until we do.
Unless there are objections, I'll say your previous incarnations were killed at almost exactly the same time on a mission together, and you all drew your second breath at exactly the same time, no matter where you were in Creation. There's a positive legacy behind you. Your predecessors were famous for something - could be hunting incursions from Malfeas, the Underworld, or the Wyld, or something else entirely you come up with. You went to the school of divine knocks together, the Bureau never missing an opportunity to cut costs by assigning one instructor to teach you the core material instead of having each of you receive individual tutors. You saw less and less of each other as you reached your advanced classes where individual tutoring was a necessity, and less still as you shadowed mentors on Bureau assignments, but now you're back together again for your first real unsupervised assignment. Gods help us all.
If you're E1 you're all probably around 20, and this is the first mission you've gone on unsupervised. If you're E2 you're about 25 and you have plenty of solo and circle missions under your belts. Yes I know that you're going to hit E2, 3, and probably 4 before you see your 21st Calibration under the rules, but short of decades long time skips there's no getting around that.
If you're E1 you're all probably around 20, and this is the first mission you've gone on unsupervised. If you're E2 you're about 25 and you have plenty of solo and circle missions under your belts. Yes I know that you're going to hit E2, 3, and probably 4 before you see your 21st Calibration under the rules, but short of decades long time skips there's no getting around that.
