Number of Yozi

[Persell]

I'll admit to being a bit behind, but I'm reading MoEP: Infernals and ran across the line on page 31, "Of the vast host of them (the Primordials/Yozi), only a handful remain able to work together for any more than momentary gains." Of the vast host of them? Exactly how many are we talking about? Has it been enumerated anywhere?

 

[Thanqol]

The number is deliberately vague, but really, 3 Primordials could count as a 'vast host'.


There's at least 10 canon Yozis and about 5-8 Neverborn. I imagine there could easily be another 10 or so Yozi, putting the Primordial host around 30. I don't have page references quite yet, but I don't believe it's been solidly numbered either.

 

[Persell]

Jesus! 30 or more? Maybe its my own understanding of the Primordials (or the bottle of wine I drank coupled with sleep deprivation) but how the fuck did the Exalts ever win? I'm not an Infernal fanboy by any means, but I have always envisioned the Primordial War as something the Incarna and Exalts only just barely won and 30 plus Primordials makes the victory seem less plausible.


edited for really bad grammar and typos.

 

[Thanqol]

Well, thing is, the Exalts are immortal and the Primordials aren't.


This is how I saw the War going down: All the specially trained ultra-powerful Exalts who were readied in preparation for the War all got totalled in the first few seconds. But they kept coming back, and being wiped out, and coming back...


And eventually one of them activated Ghost Eating Technique on a Primordial. And again. And then the tide started to swing in the other direction.

 

[Chaka]

Not to mention that most of the Primordial souls weren't actually geared for fighting, and would have gotten steamrolled good and early before the combat ones could really try to stem the tide.


Consider the attack of the Primordial during the High First Age. One Primordial who'd spent centuries reshaping all its souls to be absolute combat monsters was able to prosecute a century+ long war against the Solar infrastructure of the High First Age. And even with the entire might of an established and functional Solar Deliberative against it it required an (undefined) Heroic Sacrifice on the part of Brigid and her greatest disciple to actually drop the fucker after decades of warfare. The Aftershock War goes to prove that the Primordial War probably swung to the Exalted's favour early and the Primordials were able to hold them in a stalemate for a time (a horrifying bloody gory stalemate that threatened to tear Creation apart) but were never able to regain the balance.

 

[Kyeudo]

Also, there were origionally more Incarnae. When they died, their Exalts went mad and were devoured by Malfeas. They are no longer remembered because of She Who Lives In Her Name's little bonfire.

 

[Flamane]

Reviewing my notes, I believe there are 24 Yozis. Still, I can't seem to find where this information came from (possibly some first and second edition mixing). Anyway, I constantly try to update that kind of thing in my files, and I admit I could have lost count after new Yozis were introduced, such as when I bought the Malfeas book. At the very least, it's a good estimation. The number of Neverborns are unknown, at least to me.

Also, there were origionally more Incarnae. When they died, their Exalts went mad and were devoured by Malfeas. They are no longer remembered because of She Who Lives In Her Name's little bonfire.

What?!

 

[cyl]

Yeah that's been in at least 2-3 books IIRC.


And how the exalt won ? simple: they had 1 target to make the whole fall.


A primordial, titanesque being... but only one single core soul.


Focus enough forces on this precise target, and you got the primordial by the balls.

 

[Ker'ion]

14+ Yozis plus more than 5-8 Neverborn (but I remember it saying somewhere that there were 13) plus Gaia plus Autocthon plus any others that may have gotten away.


So, 14 + 13 + 2 + ? = A minimum of 29.

 

[Chaka]

One primordial besides Gaia and Autocthon is still at large. Others exist who abandoned the making of Creation early and have no interest in creation so far.

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

They're playing dice with shinma two dimensions over. I'm sure once they realize the mail they sent to Brother Malfeas isn't being returned, they'll investigate some shiny day.

 

[Plague of Hats]

Jesus! 30 or more?

There are at least five and probably around eight Neverborn' date=' there are "at least" 23 Yozis, there's Gaia and Autochthon, the two enemy Primordials that survived the War without being imprisoned and an unspecified but greater-than-one number of others who abandoned "the Creation project" before the War. So, a low-end estimation is 40, but it's not unsafe to conjecture as many as 50 were involved in the creation of Creation.

Maybe its my own understanding of the Primordials (or the bottle of wine I drank coupled with sleep deprivation) but how the fuck did the Exalts ever win? I'm not an Infernal fanboy by any means, but I have always envisioned the Primordial War as something the Incarna and Exalts only just barely won and 30 plus Primordials makes the victory seem less plausible.

One of the conceits borne out by (well-executed parts of) the game is how power functions in the setting. As you approach Essence 10 you do the same things on a broader and more impressive scale, but in one-on-one interactions little changes except your affect on the surrounding environment. The major difference to a canny Solar between Soul-Shattering Punch and Soul-Shattering Typhoon is that the ground will be wet and boggy after the latters use, and all of your less impressive friends are now dead. Whatever Charm gives him immunity to the thrust of the first gives him immunity to the thrust of the second. The titans operate on a huge scale physically and metaphysically, but mechanically a lot of that becomes window dressing to two characters just duking it out when a Solar comes along to kill them.
Take Anonymity Through Propriety, for instance. Cecelyne can get an entire plane of existence to leave her alone. Even at that point, though, it's still a comparison of X attack against Y DV that is completely ignorable with Z Charms. There might be upgrades in the Essence 6+ range that do things like add punitive measures against those who resist, or tack on new complexities to the effect like forcing others to unconsciously aid the user's actions, but that doesn't really make much difference in the face of Elusive Dream Defense.


The breadth of power and resources the titans have are staggering, but the depth of power for most things at the Solar level plateaus by Essence 5. Sometimes as early as Essence 1 and 2.

Reviewing my notes, I believe there are 24 Yozis.

The clearest quote, from Games of Divinity says that there are "at least 23."

Also, there were origionally more Incarnae. When they died, their Exalts went mad and were devoured by Malfeas. They are no longer remembered because of She Who Lives In Her Name's little bonfire.

What?!

This popped up in Guidebook to Meru and got more play in Manual: Infernals. The idea of other, lost types of Exalted and lost Incarnae are both themselves not naturally objectionable, but so far the way they've been worked into the books is pretty horrible and should largely be ignored.

 

[Chaka]

One of those two Primordials who escaped the War later died horribly during the Aftershock War, but not until after he did some pretty severe damage.

 

[Persell]

Where was the idea of destroyed Incarna/Exalts in the Guidebook?

 

[Plague of Hats]

Where was the idea of destroyed Incarna/Exalts in the Guidebook?

The Fallen Stars Memorial, on page 41. On rereading it, it does not use the term "Incarnae" with reference to the lost gods, though this isn't the objectionable part of the situation as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Persell]

I had totally forgotten about that. Cool imagery. What do you find objectionable? I kinda like the idea of there having been some casualties on the side of the Gods/Exalts.

 

[Plague of Hats]

I had totally forgotten about that. Cool imagery. What do you find objectionable? I kinda like the idea of there having been some casualties on the side of the Gods/Exalts.

"God with X Exalted dies = X Exalted go crazy and kill each other." That's bullcrap. It's almost as bad as Malfeas "eating" Exaltations in Manual: Infernals, which occurs in the same paragraph that they reemphasize "dead god = crazy Exalts."
I'm not against the basic idea of there having been more Incarnae and associated Exalted, and these Exalted being susceptible to real extinction in some way. Hell, the Terrestrials had just such a weakness until they started interbreeding so widely with humans (and they technically still do, but you'd pretty much have to kill all humans at this point). But to take away these Exalt's agency by tying them so closely to their god that they "go crazy and destroy themselves" is not at all what any type of being called "Exalted" should ever do, unless it's an after-the-fact, individual thing like becoming an akuma. It's made worse that they killed themselves by their own hands.


I think it would be cool if there were Incarnae lost in the War. I'm very leery of there having been any more Exalted than we already have for the War. Four is plenty, though I'm willing to be swayed by superb new things. But they can't have died as they appear to have without making them not-really-Exalted. They can even have destroyed themselves, but it has to be some zealous, terrible storm of rage over the death of their god, not some chained-to-Prometheus-and-dragged-to-his-hell stupidity. They need to batter themselves to nothingness as they take down the first of the Neverborn, or venture into the Wyld where they unravel trying to perform insane experiments on the shinma in hopes of killing they that murdered their god.


It's probably best if they were a "race" like the Dragon-Blooded, allowing them to be extinguished via genocide, but I'm not willing to say no one could ever come up with a good way to handle imperishable versions that are floating around but can't find candidates anymore. In the latter case, though, it's going to have to be a hell of a lot better than "She Who Lives in Her Name wiped out the Gameable Past" (in which case the exercise is moot) or "Without the Incarna of Fur Hats, no Fur Hat Exalted can be imbued" (in which case you take away the agency of the ultimate cyclical uprising from the Exalted, which should never happen).

 

[cyl]

Hmm... one question about those exalted who lost their patrons... what happened to their essences ?


I mean if they are anything like the celestials... then they can reincarnate, and so Lytek might have their essences in store...

 

[uteck]

I am not very fond of Lytek since that goes against the idea that the gods created the Exalts to fight the Primordials by proxy since the gods could not do it directly. All the Primordials would have to do is order Lytek to hand over the Exaltations and that would end it.


During the war pruning the Essence shards of memories would be counter productive for the war. How much better for you if your Essence 5 Exalt who died taking out a 3rd circle soul to Exalt a few days latter with all his/her memories and experience and be able to pick up the fight again rather then spending years gaining experience and relearning Charms.


I prefer to interpret Lytek as being given the job after the war to prevent new Exaltes from going mad with all these memories from past lives as mortals and Exalts and all the many deaths they encountered during the war.


Having said that, I still have not gotten around to reading DotFA, so perhaps they have a better explanation there? But my method make its play a first person shooter game where you re-spawn after dieing. That would make an awesome Exalted video game.

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

I rather like Lytek, honestly.

I am not very fond of Lytek since that goes against the idea that the gods created the Exalts to fight the Primordials by proxy since the gods could not do it directly. All the Primordials would have to do is order Lytek to hand over the Exaltations and that would end it.

No reason that the bolded part couldn't have been true in the beginning, really. With the way this setting spirals out of control, I imagine Lytek had a similar job to what you said, but he is clearly their...cattle driver of sorts. Keeping those shiny pearls clean for when they're shunted into the world to find hosts. That and I love his field medical kit, but that's me.


I'd say I'm a fan of Lytek, but I really do see where you're coming from. Doubtless the developers missed that part

 

[Thanqol]

I quite like Lytek as well. I see his function being similar to that of any god's.


If you kill the God of the Yellow River, the Yellow River becomes chaotic, mismanaged, unpredictable - but it's still the Yellow River. Same story with Lytek and the Exaltation process. More jerks and assholes get Exalted, and Exaltations happen where they aren't "needed", but it still keeps on keepin' on. It's a process he can guide, but cannot begin or end.


And regarding memory pruning: What happens if your brand new Exalt wakes up with the memory of spending six years being mindraped by a third circle demon and has to deal with the trauma? What if that affects his memories and intimacies? Better to have a fresh start.

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

I dunno, if the Exaltation went to a Cynis patrician...they may like it.

 

[Thanqol]

I dunno' date=' if the Exaltation went to a Cynis patrician...they may like it.[/quote']
And if it goes to a fifteen year old farmer girl? She'll be a traumatized cationic wreck! The solution is to prune the memories rather than try to find people debauched enough to handle them.

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

Pssssssh, she'll be as happy as Raksi or Lilith.

 

[Thanqol]

Pssssssh' date=' she'll be as happy as Raksi or Lilith. [/quote']
Neither of whom have done anything awesome to shore up the boundaries of Creation recently, now have they?


And imagine Exalting and getting Raski's memories. You'd go even more insane than she was.