Dice [OOC] - To Stand Against the Crimson Tide

[Random Word]

Technically, Garret is a Casteless Lunar, since he just Exalted and hasn't had a chance to get his Caste Tattoos on yet. But yes, he has all the murder that a Full Moon Caste has in their hearts.

You're technically correct, the best kind of correct! Thank you. Equusheart, I hope you're taking notes.

Lol, sounds like quite the motley crew. So, are Castes like the different character classes?

Yes! Though they're not at all rigid and Exalted doesn't encourage colouring between the lines, so you can play Castes in very unusual ways. We have five flavours of Exalted available at the moment: Solars, Lunars, Dragon-blooded, Sidereal, and Abyssal. We'll forget about the Sidereals for now. Each one is further divided

For Solars we have five Castes: Dawn (Murder), Zenith (Priest), Twilight (Scholar), Night (Thief), and Eclipse (Diplomat).
For Abyssals we have Dusk (Murder), Midnight (Priest), Daybreak (Scholar), Day (Thief), and Moonshadow (Diplomat).
For Lunars we have Casteless (Yes), Full Moon (Murder), Changing Moon (Thief-Diplomat), and No Moon (Scholar-Priest).
For Dragon-blooded we have five Aspects, one for each Element: Fire (Fire), Water (Water), Air (Air), Earth (Earth), and Wood (Wood). And by their powers combined, they are captain planet an imperial superpower bent on colonial exploitation... I mean the last bastion of civilization against the encroaching horrors from beyond the world.

 

[Sherwood]

Lol, sounds like quite the motley crew. So, are Castes like the different character classes?

Kinda/sorta. Each Caste has a different focus depending on what kind of Exaltation they have. For example, Solar Exalts of the Dawn Caste are your warriors, generals and overall combat experts. A Zenith Solar fits into the high priest of the Unconquered Sun. Thieves and scalawags of the Solars fit into the Night Caste.

Unlike the other kinds of Exalted, Lunars only have three well-defined Castes; Full Moon, Changing Moon and No Moon, with the Casteless being a newly minted Exalt that has not had his/her defined Caste locked in.

 

[Equusheart]

Equusheart, I hope you're taking notes.

I'm taking all the notes I can lol. I'm even consulting the Almighty Google (with mixed results depending on what I type in the search bar).

Okay, then. The Dragon-Blooded sounds interesting, but so does the Lunar Exalted The Sidereal Exalted also sound really interesting, but also complicated so I'm not gonna even think about touching that

 

[Sherwood]

I'm taking all the notes I can lol. I'm even consulting the Almighty Google (with mixed results depending on what I type in the search bar).

Okay, then. The Dragon-Blooded sounds interesting, but so does the Lunar Exalted The Sidereal Exalted also sound really interesting, but also complicated so I'm not gonna even think about touching that

Well, we don't have a Dragon Blooded in the mix yet....

 

[Equusheart]

Well, we don't have a Dragon Blooded in the mix yet....

Yeah, I was kinda leaning towards Dragon Blooded in either Water or Air.

 

[Equusheart]

Is it possible to do a bit of both Air and Water I wonder?

 

[Random Word]

Is it possible to do a bit of both Air and Water I wonder?

It is, yes, in a variety of ways. While you must be Air or Water, Air Aspects can take Water Charms (Charms are powers) and vice versa. An Air Aspect can be in Water Aura, and a Water aspect can be in Air Aura. You can also have Artifacts with Evocations (Weapon powers) that generate elemental powers other than your own natural element.

I will warn you, Dragonblooded are mechanically weaker than the other options. This is an intentional part of the game design, not a balancing failure. They are weaker, but there are a lot more of them (DBs outnumber Solars by maybe as much as a hundred to one), which means when they go to war they bring friends. To compensate, PC DBs start at a higher level, and the dominant religion of Creation considers you a Bodhisattva where it wants to murder most of the other types of Exalted on sight. Unfortunately, the greatest perk of being a DB is the option of being a wealthy and powerful scion of one of the dynasties that rule Creation (You get to be Prince Zuko/Azula!), and that option is likely off the table here. It's not impossible you can write a story in which a wandering Dynast, Prasadi, or Lookshyan fits into this group, but it's really hard (You would need to be an extremely open minded iconoclastic heretic *cough* Ragara *cough*), so you should probably be an Outcaste (which is just a DB who isn't from some powerful empire somewhere) if you're going to be a DB.

Oh right, there's also Exigents, which is basically 'Chosen of that god I made up just now', which entails a lot of writing your own Charms but lets you make almost anything you can imagine. Chosen of the God of Puzzles. Chosen of the God of Intoxicants. Chosen of the God of Secrets Known Only to One Person. Chosen of the God of Lost Things. Chosen of the God of This Particular City. You probably don't want to be an Exigent, as it's a rather advanced option.

 

[Red Shadow Claws]

Is it possible to do a bit of both Air and Water I wonder?

I would suggest reading some of the basic Charms of each Ability, and make a list of which 10 Abilities you find most interesting.
Since each Aspect (element) of Dragon Blooded get 5 automatic favored Abilities, that would tell you which of those fits your character better.

 

[Red Shadow Claws]

Air: Thoughtful, creative, and visionary, skilled in subtlety and scholarship.
Aspect Abilities: Linguistics, Lore, Occult, Stealth, Thrown

• Earth: Strong-willed, traditionalist, and meticulous, possessed of great endurance and skilled in shaping things that last.
Aspect Abilities: Awareness, Craft, Integrity, Resistance, War

• Fire: Passionate, hot-blooded, and contentious, excelling in physical activity and social interaction through boundless energy.
Aspect Abilities: Athletics, Dodge, Melee, Presence, Socialize

• Water: Shrewd, mercurial, and adaptable, able to navigate complex problems or improvise effective solutions.
Aspect Abilities: Brawl/Martial Arts, Bureaucracy, Investigation, Larceny, Sail

• Wood: Ever-changing, nurturing, and sensual, with strong ties to nature and the cycle of life and death.
Aspect Abilities: Archery, Medicine, Performance, Ride, Survival

 

[Red Shadow Claws]

Another option to choosing an Aspect, is to see what Abilities others have focused on, and find a niche that's your own, and that you're comfortable with.

So, Sjet is focused on Occult and Lore, and Droplets is focused on Presence, Survival, Garret is focused more on Melee and Resistance, and we can intuit that the pirate is focused on Sail, and likely Socialize and Bureaucracy.

It doesn't mean you can't have Charms from those Abilities. On the contrary, since you're a different kind of Exalt, your Charms will be very different than what others bring to the table. But it might be that in those areas, you might feel left behind.

 

[Equusheart]

Another option to choosing an Aspect, is to see what Abilities others have focused on, and find a niche that's your own, and that you're comfortable with.

Yeah, that's what trying to do in asking about the other characters. I do the same thing when making a D&D character so I'm not overlapping skills and accidentally making, for example, two rogues or something.

Now that I see what the other characters' abilities are as well as the abilities for the different Dragonbloods, I actually find myself leaning towards Wood with Archery and Medicine. But I still like Air for its Stealth ability. Is it possible to be Wood, but had an Air charm for that?

 

[Red Shadow Claws]

Yeah, that's what trying to do in asking about the other characters. I do the same thing when making a D&D character so I'm not overlapping skills and accidentally making, for example, two rogues or something.

Now that I see what the other characters' abilities are as well as the abilities for the different Dragonbloods, I actually find myself leaning towards Wood with Archery and Medicine. But I still like Air for its Stealth ability. Is it possible to be Wood, but had an Air charm for that?

Sure. As I said, each Aspect gives you 5 Favored Abilities. But you can choose 5 more Favored Abilities, for a total of 10. So you can definitely take Stealth as one.

 

[Equusheart]

I think I'm getting an idea for what I want to do. Is there a good place to read up more about the lore of the land this is set in?

 

[Random Word]

I think I'm getting an idea for what I want to do. Is there a good place to read up more about the lore of the land this is set in?

The players built the city by picking some qualities from a list: Dice - [OOC] - To Stand Against the Crimson Tide

Creation is massive. I think about four times the size of Earth, and it used to be over ten times larger. That means any time you throw a dart at a map you're making a place up and have a lot of broad latitude. The players chose a city-state in the Cinder Isles, but that doesn't tell you a whole lot except what the climate is like. The Cinder Isles are in the Southwest. South is the Pole of Fire, and the West is the Pole of Water, so it's a hot, humid volcanic island chain with a big continent nearby. Demon-worshipping pirates are a problem.

Creation is animist, which means every important river, road, city, and volcano has a god in charge of monitoring it and reporting on its status to the Celestial Bureaucracy. Gods are... well... they sometimes do their jobs. Usually they're lazy, corrupt, vain, and up to something entirely unrelated to their nominal responsibilities, but they love prayer and are often highly prayer motivated, so their relationships with mortals are usually transactional, except where something is coercing them to behave. I'd get into what's supposed to be coercing them to behave, but honestly your character probably doesn't know anything about that unless you have a very particular education and we want to minimize information overload.

This city in particular has a strong culture of ancestor worship. The ghosts of famous community members are communally worshipped in cults, and then each family often maintains shrines to their own personal honoured ancestors. The cults have learned the art of ritually preparing compatible adherents for possession by the great ancestor, who, being a powerful ghost fat on worship, can grant powerful blessings or possess unique supernatural powers. If you grew up in the city, you've attended special annual ceremonies led by one long-dead cultural hero of your city or another. A Shadowland is a connection between Creation (the land of the living) and the Underworld (the land of the dead). If you exit a Shadowland during the day, you enter Creation. If you exit at night, you enter the Underworld. Think of it like a neighbourhood sized elevator that only moves floors once a day. You can still enter from Creation or the Underworld any time of day, but exits go one way. To help with logistics, I've added the Guild of Ferrymen, whose small boats can cross the river dividing the Shadowland from the city and choose which realm they come out on. Naturally, they guard this very valuable art closely, and will happily kill to preserve the secret and sell any resulting ghost into slavery with the Timeless Order of Manacle and Coin, a powerful merchant confederation in the Underworld.

If you have questions about specific aspects of life, ask me. If you want to invent something, by all means. We're filling in this canvas together as we go.

 

[Red Shadow Claws]

Guild of Ferrymen, whose small boats can cross the river dividing the Shadowland from the city and choose which realm they come out on. Naturally, they guard this very valuable art closely, and will happily kill to preserve the secret and sell any resulting ghost into slavery with the Timeless Order of Manacle and Coin, a powerful merchant confederation in the Underworld.

Be interesting to see how they react when they find out Droplets can move between the Underworld and Creation on her own, with Dark Roads of the Dead.

 

[Random Word]

Okay, we have a main thread . Who needs characters, anyway? These initial scene settings are provisional guesses on my part, and I will amend them to better fit your concept if you don't feel they properly reflect your character. They're only in spoiler tags because of size - they aren't secret.

 

[Equusheart]

I'll get mine worked on. Is there anything else I should know about character creation?

 

[Random Word]

Do you have rulebooks for Exalted? We can provide them, as well as help building your character. We're using a variant of character creation rules outlined in the characters thread, and if you're playing a DB you'll start with 80 XP to spend instead of 55. Before you even touch mechanics, you'll want to establish your character concept and share it with the group to see if it fits the story we're building together. I really want people to look at the story and ask what characters would be excellent protagonists to tell it, with ideas tied narratively to other PCs, rather than make a character sheet in isolation and then try to jam it in.

 

[Equusheart]

No. I tried Googling it so see if there were any guides for that like there is for D&D but I wasn't finding anything useful.

Okay, so should I just put out what I'm thinking for my character and see what you all think?

 

[Sherwood]

No. I tried Googling it so see if there were any guides for that like there is for D&D but I wasn't finding anything useful.

Okay, so should I just put out what I'm thinking for my character and see what you all think?

I can share the books with you on my DropBox account if you are willing to send me a PM with your email.

 

[Equusheart]

I can share the books with you on my DropBox account if you are willing to send me a PM with your email.

Sure I can do that

 

[Random Word]

Okay, so should I just put out what I'm thinking for my character and see what you all think?

Yes, please! We can help with mechanics, but first you want to explore how your character is connected to the other players, and get their buy-in. Ideally you want at least one or two other players excited about how your character connects to theirs, and how that will affect the story.

 

[Crocodile]

I've got a sheet, but charms need selecting and I'm debating an artifact. Main interest is showing I could afford a ship and crew. It'll get refined better in a day or so along with more fully fleshing out his backstory.

 

[Equusheart]

Yes, please! We can help with mechanics, but first you want to explore how your character is connected to the other players, and get their buy-in. Ideally you want at least one or two other players excited about how your character connects to theirs, and how that will affect the story.

Okay, so I'm still working on the name (thinking maybe Nari, Sakura, or Sayuri). I'm thinking on making her Terrestrial Exalted, or Dragon-Blooded, and leaning into the Wood element with the Archery and Medicine. Also with a Charm for Air for the Stealth ability. I figure the charm could be in the form of an amulet given to her by her two older brothers who also taught her to use the bow. So, she's basically a healer, but can fight and/or hunt if need be.

With her backstory I'm thinking she comes from a rural village up in the highlands that is most known for growing tea(?). She is the oldest daughter in a family of seven children. And I'm still developing her, but that's what I've got so far.

 

[Red Shadow Claws]

Okay, so I'm still working on the name (thinking maybe Nari, Sakura, or Sayuri). I'm thinking on making her Terrestrial Exalted, or Dragon-Blooded, and leaning into the Wood element with the Archery and Medicine. Also with a Charm for Air for the Stealth ability. I figure the charm could be in the form of an amulet given to her by her two older brothers who also taught her to use the bow. So, she's basically a healer, but can fight and/or hunt if need be.

With her backstory I'm thinking she comes from a rural village up in the highlands that is most known for growing tea(?). She is the oldest daughter in a family of seven children. And I'm still developing her, but that's what I've got so far.

The Charms of the Exalted are not items, but innate powers you learn to unlock in time.
Do you plan to invest some in Survival as well? if so, maybe your character and mine knew one another since my character is very good with Survival, and would help you find medicinal herbs