Over a Mug of Ale [For A Better Age]

The line between bravery and stupidity is usually what you can (and can’t) get away with.


Light night for me. Just some basic stuff at the moment. Been a long day for me. Plus I need to see exactly what everyone decides to do in some situations we got going.
 
Inari: I will need an attack roll vs. DV 1 and a Stealth + Dexterity roll. Also is she using her anima ability?


Sherwood: The ships you have do not have any weapons. They are Viking style longships that were made in a very quick period of time for the purpose of this raid. Building more complex vessels with weapons likely would have taken more time and resources.


I’ve had a long day today, and an early morning tomorrow. So probably no posts from me today.
 
Axelgear said:
BROKEN WINGED CRAAAAANE!
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Tiger and phoenix and titans OH MY!


(for those that don't know, that is charm cascade to become your own super being. Something tiger, rise of the phoenix, and face of the titan- then a few more.)
 
Quick correction, Archie: Surprise attacks are versus DV 0, not 1.

magnificentmomo said:
Tiger and phoenix and titans OH MY!
(for those that don't know, that is charm cascade to become your own super being. Something tiger, rise of the phoenix, and face of the titan- then a few more.)
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Triumphant Howl of the Devil Tiger (fuck you, Yozis!), Swallowing the Scorpion (fuck you, Lillun!), The Tempest of Inward Focus (fuck you, Autocthon!), The Flame of the Rising Phoenix (fuck you, Incarnae!), The Face of the Titans (fuck you, Unwoven Coadjutor!), The Spirit of the Living World (fuck you, reality!), The Dance of the Thrashing Dragon (fuck you, scenery! I'm gonna chew the shit out of you!), The Path of a Thousand Whispers (fuck you, soul hierarchy!), The Way of the Resplendent Crane (fuck you, distance!), and The Song of the Shadow (fuck you, free will!).


Calypso will be taking them all, probably.
 
Usually my characters are almost overly familiar with a language, using erudite turns of phrases or crass colloquialisms depending on the flavor, so I apologize if I get carried away with playing up the growing pains of foreign language use. Not only is it fun because it is a challenge for myself, having to step out of my normal "go to" voice, but also because it is something I am going through with French.


I noticed I have posted just one revision shy of my most recent draft of XP expenditure. I had realized it was more efficient to buy another charm slot and the fourth intelligence excellency than to buy up intelligence 5, but I guess I had copied and pasted the wrong one. I know I have started play already, so I would understand if it was a 'too bad' situation. On the bright side, it wouldn't have affected my personal mote pool usage or anima flare in that last encounter, because I realized I had also miscalculated my personal pool :oops:


I guess I had done too much late night character crunching.


Now I will get back to my Broken Winged Crane.
 
Not sure what you mean by 3CDs...


(Edit: Oh, Third Circle Demons. Not sure yet...)


As for Calypso's charms, they're going to be defined within the focus of her Excellency. Most likely that's going to focus on promoting life and growth, and the bounds of compassion; a lack of cruelty, obviating suffering, and so on.


Also likely to involve some degree of analytical and constructive underpinning to go with it, to emphasize her creative side.


At the moment some possible concepts I'm thinking of are:


-Life-Granting Benediction (and some expansions): The Primordials created life not in genesis labs, but from miracles of Essence. Such crude tools are beneath them. This charm and its expansions would offer a hint of that world-forming power, allowing the nascent Primordial to create life from non-life; to perform abiogenesis and turn crude matter into living creatures. (Active charm that enhances Craft (Genesis), growing in power with each expansion)


-Embraced by Worlds: While all the Primordials were greatly self-involved, some showed sincere love for their creations, be they people, places, or concepts. This charm makes such care reciprocal. The world cares for its creator and reshaper, and shows it in its actions. (Permanent Charm, equivalent to Cecelyne's or Kimbery's charms to make you more suited to a given environment. Would obviously be different to theirs, of course)


-Cauterizing Surgeon's Scalpel: Life is not perfect, not yet at least, and sometimes cancers form. It is not because he enjoys cutting into his patient that a surgeon carves a new wound, however, or hatred of the tumor, but the understanding that the damaged section must be excised if the whole is to live. The same principle applies to all things, not out of desire but from necessity. (The basis for a combat charm tree)


-Wound-Sealing Beneficence: Death is a natural part of life, but not all death is natural or desirable. Sometimes, a caregiver must intervene and prevent the end. (Healing charm)


-All-Birthing Ingenuity: The word "obstacle" is curious to the beings who invented the term. It is even more curious to a Solar, against whom all limits shatter like so much glass hurled against a stone. The fusion of Primordial and Solar ensures that, when faced with poultry limits, they merely rewrite the rules and expand beyond them (Crafting charm tree basis. Not sure how it may relate to Life-Granting Benediction yet.)


... Huh. I didn't think I had that many ideas... Ah well, there they are.
 
Shininess.


I'd see the Crafty tree and the Lifey tree fusing at high levels- maybe even into a Shintai, where the act of creating and the act of giving life become one and the same.


(My interpretation; you may disagree, of course.)
 
Already went over some of this with you in IM, but I'm going to go ahead and put them out here since it can show some insight into how design works.

Axelgear said:
As for Calypso's charms, they're going to be defined within the focus of her Excellency. Most likely that's going to focus on promoting life and growth, and the bounds of compassion; a lack of cruelty, obviating suffering, and so on.
Also likely to involve some degree of analytical and constructive underpinning to go with it, to emphasize her creative side.


At the moment some possible concepts I'm thinking of are:
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First of all, it's not a good idea to be coming up with Charm ideas before you've visualized a First Excellency. Everything Primordial Charms do build off of the themes contained in that single Charm, and if you're not completely sure what those are you're creating a patchwork set of Charms and then forcing their premises together.


Additionally, keep in mind that so far Primordials have been portrayed as--at best--benign, and even that label is suspect. Intentionally or unintentionally, the narrow and sometimes myopic focus of their Charms warps their targets, be them mortals, lands, or gods, in ways which may not be inherently harmful but are not necessarily welcome. Of course, this isn't a problem for Green Sun Princes, who can exercise restraint and consideration, but this mindset can be very helpful when it comes to designing Charms.


In short, to what extremes might a being defined solely by its nature (its First Excellency) take these powers to?

-Life-Granting Benediction (and some expansions): The Primordials created life not in genesis labs, but from miracles of Essence. Such crude tools are beneath them. This charm and its expansions would offer a hint of that world-forming power, allowing the nascent Primordial to create life from non-life; to perform abiogenesis and turn crude matter into living creatures. (Active charm that enhances Craft (Genesis), growing in power with each expansion)
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Yeah, you need to expand on this premise. Life and growth are major Gaia themes, and you need to do something to distance yourself. Overlap within spheres is fine, but this isn't at all unique. Furthermore, the impression I've received of Calypso thusfar paints her more as someone concerned with the preservation of life, rather than its design (of which there CAN be that mentioned overlap).

-Embraced by Worlds: While all the Primordials were greatly self-involved, some showed sincere love for their creations, be they people, places, or concepts. This charm makes such care reciprocal. The world cares for its creator and reshaper, and shows it in its actions. (Permanent Charm, equivalent to Cecelyne's or Kimbery's charms to make you more suited to a given environment. Would obviously be different to theirs, of course)
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This is simultaneously too weak and too powerful. Mostly because the way you've phrased it makes it open to interpretation. So it's about making more people love you, but also reshaping people (in a way you don't even know yet)? As a permanent Charm? On you, or on your targets? Gotta define this one more, and perhaps narrow its focus down to what it specifically DOES, and the potential side-effects of it.

-Cauterizing Surgeon's Scalpel: Life is not perfect, not yet at least, and sometimes cancers form. It is not because he enjoys cutting into his patient that a surgeon carves a new wound, however, or hatred of the tumor, but the understanding that the damaged section must be excised if the whole is to live. The same principle applies to all things, not out of desire but from necessity. (The basis for a combat charm tree)
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This is good. Problem is envisioning it solely as a combat tree, which it does not sound like. I could see this being the basis of a number of Charms dedicated to removing/imposing status effects (mutations, poisons, maybe intimacies--scratch that, especially intimacies) from targets and inflicting them on either yourself or other creatures.

-Wound-Sealing Beneficence: Death is a natural part of life, but not all death is natural or desirable. Sometimes, a caregiver must intervene and prevent the end. (Healing charm)
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You'll notice, throughout Exalted, healing Charms are RARE, and come with some sort of trade-off on the part of the healer or healee. This can work, but you need to determine what needs to be paid, BEYOND mote cost, for this to operate, and under what circumstances it would be applicable.


It also sounds more like it would build off of some tree involving Cauterizing Surgeon's Scalpel.

-All-Birthing Ingenuity: The word "obstacle" is curious to the beings who invented the term. It is even more curious to a Solar, against whom all limits shatter like so much glass hurled against a stone. The fusion of Primordial and Solar ensures that, when faced with poultry limits, they merely rewrite the rules and expand beyond them (Crafting charm tree basis. Not sure how it may relate to Life-Granting Benediction yet.)
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First of, this is a BAD theme. Designing a Primordial Charm tree around the idea of being a fusion of Yozi and Solar is... it's just wrong. Especially when you consider that, assuming you ever take apotheosis Charms, your Exaltation leaves you. Until you fix that issue, not much else can be said about this conceptually.


A last word: Primordial Charms aren't built from several seperate trees. They're built from only a few core defining Charms, and spin off from there. It's best to envision where you would start before going on to design where you will go.
 
Tableface said:
Especially when you consider that, assuming you ever take apotheosis Charms, your Exaltation leaves you.
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Nitpick: the very Charm that allows the First Calypso Excellency to be created also bans her from taking any Cosmic Principle; the only what for the Primordial-that-was-Calypso to apotheosize is for Calypso to die after getting lots of the Charms and her Exaltation's next bearer to develop it.
 
It doesn't forbid you from taking (Your Own) Cosmic Principle, though. Maybe it was intended, maybe it wasn't, but Exalted tends to run off of "if we haven't said no, you can." Also the rule of cool. And becoming your own Primordial very much is (and given commentary since Infernals came out, I can't imagine them deliberately barring that).


Regardless, the point still stands. These are inherently Primordial Charms, built off of a handful of interconnected themes.


Edit: wow, I read like a right pretentious ass in that last line there. Sorry.
 
Give me a minute and I'll dig up the post in the discussion on the WW forum where I asked if it bars you from taking (You) Cosmic Principle.


Short answer: it does.


(I wasn't disagreeing with any of the rest of it, I think that's reasonable commentary on the ideas.)


EDIT: Here we go.


Posted here:

Holden said:
MorkaisChosen said:
Am I right in thinking that choosing to become your own being, define your own Excellency, and suchlike means you can't become a Primordial at all- not even your own Primordial? It seems like an interesting trade to me; retain access to Yozi Charms (including two Favoured, as well as your own Charms as Favoured) but lose the chance for an infinite mote pool.
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Yep.


Well, actually, there's a way to finish your Yozi transformation but it's a bit extreme. Requires fetich death.


Trouble is, you are your fetich. So. You die. Pass on your shard. Your inheritor gets the shard and starts buying up Bob Charms. Then he runs out of stuff to buy-- he has everything Bob invented. He doesn't go Heretical. Starts making new Bob Charms. Eventually, he shoves his way clear up to Bob Cosmic Principle.


Yozi Bob has finally been incarnated into the universe! Through someone else!


How Yozi-like.
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I've just realised I said infinite mote pool, when of course I meant enormous. Oops.
 
No need to dredge it up, lord knows you're more active on there than I am (and I am not inactive, I just don't post).


Still, so much for that "becoming your own primordial" stuff we've been hearing about for the past year.


Edit: Wow, I can see that becoming the second most-houseruled bit of the system, after Craft.
 
You can do a great deal of the fun parts of becoming your own Primordial- charmset, Shintai, even Eternal Essence and Yozi-Body Unity, as they aren't behind YCP. You also keep access to other Yozi Charms, which is pretty handy.
 
Hurray! Productive discussions!


First, thanks for the feedback. Already got some ways to integrate the advice, and think I have an idea for Calypso's First Excellency that I'll work on later this evening.


Edit: Well, here goes...


THE (incomplete) FIRST CALYPSO EXCELLENCY

The Demon Child seeks harmony in all things. Peace and gentility come naturally, only resorting to violence when unavoidable. Born of two wildly different worlds, Calypso empathizes with all. She is compassionate, caring for all life. However, this does not mean she is without resort to harm: Calypso can deliver righteous retribution. This retribution never crosses into cruelty.


With empathy comes understanding. Calypso learns swiftly, internalizing new concepts for later use, as well as extrapolating and developing her own. Calypso creates, grows, and evolves in doing so.


It still needs a flaw, but I'm not sure how to integrate any of the ideas I have just yet. Also got one or two other things worth including in there to add still.
 
So, what is the plan from Keikan? You have got my curiosity going.
 
Exactly what Keikan just said. He's going to give the Varatjul Commander there a proper funeral. Peace. Rest. A swift reincarnation. ^_^


Beyond that, you'll just have to wait and see. :)
 
As cliché as it might be, I see Calypso's new caste mark as a Yin Yang. yeah yeah, Daoism doesn't exist in Creation, but I really see the Demon Child being the manifestation of the balance of forces.
 
Possible. You have to be E6 to achieve apotheosis, though. To do it without Calypso being a hundred first, I need Ascendancy Mantle of (Yozi), though...
 
Ascendancy Mantle of Adorjan could work- really devoting herself to seeking out freedom.


EDIT: Sail check. What Attribute?
 
I'm getting a bit tripped up by Factual Determination Analysis. To quote what I said in the game thread:


"The statement “We tossed him (Ofran) overboard a little bit ago,†I think rings up as truth with Factual Determination Analysis. At least if I am reading the charm right. Certain parts of the charms text cause it to be a bit hard to understand and apply in practice in this situation.


The "Any intentional deception or meaningful omission of relevant data in any part of the tested statement returns the same negative response, so it is best to test a long statement frequently to isolate where the truth breaks down." makes it a little hard to determine what is an isn't an omission in a given statement. For example, if I admit to breaking an expensive vase, but neglect it was because I was being an idiot by playing football in the house, would that cause my statement to ring up as a falsehood with this charm due to omission. If failing to mention specifically why the vase got broken results in a negative response from the charm, then Calypso would probably get a negative from the Valhal here."


Seems like there can be a lot of grey in the use of this charm. As some of you can probably guess from the hints NPCs have been giving, there are a number of reasons that aren't being expressly stated for why they tossed Ofran off the ship. And I'm getting tripped up with this charm over whether failing to mention that would cause Calypso's charm to ring up a negative due to omissions.


I'm inclinded to say Calypso's charm rings up a positive given she is inquiring if Ofran getting thrown off the boat is true, which it is to the best of their knowledge. She didn't inquire why they did so (at least if I read Axel's statment right), so she wouldn't get a negative for that reason.


Edit: Also sorry about the recent slowdown, and lesser quality in posts the last few days. Just hit a rough patch at work, and I’ve been exhausted as a result. Things should hopefully be back to normal by the end of this weekend.
 
Sharp Snowflake is asking Asyk about Volund. Does she mean Bjarn? I thought Volund was with the ships that sailed out.
 
Good rule of thumb on Factual Determination Analysis: If you find yourself asking "does this ring up as true?" it probably doesn't. If they tossed Ofran overboard because he was belching fire or grew a second head, things along those lines would be meaningful omissions. If they tossed him overboard for being a completely average twat, it wouldn't.


And really, the idea that a handful of Valhal warriors would be able to toss the belligerent warrior god-blood overboard without enduring significant wounds and casualties (and a heavily-bloodied deck) should be setting off warning bells anyway.


Your prerogative, though.
 
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