The Great Observatory

[wordman]

The Great Observatory in Ruins of Rathess was written before the sidereal book was. As a result, the Observatory's flavor is a tad off and its effects are sort of lame.


How would you update the Observatory to take into account sidereal astrology?


Also, given new Craft, artificing, repair and other such rules, how would you handle the repair of the place, both rules- and story-wise?

 

[Hanat-Osul]

The Observatory is a Manse, right? Oadenol's Codex has all the rules for Manse repair and whatnot, and I think it has an updated writeup on the Observatory, as well.

 

[Charon]

The Great Observatory in Ruins of Rathess was written before the sidereal book was. As a result, the Observatory's flavor is a tad off and its effects are sort of lame.
How would you update the Observatory to take into account sidereal astrology?


Also, given new Craft, artificing, repair and other such rules, how would you handle the repair of the place, both rules- and story-wise?

It is stated that through the Orrery of Arainthu, the Dragon Kings were able to predict the Great Contagion and the Fair Folk invasion, something that the Sideral were unable to do.


I'm not sure what you mean by the flavor being off ; It is the means to make the most accurate prediction of the future.  Nothing else match it.  That's it flavor.


Considering repairing it, I'd say Craft (magitech) would be the appropriate skill.  You'd also need to be a brillant Astrologer so a high Occult with Astrology is a must.  And you'd need lots of Ressources, including quite a bit of Starmetal.


The suggested minimum attributes (6+) from the Rathess sourcebook implies that your character is already very experimented.  To reduce this to more manageable level, I'd suggest an adventure to track down the blueprints and then you could repair it with skills at rating 5.  Getting the ressources and materials to Rathess is another adventure in itself.


And you'd probably need to get the support of the Gold faction because once you repair the Orrerry, Siderals will get very concerned and shutting down both faction could get hard.  On the other hand, it could be a good bargaining chips to get Siderals from the Gold faction to really commit to the cause of Solar resurgence.

 

[Persell]

What wordman probably meant is that predicting the great contagion and the raksha invasion was simply not possible, metaphysically. And there is nothing more accurate than direct access to the loom of fate. And I agree.

 

[Jukashi]

Actually, since autocthon made an upgraded version of the Loom of Fate for himself, there is technically something more accurate than direct access to the Loom of Fate. </nitpick>


Seriously, though, Exalted is a world adrift in a sea of endless possibility. The Primordials and the Unshaped Fae are both beyond human comprehension. And from time to time, it's good to have something that doesn't seem to quite fit in with what seems possible... if it's done well. Which I think the Orrery was, with the whole lost-in-the-ruins-of-a-civilisation-from-a-time-before-human-thought thing. You gotta have some mysteries that the players can't solve through having read all the books.

 

[Charon]

When the Orrery is described in 2nd ed (In Wonders of the Lost Age), they still state it allowed the Dragon King to predict the Great Contagion, a feat the Sideral failed to do.  And by then the authors had a pretty definitive idea of how the Sideral work.


The Orrery is the Ultimate divining instrument in Creation.  It's the whole point.  It wouldn't be half as valuable otherwise ; If any of the 100 sideral could make more accurate predictions than the Orrery, it wouldn't be one of the 8 wonders of the First Age.  The Siderals wouldn't be keeping an eye on it warily.  It wouldn't be worth rebuilding.


The Orrery is a statement from the ancient Solars and Dragon-King.  To the Sideral it says :  Your arrogance is unwarranted.  To the rest of creation it says : We can accomplish wonders by working together.  Rebuilding the Orrery would restate these messages once more.

 

[Sherwood]

Dont forget that WW seems to have a problem with consistancy.  If you dig too hard at something, you may not like what you find.  The golden rule still stands: If it doesn't work well for your game, change it.

 

[Persell]

I read up on it. I must say charon is right on this one.

 

[wordman]

Dont forget that WW seems to have a problem with consistancy.  If you dig too hard at something, you may not like what you find.

Yes. I already don't. WW's consistency problem gets much worse the greater the amount of time elapses between sources. It gets exponentially worse as the sources approach the very start of the product line, as Ruins of Rathess does.

The golden rule still stands: If it doesn't work well for your game, change it.

That's why I'm asking you all: what would you do?

 

[Persell]

That's why I'm asking you all: what would you do?

The first arc of my current game takes place in Rathess, and repairing the Orrey (or at least finding one of the ancient Dragon-Kings who knows how) is a major part of this arc.  How I'm handling it is like this:


You trade off Craft (Clockworks) for Craft (Magitech), since clockwork parts now fall under magitech according to 2e rules.  Given that it's usually pretty difficult to play an elder Exalt game, and that any elder Exalt could pretty easily wipe out any and all current threats in the city, I lowered the minimum Ability requirements to 5 apiece, but doubled the successes needed to repair the Orrey.


So.  To restart/repair the Orrey, the character needs to have the following: Craft (Magitech) 5, Occult 5, Lore 5.  The character still needs to succeed at a diff 8 Perception + Occult roll in order to fully understand how the orrey works.  Charms, Excellencies and applicable specialties, of course, fully apply to this roll and help greatly.


Repair is undertaken exactly the same way, with the sole difference of needing 200 successes apiece on Per + Occult and Int + Craft (Magitech) at diff 4.  Each roll represents a week of work, and the rolls need to be made in sequence.


Team efforts require all their helpers to have at least Craft (Magitech) 4, Lore 3 and Occult 3.  Fixing the orrey still costs Resources 5 amounts, and requires several exotic ingredients to repair the decayed clockworks (including the mechanisms mentioned in the RoR book).


This way, an interested Twilight (or other sorts of qualified Exalted) player can take a stab at attempting to make one of the great wonders of Creation functional once again without needing to roll up an Exalt that's several hundred years old.  


Of course, I tend to view repairing something like this as a monumental task the reincarnations of the greatest artificers ever seen in Creation or truly dedicated magitech engineers can cut their teeth on without running much risk of killing or mutating a whole bunch of people should the project go badly awry.


As for how the Orrey would affect Sidereal astrology, well... I'm not hazarding any kind of guess until I see the Sidereal book and know what, if any, changes they made to it.

 

[wordman]

I was thinking along the same lines, but hit a logical snag: if repairing the Orrey is within the grasp of Essence 2-3 characters, why hasn't it been fixed before? The sidereals, in particular, seem like they would have been able to do so by now, even under the city's current occupation.


I think what I may do is plant some stuff at my circle's current location (the end of a long quest to find a tomb, wherein lies a bunch of first age knowledge) that include plans for some of the Orrey's devices and structure. The idea would be that having this information is what drops the skill requirements down to the 5 level.


Still not sure about the observatory's effects, though. I do kind of like the idea that it could see some things that the sidereals cannot and also maps the constellations in the underworld, as this opens some interesting story ideas as to its true purpose. This also might help explain why the sidereals haven't repaired it (i.e. the sidereal's Great Curse causes them to believe that it is simply not possible for a device to see what they cannot, so treat it more like a parlor trick novelty than something worth a huge repair investment in dangerous territory). So, I vacillate between wanting it to do sidereal-type astrology or something else. Certainly, it would help a sidereal do astrology (any observatory does), but I'm not sure that should be its primary purpose.

 

[Flagg]

I was thinking along the same lines, but hit a logical snag: if repairing the Orrey is within the grasp of Essence 2-3 characters, why hasn't it been fixed before? The sidereals, in particular, seem like they would have been able to do so by now, even under the city's current occupation.

What if it needs a particular component that can only be made by more powerful beings?


They might have known HOW to fix it, but still been unable to.

 

[wordman]

What if it needs a particular component that can only be made by more powerful beings?
They might have known HOW to fix it, but still been unable to.

Perhaps. This would imply that I need to get that component into my circle's hands if they are to restart it.


It would also need to be one hell of a component, given that the sidereals have access to heaven and, therefore, beings capable of producing things at will with quintessence.

 

[Murdrak]

Wonder-Forging Genius - Purchase of this Charm reduces by one dot each the minimum Craft, Lore, Medicine and Occult requirements to build or repair artifactsâ€â€to a minimum requirement of one dot for any Ability normally required for the task.


I can't quite remember but I think that it can be improved further.

 

[memesis]

What wordman probably meant is that predicting the great contagion and the raksha invasion was simply not possible, metaphysically. And there is nothing more accurate than direct access to the loom of fate. And I agree.

"So how does it work?"


"As far as we can tell, it is a panopticon which views the dreams of transcendent beings.  Within Creation, and without it."


"Transcendent beings..?"


"The unshaped Raksha.  The Neverborn.  The Malfeans.  Other, stranger creatures."


"Then why haven't the Sidereals simply repaired it and used it?"


"Because the dreams of the transcendent are certain madness and ultimate death for human minds, Exalted or no.  The Dragon Kings were sufficiently alien to comprehend it, and survive.  But man?  ..."

 

[memesis]

if repairing the Orrey is within the grasp of Essence 2-3 characters, why hasn't it been fixed before? The sidereals, in particular, seem like they would have been able to do so by now, even under the city's current occupation.

My previous post asserts that it wasn't fixed because it SHOULD NOT BE fixed - at least not without the assistance of the Dragon Kings.  Decide how this interacts with Sidereal hubris as you like, and disregard if this sort of thing doesn't mesh with the feel of your game.

 

[Ned]

The sidereals, in particular, seem like they would have been able to do so by now, even under the city's current occupation.

They are too arrogant to bother I'd say. "How could a silly manse even compare to our abilities! Foolish DragonKings!"