Bonus: Prologue (Original)
My Little Exalt
BONUS: PROLOGUE (ORIGINAL)
by: Lithl
special thanks:
Rhanite
In an inhospitable swamp on the edge of Creation stands an unremarkable burial mound some 100 feet tall, built by some race long forgotten to prehistory. In the surrounding swampland, no animal or plant life exists… but despite the lack of life, there are apparently rotting animals and plants that still exist, the magic of the region allowing them to even go so far as to produce equally rotted offspring. Such is the Noss Fens.
Within the burial mound affectionately named the "Mound of Forsaken Seeds", corridors twist and turn, as if carved by some gargantuan earthworm. Chambers within are lit by steel lamps, furnished with steel furniture, steel children's toys are strewn across the floor, and even steel flatware rests on some of the tables. And yet, if one were to sit in quiet contemplation; if one were to put an ear to one of the steel productions, one would hear hundreds – perhaps thousands – of voices, screaming in eternal agony.
The voices of children haunt these halls. This is not because the children are dead; they are in fact the only truly living beings within the borders of the swamp. Yet the children also know what their ultimate fate is likely to be. It happened to their parents, their grandparents, and all of their ancestors for the past thousand years. All of these children have witnessed death at the hands of their adoptive 'mother'. They have witnessed their families harvested like heads of cabbage, smelted into the very screaming soulsteel they rely on for light, for comfort, and for entertainment. These children know that, eventually, their 'mother' will return them to their village, where they will grow into her next harvest, when she will take their children to begin the cycle again. This is the fate of all the children in the mound. All save one.
One child lives apart from the rest. One child has received a gift of near-immortality from her 'mother'. One child walks the line between life and death, and serves her 'mother' without question. One child will aid her 'mother' during the next harvest. One child has had her name ripped from her soul, to be crowned Shoat of the Mire.
But even the Shoat does not – dares not – venture into the deepest parts of the mound. In the dead center lies a vast, open room. The walls, floor, and sparse decorations and furnishings are all sculpted, oriented, or designed to draw attention to the center where a throne sits before an open well. Sitting in the throne, staring deep into the well, sits the 'mother', The Dowager of the Irreverent Vulgate in Unrent Veils.
The Dowager sits naked on her throne, save for a half dozen veils made of a translucent black silk, and an ochre body paint from head to toe. Or, what would be her toes, if her legs didn't end in the cloven hoof of a ram, paired with the ram's horns protruding from her head. Beneath the obscuring shadows of the veils, her eyes can still be seen, burning yellow in the darkness. As she stares endlessly into the Well of Udr, she strokes its edge with the snakes that have taken the place of her fingers.
Several weeks after an accident transporting Twilight and her friends to another universe where they met male versions of themselves, Twilight is in the library's main room studying her new book, Many Worlds in One: the Search for Other Universes, by esteemed Doctor Alexi Vilenkolt (responsible for the Theory of Eternal Inflation of Magic and an important researcher in the field of Quantum Magic). After a first-hoof encounter with another world, Twilight was eager to read what theoretical research had to say on the matter.
Compared with historians and detectives, the great advantage cosmologists have is that they can actually see the past. Light from celestial bodies is millions or billions of years old by the time it reaches our telescopes, so we observe them as they were millions or billions of years ago. This wonderful vision, however, has its bounds. Even though we can trace the history of our universe back to its creation, we are still unable to see just how that creation came to pass. Was it created by our dear princess, or is she a product of this universe as much as we are?
The worldview that has emerged from new developments in cosmology is nothing short of astonishing. To paraphrase Doctor Neigh Bolt, it may even be crazy enough to be true. This worldview combines several contradictory features: our universe is finite and infinite, evolving and stationary, eternal and yet has a beginning. This theory also predicts the existence of remote regions of our universe containing planets just like our own, with the same continents and terrain, inhabited by identical creatures, including our clones and clones of our princess, some of them holding copies of this book in their hooves.
Twilight frowned a little as she read, noting the singular 'princess'. She flipped back to the credits at the front to find the date it was printed, and sighed, dejected. Seven years old, plenty old enough for nopony to even think of Nightmare Moon as real, much less remember Princess Luna. And when it came to the theoretical fields of magic, seven years was practically a lifetime. Twilight levitated the book to its place on the shelf, uncharacteristically leaving it unfinished.
Twilight turned back to another book lying on the table, the one which had started her whole adventure, Exploring the Æther for Fun and Profit. If theoretical magic and cosmology couldn't help her, then perhaps the scrying spell which she had accidentally mixed with her long-distance teleportation spell would let her experiment for herself with the existence and diversity of other universes.
Sitting back on a pillow, Twilight closed her eyes, and concentrated on the leylines surrounding her. To start, she focused on the frequency she had used to access the gender-swap dimension she'd landed in before: 40.1 Kiimehertz. Twilight opened her mind's eye to the power resonating between her horn and the clearly marked leyline, contorting in shapes that would cause any mundane eye to bleed. Suddenly she had a bird's eye view of Ponyville, and was able to move her point of view around freely. Below her, oblivious to their invisible observer, familiar ponies continued in their daily lives. Familiar… except for the gender they were supposed to be.
Twilight took a deep breath and opened her mundane eyes, momentarily disoriented by the view of her library overlapping with the floating view of the town outside in her mind. "Okay, now to start experimenting!" She extended a tendril of power to her desk, pulling a roll of parchment, quill, and ink bottle closer to her as she settled in to take notes on her findings. Finally, she shifted the frequency of her focus, snapping her mental image to another Ponyville in another universe.
The Dowager looked deep into the Well, combining her magic with its inherent power, scanning other worlds for a solution to her master's problem. Centuries ago, the Dowager had used her magic to pull a disease from within the Well – from another universe – which she released upon the land. Nine of ten died to the 'Great Contagion', whether it was man, beast, or plant. Had it not been for the glory-grabbing actions of her so-called 'allies', the Dowager reasoned, her pestilence would have annihilated all life in Creation. With all life destroyed, her master could finally slip from his current existence. Whether to finally fall those last few centimeters into the yawning pit of Oblivion or spontaneously return to his former nigh-omnipotent glory, neither master nor servant cared. After endless suspended millennia, escaping the precipice was what was important.
On the inky surface of the Well, many shifting images could be seen. The Dowager seemed to be able to control the images to some extent, though not even the god of secrets knew exactly how. Suddenly, all of the images in the Well blinked, and the Dowager drew back in hesitation. After a moment, she returned to her ministrations over the Well, only to have the images blink once again. Before the Dowager could continue searching other worlds for another weapon to wield against life itself, all of the images floating in the Well converged to form a single image, spanning the entirety of the Well's surface.
Unable to control the images displayed to her any more, the Dowager stared down into the face of a surprised-looking… purple… unicorn?
"And in Universe Upsilon Beta 9-6, we have… hairless, tailless diamond dog-like creatures, nearly half of them dressed similarly to the super heroes in Spike's comic books." Even through her pride at her ability to organize a simple, efficient naming system for the universes she viewed, Twilight had to shake her head at that one. "I'm sure Spike would jump at the chance to visit 'comic book world', and I realize an infinite number of universes means every possibility is covered, but that's just absurd. Moving on!"
Zeta Tao 7-63: creatures apparently made of shadows (relation to the Nightmare? Warrants further study!)
Alpha Upsilon 24-2: apparently uninhabited, but the remains of several metropolises like Manehattan suggests an advanced civilization used to live here
Omicron Zeta 12-20: cyborg ponies!
Epsilon Tau 27-2: many clockwork devices, no evidence of other sentient life
Delta Zeta 24-10: more hairless, tailless diamond dog-like creatures; all dressed in the same uniforms, all seem to have the same coat color (peach/white), same mane color (white/yellow), and same eye color (blue)
Tau Gamma 9-24: appears to be one giant Everfree Forest!
Sigma Psi 20-7: many buildings that appear to be laboratories; looks like biological research
Lamda Rho 57-20: night everywhere – did Nightmare Moon win?!
As Twilight continued her mental observation of other universes, she didn't notice the heat building at the base of her horn when viewing certain dimensions, and dissipating as she looked away. Perhaps, if she had made note of the sensation, and cross-referenced it with the universal addressing system she had divised, she would have been able to make an inter-dimensional map. A map showing a circle where her horn began to heat up, with more heat building the closer she came to the center of the circle. And if she had calculated the universal address of the center, she would have known to avoid scrying into –
"Next on the list is… Chi Rho 34-71!" Twilight closed her eyes to help concentrate on her new destination, and then opened them again, ready to take notes and by now used to the strange double-vision. But this time, when she opened her mundane eyes, she didn't get a double-vision of her library and another world. This time, she saw the same thing with both her mind's eye and her physical eyes. And, unlike every other world she'd viewed where she began with a bird's eye view looking downwards which she could move nearly any distance with her mind, this time she was staring immobile up at an earthen ceiling, her view obscured by a singular figure. And unlike every other world she'd viewed, this time the figure she saw stared back.
The Dowager was just as shocked at the development in the Well as the unicorn appeared to be. As she took in the unusual sight, she was oblivious to the previously invisible runes that began appearing along the outside of the Well. They began as a faint black shimmer, barely visible in the dark throne room. Quickly enough for an outside observer – if there had been one – to readily notice, the runes began to glow blue, and gradually increased their intensity.
Blind to her surroundings, Twilight had no choice but to stare into the eyes glowing from within the shadows of another world. Only now did she notice the heat creeping slowly up her horn, spiraling as if somepony had poured molten steel into the groove around it, which flowed upwards base to tip. Twilight cried out in pain, but couldn't tell if anypony had heard it, or even whether her cries were audible, or locked inside her head.
The Dowager looked on with the same analytical interest she gave to other worlds she had seen over the years, searching the vast expanse of the multiverse for the antithesis of life. The spiral around the unicorn's horn began to glow red, at first merely a point of light where the horn met her skull, then spiraling upwards. The unicorn cried out in pain – apparently the glow was not normal, and was excruciating if the creature's reaction was any indication. The Dowager sneered a bit, relishing in the pain of a living creature. But as the red glow neared the tip of the unicorn's horn, the Dowager snapped back to her reality, finally noticing the glowing blue runes on the Well.
No consciousness survives for centuries without either going mad or becoming quick-witted. While some might claim the Dowager was both, it was easy for her to connect the loss of control over the well, the glowing unicorn's horn, and the previously unseen runes on the exterior of the Well which was now glowing bright enough to make it painful to look at, even for the Dowager. Unfortunately, while she was quick enough to assimilate all the facts presented and form an accurate conclusion based on them, she was too late to stop what was about to happen.
There was an explosion. Or perhaps it was two explosions. Or it was an explosion for each and every world in the multiverse. Or there was no explosion at all. As described in an unread chapter of Twilight's discarded book, the real answer was 'all of the above'.
Regardless of what was going on in the realm of inter-dimensional physics and quantum magic, the two mages each heard a small 'pop', much like ears popping when gaining extreme altitude. Everyone (everypony?) else in the vicinity of each mage heard something entirely different. From Sweet Apple Acres to the Everfree Forest, and from the western edge of the Noss Fens swamp to the wyld bordermarshes on its opposite side, every sentient being was deafened and blinded by what was, in their minds, definitely an explosion.
Twilight opened her eyes, magically exhausted as though she'd been casting some of the most difficult spells in her repertoire for hours on end. Through the exhaustion and the tingling feeling of relief from pain, it took her a few moments to register the fact that she was no longer in her library, but sitting on a throne in the same dark earthen room she'd been staring up into moments before. A discolored circle marred the ground in front of her, as though something had been sitting there for a very long time and was only recently moved.
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Yes an update!
1234887
Derpy always meets the nicest holograms.
I'm in an Exalted game that's just starting and I wanted to ask your opinion on something.
I'm playing a Night Caste I want to be Martial Art based, but I know that Solar charms are for the most part stronger than Celestial Martial Arts. From what I can tell, the only ones that may measure up are Solar Hero Style and Water Dragon Style, though I heard the latter one is only good in the beginning. What should I do, if I don't want to be outdone by my party? Keep in mind, we already have another Night Caste, who does all the Stealth & Larceny stuff, though I am much better at Athletics than him.
1240718
Honestly? I much prefer to have a style that fits the character, rather than twinking out. Righteous Devil Style (especially the form charm) is weak compared to most other celestial styles. It's a very flavorful and fun style for a gunslinger, though. Then again, I don't generally get bothered if another player is able to outshine me. (In the Vampire game I've been playing recently, my True Brujah's contribution to combats so far has pretty much been to use Lapse repeatedly -- the character generally sucks at combat, but cutting an opponents' Str, Dex, and Wits pools plus their movement speed in half lets my allies make short work of the enemy.)
If you want to stand out among your party, find something that no other character excels at, and focus your energy on being good at that one thing. My friend created an Abyssal, for example, who could barely hit the broad side of a barn and who had a hearthstone with a side effect of cutting his movement speed in half. His charmset, however, made it so that attempting to attack him (physically or socially) cost willpower, attacking him (physically or socially) dealt damage to you, you lost most of your die pool on the attack, and even if you hit he would soak the damage. The character was built for an online Exalted chat, where he had noticed PVP was on the rise, and new characters were boned unless they were twinked for combat. So he made a character that simply wouldn't die, and punished anyone for trying to attack him, then he could play the game as he pleased, without worrying about PVP.
While Water Dragon Style (and the rest of the Fivefold Dragon Paths) are strong Celestial martial arts and there's nothing mechanically stopping your Night caste from learning them, I'll point out that normally, the only people who learn those five styles are Dragon-Blooded graduates of the Cloister of Wisdom (either as members of the Immaculate Order or otherwise), and their Sidereal Sifus. You could still learn the style, but if I were your ST I'd want a good reason why a Solar is learning a style intended for exceptional Dragon-Blooded.
Solar Hero Style, on the other hand, is the Second Edition equivalent of the Brawl charm tree in First Edition (1e had Brawl and MA as separate abilities, while 2e has the brawl charms under MA). It's a very different fighting style, and it's really only Martial Arts in the sense that the phrase was used in the 16-17th century -- that is, the "Arts of Mars" (the god of war) -- not how it is often used today, usually referencing Eastern combat styles. (That said, the older definition of Martial Arts could be applied to the other combat abilities in Exalted and leave all combat under the MA ability, but that messes with game balance.)
All of the Celestial MA styles can be strong, when you play to their strengths. Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Style is very subtle, and it can be difficult to even realize the weapons being used by the character even are weapons. Celestial Monkey Style, once mastered, is the most flexible style available (Celestial Godbody Understanding lets you use any weapon and any armor with any MA attack, including Celestial Monkey Style charms; it also cuts the Str, Dex, and MA minimums on weapons in half). Silver-Voiced Nightingale Style turns your character into a Siren. Black Claw Style (from Ink Monkeys) is very defensive -- or at least the character appears to be a victim against an aggressor, even when the Black Claw user started the fight. The style also has several charms producing Emotion effects either in onlookers or in their opponent.
1251811I already OK'd Water Dragon Style with the ST and justified it with my back story. I'm just worried about being outclassed by the Terrestrial Ally I have due to my Ally background, who has incredibly high damage and soak.
On a side note, do you know when I should use certain dodge charms, as other than 7 Shadow Evasion, my second Dodge excellency seems better than the other available dodge charms. Should I buy some dodge combos, or what?
Keep in mind this is my first Exalted game, so sorry if I come across as lacking basic knowledge.
1253453
Excellencies are bread-and-butter for pretty much every ability. There's a reason most ability trees are rooted in an Excellency. (To be honest, I find the Third Excellency best for defensive abilities like Dodge and the First Excellency best for other abilities; First and Second are the same result on average, but First has the chance to be better if you roll 10s; Third Excellency on defensive abilities lets you activate it Step 6 -- Step 6 lets you see exactly how many successes the attacker has rolled before you even make the choice of activating your charm.) Other charms give you the advantage of other effects beyond just increasing your success(es).
Shadow Over Water lets you ignore penalties being applied to your DV (perhaps most commonly from your opponent using a flurry, from being flanked, or because your DV hasn't refreshed yet). Reflex Sidestep Technique lets you use your full defense against an unexpected attack. Flow Like Blood lets you ignore onslaught and coordinated attack penalties for the rest of the scene. Leaping Dodge Method helps escape an attacker, helps reach a goal while under attack, or sets you up for a stunt/coordinated attack of your own.
With regard to buying combos: they can be very strong, but in RAW Exalted 2e, they're pretty inflexible and expensive. If you can get your ST to follow the Scroll of Errata "2.5e", then there's no need to buy combos at all.
Thanks for the advice.
If all dragons are just powerful elementals, what element is Spike in this story anyway?
1266643
Fire Elemental. Spike's most notable characteristics are flame resistance (Blessed Fire Body, RoGDI* pp163 or Elemental Rejuvination, RoGDI* pp170), flame breath (Dragon's Suspire, RoGDI* pp170), and sending messages (No specific Spirit charm, but it could be a unique Sending or Relocation ability). Dragon's Suspire manifests a breath (usually) weapon of the Elemental's element, and Elemental Rejuvination works only on the Elemental's element. Blessed Fire Body supercedes a Fire Elemental's Elemental Rejuvination ability.
As an example of something else, a Wood aspect Lesser Elemental Dragon with Dragon Suspire would likely have a spray of thorns it could spew from its mouth, and an Air aspect may have an ice breath. Spike's god fire.
* The Books of Sorcery vol. IV -- The Roll of Glorious Divinity I: Gods and Elementals
(WW80303)
Playing "peek into the multiverse" is something I imagine is a lot like taking a wiki walk: before you've realized what you're doing the day's already over and you have no idea how you got to where you are now. Also, points for throwing in the Nazi universe without outright saying it.
Ah, the Dowager. She's a special brand of capital "E" Evil, even for a Deathlord. Even forgetting that she's responsible for unleashing the Great Contagion that wiped out about 90% of Creation's population (that's not an exaggeration; it's the most commonly accepted estimate in-universe), the sheer horrible lengths she goes with the creation of each Shoat of the Mire, the petty, completely unnecessary cruelty of it all (she'd say it's "to make the perfect Abyssal" but she's been doing it for longer than the Deathknights have been around, so it's a flimsy excuse) makes her one of the very first things I want to kill in any Exalted campaign taking place in the East (and eventually even outside of it. For a powerful enough Exalt, all the world is a sandbox).
2 Words:
⸘Gnaborretni | Interrobang‽
¡⸘Gnaborretni | Interrobangs‽ are 20% cooler!