Dreams of the Second Age

[QUOTE="Action Replay]Our goals in the west include gathering information, staying low key in building up a powerbase and nation initially, making allies of powers, gods, elementals, and exalts in the west, then eventually move to establish a hegemony of the islands. Possibly terraform more land if we ever get that far. As a general over view.

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Going to literally the other side of the world to hide in the Wyld is ridiculously paranoid. Pick a random direction and head 500 miles, at most, if you want to make a ourselves a hard target, but the other side of the wold is excessive.

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Being confident is one thing, but the line between it and overconfidence in Exalted usually comes down to a line so fine you need high essence perception charms to spot it. I'm not saying that with enough plot convenience and power abuse we couldn't eventually take Rathess. Depending on how intact we care for the city to be, yes we could probably take it in a day. The issue with that, is you vastly over estimate your own abilities and underestimate the enemy's. Do you honestly believe Han-Tha or Filial will be at just E6~7 when we could deal with that "so easily" as you said? That numbers are meaningless in front of my xyz crunch? That because I believe this enemy can't harm me that he really can't? If that were the case, we would have no story. For every time you do that, the GM has to rise to the challenge of giving us a challenge. If your first choice is murder it's face off or solar sanctuary, you are going to attract problems that cannot be solved by it. Problems that we really do not want to deal with at this point in time. Just remember, the first age solars/lunars were more powerful than us and still died out en masse.

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Unfortunately, the numbers really do add up that way. The biggest threat in the immediate area is Filial Wisdom and his god, and we out number him 5 to 2. If numbers concern you, you have to remember that I can literally poof an army in to existence to counter excessive numbers, not to mention the dragon kings who are likely to be very happy to see a bunch of Solars, considering how they worship the Unconquered Sun above all else, and Solars are basically jesus to them.

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The thing here is we are just outright going to be noticed at some point now that we are on the loom. There is 0% chance we will not be noticed at some point. We are effectively on borrowed time to get things set up in as low profile a way as possible until that time. Jupiter senpai has already noticed us as a matter of course, but is keeping that to herself. Pyter is part of the bureau and over time people will notice he is missing from where he should be. If you want to blow that time and announce we're here with solar sanctuary and a charm that will with no room for doubt get us noticed, that is your prerogative. Not being there when the bronze faction, deathlords, and realm come kicking in the door later to account for that is also a prerogative.

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You realize that the basic premise of the Age of Sorrows is that there's so much shit going on that the Sidereals are super over worked to an excessive degree, right? That's how a normal circle of Exalts can be expected to cruse around Creation and not have to be utterly paranoid about being spotted and ganked. There's 500+ Celestials out there running around messing things up for Fate and the Sids, so one group in the ass end of nowhere isn't going to get special attention. Sorcery doesn't automatically send up a giant red flag in the Loom of Fate, and I can set it up so that the Charm that does, wont.

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IC perspective, we came out of these cryo tubes to rebuild the first age without all the problems of the first age. Like extreme power abuse as the first and only option which is kind of running contrary to arguments I'm seeing here. Rykon doesn't see a point in "meat shields" or "money" from the sounds of it. The tag line is that this was a nation building game, and six people does not a nation make. There was indeed a point to the exalted raising and bothering with armies or money at all beyond giggles if you realize it or not. When your primary goal is to survive and rebuild it's sensible to take the path of least resistance to that goal. Hence why when my character hears, "Crazy and powerful solar and a just shy of chimera elder who hasn't been asleep" he severely reconsiders his starting location options. For all we know IC he could be a first age survivor like Ma Ha.

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If this is a nation building game, why are you advocating abandoning a city that is reasonably within our power to take in favor of running to the other side of the world? I'm not saying it'll be easy to take Rathess, but it can be done.

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There is certainly a time and a place to use all those fun charms and abilities. That is part of the reason why we play a high essence game. This is not the time nor the place to start doing that imo. So I'm looking for a place where it would be and set up a time that we could do this without anyone being able to do anything about it by that point. Varna is the one with the manse and volunteered an alternative place, so I can't answer Pyter's question until we all know about it.

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Or, you know, we could take those towers of flight, which give us the high ground and an easy escape rout if things do go sour, as Myllinnia pointed out. You're acting like we're under threat at all times and constantly need to look over our shoulder for assassins. No one who would want us dead knows we're here, and are unlikely to find out any time soon if we play it smart.

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tl;dr version: Going on a journey to the west. Stay in Rathess or come with if you want.

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Unilateral decision making without consensus with the rest of the group is bad gaming. Please don't do that, it's rude.
 
JayTee said:
Going to literally the other side of the world to hide in the Wyld is ridiculously paranoid. Pick a random direction and head 500 miles, at most, if you want to make a ourselves a hard target, but the other side of the wold is excessive.
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Nobody mentioned the wyld aside from Ryon? I'm not the one picking the location for the manse, it's Varna. I agree that it's farther away but I haven't seen any other options put forth aside from the hatchery. Which sounds a bit closer to Ma Ha Suchi than Rathess itself is.

JayTee said:
Unfortunately, the numbers really do add up that way. The biggest threat in the immediate area is Filial Wisdom and his god, and we out number him 5 to 2. If numbers concern you, you have to remember that I can literally poof an army in to existence to counter excessive numbers, not to mention the dragon kings who are likely to be very happy to see a bunch of Solars, considering how they worship the Unconquered Sun above all else, and Solars are basically jesus to them.
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The issue with the dragon kings wouldn't be getting them to help, it would be wrangling up and individually enlightening thousands of them. As to wyld shaping people, my memory may be failing me but I believe that had to be done in the wyld even considering the hand of the great maker hijinks.

JayTee said:
You realize that the basic premise of the Age of Sorrows is that there's so much shit going on that the Sidereals are super over worked to an excessive degree, right? That's how a normal circle of Exalts can be expected to cruse around Creation and not have to be utterly paranoid about being spotted and ganked. There's 500+ Celestials out there running around messing things up for Fate and the Sids, so one group in the ass end of nowhere isn't going to get special attention. Sorcery doesn't automatically send up a giant red flag in the Loom of Fate, and I can set it up so that the Charm that does, wont.
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Sidereals are over worked, yes. They don't have the time to go hunt down every last exalt, nor does the Wyld Hunt have time to hit every single one. What they focus on instead are the biggest threats and most obvious targets. Which is what I am concerned about us becoming if you decide to just start dropping solar sanctuary and alert them with a high essence solar sorcery enhancement that specifically tips them off. Given we're the antithesis of everything Kejop's bronze age is and higher up on the list of things to be dealt with. As to how you plan to keep the charm from doing so, I am interested to hear your ideas on that.

JayTee said:
If this is a nation building game, why are you advocating abandoning a city that is reasonably within our power to take in favor of running to the other side of the world? I'm not saying it'll be easy to take Rathess, but it can be done.
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Because from my perspective it isn't reasonable at all. Were it otherwise, this discussion would never have come up. I consider everything Varna posted a couple pages back to be valid. I've been in exalted games prior where those were very real concerns even for higher essence exalts. We had a GM who loved surprises and did not pull punches if we simply waltzed in which is what it seems like the direction staying in Rathess would be.

JayTee said:
Or, you know, we could take those towers of flight, which give us the high ground and an easy escape rout if things do go sour, as Myllinnia pointed out. You're acting like we're under threat at all times and constantly need to look over our shoulder for assassins. No one who would want us dead knows we're here, and are unlikely to find out any time soon if we play it smart.
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Because we are under threat at all times in current Rathess given it's overpopulation problem of threats? The towers of flight are rather huge and would take time to clear out. I don't expect someone to come out immediately and whack us for walking around. I do expect that from an extensive stay. Seems like a really easy place to ambush or for a few fair folk nobles to topple by altering the shape of the base structure or cause a cave in. Because they can do things beyond directly shaping people.

JayTee said:
Unilateral decision making without consensus with the rest of the group is bad gaming. Please don't do that, it's rude.
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That is the current route that I am leaning towards, and I do not intend to just jump there immediately. I could have done that without discussing it if I intended to. If that is how it sounded then I worded it poorly. However, on the subject of bad gaming I would find it equally in poor taste to simply barrel ahead in story dragging others along with you. Such as trying to pull us along into the tower when we chose to remain outside by writing as if we had followed along anyways.


Tyrant and Shining intend to go back to Shining's manse and get forces to make it easier to take Rathess and deal with Ma Ha Suchi. The above mentions of goals based in the west is if the entire party decides it wishes to relocate to a western campaign. We intend to come back, but not to stay and put it up to luck.


From my perspective, it feels that Rykon and you want to simply steamroll everything that comes our way without caution and stay in what looks like an untenable position if we wish to be stealthy about it. To just immediately force a confrontation with filial wisdom and his god with little to no prep. Perhaps that is not what you intend and I am misunderstanding you. That is what it seems to be from my pov, but please feel free to correct me if that is not the case.
 
I didn't mean to start internal strife. I am sorry guys.


Apparently I had no real idea what was going on and it's my fault for not reading closer into things. What I thought was in question was whether we carve out Rathess into a kingdom now or later as my assumption was that this would be a game where Rathess was assumed to be central. Clearly this is not the case. While I'm willing to make the move to the west, I'd probably have done a few things different with character focus had I known the party, at least a significant group, would cleave to it so fiercely.


It's not that I was arguing for a Gurren Lagaan-esque power spiral, merely trying to argue that the situation should be assumed to be a manageable start up for a First Age Circle. Also the main irritation of the character was that we seemed to be giving up before even gathering REAL information. It is really scary to having a starting precedent of running away without trying or even examining.


Please pardon my misconceptions on such matters. I hope we can continue to game without any hard feelings now that the matter of differing expectations has been cleared up.
 
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Yup, not angry but was rather concerned about it being a run away train. Good to know that isn't the case. Okay, that does clear up a good majority of my worries on the matter. I would like to point out a few things however.


For one, we have seen 3 dragon kings enlightened and by canon there are 60 of such. I think it would be better to not assume 3 makes all 3~6 thousand enlightened. Because that can bite us hard if we do so. In the event that they are not enlightened, what is going to be our back up plan?


Secondly, the celestial lions would notice the solar sanctuary and can report that on us. So we'll need to deal with them one way or another, depending on if they are corrupt as in canon or not. Sorcery ITSELF does not really bring alert signals, true. It was mostly just the point of that charm summoning third circles in creation that had me itching. Solar Sanctuary is bad news to anyone who recognizes it but won't set off alarm bells in the loom or anything. On that note, where are you getting those statues for the spell? Did you just have them prepared before hand in your wealth pile? Asking to be sure since I don't recall any nearby wyld close to Rathess aside from the rutting pens. Keeping the statues safe will be another concern, but hopefully you have something in mind. I know they are resilient, but still. Doesn't hurt for redundancy.


Edit: We can keep the teleport to manse as a back up option in case it doesn't work out then.
 
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If there aren't enough Enlightened Dragon Kings and we need a fallback option, I can Summon us up some demons (using conventional 1st circle summoning, not the Charm Enhanced version) to provide our shock troops or support units for our combat heavy Celestials.


I am almost 100% certain that the Celestial Lions are the one thing in all of heaven who AREN'T corrupted. They might be burned out or tired of dealing with corrupt gods, but they shouldn't be corrupt themselves. I think it's actually against their godly nature as the police force of Heaven, making it impossible for them to be corrupted.


The Statues from the spell are going to be Wyld Shaped in to Existence via Hand of the Great Maker. Failing that, I have Weath, Arsenal and Panoply 4, which gives me an effective blank check as far as material goods are concerned (all of it locked away in Cache Eggs, god bless the man who invented extradimensional storage!)


EDIT: as for the condition of the statues themselves, I am automatically aware of anything that happens to them, and can teat anything inside the radius of the spell as the Pure Wyld for the purposes of Wyld Shaping, so it should be covered.
 
Assuming we know the numbers of the enlightened, 60 is not a bad number and we can easily gain the favor of the local city gods simply by lending them a much needed hand.


For a long term solution to feral DKs though, I recommend the Lore teaching charms and the addition to them, Dragon-Soul Enlightening Method in Debris of Fallen Races, which is designed for mass enlightenment of Dragon Kings. Unfortunately I don't recall if Rine or Shining are positioned for grabbing that in a reasonable time frame.


Though there is also another course that isn't barred from us yet either, and that is actually just talking to the Fair Folk. Some of them could probably be persuaded into making themselves useful considering how well opposing Solars went for them in the First Age. Sad part is they are the least likely to snitch on us to the Yozi, Death Lords, or Yu-Shan which is a definite plus even with the baggage.
 
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Lets try and remember that we are all here to have fun, even if everybody has a different idea on what the best course of action is.


On a funnier note, here is a video that I have on my iPod that I would like to dedicate to the ladies:


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Oo How the heck did I miss an entire page of OOC. *sigh* But notice an IC postie.


Well I'm not fond of the west, all that water~ (Yet I like the South... ya... all that sand. ><, and somewhat partial to the East (all the trees...) And well all of those better than... the North, because. I hate the cold personally, and nothing there ever caught my attention. But I will not turn down any option available to us. xD


Either way let's just get this boat moving. We can argue the fine points in IC. xD


Edit: Heh, to the music video. xD
 
Will get something posted tonight when I get back home. Hopefully not too awkward either to get back on track.
 
Are we cool with just scoping out the situation from a distance for now? I think it would benefit us to hang around long enough to talk to the Lunar's and Rookie Solar to get some perspective on the state of affairs in character. I personally at least want to lay eyes on Filial, if only to gain definitive intel on whether he's A a threat that needs to go now, B someone to convert into an ally, or C someone to ignore/avoid.
 
I'm fine with scoping at a distance, then scouting in the early morning when it would be easier to stay hidden. If we follow the trio we'll get to the redoubt of another lunar who is supposedly wise. And possibly not insane or a chimera. Which are all good things.
 
Wait, I sort of lost track of what was going on, did we leave Rathess without doing anything?
 
Yeah. There is a Lunar named Murdock that has a training area nearby. I was trying to come up with a solution to keep the party together.
 
I updated the Overview with a pic of Mor'du in his human form, and Murdock when you meet him.
 
I like where this is going, also the warform image is amazing.


Have you guys been making these images yourselves, commissioning them, or something else? I 've been trying to find time to construct a satisfactory likeness of my character, and I'm curious as to how others create works on that level of quality.
 
I personally browse a site called 4chan.org. It has a ton of different categories of pics, some are NSFW, so be careful where you click.


 
@Crocodile and @Varna, are you guys going to join us, or should I count you out of this game?
 
I will work up something tonight or Sunday when I have time available to catch up fully.
 
Last time I checked Varna has been busy with irl issues but should have a post in soon. I've been dealing with college shenanigans, and have two tests coming up that are breaking my back. So when those finish I should resume normal posting speed. Will try to respond once a day if time allows.


So how much are we going to divulge to Murdock Rainflyer? Or anyone else for that matter I suppose. Would be a good thing to get sorted out now before telling anyone else we went into stasis. @Rykon The image for Murdock's war form is the canon picture for Rain Deathflyer's war form, so it's from the actual game line.


Tyrant asks questions, because someone has to and starts setting up a war game using the crudest of figurines.
 
Pretty much what Action said. I'm getting college set up and dealing with Financial Aid. And a birthday. Annddd my family.
 
If nothing else, I'd prefer that unless we have an extraordinary amount of trust in someone, we don't that we're from the First Age.
 
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