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Dice Exalted 3E - Tale of a Falling Empire OOC

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Also note, there a canon Deathlord in the West you can leverage if you wish. I think it's the Silver Prince in the Skullstone Archipelago. It's been a long time since I've looked at any of it, so I might be mixing something up somewhere.

I think you mean the Bodhisattva Anointed by Dark Waters, or something. Yeah, I know a bit about him, but I also wouldn't mind trying to come up with my own antagonist for a game.
 
A water themed campaign with abyssal villains definitely has the chance for some fun monsters. Like a giant warship with necrotech elements made from sharks and whales and stuff and had a bug toothy maw and tentacles that eats smaller ships, adding their materials to its own hull.
 
I tried my hand at an Exalted game, running the Autochthonian invasion in reverse where a pair of Deathlords were planning on unleashing the Great Contagion inside the Great Maker and kill him dead, but the game fizzled when people just stopped posting. :closedeyescryingfrown:

The other Exalted games sound pretty cool, though. I would love to get into them!
 
Kuidao leading the armies against Asuna's Tactics

Asuna would get rekt by Kuaidao if she tried to face him alone. With Xandra she would stand a chance of at least giving him a bloody nose. Kuaidao can take an angry peasant and turn them into ten legionnaires in a week, or ten Legion of Silence members in a month, then have them march for days without food, water, or sleep, and have them show up to battle fresh and in high spirits. Asuna is a better field commander, but strategy, logistics, drill, and numbers trump tactics. Poor Asuna only has the one mercenary company generously gifted her by Manato. She would need to pull out every dirty trick in the book to stand a chance.

but the game fizzled when people just stopped posting. :closedeyescryingfrown:

Oh no! You've got to kick people under the table when they stop posting to remind them sometimes. I hope it wasn't me. I recall taking my turn. PBP has a problem with deadlock where two people both believe they're waiting on the other to post, but no one discusses it, so nothing happens. Somehow as part of the etiquette or part of the software PBP needs an easy way to flag when someone believes they're blocked so everyone can see deadlock more easily. Barring that, STs have to periodically poke people to find out. If you're still excited about running your campaign just poke us to carry on - I assumed you were too busy to continue.

One of them's based in the South, and would centre around a desert kingdom founded by the characters' past lives but now ruled by the Scarlet Empire and a Shogunate dynasty (think Ancient Egypt with the political dynamics of Ptolemaic Egypt), with the characters having the option to seize control for themselves.

Great minds think alike. My campaign pitch notes for a long since fallen Lunar+Solar dominion with ancient Egyptian and Sumerian themes:

The Achaea river valley and its tributaries in Locura are an artificial jewel of life in the midst of the sun-bleached desolation of the Burning Sands. Fertile floodplains feed towering cities ruled by sorcerer-lords in sky palaces; urged on by their gods they strive for nothing less than heavenly perfection of their people in mind, soul, and body. Long dead legions buried in the sands march again in serried ranks, shields bearing forgotten heraldry gleaming in an unfamiliar sun. Ships buoyed on sandstorms with sails filled by the breath of Djinn and holds filled with precious metals brandish flame and bronze as they crest the dunes. Warrior heroes harvest rare reagents from terrifying jungle beasts; refining them through esoteric techniques into puissant alchemical cocktails to cultivate their power.

The Realm has long coveted it all, yet it remained eternally out of their grasp; now more than ever as the Imperial Legions retreat to the Blessed Isle to prepare for the coming succession war. Rare, then, is it in this Age of Sorrows to see a Legion marching into the depths of the Threshold. The shining scion of House Sesus, supply lines harried and enemies on all sides, is counting on doing what none of her predecessors could: Secure a stable source of supply along the Diamond Road to fuel her suicidal march South. House Ragara has found a vein of jade so rich it could arm a legion of terrestrial heroes, and should she seize it for Sesus she may just secure herself the Scarlet Throne. She has dispatched the Seven Depthless Sorrows as her van with the aim of bringing Achaea to heel by any means necessary before her legions arrive. Still, many onlookers quietly question whether any amount of Jade would be sufficient to motivate such seemingly suicidal determination from one whose star seemed so bright, and mutter darkly about what else Ragara may have found in the deep and the dark.

The Lady of the Forest has worn many faces and many names over the millenia, in any one of which she has thwarted designs on her domain more ambitious than this. From her school at the House of Form Sublime and Variegated deep in the Locuran jungle she has dispatched her students to thwart the Depthless Sorrows, and to make what mark they will on the peoples of the valley. She may have resigned herself to the failure of her grand experiment, but she will see it reduced to ashes before she permits it to fall into the grasping claws of the Dragons, and some small part of her still hopes her students may rekindle her dream.

The polities of the Achaean river valley are hardly helpless sheep to be toppled at will by foreign powers. The blood of Djinn runs through the veins of the Faqari clans, and each great family has generations-long pacts with these spirits of fire and wind to drive their sandships across the dunes. They need every bit of divine swiftness they can get to outrun the leonine faeries of the Court of Bleached Bone. The holds of their ships are laden with copper, tin, and gold from distant mines, firedust, and artifacts recovered from beneath the shifting sands. Lumbering Townships render the corpses of harpooned behemoths for firedust and rare reagents, and to supply more ambitious scavenging expeditions deep into the ruins before the shifting sands bury them again. They stop at the oasis settlements that dot the desert for resupply - but never for long; a canny hunter knows the watering hole is the best place to find prey, and the Faeries of the Court of Bleached Bone are nothing if not canny.

Long have the Faqari paid tribute and sworn fealty to the mighty sorcerer-princes of the Sassarin Principate, but no longer. Three years ago an exiled prince of the Hetshepsite clan returned from certain death amongst the sands crowned in flaming glory. Riding a war sphinx at the head of long dead legions they proclaimed themselves Ur-Pharaoh. Dead legionnaires silently scaled sheer walls on a moonless night and swept over the ill-prepared city garrisons of the northern fork of the Achaea. In the ritually prepared living vessels of their cultists the great pharaohs of old walk beside the young Ur-Pharaoh, whispering centuries old wisdom and offering their sorcerous and martial might. For all this, the Ur-Pharoah’s army retreated from the cataclysmic Battle of the Silesian Gate before the bright burning might of the Sassarin Exigence, but it was such a pyrrhic victory for the sorcerer-princes peace terms soon followed. Claiming victory, the Ur-Pharaoh donned the Thrice-Blessed Crown of Eternity and seeks to restore the lost glory of Ea-Abzu.

All is not well for the young ruler. Though legions of the dead work the floodplain fields to fill the coffers of the newly raised Hetshepsite nobility, the Elementals of the Court of Seven Reeds are enraged at the lack of easily-drowned slaves in their waters and conspire with the Sassarin Harvest Goddess Merecheas to make the annual inundation weak. Once overflowing granaries are running low. The court of the Ur-Pharaoh seeks far and wide for high priests and spirit mediums who can propitiate the Court of Seven Reeds, or sorcerers and savants capable of restoring the fertility of the soil.

From high in their towers, salons, and colleges, Sassarin sorcerers are engaged in nothing less than a project to perfect human life in all its facets. They harvest the final dreams and nightmares of the dying and distill them into panaceas for the sick and injured. They concoct elixirs and serums from the humours and viscera of rare and potent beasts on their quest to perfect the mortal cultivation of essence. They forge beings of living bronze powered by ever-burning flames to aid in the construction of their great towers, then join together in intricate rituals to lift these towers into the sky and link them with bridges of shining light.

All of this knowledge and more is freely available in the libraries and lecture halls of the great academy of Ain Soph Aur, an institute of sorcerous learning to rival Ysyr - so long as prospective students can pass the penultimate stage of the ancient Indisputable Assay of Celestial Wisdom, the great multi-stage examination through which all Sassarin must earn their place in society. Failure to pass the lowest tier of the exam sees one cast down as a helot to work the floodplain fields. The examination is annually administered through dreams to all adherents of the Goddess Hanama. The great scholastic houses tightly regulate the dissemination of knowledge and literacy to ensure the population of helots remains sufficient to produce the agricultural goods required to sustain the Principate, while pointing to examples like the recent admission of a foreign Outcaste Terrestrial Sorcerer to the rolls of citizenship as proof of perfect meritocracy in action. The final stage of the examination determines ultimate worthiness to sit in the highest positions of government, scoring well on which is almost hopeless without initiation into Sorcery. From amongst these select few the Divine Tetrarchy, the patron divinities of Sassarin, choose the worthiest to become Princeps - First amongst equals.

In addition to their legions, sorcerer-generals, bound demons, alchemically enhanced Immortals, and animate bronze warriors, Sassarin has one final weapon of last resort to call upon. Each of the Divine Tetrarchy received a piece of the flame of Exigence when it was young and still burned too bright with terrible power. When called upon they can bestow it upon a worthy candidate willing to lay down their life for their people. A mortal soul cannot withstand being bonded to such immense power regulated so crudely, and invariably burns up within scant weeks, but in this time they can work wonders the mortal sorcerers of Sassarin can only dream of.

In the wake of the victory at the Silesian Gate revanchism burns bright in the hearts of many of the princes and councillors of Sassarin. Many resent the decision of the Princeps to make peace and cede the cities of the north fork, and dream of their recapture. In their salons and high towers many great houses sharpen their knives and plot his downfall so that someone more qualified might avenge Sassarin’s wounded pride. Others see the strategic situation as hopeless and fear of annihilation grips their hearts - a fear that breeds desperation. Perhaps more terrifying still is the decision of the Ur-Pharoah to promote the helots of their territory to citizens and replace them in the fields with dead legionnaires. Word of this spreads like wildfire, and gives the helots dangerous ideas.

Upriver, prayer-wheels spin day and night in temples across the eternally mist-bound city of Tiama to power great stone titans. The stone titans endlessly turn the immense cranks that wind the white jade chains of an ages old elevator to lift goods and vessels up and down the kilometre high Tiama Falls to the jungle of Locura, the source of the life giving waters of the Achaea. In the canopies of the dense rainforest between its winding tributaries are arboreal city-orchards with branches thick enough to support neighbourhoods. Beneath them their gnarled roots wind around ancient temples and long lost cities. Prayers and suitably generous offerings to the elemental spirit of these immense trees can cause a branch to grow any of an incredible cornucopia of fruits, herbs, and spices, including the miraculous Monkeyfruit and Skyfruit.

Martial artists of the great schools of Locura petition the Lady of the Forest for a sacred hunt of the guardian beasts of the jungle. Should they succeed they not only earn the right to use the alchemical reagents extracted from their bodies to cultivate their own essence - or sell them for a hefty price, but also earn a ward against the guardian beasts for themselves and their clan, allowing them to safely harvest the bounties of the forest. Training or adopting heroes for a great hunt every season is a necessity of life for every great family in Locura, and as such martial artists are held in the highest esteem.

(etc, etc, there are more ideas but this is already long)

Lunars were once worshipped, but long has it been since they walked openly.
The Lady of the Forest hates Solars and will dispatch her students to force them to leave the valley - and kill them if they refuse - if they're revealed to her. The nations of the valley, however, are desperate for power and it's been so long since the ancient laws against Solars have been enforced that it will be easy to persuade them to look the other way.
One too many invasions has led Dynasts to be looked upon with suspicion, but the valley has been at peace with the Realm for long enough that they are currently accepted as foreign dignitaries. Outcastes are welcomed, so long as they do not challenge the existing order of things.

Potential Focuses for the Campaign (Mix & Match favourites, and suggest new ones):

Political Intrigue - Focus on the internal dynamics of Sassarin and Ea-Abzu, and causing or preventing instability induced by the external superpowers of the Realm and Silver Pact.

Cash & Murder Games - Focus on the clandestine operations undertaken by all parties, including some we haven’t mentioned here.

War - Focus on a flashpoint for the likely renewal of hostilities between Ea-Abzu and Sassarin, which may pull in neighbours on either side. Conquer nations with necromancy and/or narcomancy!

Relic Hunting - There are more lost First Age and Shogunate sites buried in the sands and lost to the jungles than you can shake a Daiklave at. Some of them should probably stay that way, but when has that ever stopped an enterprising Scavenger Lord? Competition will be fierce and the wilderness deadly.

Horror - Sometimes old mistakes don’t die. Sometimes they lie slumbering in the Underworld for a millenium, bitter resentment fermenting into a fury like fine wine. I told you some of those sites should have stayed buried.

Nation Building - Take an existing major player, tributary nation, distant tribe, or breakaway faction and turn them into the pre-eminent regional superpower. Or go conquer the Realm. Whatever works for you.
 
Random Word Random Word
Dang. That's like 200% more thought out than my southern idea, and I've had an interest in Sumeria ever since I started playing Civilization 6. If you ever decide to storytell it, hit me up.
 
Wow. That is a lot of info to prep up. I'm impressed!

I concur with Jaydude on this: If you ever need players for an Exalted game, I'm here!
 
That's probably the most detailed pitch I've seen an ST assemble and present. If you do run it, I'd certainly be up for it as well.
 
I was trying to practice the short and punchy style of the location introductions in the official books. I like how they keep the inspiring ideas per word ratio so high.

I expected everyone's schedules to be packed with all the games you're in and/or running! I wasn't even going to consider pitching a new campaign until at least one of the other games finished up. It seems I was mistaken about the appetite for simultaneous Exalted games.
 
All the effort paid off. There's a lot of life and depth to the picture it paints. You did a fantastic job. I hope we get to see how it all plays out at some point.

When I can think long enough to dare run a campaign, I also hope I can instill half the excitement and energy that you have with this pitch and the other illustrious STs among us have for theirs. I know I'll keep all of you in mind when that time comes.

In the meantime, I'm still enjoying this game and the others I get to participate in. Looking forward to finding out how this siege ends.
 
D. Rex D. Rex
So do you want to edit your post? I've got a response for what you initially wrote set up, but I don't mind rewriting it if you'd rather do something different.
 
D. Rex D. Rex
So do you want to edit your post? I've got a response for what you initially wrote set up, but I don't mind rewriting it if you'd rather do something different.
I'll edit my post, give Asuna the chance to do some cool stuff. Fel is quick enough to leap into action if needs to.
 
I fully expect this kid to go into War Form and bite Asuna. Not because they're a Lunar, just because children are like that.
 

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