Dice Exalted 3E - Tale of a Falling Empire OOC

[Random Word]

Asuna has delivered her information, and is simply listening to Fel, Xandra, and Larissa's deliberations and drinking her tea.

 

[D. Rex]

Fel gave his suggestion, so we will see from there

 

[jaydude]

Sherwood and Psychie
I don't mean to push you both, but I think we need to hear your characters' opinions on what to do about Annika and Selket.

 

[jaydude]

Another bump for Sherwood and Psychie .

 

[Sherwood]

Sorry. I'll have something up for Larissa soon.

 

[Psychie]

With as long as its been since I have been a serious part of this, I think it is probably best if I bow out and let you guys go on without me.

 

[Random Word]

I'm sorry

I take a lot of the responsibility for that. I took every opportunity to talk instead of fight because I was trying to stack up every little advantage before fighting what seemed like an insurmountable enemy. If you'd like to keep playing I promise to make a serious effort to step back and get out of the way of Xandra enjoying her violence. The coming scenes should be a chance for Xandra to finally take centre stage.

 

[Rykon]

I don't think I've been much help either to be fair. We've been moving toward a suicide mission for a while and we are all trying to tip the scale to make success not just possible but inevitable. The characters we built mean a lot not only to the other characters but to us all as players. I want to see our hearth pull off the impossible with panache. The grand vision of victory in style will be lacking if Xandra isn't there standing on a mountain of corpses on top of a mountainous corpse covered in gore and glory with a grin.

I won't strong-arm anyone into doing something they don't want to, but if there's anything I can do to improve the engagement and enjoyment of others I'd like to make the effort to help out.

 

[jaydude]

I'm sorry that you want to bow out, Psychie .

As Storyteller, I feel partly responsible for this current state of affairs myself. I think I ended up letting this game focus way too much on political stuff, when many of you were preparing for a war-based chronicle. And while the Annika/Selket plotline was one attempt at giving people - especially Xandra - something to do besides politics, I feel that we need a more long term solution.

In terms of salvaging the chronicle, my first instinct would be to try and make the power balance less lopsided, in order to reduce the risk of you all being "forced" into politics to try and even the odds. Indeed, my current plan - which I believe I've been foreshadowing - is to cause a schism between Jinlong and Yin-Shizi that shatters any chance they have of working together, with Jinlong returning to Yangofu and allowing her Kandaran soldiers to leave her service, and Yin-Shizi continuing the war on his own with a more Lunar-based force. Both Jinlong and Yin-Shizi would be in much weaker positions than they were at the start of the conflict, and hopefully a bit easier for you all to manage.

Otherwise, the only option I've really considered is scrapping this chronicle entirely and starting up a new one. Looking back, I feel like I could have done a bit more planning and worldbuilding beforehand. Plus, I don't know how well my ultimate vision for it lines up with everyone else's. Just to name one example, if you guys do kill Jinlong and destroy her circle, I wouldn't treat it as anything resembling a great and glorious victory, but bittersweet at best and tragic at worse. The fact of the matter is, you guys are playing members of a culture that's been perpetuating a massive lie about the Celestial Exalted, and has recently become pretty corrupt and/or tyrannical.

 

[D. Rex]

I'm sorry that you want to bow out, Psychie .

As Storyteller, I feel partly responsible for this current state of affairs myself. I think I ended up letting this game focus way too much on political stuff, when many of you were preparing for a war-based chronicle. And while the Annika/Selket plotline was one attempt at giving people - especially Xandra - something to do besides politics, I feel that we need a more long term solution.

In terms of salvaging the chronicle, my first instinct would be to try and make the power balance less lopsided, in order to reduce the risk of you all being "forced" into politics to try and even the odds. Indeed, my current plan - which I believe I've been foreshadowing - is to cause a schism between Jinlong and Yin-Shizi that shatters any chance they have of working together, with Jinlong returning to Yangofu and allowing her Kandaran soldiers to leave her service, and Yin-Shizi continuing the war on his own with a more Lunar-based force. Both Jinlong and Yin-Shizi would be in much weaker positions than they were at the start of the conflict, and hopefully a bit easier for you all to manage.

Otherwise, the only option I've really considered is scrapping this chronicle entirely and starting up a new one. Looking back, I feel like I could have done a bit more planning and worldbuilding beforehand. Plus, I don't know how well my ultimate vision for it lines up with everyone else's. Just to name one example, if you guys do kill Jinlong and destroy her circle, I wouldn't treat it as anything resembling a great and glorious victory, but bittersweet at best and tragic at worse. The fact of the matter is, you guys are playing members of a culture that's been perpetuating a massive lie about the Celestial Exalted, and has recently become pretty corrupt and/or tyrannical.

Nah, I don't think it is your fault. Most of us are schemers at heart anyway.

I can't say I have done much either aside from have Fel put his two cents worth in a few times. Still wish I could use my warstrider, as I was looking forward to that. But I've still had some fun regardless.



As for salvaging the chronicle. I can certainly see the advantage of putting the rp back in its rails. Not that I'm dissatisfied at how well we were able to avoid destruction by accident. It was an amusing turn of events.

It was our ideas, more than worldbuulding or planning on your part, and you did well in enacting out plots and interference.



I would think that our plot against Jinlong was more of a plot of opportunity. Taking advantage of her mercy to cut off the head of the serpent. Being real loyalists, our view is narrow and see her as the threat and not fully understanding that the true threat is it was intead a mark of the coming rise of celestials. The sniffles to indicate the coming flu.

I think we are all on the page of knowing we are on the bad guys side. As well as knowing that "winning" in the sense of returning the glory of the realm is an impossibility. That the best we can hope for at the end is a phyrric victory, and a temporary one at that. Our chars optimism is simply setting themselves up for a greater fall.





Scrapping is an option. Or doing something drastic like a timeskip or something.

 

[Rykon]

The fact of the matter is, you guys are playing members of a culture that's been perpetuating a massive lie about the Celestial Exalted, and has recently become pretty corrupt and/or tyrannical.

In preparation for a game to run First Age Solars in Third Edition, the war strider one, I've been reading a bit into Dreams of the First Age: Lands of Creation and Lords of Creation and I gotta say that lie is far from "massive".

I'll just say there was plenty of tangible motivation for the Usurpation to take place. Just one example, much as he was hated enough to strike from canon, I always felt like Desus was intended to portray the monstrosity of a First Age Solar to the readers/players and how the Great Curse wasn't so obvious. While I don't think the idea of replacing him is bad, I think not replacing him with something more memorable or compelling was.

I fully intend for that campaign's call to adventure reference the latent terror that undertoned the late Solar Era. My current struggles are trying to weave enough story hooks together after an initial adventure to let the players make of the world what they will. Also specing out a vessel that can house and deploy a circle's worth of Warstriders and their support crew without it ending up as either ridiculously excessive or to fall short of serving its intended purpose. After all, what would a gundam/mecha story be without the ship and support crew showering the lesser units in artillery fire as the heroes expertly clash against absurdly skilled and powerful opponents?

I think once I have enough loose threads down, I'll take some notes from Random Word's game and let the players have more free reign in defining their group, the organization that supports them, the nature of their mission, and the things that make their arsenal special to them.

Anyhow back to Dragon-Blooded... For Third Edition, I agree it does an incredibly poor job on selling the players on a Bronze Faction or generally Anti-Solar agenda. The religious tenets crush hope, ambition, and upward mobility. They focus on surrender, submission, and obedience to the Exalted regardless of their actions. This is the exact kind of thing individuals that experienced the Pre-Usurpation climate should know better than to do and the text sets it all up as their idea... What?! That kind of ideology would smother any kind of passion from rank and file soldiers to have something worth fighting for and instead just stumble through life being reminded to stay in their lane all the time. To top it all off, they engineered an aristocratic culture that manufactures single child syndrome sociopaths with little to no reason to be accountable for their actions whatsoever and even less reason to care about the family they never see if it weren't for their monthly stimulus check.

Of all the shortcomings of the Realm, their story about Solars is the least of them in my mind. Reality is often disappointing... Still, it gives us a good starting point to build our own stories with.

 

[jaydude]

In preparation for a game to run First Age Solars in Third Edition, the war strider one, I've been reading a bit into Dreams of the First Age: Lands of Creation and Lords of Creation and I gotta say that lie is far from "massive".

I'll just say there was plenty of tangible motivation for the Usurpation to take place. Just one example, much as he was hated enough to strike from canon, I always felt like Desus was intended to portray the monstrosity of a First Age Solar to the readers/players and how the Great Curse wasn't so obvious. While I don't think the idea of replacing him is bad, I think not replacing him with something more memorable or compelling was.

I'm not saying that the Usurpation wasn't justified, or that the Bronze Faction can't at least make a case for why it was necessary. I'm just pointing out that the Immaculate Philosophy is wrong about the nature of Celestial Exalted powers and how they're obtained, and doesn't encourage even a moderate approach when it comes to Celestials.

 

[Rykon]

True and I suspect there's a reason for that but it's sadly not given much word count or lipservice. Depending on how we move forward and if you'd allow it, I was going to declare a heretical school of thought in Immaculate Doctrine that is much closer to the truth and gives more clear guidance on why Celestials are seen as "unforgivable".

Ultimately I was going to associate the current roster of Celestials with the concept of rogue or black market Exigents. Not much is out on Exigents at this time, but I see it as likely that Exigents of various stripes are known to be Exalts since I believe some were stated to be tolerated within the Realm. It's also likely that Heaven, through Bronze Faction operatives, would leverage wyld hunts to exterminate black market Exigents (or politically inconvenient ones).

 

[jaydude]

Depending on how we move forward and if you'd allow it, I was going to declare a heretical school of thought in Immaculate Doctrine that is much closer to the truth and gives more clear guidance on why Celestials are seen as "unforgivable".

Ultimately I was going to associate the current roster of Celestials with the concept of rogue or black market Exigents. Not much is out on Exigents at this time, but I see it as likely that Exigents of various stripes are known to be Exalts since I believe some were stated to be tolerated within the Realm. It's also likely that Heaven, through Bronze Faction operatives, would leverage wyld hunts to exterminate black market Exigents (or politically inconvenient ones).

For the heresy itself, if you're talking about doing an Introduce Fact, I'll allow it at Difficulty 4. And I'm assuming that Manato and/or his people will have heard of it through their trading ventures, yes?

When you say "the current roster of Celestials", are you referring to the ones in this game specifically?

 

[Rykon]

By current roster I mean Second Age / Reincarnated Celestials as opposed to the ones directly responsible for past mistakes.

As for where Manato would have heard it, I was going to declare it as something he was taught from a tutor he once had.

 

[jaydude]

By current roster I mean Second Age / Reincarnated Celestials as opposed to the ones directly responsible for past mistakes.

As for where Manato would have heard it, I was going to declare it as something he was taught from a tutor he once had.

Sure, both those things can work.

 

[Random Word]

I think we were doomed to tragedy from inception, then, because we as players fundamentally misunderstood the implicit goal of the campaign. I think we all heard, 'Make some Dynasts on sabbatical in the Threshold, then have a heroic last stand against a bunch of Celestials and maybe survive by the skin of your teeth if you're very lucky and very good,' and so we created loyalist Dynasts with teeth. What you wanted was for us to create a ragtag bunch of disenfranchised, disillusioned, and ostracised Dynasts who had no strong ties to the existing power structure of the Realm, and who could be won over to the other side. As soon as we had people like Xandra and Fel in the Hearth the difficulty of the Celestials ever persuading us to change sides shot way up. Xandra fucking hates Anathema for what they did to her family. Asuna and Manato are probably the easiest to persuade, and they're both hard. I went over the hurdles when I explained Asuna's thoughts about the war, but yeah, while a really dedicated group of Celestials could absolutely convince Asuna to change sides she would just immediately lose all her Willpower every day for betraying Xandra if she so much as lifted a finger to help them. Possibly even if she allowed their schemes to be furthered through inaction? Sworn Hearths are serious business.

Jinlong was going to die, or we were. Or the Civil War was going to start, someone was going to overload the Sword of Creation by accident (or on purpose), and the Blessed Isle was going to be annihilated. That would immediately prompt Asuna to start thinking about forming a new Empire in the East, and she would suddenly be a lot more flexible about who was allowed in. That still wouldn't get her out of the commitment to her Hearth, some of whom would not be so morally flexible even after the end of the world.



It's true they don't emotionally drive home the point about why the Usurpation was righteous in 3e. They still furnish you with the logical reason. The Great Curse exists. The Solars nearly destroyed the world once, and they're likely to do it again given the chance.

3e does depart from 2e quite strongly in that it makes it clear that Immaculate Monks of sufficient rank know exactly what Celestials are. Shikari like Fel included. They don't tell lay people because it's a lot more complicated to say, "Yes, Lunars and Solars are the Chosen of the Incarna, but they are not sanctioned by Heaven, the Incana don't endorse anything they do, they're going to inevitably be driven insane by their incredible powers at some point in the future, and their mad hubris will doom us all. It's safer to just kill them now before they learn how to wield their powers," than it is to say, "That person is possessed by a corrupted fragment of the power of the Sun and no longer the person you once knew. To kill them would be a mercy - the longer that power eats away at their soul the less of your loved one remains." As with all the best lies, it's a selective truth. The enlightened can follow the more complex argument while the average peasant is shielded from the truth for the sake of their spiritual well being.

The Breath of Hesiesh does actually keep some Celestials imprisoned in service to the Realm in 3e, and Exigents and even Liminals are only Anathema if they actively work against the Realm.

I would also disagree with the assertion that the Immaculate Philosophy placing Exalted above mortals and lauding subservience was incorrect after the Usurpation. The Sidereals needed a hierarchy to exert control, Dragonblooded are statistically speaking legitimately by far the best population from which to draw administrators and rulers in any large society, and authoritarianism with strict and very clear hierarchy can help hold a society together in a crisis. It takes a lot of resources to build and maintain the artifact panoplies needed to defend Creation from outside threats, something the DBs were expected to do, so concentration of wealth was going to be necessary. They needed to replace the defense infrastructure of Creation immediately or risk the entire thing being wiped out. There are a lot of really stupid reasons feudalism arose after the fall of the Roman Empire, but one of the reasons it stuck around for so long was the ludicrous expense of arming heavy cavalry, and how incredibly effective they were in battle. Dragonblooded warriors with artifact panoplies are knights and Raksha crusades the Huns or Mongols. Dynasts have a surprisingly low life expectancy given their natural life spans because they die defending Creation with such regularity, and they have for thousands of years.

The tenets of the Immaculate Faith are actually quite vocal about defying even the Dragonblooded when there is large scale injustice against the people, and the books describe at length all the protests and even outright insurrections monks have led against corrupt or incompetent governments, even when those governors were Exalted. The Sidereals weren't incompetent when they drafted the texts, and they do intervene to correct bad behaviour when it becomes egregious. I was personally surprised the Abbot of Kandara wasn't leading an uprising against Satori at her worst, as scripture and duty demanded of him. Asuna didn't care, though, so she didn't comment. A venal or corrupt monk was nothing new to her, and she doesn't have a lot of respect for the Order.

One of the things I like about Exalted is how it's a tragedy on all sides. No side has an unequivocal moral high ground, and most everyone has perfectly legitimate reasons for believing they're the good guys. History is full of people who were once righteous and haven't yet noticed they aren't anymore because now isn't then.

 

[jaydude]

I think we were doomed to tragedy from inception, then, because we as players fundamentally misunderstood the implicit goal of the campaign. I think we all heard, 'Make some Dynasts on sabbatical in the Threshold, then have a heroic last stand against a bunch of Celestials and maybe survive by the skin of your teeth if you're very lucky and very good,' and so we created loyalist Dynasts with teeth. What you wanted was for us to create a ragtag bunch of disenfranchised, disillusioned, and ostracized Dynasts who had no strong ties to the existing power structure of the Realm, and who could be won over to the other side. As soon as we had people like Xandra and Fel in the Hearth the difficulty of the Celestials ever persuading us to change sides shot way up.

I wouldn't say that I wanted you all to create rebels or loyalists. At a basic level, my goal was always to subject a group of player-controlled Dynasts to the reality that A) the Realm is starting to crack at the edges, and B) the Solars are back and not universally evil, and then see how each player had their character react to it. My overall plan was originally to have Kandara fall to Jinlong and her forces though, and I was prepared to "cheat" a little to make sure that came to pass, whether by putting the Realm loyalists against impossible odds, or having Annika/Selket/The Cult of the Illuminated open the city gates, or anything else that could render any player efforts to defend the city meaningless. But it was never intended as an endgame event, or something that had a high chance of killing your characters. Not unless any of you chose to fight to the death.

I would also disagree with the assertion that the Immaculate Philosophy placing Exalted above mortals and lauding subservience was incorrect after the Usurpation. The Sidereals needed a hierarchy to exert control, Dragonblooded are statistically speaking legitimately by far the best population from which to draw administrators and rulers in any large society, and authoritarianism with strict and very clear hierarchy can help hold a society together in a crisis. It takes a lot of resources to build and maintain the artifact panoplies needed to defend Creation from outside threats, something the DBs were expected to do, so concentration of wealth was going to be necessary. They needed to replace the defense infrastructure of Creation immediately or risk the entire thing being wiped out. There are a lot of really stupid reasons feudalism arose after the fall of the Roman Empire, but one of the reasons it stuck around for so long was the ludicrous expense of arming heavy cavalry, and how incredibly effective they were in battle. Dragonblooded warriors with artifact panoplies are knights and Raksha crusades the Huns or Mongols. Dynasts have a surprisingly low life expectancy given their natural life spans because they die defending Creation with such regularity, and they have for thousands of years.

I mean, I'm not trying to argue that the Shogunate and Realm's political systems didn't work, or that they were seriously worse compared to others in the setting and those of the real world. I don't believe either of those things, and I'm the kind of guy who sees the good and bad in everything. I will admit to putting more emphasis on the Scarlet Empire's flaws though - namely that it's in the middle of a succession crisis that's causing the nobility to withdraw support from the outlying territories while simultaneously working them to the bone, with even houses like Ledaal that have no interest in the Scarlet Throne doing the same just to ensure their survival in the event of a civil war - simply because they're a central theme of the story. To me, that's no different than running a Chronicle taking place during the Usurpation, except the emphasized flaws there are those of the First Deliberative.

The tenets of the Immaculate Faith are actually quite vocal about defying even the Dragonblooded when there is large scale injustice against the people, and the books describe at length all the protests and even outright insurrections monks have led against corrupt or incompetent governments, even when those governors were Exalted. The Sidereals weren't incompetent when they drafted the texts, and they do intervene to correct bad behaviour when it becomes egregious.

My bad. I think I read something to this effect in the Realm and/or Dragon-blooded books, but didn't remember it very well. Hence, I instead transferred over what I remembered from 2E. If I had retained the knowledge of what the Immaculate Faith was actually like in 3E, I would have had Sengon act very differently than he did in the game.

 

[Random Word]

I mean, I'm not trying to argue that the Shogunate and Realm's political systems didn't work, or that they were seriously worse compared to others in the setting and those of the real world.

Oh, pardon, that bit was mostly a reply to Rykon when he said it didn't make sense to him that the Sidereals would draft the Texts the way they did after they had literally just dealt with a bunch of Exalted getting too big for their britches. I totally get leaning into the, "The Realm is falling apart!" angle of the Civil War era. I agree the Realm is a complete mess right now, and short of a miracle it will not survive the Civil War intact, nor in possession of the Threshold.

 

[Rykon]

Sounds about right. My main critique of the Sidereals role in all of it was what seemed to be a complete lack of accountability and that was based on a misunderstanding. Happy to find out that misunderstanding is not the case in this edition. I still think the outlook or mindset of a giving adherent in a rigid class structure is pretty bleak but the perspective being influenced by reincarnation could change things.

By the way, if the truth of celestial exalts is already within the doctrine then there’s no need to declare the fact.

 

[Rykon]

[OOC: So after a bit of internal debate, I've decided to at least do a bit of a timeskip in order to get us out of the metaphorical rut we're in story-wise. Whether we all want to continue will be another matter.]

I'm fine with continuing, as I really enjoy the character. I will say, the instant it's made clear that the Ragaras still intend to move forward with an elevated tax rate instead of Manato's policies, he leaves Kandara with no argument. There's no point in staying if they throw out the work he put in. Better to spend his time tending to his own business or that of his hearth's or house than a rival house that will just do whatever they want.

 

[jaydude]

I'm fine with continuing, as I really enjoy the character. I will say, the instant it's made clear that the Ragaras still intend to move forward with an elevated tax rate instead of Manato's policies, he leaves Kandara with no argument. There's no point in staying if they throw out the work he put in. Better to spend his time tending to his own business or that of his hearth's or house than a rival house that will just do whatever they want.

With regards to the tax rate, it's more trying to find a compromise between not oppressing the locals too seriously, and getting that little extra from them in preparation for the civil war.

 

[Rykon]

With regards to the tax rate, it's more trying to find a compromise between not oppressing the locals too seriously, and getting that little extra from them in preparation for the civil war.

I understand their motivation. Manato had a personal agreement with the prior Satrap for a change. House Ragara has now changed leadership of the Satrapy, negotiated an off the books deal while shutting out the hearth's council, and has now shown intent to reverse course against what was deliberately a harsh course correction on taxes for a good reason. If there was ever a time to wash one's hands of this debacle, it'd be now.

In a climate where house politics and posturing dominates one's attention and resources, why would he spend his on the behalf of one that he isn't even allied with? Manato pretends to act on the whole of the realm because it's what keeps House Cynis protected. Even with his kinship present, pursuing this situation doesn't aid house Mnemon, Ledaal, Sesus, or Cathak either. By all accounts, I'd think the characters ready to pack up their vacation and spend it in a spot far less threatening to life, limb, and blood pressure.

 

[D. Rex]

It will be interesting to see what would happen to the warstrider, as it technically belongs to the Ragara's. If we leave Kendara, we leave that too.

 

[Rykon]

It will be interesting to see what would happen to the warstrider, as it technically belongs to the Ragara's. If we leave Kendara, we leave that too.

Sadly, I don't expect they'll lend it to us to take back Yangofu given their unwritten treaty.

I guess my real question is, how and where are we picking back up and what kind of goals would we want to pursue?