Those wacky Yozi Princes and their plans...

[Haku1]

Okay...


For those of you who've used the Yozi Princes or demons... what sort of plan, tactics do you have for them to come busting some caps and getting "Teh win!".


By the win, I mean... a unaminous agreement that the Yozi Princes have won and Creation is once more theirs.


Feel free to contribute yack and inane plans as well as vile, evil plans that you've got simmering in the back of your minds.


This could be a plan that your players would have to foil in your games or YOU as a player have foiled in the games you've played.


It doesn't need to be a serious plan, but it has to have a shot (no matter how slim or long) of actually working.

 

[Jakk Bey]

Depends on what you call teh win.


Most of my plans with the Yozi entail making life as miserable as they can for everyone that is foolish enough to contact them and their minions. It's reflexive. If you contact the Yozi, you will eventually wind up betraying everyone that ever loved you, and delivering them to your masters so that they can savor not only their suffering, but savor your own corruption as well. A piece of the Creation that the Gods threw them down for is tarnished a little further--this is what they fought for, Mortals and Exalted who would do this evil. Kind of like peeing on the last popsicle that someone snaked out of the cooler before you. Enjoy that taste...


Long term, the Yozi are looking to get back to the Creation, when they will take particular pleasure in despoiling the Creation not to punish it as much, as to make the Gods watch. To taste the anguish and the pain, to see Mortals eventually look to the Yozi, with fevered light in their eyes, and swear their undying loyalty to their old masters once again. When the last of the Creation cries out to the Yozi as their Kings, their Creators, despoiled, ravished, and loving it, then they can get down to the serious business of making the Gods suffer.


How are they going to do that? By subverting the Gods' most trusted servants of course.  Turning the Exalted, and the Spirits against them is a start.  Corrupting Elementals and other Spirits to their cause, subverting them to answer the call of the Yozi. That may mean poisoning waters, fouling the earth, the sky, dumping enough toxins and corruption into the earth so that even the lava runs with the greenish light of Balefire.  Mortal servants are nice for that. They can work on the little details. They can be brought to heel easy enough, and act as hands to carry out the little tasks.


Sorcerers are better. They can enact corruption on a grander scale. When a Demon does their job, they plant seeds with their words, ask small favors that don't seem like much. If you want me to destroy this villiage, I need to get a key that is held by Gellah the Watcher. The key turns out to be for a depository of Thaumaturgical waste, and has a few odd First Age toys along side of it. The weapons are handed over to the "master" but the servants of the Yozi have unlocked their real goal, which can be spread out over rich, clean loam, turning an Orchard Spirit that feeds another villiage, far from the master's goal, and the fruits that the corrupted Spirit provide in turn corrupt that villiage, plant seeds of corruption that allows the Yozi to whisper in their ears, to unearth another First Age trove, this being a Librium that has the location of a Behemoth.  A few deft marks with a quill, and the book is changed, and then left where Solars or Dragon Bloods can find it. Maybe you sacrifice a cult to make it look guarded--they're only Mortals anyway, right? The Librium in hand, the Solars think that they can get some answers from the Behemoth for their own quest, but in using the spell that allows them to speak to it, they chant a portion of the Binding that was used to shackle the Yozi. Just a syllable, but coupled with a few dozen others, a word is spoken, and it loosens the Binding just a little. When all the Yozi's True Names are spoken, the Bindings will activate, and a true servant of the Yozi can call them forth, break their bonds--as creatures of the Creation, they can call to break the prison of the Yozi. The Yozi, summoned back the Creation in their fullness, can then inform their servant that the full spell they spoke also frees them from obligation to their summoner--the first of the words spoken have insured that, and the Yozi are free again, to take issue with their errant servants, the Gods...

 

[Haku1]

*looks* suitably impressed by Jakk Bey's answer.


By the 'the win'... I mean, all is right in creation (as per the Yozi), they're getting their worship, the exalted serve them, as do the various  spirits of creation (now with oaths and bindings version 2!), the Celestial Incarna... well... they're there... somewhere... suffering for their crimes. And naturally, they get to play with their gameboy. ^_-


But yes... slow corruption might be the key here for the Yozi... after all, they have nothing but time on their side.

 

[Master of Malfeasance]

Alright.  I accept that this is totally my own fault.


I just finished painting a Daemon Prince from Warhammer 40,000.  The paintjob was stupendous, it has large (6") wings torn from a Todd McFarlane's Dragon, a tail and horns from the same.  It's all slick with blood and is a fairly savage looking mini.


This game, we had a huge combat as my circle was trying to break a siege on Varsi.  I had to use the Daemon Prince... It was inevitable.  Once I sat down and actually considered what the stats on the thing would be, it occured to me that only the sorcerer in the group stood a chance.


That's cool, so two players slaughter the 38 other opponents in like seven rounds while this Demon beats the ever-loving crap out of the other two until the sorcerer casts Death of Obsidian Butterflies and the Demon takes notice and attacks the sorcerer.


The sorcerer gets lucky and dodges the first few attacks, but the player knows that he's about to run out of luck shortly.  I was expecting that the player do something to unsummon the the thing.


Nope.


Me:  It looms over you, nearly overpowering with its fetid breath.  What do you do?


Midgetprince:  I calmly sit into a lotus position with my weapon across my thighs and pray to whatever is out there that will listen that I will promise my soul to them for 333 years if they get me out of this bind.


Me: (blinks) you.... umm..... okay....


But it's late at night, and I'm not thinking especially well.... The demon gets sucked into midgetprince's screaming mouth and he is now infernal Exalted.


Now what?  I have no charms to give him, no idea what his powers are, and I refuse to go back on it.  Where might I find these things?

 

[Jakk Bey]

I would posit that he is NOT Infernal Exalted, as there are only 50 Shards that the Yozi corrupted, and they aren't out in splat book form yet.


You could call the character possessed by his own violition. Or, if you were particularly ebbil, that they have signed up for a crash course in Akumadom, and the PG should be your guide for demonic Investments. And the whole, the Yozi is your Master sort of thing...


I would go for possessed, and work into the Akuma thing. Give the PC chances to escape, but dangle the power in front of them, all the time. Even let the demon rage around, get them into trouble, and then it retreats, leaving the character eye-ball deep in its mess, and then in order to get out of the mess, they have to call on the demon again, its power then called out, exacts a further price. Rinse. Repeat. Until the PC goes for the Akuma deal of their own free will. Much more tasty for a plot than just the garden variety corruption. Or rather, that's how I think that corruption should go.


In the end, you make them want to travel down that path, and when it backfires, it's all the more sweet. And if a player gets antsy, you can then say, "You asked for the help...'


Ebbil, is sometimes its own reward...

 

[Master of Malfeasance]

It's true.  Back when I was the Apprentice of Malfeasance, I only played good characters because I personally was (why not call it what it is?) Lawful Good.  It was hard to see things any other way.


Ahh, the innocence of youth.  My first insidiously evil character happened just before I deployed.  A Necromancer/Mystic in Talislanta.  Every time I sacrificed someone, I got 5 XP (which is like 5XP in Exalted--a lot).  When I made 65 experience points in one game session, it occured to me that raising skills five or six times in a game session was pissing the other players off royally, I realized I didn't care.


It was totally, irredeemably evil, and it felt soooooooo good.


Evil is its own reward.

 

[Haku1]

MoM, I would say that the sorcerer is now possessed... ridden via the ride charm in PG (DragonKing section page 159). This gives the character tons of niftiness and the demon railing in his mind. ^_-

 

[Obsidian Soul]

The Yozi's are not evil, just as the Gods are not good.  It is all propaganda.  The Gods rose up against their betters, their creators, and have spent the last forty-five centuries or so blackening their good name.  Now, I'm not saying that the Yozis are good, they are to us what we are to ants, their motives and methods are unfathomable.  The only thing that is known is that they want to get out of the Hell that is Malfeas and they want to go back to Yu-Shan and Creation and they are willing to do anything to do that.