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Alexander
That is not dead which can eternal lie
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"In this world, there is no truth. The truth is made later on and overwrites what comes before it. Real truth doesn't exist anywhere." –Beatrice, Umineko
"For the first time, I felt honoured at being allowed to compete in this game of truth and error, and witches as a human. And ironically, that taught me that the truth is not necessarily only one when I believed that only one truth existed. By just broadening my field of vision a little, I can see a truth that is completely different. And no matter which one of the truths, if you can only see one of them, they will not be the right answer. Ah, in my life until now, I wonder how many truths have I turned away from because I was blinded by some trivial truth? This is, the truth, of the world." –Furudo Erika, Umineko no Naku Koro ni
"How can this be real?" I whispered. "I mean you... you... where you come from. Your world. It is so beyond everything I've ever known. And you would... you would take me to the Pumpkin Ball?"―Serra Elinsen, Awoken
ORAMUS, THE DRAGON BEYOND THE WORLD
Oramaic Urge (The Urge to Mystify)
As from here. I welcome the volunteers:
The Great Me I have charisma
Crawling_Chaos Grant us forbidden wisdom, oh Transcendental One
Jarudazuigu Burn with the power of ten thousand fluffy suns
frozenchicken Never underestimate what an ice bird can do
We have discussed before about what this is about, so after necessary greetings between those who don't already know the others....
....
...Let's start. We shall begin with the words of the Immortal One, Revlid-sama:
Even more, the man offered words of advice directly to the Great Me:
I know some of you have already an idea of Oramus, but just in case I am going to list which characters from other media may work as templates:
Master Therion (Demonbane)
Haermaus More (Elder Scrolls)
Q (Star Trek)
Discord (MLP)
Yakumo Yukari (Touhou Project)
Junko Enoshima (Dangan Ronpa)
Beatrice (Umineko no Naku Koro ni)
"For the first time, I felt honoured at being allowed to compete in this game of truth and error, and witches as a human. And ironically, that taught me that the truth is not necessarily only one when I believed that only one truth existed. By just broadening my field of vision a little, I can see a truth that is completely different. And no matter which one of the truths, if you can only see one of them, they will not be the right answer. Ah, in my life until now, I wonder how many truths have I turned away from because I was blinded by some trivial truth? This is, the truth, of the world." –Furudo Erika, Umineko no Naku Koro ni
"How can this be real?" I whispered. "I mean you... you... where you come from. Your world. It is so beyond everything I've ever known. And you would... you would take me to the Pumpkin Ball?"―Serra Elinsen, Awoken
ORAMUS, THE DRAGON BEYOND THE WORLD
Oramaic Urge (The Urge to Mystify)
====
As from here. I welcome the volunteers:
The Great Me I have charisma
Crawling_Chaos Grant us forbidden wisdom, oh Transcendental One
Jarudazuigu Burn with the power of ten thousand fluffy suns
frozenchicken Never underestimate what an ice bird can do
We have discussed before about what this is about, so after necessary greetings between those who don't already know the others....
....
...Let's start. We shall begin with the words of the Immortal One, Revlid-sama:
This is the Guide to structure Primordial Charmsets, the trend since 2014.Revlid said:Question: How should I go about developing a Devil-Tiger?
Well, first off is your Excellency. Describe the nature, personality and behaviour of your character, in the most archetypical, exaggerated manner possible. Try to hit somewhere between 200-300 words. Include an action it can always enhance, and behaviour that absolutely forbids use of the Excellency. Make sure it can be trivially applied in most situations, while banning certain specific approaches.
After that, you've got the rest of your General Charms. Sorcerous Enlightenment can be a little tricky, but if you just follow the cues of existing Yozi initiations you'll be fine - one kind of spell that gets bonuses or becomes cheaper, another kind of spell that suffers penalties or becomes more expensive. A similar assurance applies to Ascendancy Mantle, which just needs to make the Exalt's life harder or include some kind of obligation. Mythos Exultant is the hardest, because it's a stunt modifier, and the most obvious changes - more motes, more Willpower, even more dice (not recommended) - have already been applied. Ultimately, it's a thing that gives you resources, so work out what resource your Devil-Tiger needs and have the Mythos Exultant give it that - Kimbery can afford to spend health levels, Malfeas can afford to blow through motes, She Who Lives in Her Name can burn Willpower like joss paper, Theion has a bottomless supply of Conviction channels, and so on. If you go for a specific Virtue channel, recall that motes or Willpower are (in that order) far more vital than Virtue channels, so you don't want to duplicate Phoenix Renewal Tactic, because it's crap - ideally you'll get a Virtue channel in addition to your rewards, with some sort of mild restriction to balance it. Theion (and my own Isidoros) Mythos Exultant is a good example.
After - or more likely, alongside - that, you've got all your other Charms. The advice here is simple - two trees, one that describes how your Devil-Tiger understands the world, the other describing how he manifests within the world. The root Charms for these generally manifest as some sort of mental/sensory enhancer and some sort of physical enhancer, respectively. In the former category, Malfeas has "I know who is weaker than me", Cecelyne starts with "I intuit the nature of spirit-slaves", She Who Lives in Her Name has "I can tell truth from lie", the Ebon Dragon says "I understand darkness and lies", Adorjan has "I survive through murder", Kimbery gets "I know the proper nature of relationships", Theion has "I know the worth of my servants". I gave Isidoros "I understand that my whims are paramount". In the latter category, Malfeas is a thing of self-inflicted pain, Cecelyne is a being of desolation and desert, Adorjan is fast as the wind, the Ebon Dragon has no real fixed shape, Kimbery is a creature of water, and Theion is divine rulership embodied. She Who Lives in Her Name is made manifest only through her philosophy, and so gets just a single tree. I made Isidoros into a force of weighty destructive force.
Your Charms progress from there, with the vast majority sitting at tier-2 and tier-3. This generally manifests as a handful leading off each root Charm, with the more core tier-2 Charms spawning a bunch of upgrades and variants - only specialist effects go any deeper.
But first of all you want to do your Excellency, because the guiding principle of all Charms is "how does knowing this Charm make my character act"? If the answer, viewed as coldly and logically as possible, isn't "like the Excellency" then it's probably not a good Charm. This applies most obviously to Charms that forcibly alter the character's behaviour, by changing their definition of a Virtue (and take care to consider - does the Yozi have an alien view of a Virtue? Or just a low rating?) or applying some kind of compulsion or penalty, like Witness to Darkness (you are worse at telling the truth) or Murder is Meat (victims don't count as people), or Mother Before Daughter (I can never betray my loved ones or ancestors). Such Charms tend to be chokepoint Charms - placed in such a way that you have to buy them to get to other, more universally-applied or juicier bits of magic (though they should still be useful on their own), to force you to pick up more of the Yozi's nature in claiming their power.
However, it also applies to Charms that come with no such direct obligation - Mother Sea Mastery does not penalize you for staying out of the water, it just means that you've spent 8-10xp on being better at acting in the water. Therefore, you're more likely to spend time in the water, where the advantage is yours. This is something of a chicken-egg thing - why would you get Mother Sea Mastery if you didn't want to spend time in the water? However, it's also a temptation of sorts. If you have Mother Sea Mastery, you're wasting a purchase if you don't spend time in the water, and getting in the water is always an option, one open to you more than anyone else. It even applies to Charms that you activate - Green Sun Nimbus Flare is a really good offensive tool. It also causes horrendous sickness, leaves corpses twisted in charred agony, condemns slain foes to millennia of torment, and terrifies those who see it inflicted. If you use it, you are acting like Malfeas' Excellency tells you to. If you upgrade it, you are increasing your investment in acting like Malfeas tells you to. And why wouldn't you upgrade it? All the upgrades are so good.
Once you've got all that down, it's just the balance of individual Charms that should concern you. Avoid duplicating existing capabilities where possible. Compare to published Solar, Abyssal, and Infernal capabilities, but don't be afraid to make changes on gut instinct, and always try to switch things up in an interesting and characterful fashion. Ask yourself if you'd ever take such a Charm (since you're making this set specifically for your character, this shouldn't be a problem). Make sure to include a distinctive aesthetic. Edit, re-read, rewrite, compare, edit again. Best of luck.
......................
On the note given above - you know what's really good about Infernal Charmsets? I mean, unique to the way they work, not the fact that the published material was mechanically better written and more suited to the system than its peers.
It's that they produce, more than any other setup in the game, more than any setup I've seen beyond "have someone else RP the possessing entity", a powerset with its own motives. A Solar's powers will never fight him. A Sidereal's powers will never strain under her grip. A Lunar's powers won't do things he didn't want them to do. A Terrestrial's powers won't have their own agenda. An Infernal who picks up Malfeas Charms has to deal with the fact that his powers want to hurt people.
Not in the obvious, fight-for-dominance-in-a-metaphorical-mindscape sort of way, but in the sense that these powers were designed to be perfectly suited to a specific personality, and in some instances themselves work to shape and model that personality. If you are that personality, then the powers work perfectly, and at this point the Charmset has 'won'. Jackie Estacado has given in to the urgings of the Darkness. Ling's been eaten up by Greed. Siegfried's been taken over by Soul Edge. Johnny Blaze has surrendered to the insane drive of the Spirit of Vengeance. Negi Springfield's been consumed by Magia Erebea. Harry Dresden's reached an accord with Lasciel. Cletus Kassidy has found his soulmate in the Carnage symbiote. Ichigo Kurosaki has been defeated by his inner Hollow. Jaime Reyes has let the kill-instincts of the Blue Beetle run wild. You're still in charge, but you're doing exactly what the Charmset 'wants' you to do.
If you're not that personality, you have to wrestle the round peg into the square hole over and over again. You have to strain and adapt and compromise to do what you want, albeit the way your powers want to do it.
Infernal powers - unlike any other in Exalted - really have a life of their own. Out of a selection of character types whose only real common point is "I am awesome", the Infernal is the only one whose powers can be an antagonist within their own story. That's their most distinguishing point. If you have access to Kimbery's Charmset, you might as well have her as a siren-devil sitting on your shoulder, telling you to act like her. You don't have any such thing, of course (outside of stunted Essence-training-meditation), but you really might as well, because you, as a player and as a character, know that there is power to be had in acting like her. In doing what she wants. And the more of her Charms you pick up, the stronger that "voice" becomes, because there is more and more power to be found in becoming her. And it's entirely up to you, no Virtue rolls or Willpower expenditure or unnnatural mental influence involved, just pure player/character decisions. How marvelously clever.
That realization is what it would take for Metagaos to open his Charmset, I think, barring PC-level plot intervention. The understanding that, in doing so, he gets to infect the Exalted, make himself a part of them, in a way they can never ever defend against.
Even more, the man offered words of advice directly to the Great Me:
So, after reading that I think you would agree we need, first and foremost, come up with a "clear image of how you want your Yozi to behave". In this case, Oramus.Revlid said:Very basic advice for Charms, to start off with:
1) Check similar effects to see how they were done. Don't be afraid to steal wording. Don't be afraid to completely depart from precedent if you feel it makes sense.
2) Be aware of how your effects combine with all the others available to your character, and account for it. Try not to devalue other effects, unless you're deliberately doing so because they're crap. Conversely, try not to create effects that can be overpowered when used in combination with another.
3) Obey basic cardinal rules. Don't fuck with perfects, don't allow mote-positivity, and so on.
4) Have a clear idea of what you want a Charm to do before you write it. A Charm that ignites a sword is one thing – but what does this do? Increase damage? Incite fear? Cauterize wounds? Set victims on fire? Choose, or your Charms will be muddled.
5) Rewrite your stuff over and over. Simplify wordings and iron out vagueness.
Next, for Yozis:
1) Have a clear image of how you want your Yozi to behave. Use characters from other media as templates, if necessary, but have a solid understanding of what behaviour and beliefs your Yozi promotes, and which they scorn.
1a) Use this to write the Excellency, which should be two paragraphs between 200-300 words total, the first focusing on the Yozi as a character, the second on the Excellency as a tool. It should have actions it can always enhance and actions it can never enhance – a personality is as much about restrictions as possibilities. Avoid too much reference to things you can't do without Charms – rather than telling us that Malfeas burns things with emerald fire, it's more useful to tell us that he obliterates his enemies with absolute cruelty, because that's something a person can do and emulate (as opposed to a purchase of Green Sun Nimbus Flare).
2) Make sure you have a strong aesthetic in mind. This is one of the things that separates Yozi Charms from many others – a clear image of what each Charm does and how it looks in action. Contrast to the Solar model of letting players customise their effects.
3) Split your Yozi in two. This isn't an absolute restriction, but it's one that most sets follow and works pretty well for this sort of set-up. One tree is rooted in "how the Yozi relates to the world", and the other is rooted in "how the world relates to the Yozi". Malfeas has one tree that starts with the power to tell if someone's weaker than him, which leads into Charms to punish people with eternal hellfire, order them around, brand them as his slaves, and so on. He has another tree that starts with the power to ignore pain by injuring yourself, which leads into Charms to warp his body in horrific ways, forgo sleep or real food, and armour himself in scars. Ditto with Kimbery, Cecelyne, and Theion.
4) Charms have a logic which follows on from the previous Charm. Each Charm is a statement about the Yozi, so each of the two trees starts with a statement about the Yozi – "what I am" and "what you are". A second-tier Charm - that is to say, one which only requires one of these Charms - is a statement that follows logically from a first-tier Charm. A Charm which requires that second-tier Charm follows logically on from that, and so on. Provided it suits the Excellency and logically proceeds from the statement made by its prerequisite, you're golden. This means that the statements Charms make can "drift" as you go on – particularly significant statements often become "bottlenecks" in the trees, which means that you need to buy them to access a great many subsequent Charms. If you notice a bottleneck, it's often worth it to include some characterful drawback or quirk that a) encourages the right behaviour or b) ensure that anyone who learns it is prepared to make that sacrifice for the Yozi. Nightmare Fugue Vigilance is an example – powerful Charms like By Agony Empowered are locked behind it, but buying it means you'll never sleep without nightmares.
5) Only gate very powerful or characterful Charms behind Excellencies. Most Infernals aren't going to have more than one Excellency - maybe two, if they're really wasteful. Adding an Excellency prerequisite to a Charm means you only want people who have seriously dedicated themselves to that Yozi acquiring the relevant Charm. This might be flexible Overdrive tech, or a tree that totally changes how someone plays the game – Cecelyne's wishing tree is a good example, the Ebon Dragon's Face in the Darkness isn't.
6) The nature of Yozi Charm sets, described above, means you'll often end up with "blobs" ("branches" sounds too distinct) of Charms that roughly streak into the same theme, with distinct blobs budding off from them at particular points. To put it in other terms, you'll write a Charm is a statement, and then lots of Charms that are merely expansions or elaborations on that statement (part of the reason why Yozi Charm sets have so many upgrades). It's only the one distinct-but-proceeding Charm-statement that actually branches off into its own blob. It's best to work out roughly what these blobs will be – and how they proceed into each other – ahead of time.
I know some of you have already an idea of Oramus, but just in case I am going to list which characters from other media may work as templates:
Master Therion (Demonbane)
Haermaus More (Elder Scrolls)
Q (Star Trek)
Discord (MLP)
Yakumo Yukari (Touhou Project)
Junko Enoshima (Dangan Ronpa)
Beatrice (Umineko no Naku Koro ni)
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