Lunar Excellencies (Damage System)

    For the purpose of Excellencies the Attributes Strength, Dexterity and Stamina are known as Might, Grace and Fortitude.

   Essence of Overwhelming Lunar (Trait)
   The Lunar may spend up to Attribute x 2 motes. For every two motes spent they gain an extra dice.

   Essence of Triumphant Lunar (Trait)
   The Lunar learns to focus Essence from her Exaltation purely through her Attribute. A roll made with this Charm does not add their Ability but they suffer no penalties for conditions related to abilities such as not having one.
   Just like the Wyld the Lunar Exaltation allows the creation of endless possibilities. Creation itself was shaped from the Wyld. Where Lunar Exaltations differ from others is that they were not transformed from Wyld energy but contain it. They are Wyld energy in an undeveloped form that can be changed according to the will of the host.
   Every dice that results in a ten counts as a success regardless of the difficulty of the roll.

   Indisputable Lunar (Trait)
   Mins: Attribute 6, Essence 6
   Prerequisite Charms: Essence of Triumphant Lunar (Trait)
   This Charm expands Essence of Triumphant Lunar (Trait) making all the successes gained with it net successes that cannot be cancelled by external penalties. A Lunar with this Charm has a chance of fathoming the most incomprehensible mysteries of the Wyld, punching out a Yozi or singing a song so beautiful that even the Neverborn will stop screaming to listen to it.

Damage System

    In the epic scale of Exalted if someone is hit (technically) then it's assumed it isn't just a scratch. The contravenes my previous idea about basing the damage dice pool on the attack bonus. I like my earlier idea more.
   To recap: In the Damage System each dice roll is the Attribute in dice.
   Threshold is the number scored by an individual dice. Difficulty is the number required to get a success. Because the dice pool is smaller than in normal White Wolf games dice rolls are resolved by the number of successes such as a damage roll (where every dice that meets the difficulty is a net success) or a number of successes to succeed by extra successes are not necessary like in Fatigue rolls.
    Add the character's Ability to each dice.
   This system requires reworking the Exalteds' Excellencies. I haven't worked them all out yet. The Third Excellency remains the same since it simply provides a reroll. In the First Excellency spend Essence up to Attribute + Ability for Solars, Essence for Sidereals or Ability for Dragon-Blooded. Every mote they spend adds to the threshold for the diceroll. I don't know what to do with the Second Excellency yet.
   Lunar Charms: For their first two Excellencies Lunars spend up to Attribute x 2 motes since channelling Essence through Attributes is more demanding than channelling through an Ability. In the First Excellency Lunars gain an extra dice for every two motes spent. Dice adders are much more powerful in this system.
   Indisputable Lunar (Trait) Lunar Attributes are known as Might, Grace and Fortitude for Strength, Dexterity and Stamina for the purpose of Excellencies. Every two motes spent doubles the result of a single dice, rolled seperately.

       Scale of Difficulty
    6 Basic difficulty. Someone with no skill has a reasonable chance of success. A master can do it with their eyes closed.
   10 A novice has a cat's chance in hell of success. This is no significant test for an expert.
   15 Impossible for a beginner without master crafted tools and expert help. The best in the field struggle to attain this level of perfection.
   20 A challenge for the greatest of all Exalted without helpful equipment or the use of Charms.
   21+ Truly supernatural feats worthy of the mighty heroes of the First Age.
   30 Paradigm of Celestial grace.
   40 Crowning glories of the Chosen of the Sun.

Roll of Glorious Divinity I

    You are the weakest link.

   Among the outstanding Books of Sorcery series that brought us the White Treatise, First Age Glories of Wonders of the Lost Age and the advanced manse and artefact rules (very useful) of Oadenol's Codex this book stands out. Unlike in it's successor II the Charms for the gods and elementals are very bland compared to the Charms for ghosts in volume II which have Virtue minimums and are grouped into cascades. Unfortunately rather than having a proper set of individual powers demons use the same Charms as gods do. It makes for very uninteresting reading. As with much in Exalted it creates more potential in the mind of the player than it actually expresses itself. The idea of Spirit Charms being expressions of the spirit's nature and personality is excellent but they don't realise this idea in an interesting way. The definition of the ghosts' Charms in volume II is far better, as with Yu-Shan the atmosphere of this book is very bland. I think it would be better if they drew directly on mythological ideas or created characters and traits similar to them, the gods in Exalted both in this book and in Yu-Shan lack an elemental power that's present in mythology and other, more basic forms of fantasy. I was looking at a book of fantasy art one day and although it was primitive had a certain fundamental power that Exalted lacks and I think would be better if it had. Players not particularly committed are better off looking at Exalted Charms and creating their own gods' powers from original ideas or using the Glorious Divinity vol.II for inspiration.

Soul Devouring Infection

    This Charm expands the effect of Chakra Violating Blow, changing it from a Crippling Effect into a Sickness Effect. If the initial blow is successful the victim has been infected with Abyssal Essence that will continue to consume them.
   After a number of days equal to their Willpower, the infection makes an attack on their lowest Virtue using the same dice pool as the initial attack. If this destroys the targeted Virtue it may make another attack after another number of days equal to their Willpower have expired.

     Like Oblivion, Dark Messiah Style doesn't focus a practitioner on petty ideas like cruelty or bloodlust. The nature of Oblivion does not seek to kill but to destroy. Other, weaker martial arts might focus on the torment and manipulation of their victims, Dark Messiah Style is used to feed on them.

   While it's possible for a Dark Messiah to tear an enemy's soul apart, with a greater Charm it's possible to tear it out of their body completely.
     Resolve the damage from an unarmed martial arts attack with an external penalty equal to the sum of the target's Virtues. Victims of Chakra Violating Blow cannot be affected by this Charm since a part of their soul has already been destroyed and replaced with Abyssal Essence so it cannot be stripped away. If the attack succeeds the Dark Messiah tear the opponent's heart from their chest and their soul with it killing them instantly.
    The power of the victim's soul now becomes their's. While the magically preserved heart is still in their possession they may use the soul's Virtue channels for their own dice rolls as if they were their own (these cannot be combined with the character's own Virtue channels) and use the number of the soul's remaining Virtue channels in place of the own Virtue rating for a related roll. They may use any Willpower points the target has and gain no Resonance for doing so (the dead soul of another Exalt no longer has an Exaltation to cause the tormented spirit Limit Break.) The character may also bite into the heart consuming it's Essence as a Miscellaneous Action and decreasing it's Essence rating by one. Doing so gives the character access to ten extra motes of Essence until the end of their next action. A spirit reduces to zero Essence is destroyed and it's heart shrivels and dries up into dust.

Chakra Violating Blow

    As they have lost the last dot of a Virtue that is a defining part of their soul they can never do anything associated with that Virtue. Those without Valour cannot face danger, without Conviction they cannot stand for their own beliefs, without Temperance they cannot repress their urges, without Compassion they can never help other except purely to serve their own ends.
   Roll Martial Arts + Essence adding a number of automatic successes equal to their Avatar, comparing against the target's Dodge MDV plus their targeted Virtue (doubled if it's their Primary Virtue.) If the roll succeeds the target loses all points in that Virtue and all related Virtue channels. Furthermore, if they suffer an internal penalty equal to what their Virtue used to be, or an external penalty if their Primary Virtue was destroyed. If the combined penalty exceeds the character's Willpower they slip into a coma.
   The effects of Chakra Violating Blow are permanent. It is impossible for anyone to heal someone affected without the use or Charms or healing artefacts. To heal someone they must spend a Willpower point and make an Intelligence + Medicine roll at a difficulty of the attacking character's Essence at the time the Charm was used with an internal penalty of what the character's Virtue was (or an external penalty in the case of a Primary Virtue.) The roll must score more threshold successes than the attacker's Avatar rating to overcome the consuming effects. A healer can only return someone's lost Virtue to a rating equalling their own. Returning someone's spiritual state to a level higher than their awareness is beyond their capability. When someone is healed they immediately enter Limit Break and suffer a Flaw for the related Virtue. This Flaw ends after the proscribed time. It is impossible for them to exert partial control and they gain no Willpower bonu for entering Limit Break.

Abyssal Backgrounds

    Whispers is the character's level of psychic connection to the Neverborn and how much their voices reverberate through the character's mind. The Labyrinth is filled with the voices of the Neverborn, things like the Labyrinth that are constantly being consumed by Oblivion yet never diminish. Abyssal characters may have Whispers from character creation without ever having been to the Labyrinth. They appear in the character's mind with no known cause like the visions in the mind of Jack Walters.
   Avatar represents the character's connection to the Void. All Nephwracks have it as well as Spectres unless you'd rather have Spectres being ghosts that serve Oblivion whereas Nephwracks have been 'consecrated' by it. The dark hunger that exists within the Void exists in them.

Those Who Wake Under the Moon

    Only in the absence of the Sun's gaze is Luna's glory evident. Under the dark sky when mortals are dreaming and Fair Folk are lured by their hunger Lunars stir.
   The Wyld doesn't endanger Lunars any more than their Essence does. The Fair Folk are things made from the Wyld that have made themselves lies to exist in Creation. Lunars are Creation-born who've become host to an Essence that contains Wyld energy and connects with their own soul. This interaction between their soul, their identity as a being and the fusion of Wyld Essence with it through the intergration of their Exaltation is what makes shapeshifting possible. Through changing their now mutable Essence they can change their physical form.

Serial Experiments Exalted

    I thought one permutation of the scientific, sci fi nature of magitech by synergysing it with BLAME! was making a truly VAST world that was a completely artificial construct where it and the remnants of humanity was threatened with destruction by dysfunctional beings created long ago. BLAME! is a lot like Necromunda.
   One further way of going is that the world is surrounded by a computer generated dimension, the Wired, where anyone's dreams can come true. In this realm the basic geographical area is called a site. Perhaps as a dreamworld it lives only in people's heads but they think they are outside reality which may in fact be true.

   With the exception of Social Attributes Lunars can learn attributes and their Charms on their own. They don't need outsiders to teach them. Even with Social Attributes, because they are so innate the Lunar improves them by interacting with others, not being trained. One cannot change what someone is, the level Lunar Charms work on, with outside training. Learning Charms and Knacks is a development of the Lunar's self.
   "the raksha takes hold of the malleable reality around him and shapes it to fit the story of his existence."
   Maybe what all Lunars desire is freedom. This is what gives the Wyld Lunar Essence the ability to bond with them and what gives them the desire to use it.
   "most are inconsistent even in defining their own inherent qualities." It is this reliance on their inherent qualities that allows Lunars to survive in the Wyld since they live by what they are not what they are defined as within Creation. It' also what attracts a Lunar Exaltation to a host. In fact they need their Attributes to be able to understand and act in the Wyld. To say Lunars are less powerful than Solars is to misunderstand their purpose. They are less powerful than Solars in Creation, which is not the realm  for which they were made. Just as the raksha are able to pass through the Gate of Sundraprisha and take on a physical form that lets them exist within Creation, so the Lunars' Essence is made from the stuff of the Wyld, extending it's power through their body and allowing the Lunar to shape it for their own purpose. They fact that they can change shape in Creation is just a side effect. Because of it they can enter the Wyld and become part of it like the Unshaped Fair Folk.
    The basic Charms of a Celestial Hero martial art are just a way of attaining an understanding of the style's true precepts that allows them to learn the later (Exalted type) Charms.
   The Wyld is a realm so inchoate and ephemeral that notions can become 'real.' As the Fair Folk can make such abstract things real, so the Lunars can turn real things including themselves into abstractions that can live within the Wyld. Or rather they can turn physical things into expressions. The most important is their beastman or Spirit Shape- nothing more than what they are as an idea- that can enter the Wyld freely. Many Lunars prefer to wear it in Creation than their human shape. Through the Sacred Hunt and the use of Knacks they learn to express themselves in different ways. A Lunar can do this at any time due to the Wyld Essence in their Exaltation that makes their body a small Wyld zone, but their true potential is only revealed once they enter the Wyld, or use their powers against those within it. For instance in  normal circumstances the Lunars' Excellencies are far weaker than the Solars', more akin to the Dragon-blooded except more flexible. Since many Fair Folk powers work in conflict with a being's Attribute + Essence however Lunar Excellencies are ideal.
   "The first thing to understant when creating a raksha character is to understand that everything about the character is a deception engineered wo facilitate an interaction between and shaped being of Creation and and an entity so far removed from Creation as to be utterly beyond mortal comprehension." In the first part Lunars must be the opposite. They must open themselves up and be so honest that their intentions can exist in and of themselves. In the second they have to so the same. Although Lunars cannot become the same unformed masses that dwell within the Wyld they are able enough to attune with this realm that they are able to become like a part of one. Although the Fair Folk would be able to tell the difference a Lunar can exist within the Wyld (with enough practise) as easily as an Unshaped Fair Folk' Emanation. The most powerful and skilled Lunars are able of venturing into Pure Chaos.
   Magical materials make for more potent stuff for creating in the Wyld. By far the best for this purpose is moonsilver.

Enlightenment of Solar Understanding

    In contradiction of divine law, the Creation Ruling Mandate and conventional metaphysics, R'yuk it seems can actually learn Solar Charms.

   Believing to have unlocked the Unconquered Sun's creation of the Exaltations or the Primordials' creation of the gods, this site is devoted to the creation of spiritual beings. Facilities for both creating the art from hypotheses and practising it are here.
   At the centre of the manse is a forging chamber. Where the hearthstone should be is the circle where the demon is bound during artefact creation.

   Did he manage to outlive himself by creating his artefact? Perhaps R'yuk was part of an attempt to make himself immortal.

   Sorcery's not meant to be easy to learn. If you want something easy to learn, learn thaumaturgy.

   Perhaps he was attempting something as noble as trying to escape the Great Curse.
   The Exaltation chose him to complete Amarec's work.
   what if Amarec completed his experiment but the components ceased to be conscious when he was killed. His abstract notes, made only to make sense to himself didn't reveal the true nature of his work and the artefacts were buried with him. He completed R'yuk last to be his greatest achievement and manifestation of his Primary Virtue (which was conviction.)
   Now his Exaltation has returned in the form of a hedonistic Nexus libertine. Perhaps four different beings were used in his creations, a god, a demon, a ghost and a raksha. Is this the only manse he made or the last?
   They have lain dormant till now. The Sidereal hit squad wouldn't have been able to understand what was written in the book because it was in an inhuman language and a set of Solar Circle Spells. Such an unknown language wouldn't just be an unknown set of letters but an entirely different way of thinking.

Damage, expanded dice roll system

    Roll 1D per Dexterity + bonus melee + accuracy

   DV difficulty number parry DV when unarmed is halved against armed opponents
   Injury roll 1D per Strength + damage (weapon + attack bonus successes)

    Existing Excellencies would have to be revised since Attributes and Abilities are more separated.
    Or you could switch everything around and use the Ability as their base dice pool so if they had no points in an Ability they would be unable to make a roll. Attributes would power Ability rolls so they would need high Attributes to have a hope of the roll succeeding more like a traditional skill roll (see Warhammer Quest.)
   Some weapons could ass pre soak successes to the damage roll.
   What if you balanced skill and power by requiring them to make a certain number of successes at a certain difficulty (number) rating.
   Dice poll for injury roll- net successes on attack roll (including basic success) that way a glancing blow wouldn't be fatal.
   What if you roll one trait in dice (possibly with a bonus against a difficulty) and add another trait to the number of successes.
   With 1D per trait with a bonus of another trait you would have to have high ratings in both of them to succeed. Put weapon strength and armour soak into pure numbers, this will eliminate rolling outrageous numbers of dice.
   vs DV need high dice roll and lots of successes to land a good blow.
   I personally prefer rolling number of dice equal to an ability and adding an attribute so if someone has no knowledge or skill they can't succeed. Although this wouldn't work on more intuitive abilities.
   I also like my earlier idea of basing the damage dice pool on strength and adding weapon damage to each dice result. However basing the number of injury dice on the number of attack successes is far more realistic since it determines the severity of the blow by how well it was struck. I also like adding one trait to the dice results with the number of dice based on another trait so a character will have to have high levels in both of them in order to be competent. The only problem I have is that strength and damage will have to be combined and added to each dice which seems a bit impersonal and doesn't put enough emphasis on strength. Exalted has a very streamlined system for dice rolls where you basically just add more dice. That reduces complecations but causes problems with weapons that have very high damage like a Heavy Implosion Bow which has damage of 50 or 60. The two separate elements of damage are severity and probability on injury. How well the blow was placed is the first component of severity which is why the damage pool is based on it. If you attack someone with a Grand Grimscythe and only score a glancing blow it will hardly do a thing. The character's strength and the damage of the weapon determine probability of injury but the size of the weapon is a secondary feature of severity as well. Attack someone with a small knife and the amount of physical injury you can do will always be limited. You could hit them in the neck or something but the actual severity of the injury is limited by weapon size as well as attack placement.

Exalted 117

    A force of elite, superhuman warriors in powerful armoured suits travel Creation desperately fighting against enemies that threaten to destroy humanity. Featuring full scale Yozi invasions and an ancient zombie plague that could destroy life in Creation: there's never been a better time for heroes.

    Science is comparable to Thaumaturgy. It involves using materials in a predictable, formulaic way. A lot of science fiction involves use of some extremely powerful energy source. Those are hearthstones. Iron Man had an arc reactor. Power armour has hearthstone sockets

Love Exposure

    When I saw the trailers for this it looked like a zany hero fantasy and stereotypical Japanese perv movie. But like Death Note it turned out to be very different from my expectations. This is the longest movie I've ever seen but I wasn't thinking about time at all, even though I stayed up until dawn.
   It's not a matter of the plot moving slowly. This is simply a very long story. It slowly takes a turn into a nightmarish land where I wished someone would just come in and off some of the characters or there would be a sudden change and a happy ending. But it keeps getting darker and harder to watch until I wished I could watch something as simple as Audition. But this is far more disturbing. Like some other films that delve into depths of genuine severity it's uncomfortable to sit through the later part of the film but it doesn't have the amorality that really turns me off those movies. A dilemma of writing a film review is you have to describe the film while saying as little as possible about what actually happens.
   The earlier part of the film is comic in a way that's rather disarming but doesn't jar abruptly with the later part. It's far removed from the sort of Japanese extreme cinema you'd seen from ten years ago. It's not quite so overpoweringly cinematic despite the frequent use of classical music. In aesthetic it's more similar to Death Note.
   This is quite a hard film to write about. It doesn't have the sort of definition that earlier Japanese films do and yet I can sense something that's waiting to come out. A bit like when I watched Jin Roh it would only really hit me the morning after. It's definitely absorbing and I'd recommend it to anyone, especially J film fans like me. There is a bit of blood in it (these things are relative) but it doesn't have the deliberate gore of some other extreme films. Mitsushima Hikari (Sayu) has a leading role in this film.
   Considering how hard this film is it's difficult to actually like it, but if you can watch all of it it's not an experience you should miss.

    Solars use Essence to supplement their powers directly such as actually sensing with Essence to perform Heightened Sense Method. Lunars use Essence to improve their powers themselves, working more indirectly.
   They should put more emphasis on Luna and less on Gaia in the Lunar Exalted.
   Does sorcery mean sending your Essence into Creation? Sorcerers actually move their Essence outside their bodies to connect with Terrestrial or Celestial power.

   Solars and Lunars should be opposite sides of the same coin. Lunars don't serve the Solars, it's against their nature and that of Luna, but they do make a matching pair.
   What if sorcery is extending your Essence, not into an ability but into the world. Lunars find this a particularly demanding discipline since their Charms and Knacks are based on inward focus. To many Solars it's a natural extension of their Charms which are about affecting the world around them. However it's difficult for them too since expending Essence in the world is very different to moving your Essence outside your body.
   (Terrestrial Projection) Terrestrials, being bound to Creation through their ties to the Elemental Dragons and being of limited skill are unable to transcend the limits of Creation with their consciousness. (Astral Projection) The Lunars and Sidereals, as children of the Incarnae are able to channel Celestial Essence.
   It takes an immense amount of practise and intense spiritual control to be able to extend their Essence outside their body and then connect with the Essence of the world. (Divine Projection) Only the Solars have been given the gift of connecting with the gods themselves. The Terrestrial Exalted can channel the Essence of the world the Elemental Dragons were born from, the Celestial Exalted can channel the Essence of the face of the Heavens, the Solars can connect with the power of the gods and command Creation as the Unconquered Sun once did.

    I got this idea when reading about the Everqueen in Caledor  (p. 305) when it talks about her being outside her body connected to it by a slender thread when casting a spell.

    If mankind lived in barbarism under the Dragon Kings (skip the r from Dragon) then under the guidance of the Unconquered Sun the Solars civilised mankind. The Twilights didn't just create great Wonders at the height of the Fist Age they were the first to teach people writing. The Legend of Sigmar would offer a close parallel to a living god bringing civilisation to man.
   300 mortals chosen by the king of the gods to bear his power and rest their race from the grip of the Primordials while the gods sought to do the same.
   Mankind had never fought before so needed people to instruct them in how to fight and lead them in battle. Creation was great and messengers were needed to travel from one side to the other in great haste.
   The Exalted had one massive advantage on their side: surprise. The Primordials never thought the gods would do anything so bold as attempt their complete overthrow.

Nephwracks

    "The creator of the Shadowcrafting path, now a chattering invalid, maintains during brief moments of lucidity that strange shadow entities wait in every darkened corner. Certainly the shades conjured by this path give credence to such notions, but the Kindred in question asserts that these beings devour light and feed upon the very essences of those who would dare truck with them."

-Clanbook Tremere 

   What if these beings are Nephwracks, beings so devoted to the Neverborn or the Labyrinth that they have transformed into something like them like a ghostly apotheosis. They have gained the power to locally control the Labyrinth. Plasmics, creatures from the very stuff of the Labyrinth sometimes make their way into the Underworld.

   Are ghosts imprisoned in soulsteel or are they sacrificed to it to create something that is like Oblivion?

   What if Whispers does more than just giving a psychic connection to the Neverborn. It actually changes people. The character can hear the psychic screaming of the Neverborn as if they were in the Labyrinth or at the tombs of the Neverborn.

Eclipse Caste

    Just as the Twilight Caste are driven by a sateless hunger for knowledge the Eclipse Caste are moved by inspiration and wonderlust.
   Of the Solar Exalted Eclipse Caste are the most 'of the moment.'

   Obvious out of Caste abilities- Performance, Survival, Craft (Air)

   Character Example- Indiana Jones

   From a subversive, poetic libertine to a high court artist in residence.
Backgrounds- smuggler, merchant prince, bandit scavenger lord, intrepid explorer

   By trading they learned the ways of foreign countries and sampled all the experiences the world had to offer.

   Unusual character example- Alexander the Great
   War- the sharp ended cousin of trade. Another way to experience what the morld has to offer, but much more forcefully.

    It's this emphasis on fundamental expression, rather than expression through a particular medium which is the cause of the Lunars' ability to enter and become part of the Wyld because they are literally able to express themselves; and the reason their powers are based on attributes. They are unrestrained by the notion of using a framework. That's what attracts a Lunar Exaltation to a host.

    Lunar scholars depend on intelligence not knowledge. Their capabilities are intuitive rather than deliberate. While their Abilities have little bearing on their potential (which is why they are not included in their Excellencies) what they learn from one situation they may not be able to apply to another, this is not of consequence to them since it's their underlying intelligence that's the font of their ideas, lacking Abilities is not a handicap to them. Only martial arts of all disciplines requires such refined training to learn.
   To put it simply Twilight skills are based on what they know. Moonshadow Caste skills are based on what they think. This did make them inferior to the Solars in terms of raw power but they focussed on a different area.
   Of course Twilights think too, their power comes from thinking about something and they're exceptional at it. The Moonshadows' power wasn't that they were the best in any field but that they can use their minds in any way they please. Luna didn't create her champions to compete with the Solars. She made them to do things the Solars couldn't.
   *Moonshadow is my name for the No Moon Caste.

    Does soulsteel contain the screams of the Neverborn or something from Oblivion or the Labyrinth rather than using the Labyrinth ore to trap ghosts?

Daiklave of Conquest

    The voice of the Unconquered Sun is captured in this blade. Everyone within a mile can hear a triumphal hymn of battle. Allies fight with greater vigour and are inspired by an almost unshakable belief in victory, enemies hear a terrifying anthem filling them with dread that sings of their imminent defeat.
    No one who follows the bearer of this sword will abandon them or flee from battle believing their foe cannot be defeated.

Spear to Dart Strength

    Lunars use bows to hit their enemies from afar not because they need them but because it's more convenient to do so. If foes cower beyond their easy reach, the Chosen of Luna can simply extend their reach to strike down the cowards who hide from them.
   Any object they can hold up can be used as a thrown weapon with a range of Strength x 5 yards and no inherent penalty to the attack roll for doing do. Any weapon that's designed specifically to be thrown (or any object light enough) has a range of Strength x 50 yards. Note, this Charm does not work with weapon's like slings since it's the rock that's used as a projectile, or other objects that are too light to be actually thrown like needles. It's a Charm for heroic warriors that allows them to hurl weapons far beyond the distances others are capable of like Leonidas' spear cast in 300. It's quite a good a example of Exalted combat that film, combining supernatural foes with comic book dramatics

Manual of Exalted Power: The Abyssals

    Looking at some of the reviews on Amazon.com I need to make the following points. Firstly I didn't find the colour of the book a problem when making out the words. Secondly this is not poorly organised. I don't know why one of the buyers said this, they exaggerated the number of Mirror Charms.
   This was one of the few books I originally intended to buy to let me develop some characters I'd thought of after buying the main rule book. The short section in the core rulebook was promising. Unfortunately with a lot of Exalted publications they show more potential and realisation. From what I've read so far the Manual of Exalted Power series is the ultimate example of this.
   For one thing I was expecting the characters to be death knights. In this book they are unquestionably Abyssal Exalted. In the rulebook it said some Abyssals are taken to the Mouth of Oblivion, but in The Abyssals it's a part of each Exalted's education and a part of becoming a death knight. I was expecting a more deathly, morbid edge to their powers and an association to Oblivion and even a direct association to the Deathlords to be more optional. The character's relationship with the Deathlords is one of the most troubling things about their conceptualisation of Abyssals. I can't even remember if I thought one of the Deathlords was responsible for Exalting the Ghostwalker when I first thought of her (probably) but they spell everything out in chapter and verse that gives you little room for your own ideas. Much worse if the grip the Deathlords and the Neverborn have over the characters. Each Abyssal Exaltation, when not inhabiting a body is contained in a object called a Monstrance of Celestial Portion (once amusing misunderstood by a god as a Monstrous Centennial Partition) and whoever has control over this artefact has control over the Abyssal whose Exaltation it belongs to, giving the Deathlords control over the character allowing them to punish them at will. On a more understandable note the characters build up Resonance (a trait they possess since they are relieved of the Great Curse) which build up by performing benevolent actions. This was a good idea when I read about it in a book review but I think it was mishandled, suggesting they would gain resonance for even the smallest good act. In the review that was part of it but it was more along the lines of doing things that were unfitting for the living dead.
   The thing I disliked most about it was their dictatorial approach to character creation. Games exist to serve the players not force them to do things. The character's motivation has to be to do with destroying something. Also the player has to chose between being a 'slave or fugitive' the character is either a slave to their Deathlord and the Neverborn or is running away from them. Frankly it's frustrating and bad story writing and just turns me off the book and their perception of the Abyssals completely. Another annoying fact that also comes up in the Underworld is a failure to explain where the lines of power are between being in the service of the Neverborn and being in the service of Oblivion. The book has a very intolerant, and sometimes intolerable, overbearing and fatalistic tone. It also is printed in black and white. The main rulebook was in technicolour to great effect and that wasn't too expensive. Considering the importance of the supplement series about the Exalted at least these should be as well. This book in particular is screaming to be printed in colour with dripping blood emblems in the background. Also the writers didn't channel one obvious influence for the Neverborn and that is the work of H. P. Lovecraft. There are major parallels between Call of Cthuhu especially and the Neverborn but they totally fail to use them. Also some ideas that have inspired me greatly are the Path of Shadowcrafting, a Thaumaturgical Path from Clanbook Tremere (p. 53-56.) It is brilliantly described and would inspire anyone with a penchant for Oblivion. The original film version of Ring is also another big one. With it's sinister Lovecraftian angle where the sea almost takes on the status of a character, it's otherworldliness of Shizuko and the sheer, deep, ubiquitous blackness (watch it at night on a cathode ray TV to see what I really mean) and this should get you thinking.
   Another disappointment was the technology associated with the Abyssals. I was looking forward a great deal to a description of how they made soulsteel instead all there is is one rather limp Craft Charm. There's a chapter on 'Necrotech' unfortunately all is amounts to is stitching pieces of bodies back together, adding some metal components if you want and casting a Necromancy spell to animate your creation. It does have a full set of rules, but completely lacks vision. There was no juicy mixing of life and death in obscene and blasphemous ways. Herbert West- Reanimator is a far more imaginative alternative for what they could have used in Necrotech. Chapter five if especially good with a gory description of a 'necrotech' laboratory. Another obvious source of inspiration was Dr. Logan's lab in Day of the Dead. For my creation of Black Magitech I was initially inspired by the mentioning of 'soul capacitors' in The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross.
   This book does do some things right. The Charm section in general is good (that God they got that bit right) taking the chance to use juicy phrases like 'Abyssal surgeons can quickly determine whether a particular patient will recover from her ailment or belongs in the flesh vats with the rest of the raw materials.' The Martial Arts section at the end of the chapter was the most interesting for me covering Dark Messiah Style and the extraordinary Hungry Ghost Style. However I don't think they really hit Dark Messiah Style on the head, making it about inflicting malice and cruelty (good) but I didn't like the wording and it made it sound more like a martial art for bullies rather than something that could be developed into something altogether more sinister. In my mind Abyssal Charm should be more associated with death, but Dark Messiah Style is truly what the Abyssals are all about, not just killing but destroying. If you want to get the idea just listen to Come to Daddy.
   Altogether this book didn't live up to my expectations. They try to dictate what the Abyssals are to the players saying 'you have to do this' and don't leave enough to choice. It feels a bit too much in some ways like Vampire which Exalted is really the polar opposite of.
   As a final note it does contain an number of new Solar Charms which players might want to check out.

Scroll of Kings

    World at War

   This book provides an unusual combination of an in depth and comprehensive guide to all major civilisations in Creation. Each chapter is a description of one of the directions of Creation finishing with the Realm with details on all aspects of how the cultures in that direction fight, what problems they face and examples of their military units. They also include to predominant directional military gods and detailed rules for the complications of fighting in each direction. Unfortunately they don't really go to town on naval warfare, I was expecting something different since it's such an unusual arena of conflict and rules for fighting with vehicles are included in Wonders of the Lost Age rather than in this book. This is an important point since there's a long list of conventional vehicles in the back of Scroll of Kings as well as an armoury of new equipment including artillery.
   Covering the entirety of Creation (including the supernatural creatures that live within it such as the Lintha and Black Fleet Spectre Commandos ("Deeeaaathhhhh") who are catapulted into battle) keep this book interesting and you can base the army of any ally of foe you're likely to meet on what is in here. Smaller, more esoteric cultures are covered in the Compass of Terrestrial Directions series.

Scroll of the Monk

    Guide to Exalted Martial Arts

   This is one of my favourite books from the Exalted series. It starts off with a description of the 'Martial Arts World,' the subculture of martial arts practitioners and how it differs from other fighting arts. There's also a treatise on the three different levels of martial arts styles, how the Exalted and other supernaturals relate to them, and how mortals can learn supernatural martial arts through Essence enlightenment from esoteric practices, dangerous artefacts, or most intriguing for my character the supernatural drug Celestial Cocaine.
   The main part of the book is a description of a plethora of styles, one chapter on Terrestrial martial arts, one of Celestial and one on Sidereal. The Terrestrial styles although unusual have an air of insubstantiability about them. I personally think they should be the opposite, very direct and solid. The Celestial Martial arts are great, especially Silver Voiced Nightingale Style, created by a Lunar with a very unmartial Spirit Shape who learned to use her voice as a weapon; the deadly Mantis Style, esoteric Righteous Devil Style that solely uses flame weapons and the Abyssal Laughing Wounds Style (which partly inspired my Denied And Forsaken Widow Style.)
   The Sidereal Styles go beyond conventional notions of Martial Arts. The first, Border of Kaleidoscopic Logic Style that starts the chapter isn't representative of all Sidereal Styles, the write ups are very long and it starts at Essence 6 Charms going all the way up to Martial Arts and Essence 8. The Charms of this style are quite disturbing to read, it attacks people's perception of identity rather than attacking them physically. The other styles are somewhat more ordinary but are still exotic. This chapter is doubly important since not only are Sidereals unable (according to Dreams of the First Age) to develop Sidereal Charms with an Essence above five, it provides a valuable guide to people who want to develop high Essence Charms.
   At the end is an appendix of new martial arts weapons and artefacts versions, including ones for weapons in the main rule book. I'd definitely recommend this as a book for storytellers as it can open you eyes to an important an exciting aspect of Exalted that you may not have considered before. It also gives storytellers and players plenty of reference for developing their own martial arts styles.

Call of Exalted

    I thought a while ago that Exalted would work best when given an angle, combined with another idea to make it into what the storyteller wants it to be. This resulted in my background for the character the Ghostwalker, and many of my ideas about the Neverborn and the Underworld.
   This game style is a combination of Exalted and not surprisingly the Cthulhu Mythos, including the video and roleplaying games based on it.

   Each player starts with a number of Sanity Points. Having high Permanent Willpower reduces the chance of losing Sanity. As a character's Sanity approaches zero they become increasingly disturbed. When their Sanity reaches zero they become completely mad and lose all Permanent Willpower and gain a derangement. The higher their Willpower was at the time of losing their Sanity the more severe the derangement is.
   There are two possible ways of resolving Sanity loss. Either use the Exalted system of using the character's Willpower as difficulty or a penalty. This is more flexible, for instance you can use Vitues to add temporarily to the character's Willpower but also carries possibility of greater Sanity from especially large threats. It's a more predictable system since low level threats could be ignored by someone with reasonable Willpower. Another system is based on Vampire where the character's Willpower is the minimum number required for a success. This makes a character more resistant to greater Sanity loss but still means they could be affected by minor threats. Another system is where like in Call of Cthulhu each threat has a dice eg. D3, D6, D8 etc. where you could add a fixed modifier eg. +1, and if they score higher than the character's Willpower the difference is the Sanity loss. You may have pre or post roll modifiers where a post roll modifier only applies if the initial roll succeeds. A similar system could be used as an alternative method of damage resolution. Eg. damage 2D6 + 4
   If they suffer further Sanity loss they continue to experience the effect of mental dying health levels. Use the difficulty of the character's highest (their primary) Virtue for difficulty of Sanity loss rolls. Each loss of Sanity in this state inflicts loss of a 'phantom' health level and a -1 internal penalty on all of the character's dice rolls. The madness is now eating away at their psyche. When they lose a number of health levels equal to their highest Virtue their mind is irrevocably destroyed causing pathological suicidal behaviour (killing themselves with the nearest thing possible) or homicidal mania that will inevitably result in death. Only potent mind altering Charms can retore (or more disturbingly reduce) a character's mind when they are losing mental health levels or their mind has been lost forever.
   Abyssals can inflict a similar direct effect on someone's psyche with the Charm Chakra Violating Blow. The difficulty to lose their last mental health level is their Virtue Rating plus all the levels lost so far. This is the difficulty of undoing the last core element of someone's psyche.

You're off the Fucking Chain

    Wonders of the Lost Age

   This book is for people who want Exalted gone mad. It's a category by category description of all the greatest things from the First Age. Some of the other Exalted supplements (ironically the ones about the actual Exalted) I found disappointing but not this. In it are finally a comprehensive description of the cryptically mentioned Warstriders and a short but brilliant chapter (starting with my favourite Exalted comic strip ever) about First Age Essence weapon such as the fabulously named Implosion Bows. Add a bucket full of megalomania for an 'All Form The Head' type game and you have the ammunition to go completely bezerk. Although that's just my ego running away with me, it does have a huge amount of the quirky exotica that makes Exalted so interesting. Including descriptions of the Eight Gifts of Celestial Grace including a full write up of the Five Metal Shrike (on the cover of the Compass of Terrestrial Directions: The South.) A great book that an Exalted fan could read purely for entertainment.

Exalted Second Edition

    A major difference between Exalted and other fantasy works is it's created completely apart from any Tolkienian influence. Many other fantasy writers try to create a setting using mainly their own imagination and they all seem the same. Exalted is a rare creation of a fantasy universe that has genuine scope as well as bringing a new set of influences that make it unique. It's a rare example of truly innovative fantasy.

    What greater Knack could there be than the potential to change into any shape at will? The Exalted is marked with the secret Primordial Word for Luna. By activating this Knack they can transform their whole being into sentience and moonsilver.
   This Knack allows the Lunar to maintain a physical form, which is basically made out of Wyld Essence, while in the Wyld. In this shape they can hunt through the Wyld and engage in physical combat while within it. Pure moonsilver Warstriders can also accomplish this.
   Those who are individual and mindful enough to accept them are given Lunar Exaltation. They are given apparently limitless power to make themselves anything they desire. Their natural realm is the Wyld and it's their task to endlessly hunt it for Fair Folk who threaten Creation as Luna did before them.
   A full carapace of moonsilver can allow a warrior to maintain a physical form of sorts in the Wyld rather than having to transmute themselves into an abstract notion as the Lunars are capable of doing (turning their own identity into an abstract notion) to exist within the Wyld without their physical form being ruined. Maybe this is the true significance of their Spirit Shape. Ghosts, gods and demons can exist as Essence and naturally belong in other dimensions. Lunars can do the same thing. Their Spirit Shape is a Wyld Essence pattern formed expressing their own identity by the transmuting power of the Lunar Essence within them. They can exist in Creation in this form but naturally belong in the Wyld in it. It can exist as a coherent identity within the Wyld. The only thing other than a moonsilver form that can do so.

    Did the Fair Folk somehow overcome or deactivate the Elemental Poles and then pass into the Circle of Earth, the main fortress at the heart of Creation and then were driven back before they could overcome that as well? Were the Poles diminished or did the Scarlet Empress find some way to restore them when she asserted her rule over Creation. Does an elemental dragon have to be at one of the Poles to assure it's stability?
   Where a element is strong it attracts Essence.
    Essence effects each element differently. It follows water to flow in rivers. It spreads from the Pole of Wood and where it spreads forests grow.

   The raging heat of the Pole of Fire is enough to bake Creation dry for a thousand miles in every direction.
   The heat of the Pole of the South and the cold of the Pole of the North are impossible for anyone to survive but are invigorating to the elemental dragons that lived there.
   The contrived nature of the Immaculate Order reflects the approach to writing the game as a whole. Instead of being a mystic order devoted to worshipping the elemental dragons who are the forefathers of the Terrestrial Exalted whose disappearance in a forgotten age has been surrounded by myth, they are deliberately manipulated tools living by the contrived ideology of a third party as is so often the case in Exalted for example the Angry Ghosts. There just aren't any real conspiracies. Perhaps they believe, understandably if incorrectly, unknowing of the Primordials, that it was the Elemental Dragons who created Creation and after their work was complete and they made the Terrestrial Exalted to follow in their footsteps, ascended to Heaven. They pieced together from scattered bits of lore that the Elemental dragons look down on them and select members of their bloodline worthy to be Exalted. After correct conduct during their lives their soul becomes one of the Dragon Blooded and then they finally go to Heaven to join the Elemental Dragons. The world has long since forgotten the Celestial Exalted. The Solar Exaltations imprisoned, the Sidereal Exalted self occulted and the Lunar Exalted driven out of Creation entirely and forced to spend one and half thousand years of exile in the Wyld battling against the Fair Folk as the Primordials once did.
   All that remains are monuments whose purpose has long been lost and tales of the end of the First Age about the hideous cruelty of demons the Elemental Dragons fought against.
   Now everything has been turned upside down. The Sidereals' desperate gambit of removing the Celestial Exalted from Creation forever lest they destroy it and the dragon blooded rule in their stead has failed. The Scarlet Empress has disappeared and the one ruling force across Creation removed the rule of the Terrestrial Exalted seems ready to collapse. The Sidereals themselves having watched Creation from Heaven and only carefully under false identities to direct Wyld Hunts to remove wayward Celestial Exalted are forced to take a more active hand and return to Creation once more. Now that the empire of the dragon blooded is no longer fit to contain them the Lunars can now return to Creation and end their imprisonment outside reality. The Solar Exaltations spill out across Creation remaking heroes the world has not seen for millenia.
   The Sidereals created the Immaculate Order as an ideological bastion to prevent anyone from supporting the Celestial Exalted again. The only remnants of memory of the Celestial Exalted are the Anathema, demonic beings who the Elemental Dragons battled against as they tried to destroy everything the dragons created.

Essence Above 10

    10 is the limit for Exaltation because that's the highest anyone can have while containing their Essence in a single soul. As powerful as they were there's no known record of the Exalted ever creating new ones. Only the Primordials have greater Essence, fighting these titanic beings was an act of heroism eve for fully developed Solars and their allies. maybe some truly mad Solars, driven mad by megalomania and the ability to do anything they desired attempted to raise themselves to the level of the world's creators, elevating them above even the Unconquered Sun by experimenting on themselves. If such things took place there's no known evidence of them succeeding. But that might not mean they didn't try. Their abilities were exceeded only by their own ego.
   Perhaps this was the purpose Amarec had when creating R'yuk, to create another soul for himself and thus be able to increase his Essence even further. Of course according to existing logic on the nature of the Primordials he would have to create ten more, which maybe he planned to do. His notes on his experiment were extremely vague about his actual purpose so any thought on the subject is a matter of speculation. A similarity with Horcruxes enters here about keeping parts of yourself in objects. Maybe on his journey to Malfeas he really did learn the secret of the Primordial's existence, or at least the relationship of demon princes to their master and then discovered a way of reproducing it. If this was the case, since he'd already begun he was on the path to becoming a being of such transcendent power. If so then the Sidereals were justified in assassinating him before his plan could be completed.

Insanity

    If the back of a person's hand is one twenty fifth of their height, which is four parts in a hundred and a Royal Warstrider was four hundred yards high then they could have three of four Very Large Concussive Essence Cannon on the back of their gauntlet. Or a self reloading Heavy Implosion Bow. Their main handheld weapons would be unique pieces of vast magitech. That's the scale of fighting units that have True Might, that are so powerful there's no point in resolving attacks normally. Perhaps you could simply use the unit's Might as its Magnitude. The reason I'm saying this is because of the vast size of Juggernaught (which I read somewhere) and Warstriders were designed to fight things like Behemoths, and probably Primordials. Maybe the Solars thought they were so powerful they would need devices like Royal Warstriders just to be able to fight them and survive. I have no idea exactly what their weapons should be like except that my previous First Age Wonder had a batter of 74 Medium Concussive Essence Cannon, basically a Napoleonic era warship transposed into Exalted. That's the kind of scale I'm thinking on. So imagine a weapon that would give a Warstrider the same power as a warship with about 100 Essence Cannon and more exotic weapons like a Storm Hammer. Each weapon would be individually crafted and be the only one in existence unless the idea caught on and someone copied it.
   The thing is Might covers mystical prowess that is already present in the character's traits. This sort of Might would be a streamlining trait so you could simply resolve very powerful attacks in a battle quickly, taking the place of normal damage resolution.

    For supersize weapons in a very crude sense you could simply resolve an attack with an appropriate Essence weapon like a Medium Concussive Essence Cannon or an Implosion Bow, just using the Warstrider's Might as Magnitude. Use a relative scale of weapon size between Warstrider weapons and normal ones. This could really speed up combat and represent larger attack area for artillery units and large weapons.
   Do warfare with a completely different set of rules like a game within a game.
   I wondered for a while how to resolve area attacks for units of small size namely artillery since working out area of effect in mass combat and war is a bit nit picky. Instead attacks that are more effective than their damage alone would suggest have Might which adds to the unit's Magnitude.

    The area outside the dragon lines are Wyld zones. During the First Age the Solars expanded Creation into these areas. They used jade obelisks to extend the reality making energies of the Elemental Poles, even creating new networks of dragon lines to stabilise the new land. The Primordials, although greater beings were never so concerned with Creation, they created it as a shield against the Wyld and never lived in it for a long time.
   Exalted is a very explicit game where it fits that things are explained. Warhammer is far more implicit where things are hinted at and mentioned but rarely explained. And yet there's so much they don't explain like what dragon lines are.

   Dragon lines mark the border of an Elemental Pole's zone of influence. The Earth Circle runs through all four of the other Elemental Poles. The Principle Dragon Lines of each other Elemental Pole runs through the Pole of Earth. They also create overlapping zones between eachother and with the Pole of Earth at the centre. Each Pole has an Inner Sanctum outside the areas overlapped by other Elemental Poles. In this areas the energy of the Pole is predominant. The overlapping fields of Essence form an impenetrable barrier against the Fair Folk.

    Phosphorescent creatures trapped in glass globes to create light. The creatures never die but need to be let out once in a while.
    Conical sea shells people use as ear pieces to hear eachother.

   They live in cave and make light when confined in dark spaces.

   Elementals bring life to their own element. They are remnants of the offspring of Gaia.
   The Elemental Poles themselves are the source of Essence for each element. They are the most material places in Creation and are bastions against the Wyld. Each one pushes the Wyld back from it in a vast swathe that defines Creation's borders. The further Creation spreads from them the easier it is for the Fair Folk to regain this new territory but they always come up against these fortresses that bar their progress. The Lunars loved living in this hinterland, beyond the heartland of Creation. When the power of the Elemental Poles dims the Wyld grows closer. Fortunately they've never managed to overthrow one of the Elemental Poles. To the Fair Folk they are unassailable obstacles; essential for their conquest of Creation yet unapproachable as the sources of natural Essence that upholds it. Even in their physical form as dreams there's only so far they can go. They can still make their way through with difficulty at the places between the Poles where their Elemental energy is weakest. So the Solars erected four vast fortresses at these places to guard them. When the Solars had vanished and Creation was decimated by the Contagion the Fair Folk stormed them and began to enter the heartland of Creation itself. Only the intervention of the Scarlet Empress activating the Realm Defence Grid drove them back.
   The area outside the influence of the Elemental Poles was once opened up by the Solar Exalted as a new land. This was the site of many of the greatest wonders of the First Age.

    Orichalcum- Light of Creation. Moonsilver Essence of the Wyld. What if soulsteel is the Essence of the Neverborn. It isn't just an ore found in the Labyrinth but part of the being of the Neverborn themselves. They have to travel to the very lowest level of the Labyrinth to find the material. They use part of the tombs of the Primordials that their dead consciousness is kept in and use it to imprison ghosts. Or they use jet black matter from the Labyrinth that part of the (unintelligible) sub division that at once imprisons the Primordials and shapes according to their dreams. Unlike Malfeas the Uderworld and the Labyrinth were created without design and by accident. In a way the Labyrinth appears to resemble the Wyld presumably changing form according to the Neverborns' thoughts. Their thoughts more than words or images echo through the Labyrinth, twisting it and bringing insanity. Maybe these black, semi tangible nightmares coalesce temporarily into eddies of insanity and malice. This is the Essence that soulsteelsmiths use.
   Perhaps the magical materials are actually made from Essence in some way. They are made from a specific type of Essence that relates to the Exalted who use it. In a way magical materials are similar to hearthstones. For instance jade is material brought about by the life giving effect of Elementals.

    Orcs are just one permutation of Wyld mutants. Wyld mutants don't have to be directly influenced by an Elemental Pole. Play around with things more.
   I'm not saying actually make Orcs. The thing I love about Exalted the most is that it's completely different to other fantasy games and other fantasy settings. Apart from a few examples such as unicorns they stick to this rule.

Life of Creation

    Gaia created the Elemental Dragons who made life in their corner of Creation. All Terrestrial Exalted share a blood line from one of the Elemental Dragons and represent an aspect of them.

High Essence Charms

    I thought that Dreams of the First Age would have a comprehensive collection of genuine high Essence Charms for all Exalted, including maybe Abyssals. The scale of Charms with Essence 9 and 10 allow the Exalted to strive against the Primordials. These are the Charms they used in their defeat, the powers that led to their defeat and enforced the oaths they took that banished them Elsewhere and imprisoned them in Malfeas (Eclipse Caste.) This is the potential for greatness an Exaltation holds.
   Guide to the Camarilla has an encyclopaedic section on all of the major Disciplines and the Camarilla ones at levels 6 to 10. This is what they should do with Exalted when making a book about the First Age. Also they should have given it more history so you could set a game during any period of the First Age. From it's herioc beginnings around the War of the Primordials when the Solars are fighting to free humanity; to the true High First Age when they made Creation the awesome wonder that it was and everyone remembers the Age for; to the twilight of the First Age when the Exalted's long developed powers are at their greatest but their corruption throws a dark shadow over the world and although their magic and technology have reached a height never seen before they have become evil, scheming despots about to tear apart the world they once created. This is why the Sidereals took the drastic step of assassinating every one of the Solars and imprisoning their Essences for all time. I like the booklet that gives you a guide to Meru, it gives you a feel of the contemporary setting, but the First Age has such distinct parts it really should have covered all of them.
   I've been thinking too about the scale of history of Exalted. Although it shouldn't be overdone because the scale it's at gives it a level of immediacy and more gravity to individual actions, earth history and the Primordials give me other ideas. There's a major opportunity to use the stories of H. P. Lovecraft, especially Call of Cthulhu as an inspiration in Exalted. Earth history goes back aeons. I don't think that the history of Exalted should go back thousands of millions of years, but there's such a strong link between the elder races from Call of Cthulhu and other stories, and the Primordials that the writers really should have looked into. The Primordial Age sounds so much like an age of earth when being of vast power ruled or fought with eachother. I think it's something that should have been gone into in greater depth creating a truly primordial and arcane past.

    Dreams of Dead Gods, Labyrinth Circle Necromancy

The Animals That Grow In Five Places

    Terrestrial Exalted are Aspected after the animals that live in one of the five Elements. All Dragon-blooded have a totem creature that embodies one of the aspects of the Dragon they are descended from. When they start to spend peripheral Essence their anima, their totem creature, starts to manifest.
   Maybe being locked into beastman form is the effect of Lunars manifeesting their anima as exhibition of their powers reveals their true form. Their Spirit Shape is what they really are. Maybe they always are their Spirit Shape and what they appear to be is just an illusion. Their Spirit Shape is the shape of their spirit, their Essence.

    The Essence of Lunar is to be what you are not what you're made

    Less powerful artefacts are not made from a compound of a conventional material alloyed with a magical one but are a combination of the two with the magical material instilling it's power in the conventional one. Such 'conventional' artefacts follow my rules (for weapons) of a superior mundane item with a magical material bonus and powers according to it's artefact rating. Artefacts made from a solid magical material are much more rare though they were more common during the First Age, and far more powerful. With such artefacts anything seems possible.
   The scale of powers for an artefact made from a solid magical material are far greater than those made from a combination of a magical and a mortal substance. Use the characteristics in the end of Exalted for weapons and armour, but their individual powers dwarf these enhanced properties.
   Making these artefacts is considerably more difficult. They require far higher skill and a more sophisticated workshop. The ingredients they require are far more powerful and harder to obtain. Also magical materials themselves are rare and gathering enough to make an artefact entirely out of one is an impressive feat.
   Only the huge scale of Creation, abilities of the Celestial Exalted and the infrastructure they made allowed Wonders such as Warstriders (superior to Common Warstriders in the way pure artefacts are to common ones) to be made as anything by exclusive rarities.
   Noble Warstriders were so called because they were the first class of Warstriders to be made entirely from magical materials. Even then they were usually reserved for Celestial Exalted. Starmetal Noble Warstriders were unheard of.
    In lesser artefacts the magical material may be a piece of carefully cut jade in the guard of pommel of a sword or a talisman in a suit of armour. A hearthstone amulet should be just that, an amulet with special powers like Tullaris' Black Amulet. Only the most basic ones would just house a hearthstone and slightly increase the rate of Essence recovery.
   The description of making the Fellblade in the Skaven army book is a good example of artefact construction.

    Only solid material artefacts can contain the energy that the creation powers of a greater magical ingredient gives. No one would waste precious magical material on making a solid artefact just to use the powers of lesser esoteric ingredients. It's the ingredients themselves that give the artefact it's unique powers. The magical material can contain their energy and provide a bonus.

Eternal Torment Cage

    Abyssals use this to trap the man's soul inside his body so they can go on torturing him after he's dead. This is one of the spells valued by mortificers as the victim's soul doesn't pass while they're being tortured. Some fasten their victims with soulsteel nails while assembling their creations. Abyssals have shown such a mastery of torture that people's souls escaped only because there was no body left for the to inhabit.
    Some have so much disregard for the etiquette of respect for the dead that they've become notorious. Far from being frightened by an enemy's vengeful ghost they relish the chance of a victim coming back to haunt them. It gives them a chance to kill them all over again.

    Lunar Excellencies are less powerful because they are based on the base Attribute not Attribute + Skill. There's only so far you can go tring to channel Essence through sheer talent. Excellencies are not a strong point of Lunars. Although they do offer some unique advantages.

    If you look at the difference in experience needed to increase Essence between what the Solars and the Terrestrials and the difference in the size of their Essence Pools for instance Solars have Essence x 3 in their Personal Essence Pool, Terrestrials have Essence; Solars have Peripheral Essence of Essence x 7, Terrestrials have Essence x 4. That should give you an indication of the difference Essence to Essence between Celestial and Terrestrial Martial Arts Charms. Also Terrestrial Charms would require less Essence because Terrestrials have smaller Essence pools. So for Celestial Exalted they're more like tricks.

    Things transformed into Wyld energy by Lunar Charms appear as showers of silver stars.

    What if disciplines like physics and chemistry didn't exist. All 'science' was based on an understanding of Essence. In most Crafts it wouldn't be recognisable and as formal as Lore but would involve practical application of the same rules. This element is what makes magitech technological. Actual artefacts work purely on the way they channel Essence which requires knowledge of Occult.

    Magitech is less magical than artefacts and offers greater control over effecst but requires maintenance like ordinary equipment.

    I think artefacts should be defined by specific powers rather than by generic statistics. The Staff of Amarec has the characteristics of a Wrackstaff. Why? Because it's fitting for the powers it holds.

    Jade artefacts, armour in particular needn't be plain objects but could resemble creatures that live in the region of Creation where it's Elemental Pole is. I thought of the idea from the cover of The Sea Watch. The man's armour looked like a crab beastman. I thought why make jade as plain as just being elemental which makes it rather dull. Wavecleaver Daiklaves made from water jade that's turquoise and looks like shallow blue water are cool, but basing artefacts on living things would make them so much more interesting. This would go with ideas about making Lunars more orientated towards the Wyld rather than just animals, although Terrestrial Exalted wouldn't have the power to transform themselves, although they could call on an animal's characteristics. For example a crablike suit of water jade power armour would give them great strength and protection.
   Terrestrial Martial Arts also seemed very dull. I think they should be solid rather than boring. For instance they could include animal styles, or at least versions of animal styles but replicating the immediate traits of an animal such as reproducing it's movements. My version of Snake Style with fighting chains to mimic and snake's coils and tiger claws to mimic it's bite would be a good example. Celestial Styles are something deeper. Something about actually becoming like the subject of the style, not just physically but inside. It's not just about changing their bodies but their minds and Essences. In Sidereal Martial Arts instead of trying to change themselves into something, they try to absorb something into themselves.

    Other Exalted can learn the basic Charms of a Hero Style by mimicking the real Charms. The Hero Styles are actually martial arts Charms for that Exalt. Other Exalted can mimic the basic Charms as a Celestial Martial Art but the real Charms are Charms those Exalted make by channelling Essence through martial arts like another ability.

    Consuming the flesh and blood of the living by consuming their life force. Mastery of Dark Messiah Style allows them to consume their opponent's Essence itself. They can even consume someone's Exaltation as their opponent's soul is naked before their assault. Defeating the four chakras is like unlocking four keys.

Masters of Unreality

    Just as the Wyld is made of possibilities, it is a place where possibilities are very real, Lunars learn to extrapolate those possibilities in their own heads into the Wyld to change it. It is this characteristic that allows them to change their own form through their Lunar Essence, which is like a part of the Wyld within them. They have the same effect over moonsilver as well. They can make it into anything they want. For all their association with the Wyld the Lunars are the opposite of the Fair Folk. They are not an existential antithesis like iron is to them, but are fundamentally opposed to them.
   Solar Exalted- Lords of Creation
   Many Lunars prefer the Wyld to Creation as it is a place they can change to their own whim. However this can make them go insane and and become addicted to living in this ever changing Nether World or become dangerously isolated and unused to reality. Just as some Fair Folk become 'sane.' It's this ability to turn 'things' into abstractions that is the basis of their ability to combat the Fair Folk. They can reverse their physical forms and turn them back into the emotions and ideas they were in the Wyld. They can also learn to do the same to other things. As emotional intensity went into creating an object like a statue they can turn that object back into the emotions that created it and either hold those emotions inside them or release them in a psychic shockwave that floods the minds of everyone nearby. It's this ability to manipulate possibility although in the opposite way to the Fair Folk that lies at the root of all their Charms and gives them the ability to fight the Fair Folk in the way they do and is the reason they spend so much time in the Wyld where their powers are strongest. Just as the Fae can turn themselves as an intention into a physical form the Lunars can turn themselves as a physical form into an intention and so exist in the Wyld.
   Accomplished Lunars see the Wyld as a playground where they can make any dream come true.
   Some Lunars become experienced enough to extend their transformative powers into things they touch. Some can enlarge this effect into the surrounding area. Can moonsilver capture these intentions and turn them into powers for the Lunar to wield?

The Host

    Comedy horror isn't exactly my favourite genre, it's alluded to in some more mainstream horror films. Fortunately (largely because it's an Asian film I suspect) they avoid the usual bad jokes. It also doesn't have the mood of a film that doesn't take itself seriously that way. However it doesn't really make me laugh that much and at times gets unusually serious. You might recognise of the characters from Vengeance is Mine. I've never heard of this director before. I can't critisize anyone's acting and the director avoids making any real mistakes except not making the film involving enough. I think this is partly due to skipping parts of the story that leave you jilted for a couple of seconds. They miss out important scenes in the series of events. Unfortunately I couldn't take the ending that seriously, partly due to western film cliche, but I just never got into it that much.

Realm of Death

    It's impossible to enter the Labyrinth without feeling the tide of hate that emanates from the tomb Neverborn. Whether any will lies behind that hate is a mystery to wise men but those listening to it are too strong in their convictions to listen to reason.
   Simply entering the Labyrinth itself would be a sanity threatening experience. Many ghosts who enter it have already been infected with it's madness. The Labyrinth is a soliloquy, the last act of creation of the Neverborn. The Labyrinth may even be the inside of the Primordials' minds when they died, a psychic dimension flooded with hate. Spectral cults who worship the Neverborn, which is hardly a surprise since they were greater than the gods, have complex and often conflicting beliefs on the nature of the Neverborn. It's uncertain if sentience still lives in their tombs or if their minds spilled out into the Labyrinth. If so the Labyrinth is actually the minds of the Neverborn, which would be no surprise to those who've seen it's twisted, warping depths. Others contend that the constant ringing of hate, a scream you can feel with your body that almost invariably induces an overwhelming desire to kill, is only the voice of the Neverborn and their minds are far worse.
   However twisted these Spectres and Nephwracks are, the shadow of Oblivion gnaws at their minds and fills their hearts with terror. Only the recent advent of the Abyssals have given Oblivion champions. They wield the power of the blackest evil. A mindless horror that threatens to consume everything. They scare even the most fanatical and violent Nephwracks with displays of Oblivion's power. Some are content to use their morbid powers and live their unlives as death knights. Others feel there is something more to their existence and search for a deeper meaning to their lives now that they have escaped death. These are the ones who travel to the Labyrinth on a vision seeking quest.
   All the Deathlords would learn Labyrinth Circle Necromancy that's a given. Abyssals don't know Void Circle yet but have the potential to do so and that scares the living Fuck out of the Deathlords. A Spectre might learn Shadowlands Circle Necromancy. As bearers of shattered reflections of souls of the Neverborn the Deathlords, who are ghosts, can learn Labyrinth Circle Necromancy as the Celestial Exalted who created Necromancy and developed it learned from the Neverborn. But only the Abyssals, whose power comes from Oblivion itself can learn Void Circle Necromancy if they seek for it and gain Whispers of Oblivion.
   There may still be remnants of First Age Solars who created the first Void Circle spells. The nature of Chiaroscuro Nos Veresus' mysterious companion points to such a possibility, that at least he may have tried to do so.
   Simply being an Abyssal gives them access to the power to learn Shadowlands Circle Necromancy. Labyrinth Circle Necromancy requires the hatred of Whispers of the Neverborn. Void Circle Necromancy requires Whispers of Oblivion.

      How Much Does Black Exaltation Change Them?
   It depends on how much they allow it to. Oblivion inspires but it does not create. Some feel drawn to seek out the source of the dark power within them.

   Necromancy- power over death

   Do the Deathlords have unique powers from possessing the spectral remnants of the souls of the Neverborn. What allowed them to encorporate their ghostly souls in the first place? Was it because of a psychic resonance that they hated Creation as much as the Neverborn?

   I think it's important to distinguish between the power of the Neverborn and the power of Oblivion. That fact that Abyssals' powers and those of others beings like the Deathlords seemed to come from both without much distinction was a weakness of the rulebook. I like the way the Oblivion is portrayed more as an entity than as a force, like Mr. Shadow in The Fifth Element. The get the feeling that there's a malevolent intelligence lurking in there rather than it just being a black hole. The outright presence of sentience in the Neverborn annoys me though. It should have been made much more unclear whether they are dead or alive. Call of Cthulhu was an obvious potential source of inspiration for the Neverborn and possibly the Yozis but it's one the writers seemed to ignore. They could have created a realm of great msytery which would have been excellent to explore through but instead they chose to spell things out. The Neverborn are obviously not truly dead and I think it would have been far more interesting for the game if no one knew really if there were dead or not. All they have to go by are the Whispers that emanate from their tombs and the apparent miracles they cause.

Bitten

Rating: Red Stuff    

    I'm not much of a fan of vampire films, most of the time I think werewolf films are better (thank you Ginger.) Initially I liked this film although admittedly I've only seen the second half of it. The main character is played by Jay from Dogma. It's an underground vampire film rather than a night stalker 30 Days of Night film. Most of the time I quite enjoyed it, watching the relationship play out between 'Jay' and his vampire girlfriend in a way fans of Masquerade would approve of despite the occasionally coarse attitude and the propensity of the director to layer on music more than is useful. Unfortunately the director tries to turn the film into a comedy when the mood of most of it makes that totally wrong. The film has a feel that reminds me a lot of Ginger Snaps, albeit in a cruder setting, but the attempts at humour are too out of feel with that and at the end the director doesn't take the film seriously at all. Then end credits are full out out-takes that ruins what was left of the atmosphere. Jason's acting measures up but towards the end just doesn't carry emotion that would have made it a climax. It had elements of a really good horror film but it also had elements that ruined that. It could have been a vampire equivalent of Ginger Snaps, a remarkably similar feel and two people enjoying and wrestling with the effects of a supernatural condition but most of all let down by the director not approaching their material properly. I would love it if they did it right. To be fair maybe it wasn't the director's fault, they get a lot of pressure from other members of the production to do things a certain way but this is what they made it.

Legion

    I wondered what to do for a larger force. Either four or five square would form a larger unit of identical troops. With four they could themselves form into a larger square of forty by forty men. And they could form a triangle in the same way as hundreds. They could also deploy in squares at each corner of a formation. On the other hand five squares would give them reserves although they might be out of place in a battle in their own camp or another defensive situation.

   I thought of a model for a larger Legion structure based on a game I used to play in Age of Empires II called Chinese warfare. There are eight players in a land based game with a population limit of 150 or 200. This allows you to have truly vast armies and fight battles where the rules should support unit versus unit combat rather than man against man combat. My preferred infantry formation was based on a combined formation of 10 Elite Chu ko nu, 10 Pikemen and 10 Elite Skirmishers. This formed an anti all arms unit with troops capable of fighting against infantry, cavalry or archers. Added on were field artillery in the form of four or five heavy scorpions and light cavalry to prevent an enemy approaching the formation unnoticed and making a surprise attack. A unit of heavy cavalry would also have been useful to attack artillery who infantry are very vulnerable to. A similar structure could be used with a Realm Legion with three groups of squares, each a different troop type and several extra units like artillery and cavalry. Scouts should be placed on the corners of the formation to give them the greatest line of sight around the infantry. The scale of the game was so huge you could field several of these divisions. It would have been good if you could fight units against units in battles that size. The scouts are very important for giving the unit awareness.

Lost Artefacts

    At their height there were nearly one million Terrestrials. Their families had heirlooms of Jade. Now there are only ten thousand so what happened to all their artefacts? Many must have been swallowed up by the Wyld during the Great Contagion. Many more must have been buried with them (albeit primitively) to placate their ghosts during that time. Who knows what happened to the others. Devices leading to places where artefacts rest must be popular. The Dragon-Blooded of the Scarlet Empire must have unearthed many when rebuilding the new Realm to establish their power. No doubt hoards and scattered artefacts remain. In lost treasure chambers or places men fear to go for reasons they may no longer remember.

Sandglass

    Create a martial arts style that affects perception of time.

   People unknowingly gain comfort from the fact that their minds are fixed in the present. This Charm releases the mind from the present moment, indeed from their very existence and allows them to contemplate eternity. As an attack they must make a (_____) roll. To use this power on themselves they must meditate and make a (_____) roll. Success removes the character's mind from their own existence. They become unaware of everything that is happening at the present time, in fact they become unable to understand or perceive what the present is as only the endless is truly comprehensible to them. Sidereals use this Charm to consider the effect of elaborate and extremely long lasting alterations to the Loom of Fate.
   Anyone who knows this power who wishes to return the mind of someone they know to be affected by it reflexively spends a point of Willpower and must make an A roll at a difficulty of the attacker's Essence when the Charm was used.

Legion

    I thought for a long time about creating an organised military during the second age. My various attempts didn't create anything that would hold up creatively so I decided after finally hitting on a good idea to use the army of the Realm. The Realm Legions are directly descended from the army of the Old Realm and follow many of it's fundamental principles. The main reason for the overwhelming strength of the Realm Legions is their use of the accumulated knowledge of the First Age. Armies are still organised and trained as faithfully as possible according to First Age practices. Unlike the idea of the Realm which was revived in a diminished capacity 750 years after the end of the First Age, the Legions are descended from an unbroken line from the time of Solar warlords. Many of them gained more individualistic characters from the fractious era of the Shogunate when legions fought eachother.

   The Square
   This description of a Realm legion's basic tactical unit is from a scene in Hero. I was very impressed by the units of the Chin army standing in squares forming vast areas covered with troops. So I thought of basing the main tactical unit on a square formation with a square number rather than using a decimal system (like 500, then 250, then 125) or basing them on getting the most from the Magnitude table. Something like 15 across didn't really sound like enough so then I thought of twenty. Each unit of 400 men is divided into subunits of hundreds. The leader of the unit commands of the hundreds and thee heroes command the others; one of whom is a senior commander. Each hundred forms a square of ten by ten men. The great thing about this formation is that it can rearrange itself from a square to a line or column facing either direction very easily by moving the square hundreds like blocks. The back two squares can move sideways and then forwards to form a line. Or the right squares can move forwards or backwards and then left to form a column. And a column in one direction is a line 90 degrees in the other direction.
   Carrying on from my rules about mass combat, I'm not convinced about the rules for messangers in mass combat units. For one thing they aren't different enough to really be special characters. There should also be an optimisation of number of subunits for a size of parent unit. The advantages are if a square of shock troops confronted a captaincy from Harbourhead with 180 men they could split up into two units of two hundred and attack them from two direction with unit of equal Magnitude. If they were against a much smaller enemy they could split up into hundreds and surround them.
   Each hundred is divided into ten man units who are trained to fight in column beside other units and in ranks.
   This formation is extremely flexible and allows it to be reform very quickly. A unit this size could include a unit of skirmishers to combat enemy skirmishers and prevent them from being vulnerable to attack from a small band of light troops. Hand picked men, or one ten man unit from each hundred could carry a missile weapon such as a sling. Larger attacks would be countered by formations of missile troops. Missile troops would have different drills and different formations to shock troops (soldiers in the First Age and afterwards would have spent a long time drilling so they could changing formation as quickly as possible.) Another advantage of the square that missile troops would exploit is that it literally lets them form a square. Each side is one of the four hundreds of troops. Missile troops would probably spend most time of the battlefield formed into two ranks or another shallow line to allow them to shoot. The typical arrangement for a ten man unit is two lines of five so a unit of a hundred can have a frontage for fifty or twenty five men.

    My military genius knows no bounds. In addition to forming square, column and line, the square mix of ten and four based units also allows them to form triangle. Triangle formations may have been used to assault an enemy line. The number of men in each ten man unit allows them to form a triangle like the red balls in snooker. If the ten skirmishers detach the other nine units can form a group of interlocking triangles in ranks of one, three and five. All four hundred in a square can make interlocking triangles to form one huge triangular wedge with the skirmishers as a detached unit, or two units.

R'yuk kan

    R'yuk kan is a god of itself and as such has free will just as it's creator intended. He is motivated to serve his master but may choose not to do so. That he does is largely due to the fact that they are together and he offers the most opportunities for social interraction.
   His entire manse was raised as a study where he could live while he researched his project. He was working completely from scratch and and to work out the entire process himself. At the end of the year long procedure of making the staff he sacrificed a Third Circle Demon he kept in the boundary circle from Calibration to Calibration. Exactly one year since he started on the last night of Calibration, the most inauspicious time of the year, he completed his work at midnight and R'yuk came into being.
   He takes great pride in the fact that he is unique, the only god created intentionally since the fall of the Primordials. Some gods wonder whether the demon was actually destroyed during his creation or formed part of his psyche. It certainly would account for his twisted personality. But then it's designed who based R'yuk on himself was quite similar. His powers against demons would certainly account for destroying a demon during his creation. This may have been R'yuk first act.
   He also is effectively the god of deliberately created gods. His existence went unnoticed because he had no place in Fate when he was made. It was only when Sidereals stormed the manse they found what an abhorrent creation he'd made. His master was largely an unknown quantity among Exalted society and the creation of R'yuk had been kept absolutely secret. Not even his closest Dragon-blooded attendants had the faintest inkling of what he was doing. As a result the Sidereals assembled one of their most powerful groups to deal with him. As hand picked elders from among the most powerful members of the Bronze Faction they were horrified when they discovered what he'd done.
   Rather than destroying the manse and risk raising the ghost of an elder Solar who'd seen the culmination of his life's work destroyed, they sealed the manse turning it into a mortuary where he could rest in private with everything he created. His spirit soon passed away and the powerful defences round the manse have been impenetrable to grave robbers ever since.
    He used the supreme, specially focused, geomantic Solar Essence of the Manse the way a swordsmith would use the heat of a forge.
    It's uncertain since R'yuk possesses unique characteristics if he actually is a god or a new type of supernatural creature. Since he has no star in the Heavens some wonder if he can actually be killed. Maybe his creator succeeded more than anyone could have thought of and he cannot be killed, then he is truly immortal.
    Archive- they are unimaginably complicated writings written by someone who's understanding of Essence exceeds almost any living Exalted. As Creatures of Darkness are the Deathlords capable of learning Solar Circle Sorcery?
    His creation as a result of it's effect may contribute to his antithesis of demons. At the end of the ritual which lasted for five days Amarec slayed the demon by driving the orichalcum staff through it's chest. His creation was in a way synergistic with the slaying of the demon and it was the first thing he was aware of.
   R'yuk's name is written in emeralds, saphires and adamant on the staff in an apparently lost Primordial dialect prompting rumours that he travelled to Malfeas to learn the secret from the Yozis especially given his apparently anti demonic disposition. What did he plan to do with the staff once it was completed? Journey into Malfeas and conquer it for his own? Demons fear R'yuk's very name and quail at the sight of the staff.
   A completely alternative possibility is that R'yuk is the result of a failure. Maybe what Amarec was trying to do was create another Solar Exaltation for a being that would do his will as just as the Solars did for the Unconquered Sun, an ultimate insult and blasphemy in his eyes. To wield Solar Circle Sorcery is to wield the power of the Unconquered Sun himself. Using it to try to recreate his achievements for your own advancement is an unprecedented crime against the Celestial Incarnae. Perhaps he saw himself as equal in power to the Unconquered Sun after the Solars long development of power during the First Age and sought to finally confirm it by creating an Exaltation as the Unconquered Sun did. Perhaps that's why the spell 'failed' and created a twisted version of him. Whatever his intentions he didn't seem disappointed with the results and found R'yuk was an adequate companion despite his low Essence and inexperience.

Damage

    I thought of a different system for calculating damage while thinking about a Lunar Excellency that was based on the actual numbers of the dice rolled rather than the number of successes. The player rolls one dice for each point of strength they have. They add the weapon's damage to the number on each dice and the difficulty to score a success is their opponent's armour value. The defending player then makes a soak roll with their stamina at standard threshold of seven. Weapon's damage values would have to be re-evaluated and piercing damage would probably be removed from mortal weapons. Another change is that more solid weapons would have an Overwhelming Damage of one where they didn't before. In this system Overwhelming Damage adds to the attacker's strength when making a damage roll so large weapons will inflict more injury. Artefact weapons would massively increase the user's strength under present rules.

Elemental Pole of Air

    What if the Elemental Pole of Air is the sky, the Heavens that the faces of the Incarnae move through an infinite distance from Creation. A craft made of starmetal can travel the infinite distance to the stars and enter Yu-Shan.

30th April

    Magitech vehicles don't just go through matter, they go through Essence and use it to move themselves.
   Because they move through Essence the pilots would need to have Lore to understand the Essence flows to pilot them. Crews of magitech vehicles need to be able to read Essence flows in the landscape.

   Solar Circle Sorcery should be the power to forge the will of the Unconquered Sun himself. It's divine power in it's most mighty form.
   Each of the Celestial Exalted were taught the divine powers by their patrons. Solar Circle Sorcery is the will of the Unconquered Sun himself. Lunars leaned the masterful, perfect protean nature of Luna which allowed them to be anything they desired. The Five Maidens taught their Chosen the Sidereal Martial Arts which give them power over aspects of reality.

30th April

    Instead of designing a building with architecture they design it with magic. Rather than using physical paws of structure they channel Essence through sheer aesthetics and intent. During the First Age and Shogunate designing a building based on architecture was very vulgar for Exalted and many mortals. The Primordials designed buildings using a mastery of Essence that made building of a kind which haven't been seen since.