What is the level of technology in Exalted?

[Bulshock]

I know that the setting is primarily Bronze Age, and I'm not counting Essence fueled wonders, but when you break it down what exactly can they accomplish and do? The Haslanti have/had in previous editions primitive zeppelins using untethered hot air balloon technology, something that didn't happen in our world until the Renaissance. Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age also had clockwork with rather extensive mechanisms, the precursor to modern plumbing was used by both the Romans and Greeks, and the first toilet as we know them was made in the Early Bronze Age. I know it's going to vary from place to place, Creation is a big place after all, and that the Realm and Scavenger Lands are likely to have the highest levels of technology (other then the Haslanti Airships). Should most of what I'm talking about be considered lost technology of the First Age, much like many of those were in our own world eventually?

[Zelbinnean]

Generally speaking, the setting is a lot of bronze age aesthetics in an iron age technological era. Most weapons are bronze or steel.

The Realm is basically a lot like the Golden Ages of China meets Rome, technology wise, except triremes are still the premier warships everywhere. Indoor plumbing is probably pretty common in some large cities, but not others.

[Eurhetemec]

Generally speaking, the setting is a lot of bronze age aesthetics in an iron age technological era. Most weapons are bronze or steel.

The Realm is basically a lot like the Golden Ages of China meets Rome, technology wise, except triremes are still the premier warships everywhere. Indoor plumbing is probably pretty common in some large cities, but not others.

Galleys, i.e. trireme-style warships were arguably the premier coastal and riverine warship up until the 1600s or later in reality, I should note. It's just a really good design (not necessarily with three rows of oars like trireme, of course). Given the layout of Creation, and the naval power of the Empire, it's unsurprising that other warships are less developed, too, because there's little cause for much deep-sea warfare.

The level of sophistication in manufacturing of goods ranges up to late-medieval/early-renaissance in some areas, for sure, given stuff like articulated plate being "commonly available" in the Realm and greater cities (Nexus, Lookshy, etc.). Of course as you say it also ranges down into the Bronze age in some areas.

[Isator Levi]

I think it's fair to say that the level of technology in the game as a whole is one that evokes a sense of powerful, decadent, well-equipped empires being at the heart of many affairs, with everybody else being at a much less sophisticated and dense populations who largely have to work with what small numbers of low-scale artisans can make and what can be bought or stolen from the greater powers (occasionally while living in disproportionately well-developed cities that are left over from the previous ages). A bit of the relationship between pre-modern China and the surrounding steppe tribes and tribute kingdoms, a bit of the contrast between places like Aquilonia and places like Cimmeria in Conan, with some post-apocalyptic imagery of a ruling class bolstered by exclusive control of forgotten technology sprinkled on top.

[Childofthesun1]

Gibber gibber banana. That is to say, Creation does not follow real world technological innovation, does not closely map to an era of our civilization, and I think looking at it that way is kinda counterproductive. I mean you've got a world stuck in the, what, 2nd century using 15th century ships with 18th century firearms except those shoot fire because reasons, and there are mecha lying around from before the apocalypse. Creation is WEIRD.

I could be wrong, of course. I'm no historian.

[Totentanz]

Creation's technology level is completely artificial, largely based on the stories the world is made to tell, rather than mapping directly to any one period in our world. When people throw around the term Bronze Age with regards to Exalted, they are really talking about an entertainment genre, rather than a concrete historical era.

[Isator Levi]

Although I think the overall image of powerful, heavily interdependent city-states with some incredibly intricate systems of social stratification and dependence on the central authority (that are still not quite reminiscent of 20th century authoritarian dictatorships) that don't know they're on the verge of a world ending disaster applies fairly across the board. That's not really one that's dependent on specific technology. But then, the actual Bronze Age wasn't really either; despite some holdovers from the Greek mythology cycles from which the terminology was initially derived, modern archaeology and anthropology has determined that those societies were actually tremendously sophisticated in terms of social organization, manufacturing capability, international trade, and art and literature. I mean, cinnamon has been found on Egyptian mummies that are more than four thousand years old; they had trade routes, spanning the entire length of Asia, in effect at least as far back as four thousand years ago. Better development of iron was arguably an advancement, but it was quite possibly one of the form "hey, now we can make even bigger armies more easily than ever before, let's endlessly beat the shit out of each other as we try to hash out the implications of this, hey where did our food go". Point is, technology isn't as important as the overall tone.

[Bulshock]

The not mapping to any one period is one reason why I want to try to figure out the general non-essence technological level of Creation. I know that it doesn't matter exactly where it is for many games, but for me it would give ideas for Craft and what would be both reasonable to take as a skill and reasonable to try to make. As well as what things could look like with a Solar trying to push innovation in those areas.

[Isator Levi]

Part of the problem is that "technology" as a term is pretty broad, covering a wide variety of topics and applications that tend to have different values depending on the needs of their contexts. I mean, in Egypt during the actual "Bronze Age", their metallurgy wasn't exactly the best, but they had the means the cut and transport stone and the engineering required to build enormous tombs, palaces and temple complexes, as well as the administration to organize all of the labour and finances sufficient to pay for it; a lot of things that they built could not have been matched by later people who could have made metal items that would have Egyptians falling down in awe. I think one needs to actually break down a few specific areas of interest and ideas of whereabouts they are before much discussion of what kinds of tools or manufacturing might be in use there can take place.

[Hark]

Creation's technology, like many other aspects of the setting is defined by the Rule of Cool. Is a fun and interesting, does if facilitate the story you want to tell without disrupting the rest of the settings? If yes that is the way it is.

Creation is more about aesthetics than it is about clearly defined setting minutiae, so it gives you aesthetics to work with instead of clear tech levels. Creation doesn't have electric power and guns because it clashes with the setting aesthetics rather than some technological hurdle any Exalt could trivially leap.

[Ghosthead]

In terms of the inspirations for Creation, the most technologically sophisticated inspiration for Exalted's world is probably Wuxia set in early-mid Qing Era Chinese, so I guess that represents close to a fuzzy upper limit if we're looking for a single historical reference.

However, as people have said above, Creation is not so coherent, even within it and across time and space. Also like in reality, technological capability is very variable, due to institutional capability / priorities. For instance, societies with horses and the wheel wouldn't care about doing certain things that earlier societies built around a base that lacked both of those could care about, etc. even though those things are technologically sophisticated. Or just different priorities in the cultural values (they just do not care about maintaining that urban-temple-market complex or whatever, at all, and it's just not on their radar to care) etc.

So the best suggestion is just to read a section on a particular culture in the book, and its close neighbours and go by feel of what you think seems plausible for them.

[Isator Levi]

One thing I've seen for a while in the setting is that the yeddim appears to be designed largely as a source of muscle power to make bulk transit over long overland distances more tenable than it has ever really been in real life, so you get the kind of trade networks that defined the actual Bronze Age, but they can stretch readily across the entire world. At the same time, I imagine that this doesn't translate to the kind of relative abundance and affluence found in even some of the most impoverished parts of the modern world, as a result of artificial scarcity maintained for the sake of keeping prices up and maintaining a level of elitism (kind of like how diamonds are still extremely expensive despite being fairly common as a result of manipulation of stocks by diamond cartels). The significance of this is that it's another area in which comparing "technology" is a bit ambiguous; you've still got a thing based on muscle power, but it's a muscle power that can approximate the range (if not quite the speed) of things that weren't really viable in real life until they invented internal combustion engines; it's an area in which an old world aesthetic (and several of its associated implications) is utilized to make for a more expanded world. At the same time, sea trade would not be nearly as important as it has been in real life because so little of the world has coastlines, were it not for the extremely distant chains of islands that can be harvested for certain rare and useful prodigies; this can mean that a lot of places are going to have some fairly crude harbours (which then gives a major advantage to the Aquilonia's of the sea trading world, such as Chiaruscuro); Savahe Seas depicted Creation as largely not having haulage cranes.

[BvBPL]

Creation's technology level is completely artificial, largely based on the stories the world is made to tell, rather than mapping directly to any one period in our world. When people throw around the term Bronze Age with regards to Exalted, they are really talking about an entertainment genre, rather than a concrete historical era.

Very much so. Creation's tech level is the same as the speed of a Starfury: it is whatever the plot demands.

Geographically much of Creation is Bronze Age, however the most populous areas use steel. Probably the plurality of the population falls into the steel age. Not that anyone uses that term.

Also, it is highly ethnocentric to make generalizations as to what Bronze Age technology means. We can talk about the Greeks easily enough, but the Polynesians had far superior seamen and many First Nation peoples had superior calendars and astronomy, relative to Hellanic society. Point being that within the broader categorization of Bronze Age or whatever shorthand one uses, there were historically vastly different areas of specialization between different cultures. Many of these specialization a were dictated by the environment in which the culture found itself. Hence the Polynesians having a superior tradition of seamanship whereas Egyptians had excellent agriculture. This, incidentally, may also explain why galleys were the premier European warships prior to the discovery of the new world and were subsequently supplanted by blue water frigates and the like as the importance of the Mediterranean as a trade center faded in favor if those centers closer to the Atlantic.

[Ghosthead]

Re: yeddim, Levi, interesting observation. Maybe. I thought yeddim were just there to look cool, and did not, in fact, offer any kind of control / feed relative to volume of haulage advantage over large herds of camels or oxen or horses or whatever else was used IRL. But looking, they are mentioned as requiring little food. They'd certainly probably be useful if you needed to transport something really large, or with a relatively small number of handlers, I guess (if anything like the latter was ever a major cost). Perhaps there might be something more in the economics books to support the idea of yeddim as a miracle long range traction domesticate. I don't actually really read them to be perfectly honest.

(IRC though from reading others with firmer opinions on it, long range trade overland in any case seems to have mostly been difficult because of political reasons (fragmentation, hostility) and communications problems across the Silk Road (signaling that this good is available for this price), and a relative scarcity of anything anyone actually wanted to buy in large volumes at long range in fairly regionally autarchic economies, rather than an actual lack of suitable traction power.)

[glamourweaver]

Basically Medieval China at the heart of creation, declining to Bronze Age tech the further out you go (with stand out exceptions like the Haslanti).