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[glamourweaver]

While we're on the subject of Lunars - will they be able to "swarm form" in the Essence 1-5 range (so turning into a swarm of bees, rats, flock of birds, etc)?

[glamourweaver]

Maybe this falls under Mammon, but I feel like there should be a Ministry whose philosophy is built around the Huxlian model of tyranny - keeping the populace in a docile content haze. Mammon consumerism can have that covered though.

[glamourweaver]

Or if you want a more negative interpretation - the cycles of usurpation playing out among the Exalted keeps them in check, while unified they'd be a threat to the Incarnae. It's like the Tower of Babel story, unified as one people, they'd be capable of anything, so Heaven must assure their division to keep them in check.

[glamourweaver]

One strong impression I'm getting in 3E, is that rather than the Games of Divinity being debilitatingly addictive, it's the Creation Ruling Mandate that keeps the Incarnae away from direct interference beyond Exaltation. They gave Creation to the Exalted - so it's the Exalted's responsibility, and intervening in the conflicts of the Exalted (such as the Usurpation) would be setting themselves over the Exalted in rulership of their affairs, contradicting the Creation Ruling Mandate....

[glamourweaver]

I'm sure the Divine Ministers would say they're an upgrade as they're bound to human communities and designed to serve those communities' interests as opposed to becoming solipsistic god-kings or exploitative blood dynasties. (That's before gremlin syndrome and void tech enters the equation of course).

In any regard, they're a distinctly autochthonian version of Exaltation, forged from magic materials, installed with crafted tech. They're a whole distinct type of Exalted no Exigence required. To the extent the Orichalcum Caste and Solars have resonant natures, it's because of the...

[glamourweaver]

Cut to Hygenius in Tartarus, his soul ripped in two, each infected with a form of lycanthropy, so that he is a fox creature overwhelmed by fear desperately trying to escape his hound-self overwhelmed by blood lust - every day ripping himself asunder, the blood taints of each infecting the other to be reformed having switched roles to repeat the cycle over and over for all eternity...

*arrested development voice*: And THAT is why you don't romanticize Artemis' connections to men...

[glamourweaver]

Personally I'd rather use it as a story that Artemis hates in-setting and is worried about belief in it fatebinding her....

[glamourweaver]

That particularly story doesn't come from any source older than than the Roman writer Hygenius. Every original Greek version has him killed either by Gaia or Artemis for bragging he could slay every animal on the earth (a giant scorpion may or may not have been the weapon used to kill him, depending on the telling).

Edit: actually his hubris/threat to animals is not the only motive for killing him in the Greek sources. Sometimes he actually assaulted Artemis or her retinue.

So yeah, I definitely call bs on Hygenius' Roman version that caught on....

[glamourweaver]

I know Holden stressed that isn't the case in 3E, and in fact Lunars sabotage is a huge part of the reason Dragon-Blooded infrastructure hasn't gotten past late antiquity level....

[glamourweaver]

*memory's failing me, don't want to mislead by confusing my headcanon with canon*

[glamourweaver]

I think I remember Neall saying cases like her and Iris would be handled as goddesses, with "Titan" being more a political label about their background, rather than a hard and fast metaphysical category....

[glamourweaver]

I don't believe she made the list for the core (12 Olympians + Hades, Hestia, & Persephone, last we saw). That's already pushing above what was going to be the cap.

Were I to pick 2 Theoi to use as examples of "additional gods" for the Companion, it would be Pan & Hecate....

[glamourweaver]

At my own table, I specifically interpret it to be the case with Artemis because she has the "preferring the company of women" element you don't have with the other virgin goddesses. Athena has one version of the Pallas myth that could be read that way, but personally I prefer to read her as ace.

Hestia I find it more of a hook if she forgoes sex and relationships by political choice rather than personal orientation, because as the firstborn Olympian, a husband or son of her own could be seen as a threat to Zeus he would take umbrage to.

(also I have an idea...

[glamourweaver]

I will fight to my dying breath to insist that Artemis "forswearing the touch of man" and running off to "keep the company of maidens and nymphs" was originally understood to mean something the ancient Greeks didn't actually have words for.

Edit: Erzulie Dantor also claims gay women as part of her purview. I don't know whether most vodou practicioners interpret her as sapphic herself, but it seems like a valid read to me.

I've got to believe Aphrodite and Ishtar are pan given their domains.

You know Het-Heru better than me. Is she broadly...

[glamourweaver]

I kind of feel like, at least in my sense of the setting, that devalues his back being turned to the world, if he's still paying attention to the world to personally pick people to uplift as Solar Exalted. They seem way less forsaken in that scenario.

[glamourweaver]

So in your version there were no Solars Exalting between the Usurpation and Time of Tumult rather than the handful as usually presented?...

[glamourweaver]

My guess is same being as the non-hostile Titan Rhea....

[glamourweaver]

(taking Cybele commentary to other thread)

[glamourweaver]

I'd add Hermes at his most cocky and boyishly smirking, but given Greek values (tmi about my own sex life in cut)

all the male Olympians except Dionysus are going to be exclusive tops, so that's not going to work...

[glamourweaver]

Well the possibilities raised by the Jade Prison are inherently plot hooks, so wherever that gets discussed a bit more (I think it first got explored in abyssals in First Edition) would be a likely place. The Jade Prison and the creation of Abyssals (and presumably Infernals) don't make sense of the number of Solar Exalted aren't finite.