[OOC] [Exalted 2.5] The Scarlet Sky Conspiracy – An Epistolary Game

[Guancyto]

I suspect PMs are for Resplendent Wood now; I just need to write up what I already had going with wonderandawe for an Ascending Wood letter and then all three of us (there are now three of us, after all) will be caught up.

Right! I needed to write a thing for you!

NPCs:

• Francesco Contarini - Carmela's great-grandfather. Patriarch of House Contarini, a family of Threshold Dragon-Bloods, merchants and bankers and traders and financiers and generally people who sully themselves with money. They are not Imperial unless you squint real hard, but they do constantly poach whatever qualified people they can find and have a number of Imperial Dragons in their lineage. Francesco has ambitions of using the Realm Civil War to put his family into Imperial House levels of wealth and influence.
• Nemias Contarini (Iselsi Nemias) - Carmela's father, an exiled Iselsi who married into the Contarini family. May or may not still be an All-Seeing Eye agent, but either way still maintains a certain degree of loyalty and contacts regarding the Realm. Sent Carmela to look after...
• Geno Husumori - Magistrate of the Pahua Basin, together with his Archons HE IS THE JUSTICE. A Lost Egg who came from the Legions, and was appointed by the Empress to BE THE JUSTICE. Carmela's ally; technically her army actually belongs to him, and she is just the commander. It is important that this be so, otherwise people would ask hard questions like "why is a Threshold Dragon playing warlord on our northern shore? And why have we not killed her yesterday?"
• Geno Jin - Husumori's nephew, a Bright Young Man(tm) who is Carmela's rival for the position of the Magistrate's favorite. Silly boy thinks it's a competition. At least he's good in bed. Was until recently betraying intelligence on the both of them (for entirely good and just reasons) to...
• Sorcerer Bandit - An ambiguously-revolutionary ambiguously-dragonblooded sorcerer that has been building an army of demons and ne'er-do-wells and constantly preying on the region. Carmela's all set to get answers from him on what his deal is, because as of the previous update she shattered his army and captured him! Is either abetted or hindered by...
• Purplesid - Can't remember what their deal is. Carmela can't, that is. I've got a few ideas.
• Peleps Lili - Carmela's second-in-command. An old, drunk, bitter woman who thinks the Realm's ideals and Immaculate doctrines are a load of crap (but she has flaws, too). A damn fine officer, though.
• Tough Moli - A mortal monk of the Immaculate Order, long-suffering because all the Dragons from Houses have deserted and she's intensely lacking in resources. Or was, until Carmela offered her assistance. Thoroughly competent. Carmela is totally not gradually corrupting her.
• Reaches the Sky - A Lost Egg Air Aspect Dragon-blooded monk of the Immaculate Order. Young as the spring dew. Carmela is totally corrupting him. Taught her how to cut spirits in twain, the two of them teamed up to purge disease gods from the refugee camps in the Pahua Basin.
• Ragara Saveria - Ryo's wife! Currently dealing with Carmela, is providing food and supplies to help manage the refugee situation in exchange for refugee labor. Pragmatic and sharp as a tack.
• Tachi-Kun - The God of Central Warfare. Possibly(?) Carmela's new best bud?

Future plans include

• Convince House Contarini and associates that playing blockade-runner to save Quelaana from Mnemon's fleet is anything remotely approaching a good idea.
• Use magisterial, immaculate and espionage connections to help out the remaining Iselsi on the Isle
• Figure out if the Sorcerer Bandit was indeed behind the whole poisoning/assassination plot, or if the rabbit hole goes deeper than that
• Continue making nice with Tachi-Kun and giving him GRAND IDEAS so he won't expose the conspiracy to the Gold Faction
• Build, train and equip her army of refugees, ne'er-do-wells, mercenaries and rag-tags such that a proper Imperial Legion won't just laugh at them.
• Use them to engage in GLORIOUS COMBAT and hopefully not die horribly.
• Figure out how to get a slave collar on Mnemon for... reasons

[Eura]

Question: Are we doing pm's for Resplendent or Ascending Wood? Bluewinds and I have sent letters for Ascending wood before the debacle happened, so would we technically have 4 more exp than the rest of the party?

[Fansibubbles]

Best of luck!


As for the rest, post will be going up today. Will use Titus for it as we've not quite worked out what to do with Ryo yet. You can all no doubt guess he is quite busy right now though!

After it's up people can PM me with what they plan to do and also anything they'd like to see some feedback/return on that they've done in the past. It'll be a little stumbling to get going but I'm sure we'll manage.

Will roll out a new OOC soon so I have edit privileges for the starting posts and XP charts but that isn't urgent.All okay?

[Exthalion]

Please accept my respectful request to withdraw from this game.

I wish you all the best and hope you continue to enjoy playing.

[Fansibubbles]

I would just rather you didn't, if you've got this far in and don't see a problem with what you've done to make craft 'viable' I'm not really sure I'm going to convince you. Your character's ability is so ridiculously out of scale with the rest of the party and Dragonblooded in general it'd be a massive drag.

I know Crafting is a bit junkrat as a DB, but that's kind of thematic. Your better off looting and fixing up the long forgotten past than building stuff fresh, it's what I did when I had an Air DB Crafter a good few years ago. The DB are pretty good at repair and heck the party might even be coming into some fucked up Warstriders sooner rather than later. The DB charmset being full of flawed gems is pretty much a universal thing and not something you're really meant to "fix"

[Exthalion]

Wait I'm confused, did you mean this or not?

I made a point of the very next sentence qualifying what that meant. If you must invest in 3 abilities and 3 attributes, multiple charms, as well as background dots to roll dice once in an entire campaign then craft is worthless because the dots on your sheet are doing nothing. If, after you jump through all those hoops, the ST doesn't like what you want to make then it is "gamebreaking".

Your first question to me was if N/A artifacts were on the table.

That post was over a thousand words long and I didn't ask. I literally said "We were also deciding if Artifact N/A were on the table." In PMs with wonderandawe my suggested N/A were putting larger than normal essence cannons on a first age hull and building a skyship larger than a warbird but smaller than Skywolf.

You're giving me limitations on crafting and also how you've gotten around them so I'm really lost as to what point you think you're making here.

Did I not include the part where my "getting around the limitation" and "pumping out" came to 14 months each with nothing else being crafted? I feel like I did. In the very post you are quoting in fact.




Before I type out the arguments I have, would you just rather I didn't? The others deserve a good experience and if all I am doing is souring you on the idea of STing then it isn't fair to them.

[Fansibubbles]

Wait I'm confused, did you mean this or not?

Some notes on crafting:

Crafting is worthless until it is gamebreaking.

Your first question to me was if N/A artifacts were on the table. You're giving me limitations on crafting and also how you've gotten around them so I'm really lost as to what point you think you're making here.

I'm not going to be allowing the pumping out of Artifact 5 items. If that's where the campaign is at well we're going to have to work something out in the transition to fix that, because it's a bit silly.

[Eura]

Yesterday you were trying to get the ok for building artifact N/A's and not too long ago you were trying the same thing for artifact 5's. The 1-3 artifact range is what's readily acceptable for crafting assuming you have the schematics and materials. Artifact 4-5 will require questing for but isn't an outright no as long as your willing to work for it. Nobody is saying you can't craft or contribute. I would like to point out a factory cathedral can also build mundane things so a mundane ship fleet is doable if extremely time consuming (not that bad when compared to artifacts though).

[Exthalion]

Should I start formatting posts differently? It feels like my points are being lost. Most of the last one was explaining how Craft wouldn't be gamebreaking and giving you levers to reign it in.

I think the letters I have written clearly demonstrate I am not just here to break the game. Pre-human relations, the Realm's cultural lionization of warriors at the expense of artifice and sorcery, the squalor of the Second Age compared to the Shogunate, Akashan's political marriage, the struggle for the soul of House Ledaal, and the like all show that I don't just want to churn out Five-Metal Shrikes until I am god-emperor of Creation.

Crafting is a complex subsystem that does not reward dabbling. Especially DB crafting where all their native magic does is break things. (1) It was apparently balanced around the assumption that it gives you backgrounds without spending XP and so is filled with mechanical and lore speedbumps. I have finally gotten over most of them and it has taken politics and adventure to do so.

However! I was trying to set myself up to facilitate other people's ambitions. I wanted to start working on sorcery artifacts for Aisa, Gunzosha armor for the conspiracy's troops (2), etc. My work in the Imperial City is because I assume there is going to be a fight there with conspiracy members and their retainers on one side and various other factions on the other.

One person cannot attune to an infinite amount of artifacts or even use all that many even if they could. None of the military skyships I am able to craft are particularly threatening on a strategic scale except for moving troops I don't have. None of the ships really come with guns. What is more, all the other factions have more Dragonblooded! The conspiracy is small and we need force multipliers if we are going to win on anything other than Imperial Manse fiat. The allies the others have been gathering are part of that. I was hoping to be another.


What are your setting and mechanical assumptions regarding artifacts so I can know what would make you comfortable?


(1) An exaggeration, but not much of one.
(2) Since I don't have any and have made no effort to get an army or navy that is personally loyal to me

[Fansibubbles]

If your views on Crafting are its either worthless or gamebreaking it might be best to roll up something new because neither sound much fun for anybody.

I mean if you're just here to try break the game mechanically then I'm sorry to say I'm not really in for that. I got pitched on this being a talky, schemey political game!

[Exthalion]

Some notes on crafting:

Crafting is worthless until it is gamebreaking. Without speed multipliers a character is lucky to craft one artifact in the entire game. With speed multipliers I have seen craft intervals of minutes. (That was a Solar, and they have better speed charms than everyone else)

The great restriction is Exotic Material Components. There are basically no rules for them at all and each one can be its own little quest to go find. The way around this is to use artifacts. An artifact one dot lower than the one you are trying to build can be substituted for an EMC. This comes to over 200 Artifact 1s per Artifact 5. First Age production levels were only possible because they had world-spanning collection and transportation infrastructure to keep the FCs supplied with EMCs and artifact components.

I do not have and Ledaal could not afford to keep me supplied with as many EMCs as I would need.

My way around this was the Dragon Kings. They have two different charms that let them make an Artifact 1 in a scene. However, this does not solve all my problems. Combining these Artifact 1s into progressively higher level components all take time. Months for every step if we keep to the Craft Slot system. Assuming I have enough crafters to rope into it, it would take 5+4+3+2=14 months to make 1 Artifact 5 from scratch.(1)

Solars get Design Beyond Limit. This is HUGE in its impact because it pushes artifacts down on level for purposes of crafting. Which means an Artifact 5 would require 4 Artifact 3 components instead of 5 Artifact 4 components. That saves massive amounts of time and material. Art of Permanence + DBL means that for the same cost as modern artificers pay they could craft stuff that doesn't require maintenance, simplifying their supply chains enormously.

(1) Its actually worse with batches since being able to make a whole bunch of artifacts likewise increases the number of components you need.

[Eura]

I think my character is mechanically the most powerful since I'm using the immaculate template, but combat has proven to only be an okay option in a macro style game. I'm finding myself having to constantly make allies to be able to keep fighting my enemies without dying horribly. I can take other dragon-blooded single handedly in combat but even with dreaming pearl it's exhausting and I'm usually mote tapped because tiny mote pool. Our big strength is our ability to ally people to our cause because of the background rules.

Actually now that I think about I could use a presence excellency too. The prism of focused passion is a really good Band-Aid for my lack of excellencies.

Edit: I don't think Wonder realized how optimized Exthalion was at crafting. On paper a factory cathedral is a good way to make a crafting character involved with politics. Something will likely need to be nerfed/messed. The craft slot multiplication was a Band-Aid to keep craft speed enhancer's relevant so that's probably a good place to start. Maybe we go like DnD crits and multipliers add onto one another instead of multiplying. so a x3 and a x2 multiplier would make a total of x4. basically making each multiplier an extra 2 crafting slots. The base number of crafting slots could be one if this is still too big.

[Fansibubbles]

The crafting stuff seems way out of control to be honest, even for a Solar campaign it's sounding OTT and I'm not really sure how much challenge anything would be with that level of power in the field.

The Realm doesn't really make Artifact 5's, they treasure the few that remain. If we're at "My character is making first age miracles" with only 30xp the rules really haven't been treated kindly.

[BlueWinds]

But yes, I think 'fairly middling' may be somewhat generous. We're starting characters with 30xp and 10 extra dots of backgrounds (In my case, nearly all Allies). I just bought E4 and am saving up for a presence excellency to make difficulty 4 checks more reliable - not exactly high-powered stuff going on in my corner of the world. ^^;;

[Exthalion]

Aren't you all fairly middlin' Dragonbloods? That sounds kind of crazy

Also want to keep the game about Realm Politics so Deathlords likely won't be a thing unless someone literally dies and wants to keep playing anyway

There were artifacts involved to meet the trait minimums. The Deathlord thing wasn't my idea, and IC Akashan has just been using it as a pretense to get Kes to support his plans. For example, to get Kes to agree to support him in breaking the blockade Akashan's excuse was that he wanted to go study Whitewall with its wards against the dead.

Exthalion is embellishing what he was allowed. He's dependent on schematics to build stuff and most of the crazy/first age stuff is off limits. Exthalion is the one investigating the Deathlord foreshadowing stuff so he does get a fair amount of leeway, but being able to build artifact 5's and knowing how to build a specific artifact 5 is very different.

I am not embellishing in the least.

As far as crafting is concerned, I am dependent on nothing. Half of the successes required to craft an artifact come from the design work. If you have the templates you do not have to generate those successes yourself and effectively cut the required successes in half. However, you must reuse the exact Exotic Material Components. I asked about usable first age templates because First Age Solars had the Art of Permanence and Design Beyond Limit which could be encoded into templates. I also pointed out, when I first asked wonderandawe about them, that most of them probably use Wyld Shaped EMCs and so wouldn't be usable to me. Wonderandawe (do you capitalize a username at the start of a sentence) was the one who set the templates the Sids gave me access to after IC PM negotiation with them.If nothing else, I literally invented a new kind of artifact in game.

Wonderandawe is also the one who created the Deathlord connection. It was brought up the first time Akashan interacted with Kes and was the explicit motivation wonderandawe gave for the Sidereals loaning out the FC. We also discussed how much Akashan could squeeze in personal projects on the side and get away with.



However, since I am apparently at the place where the Craft rules start to break the game there was much discussion over how they were going to work from now on. To be fair, I invested large portions of my character resources and IC activities on getting to this point.

It would be a houserule if I needed existing templates for Artifact 5 and couldn't produce them myself. I do not mind houseruling to limit the power of Crafting if it improves the enjoyment of everyone. But I did not distort the truth.