3E Infernals - Change of Direction

[Blaque]

Thanks Blaque, that's helpful and hopeful. It sounds like they've taken a big U-turn from the previous 3E preview.

As stated a few times, even as quoted by Holden in the first post of this thread, that preview is in effect defunct. Different people are in charge than who wrote tha

Well yes, I could buy a bunch of hardbacks that I'll probably never get to use because I have no gaming group, but I'm hoping somebody somewhere has summarized the key points (castes, caste Abilities, caste marks, and what is Devil-Body for Infernals)

Pretty much everything save Abilities is known from Essence (which doesn't use Caste/Aspect traits really). Quick summary:

Castes: Azimuth, Ascendant, Horizon, Nadir, Penumbra (relating ot the Solar ones respectively). Caste Marks are something like this, though less "spkey" than apparently I rendered them as here.


Devil-Body is what shintai use to be. It's a personalized one-winged angel form that can either look like one of the shintais from 2e or be something unqiue to you. In Essence, it's a menu of a few powers that when you build an Infernal you choose two of at Essence 1, more wtih repurchases. It triggers even if you don't know the Charm at -2 health levels, or whenever you want if you buy it with a Charm.

or in the case of Getimians, Umbrals, Dream-souled, Liminals, and Hearteaters who Chose them and why, when were they created and/or why are they only appearing in the Time of Tumult, what are their castes/aspects, what are their themes? There's a little info here (p. 1) but not even all of those questions answered, and nothing about Getimians or Liminals: http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/m...e-dream-souled

That's mostly forum and Discord stuff. Getimians are again, explained in Essnece. Their Castes are Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, colored pale pink, green, orange, and blue repsectively. Thier Caste marks are the astrological symbosls for Juno, Pallus, Ceres, and Vesta. Hey have been around for under a century, were originally made by the pre-Yozi titans Oramus and Sachverel, not used during the War of the Gods, and were let out by the rogue Sidereal Rakan Thulio who recruits them for his War on Heaven.

Liminals are as in the corebook and Essence, don't have Caste marks (since they dont' hae Castes but Aspects). The first showed-up after the start of the Shogunate.

Umbrals, Dream-Souled, and Heart-Eaters are kind of beyond scope of here. But two were from the War of the Gods and got changed and existed since in limtited form. Dream-Souled probably also were around always, but we don't know when Ketu started Exalting things.That post you link sums most of what we know about the optional Exalts.

...
I'm coming from a very post-modern, disability-as-social-construct point of view. For me being neurodiverse is 80% discrimination, 15% cool abilities that my society doesn't value for no good reason, 4% minor annoyances, and only 1% actual problems I'd ever want to "cure". ...

I guess speaking as someone who's legally blind, the environment is just not going ot afford me options, purposeful or not, that full sight would. This is with reading, navigating htings, tool use and so on. THis can be made less severe, but I'm pretty sure that my ability to navigate the world with my limitted eyesight is not sufficient for the environment most of humans in history have had. It's pretty hard-up "My eyes fucking suck, this sucks" and go with that myself. It affects how I do life, but it is somethign I would rather not deal with.

Mortals in Creation won't have a post-modern worldview, but things like ADHD, dyslexia, aphantasia, autism, missing hand/arm/eye/ear, anosmia, blindness, deafness still aren't automatically something a person hates every minute of. Having no legs in a society without wheelchairs and ramps... would be harder to cope with. Unless you're flying or brachiating beastfolk.

Having only 2 arms in a society of 4-armed people is a disability, until you run away (being Anathema and all) and enter a wider world where everybody has 2 arms. That might prompt some consideration of disability as a social construct!

Being blind means you can't see as well and humans are a primarily visual species like most primates. I guess to me "This is something that I'm bad at" is just also what I see it as. Getting around being blind is either inventing new powers that humans don't get (and thus dont' transhuman anything...it's non-human) or getting eyes that work (which is just getting me to baseline). This is why while there's a broad thing to be said on disability, I think there's not a one-sized-fits-all take on dealing with it nor shoudl there be.

Well, there is a difference between having your psychology shaped to ape a specific Yozi's stupid psychological problems (which wasn't attractive) vs. turning your Intimacies into self-aware demons who are NPCs in their own right, growing weird inhuman and unearthly powers, and gaining weird, weird perspectives on life. Like Transcendent Desert Creature... that doesn't change your psychology to be more like Cecelyne, but it will have a profound impact on your life. ...

I guess to me I see the former as intersting buts till fundementally alien, not better. And the latter is a refluffed and specifc take on Hardship Surviving Mendicant Spirit to me. The latter doesnt' say anything about impacting my life other than surviving harsh conditions but not in a way different form other Exalts in final effect. In Essence terms, it is probably more a Mode on the universla Charm.

And yeah extra limbs and eyes, built-in lasers, never pooping or peeing again, telekinetics, telepathy, that stuff is plenty transhuman. The only reason Infernals get called "not real transhumanists" is because so many people think transhumanism requires futuristic cybernetics or it doesn't count. ...

In my view transhumanism is a societal thing, not getting individual superpowers. I don't these mean you ahve some value that makes you beyond human. You are stil a human with pwoers, or you are shedding human features for power. I generally think it's baiscally exalting inhumanity as beyond humanity and often feel it has misanthorpic vibes to it. My own take there beyond context of this thread I admit.

...But even uploading your brain (or transferring your soul, or shapeshifting) into a completely different (robot/demon/animal) body is still transhumanism, and yes you are cutting away your previous human body. Just like you can tell a story about someone who cut off their human arms and replaced them with Inspector Gadget robot arms, or replaced their legs with a mermaid tail. Magic is just as valid as metal implants.

Again, different disconnect. I don't it's about the cutting stuff off or changing. I don't think i'ts "trans" anything. I don't fundementally think getting superpowers fits how I have seen transhuman presented or sold to me. It's getting power, and while I subscribe to things like full body cognition and stuff, I don't put an value or progressive weight ot it. It's different, not beyond. Again, inhuman, not transhuman, when it gets to the extrmees often highlighted by stuff I was first exposed to it by.

(Basically, balem garbige Tzimisce players and Ray Kurzweil for my generally antipathy to transhumanism.)

...
I mostly like getting rid of the Reclamation as a "get us out of jail now!!!" thing, but the idea that not even the Third-Circle and Second-Circle Demons have agendas and goals in Creation? Doesn't make sense me. They have Yozi cults for a reason. They're going to want to ask for something from the Green Sun Princes.

They have goals, they're just going to be custom to the individual deomon and probably tied to their itnerests and power bases in Hell in some fashion. Ligier thinks more of Creation should be like Hell becuase he htinks Hell is effing sweet. So doing that to impress him is probably going to be on the table. The big thing is Yozis as a whole mostly do their own things, which involve usual Yozi spite-related stuff, or their partciular thingsl ike Cecylene being an ass, the Whispering Flame enslaving shit, the Ebon Dragon being drama-goth, or Malfeas thrashing.

Making a god or familiar or elemental as a separate person is nothing like animating your love of music and poetry as a demon musician who is still part of your mind and soul while also walking around as a person in their own right, and if they get Ghost-Eaten you can't appreciate music anymore.

Thematically, no. Mechancially, yes. Infenrals will likely be pretty good at it, and have the fluff justificaiton to make more than the one a Solar usually makes from their own Intimaices or a Lunar their refelction. But like, mechanically? I doubt it'll be much different.

I gotta disagree. There's a big difference between the themes of animal weirdness (Lunars), earthly and divine weirdness (Exigents) and totally alien Hell weirdness (GSPs). Exigents can never fill the place that GSPs have in my heart, even though one could plausibly be telekinetic or telepathic. Everything under the Green Sun belongs with Infernals.

It depends what you are going at. If it is the specific aesthetics, thsoe are not really necessary ot have the transhuman stuff. They are alien powers, but still at the end fo the day powers. Lunars are able to explore that via the animal kingdom since animals can get fucking weird. And Exigents get to just play in areas that Infernals didn't or at least ot me, didn't without just doing the "Oh I want this set of powers, make up a Yozi or Devil-Tiger to suit them."

Infernals got telekenisis, shadowmancy, evil genie powers, super gaslighting, turning into Doomsday, anime hentacles, devil-triggers, and more all stuffed into one splat. To me, the Yozis were often retraoctively used to justify this (SHLiHN for example had no real implications of telekinetic anythigns ave floaty balls origianlly). Exigents are by design there to let you explore systematic ideas beyond that, and the gods of heaven and earth include things ranging from Plentimon's fair dice gimics to Han-Tha's necrophagy to going all Majora's Mask with a thousand faces and forms that way, including your own being one of them now. Infernals are going to have some things just not htere becuase Infenrals were to some extent, the Tzimisce of Exalted for me. A dozen things under one umbrella, many of them able to stand on their own as an Exalt in themsselves. Lunars got this focus in 3e, and this is why Liminals exist in part in relation to Abyssals.

Can you give me the basics of how this works, please? I have no idea what you're talking about.
MHM isn't just a weapon. It's a retractable third arm/hand that gets upgraded with later Charms: you can make it invisible, turn it into a grappling weapon, turn it into a any handheld weapon you want, turn it into Craftsmen Need No Tools, give it longer range, etc. Reducing it to just a weapon that does nothing else would ruin it. Forcing you to shapeshift into a weird-looking monster to use it worse than destroys it. MHM is telekinetics and should just be... telekinetics. Useable in human form, and potentially invisible/not Obvious.

Devil-Body basically gives you a suite of powers that reflect variosu effects previous Charms did that you can customize to look like older Charms or do your own thing. The weapon/sense/movement one could easily just be MHM's more offesnive elemeents. If you really want it to help in tool use so be it. If you bascially look human but there's a bunch of teleekentic arms floating about it can be that. And again, "Fucking mind-movement TK powers" Is literally what I mean where "Infernals wer teh wastebin Exalt" as nothing about that is Hellish save Exalted said it was and you can build a whole Exalt out of that without it also being demonic.

But Green Sun Prince is hugely superior to vanilla "Infernal". "Infernal" is confusing and bland especially when "akuma" now refers to 483734 different kinds of things while also being included in Infernal. It's like saying Solar, Lunar, and Sidereal are deprecated now, just use "Divine" or "Celestial" for all of them indiscriminately. Blegh. D:

Akuma as a term might not even return. But that's a thing. In 3e, Akuma aren't Infernal Exalted even they are. There's a term for folks who make deal with the Yozis for power. Infernal Exalted are actually Chosen fo Hell. No other Exalt of that sort exists. If your Solar maeks a deal to wrok with teh Maks of Winters or the Fair Folk they don't get a special term of Deathlord Exalted. They're Solars work with a Deathlord. If you are doing infernalism, you are just an Exalt working with the Yozis. If you're an Infernal Exalt, you are Chosen by them.

The entire distinction comes from 1e never really giving a defintion of Infernal beyodnd Akuma and 2e trying to have both under one header of Infernal Exalted when it was never eneded. Akuma are sellouts, simple as that. They don't need to be considered Infernal Exalted when like...Infernal Exalted actually do the Chosen of Hell thing.

So the demon in your head and the Past Life memories aren't even options now? That sucks. They should not be taking away character options, that just makes more and more 2E character concepts invalid and impossible to convert. ...

Past Life was a soultion to a problem they invented. Lytek has nothing to do with how Exaltation operates in 3e save observation. Before his advent in Sidereeals, sometimes you had Past Lives, soemtimes youd idn't. Infenrals don't get special Past Life points becuase like...Exaltation jsut dones't need scrubbing. The thing in your head is still there. It's just a more personal demon, not a random First Circle.

... Coadjutors were awesome, and they could give you mutations. They can always make it an option for the Coadjutor to be mind-blasted/traumatized/absorbed into silence, or have its mind assimilated by a goetic psychic manifestation of its host. But that shouldn't be mandatory.

They're still there, just different route. Likely by default htey just act as a weird Google demon to talk to Hell if you need it and likely you expand on it via Merits or Charms. A big thing to me on Infenrals in 3e seems to be you are getting a lot of the Devil-Tigers tuff out the gate. You define the Coadjutor. You define the form ofyour Devil-Body. You get an Inner World before Essence 6. And so on.

Getting rid of Urges is excellent, from a gameplay perspective. But I think it needs some serious, GoD-consistent explanation for why the Yozis of 3E are inexplicably super nice and friendly to the Exalted who they utterly hate. No akuma, no torture or Torment, no Urges, never abuse or hurt anybody, never try to force their Exalted to do anything even useful. Whuh?

Take people they kind of agree with, give them the abiltiy to rip the world apart, send them out in the world. It's consistent in that the very act of Exalting to them is spiteful in itself. Again, the shaekn soda can analogy. The can doesn't usually survive the process. Giving people who are downtrodden, and angry might result in folks hwo make the world better, but for the Yozis, they kind of hope more you hurt a lot of folks along the way. But they can't control you, they know that. They stole a part of the world and wnt to watch it eat that world with their power basically.

That said, you can likely get power and resrouces form them or their souls. That puts you in a more obligatory relationship with them. But they kind of hope you hurt peoplewith their power. You ultimately serve them through your action, kind of like how 3e geenrally runs with things like the Sun probably thinsk Choosing Solars is him doing something in the world.

Far more plausible and interesting (and humorous) would be this:
1. Malfeas turns Gorol into an akuma. The Yozis acquire some more akuma. They torture and abuse them for fun. They send out the Broken-Winged Crane. And... they don't get freed from prison. The akuma have no capacity for heroism or new ideas, are a pain to micromanage, and are fairly easy to detect (us truth charm, ask "do you serve the Yozis?"). The Exalted figure out that akuma have no free will, and unsurprisingly there's a huge drop-off in Chosen dumb enough to make that deal.

If akumahood was an utter sucker's bet, it's basically nothing but a way to make one-dimensional NPCs and plays up the Yozis as Always Super Awful Badguys. This entire step, at the end of the day, is a waste of wordcount and time to me. Like, rather than having akuma s was, we're getting akuma as a more political thing with a range, where some folks go infenralist since well...they get somethingo ut of it save beings uckers. The Yozis know they'll never get out. They can't get out. It'll never happen. So they work with Exalts becuase it might hurt the world. They send out the Broken-Winged Crane because they might get agents out there...to hurt things more or let demons out. The big thing to mostly think on is don't even think of the "Uselss husk" thing as an option. Yozis work with people they know will do the job without being brainwashed puppets.

2. So the Yozis (or 3C Demons) make the 2E Green Sun Princes with Urges screamed at them constantly (but with 3E Charms, I guess). There's a hilarious Holden quote that I can't find just now, describing this as the result of the Yozis being utterly clueless about human psychology and motivations. So of course it fails. The first generation of GSPs quickly figure out how to Swallow the Scorpion [or insert name] at E3, or get themselves killed constantly Tormenting themselves, or just screw around with Acts of Villainy and do their own thing. Even the loyalist ones almost never try to fulfil their specific Urges. Except Manosque Cyan.
3. Finally, the Yozis (or 3C Demons) realize they can't win and just throw up their hands and give up on Urges. All future Green Sun Princes are the 3E version with no Urge. They still use a Coadjutor to deliver the Exaltation to Creation. Suddenly... GSPs are rewarded for their actions with artifacts and training that makes them more effective at fulfilling their contracts with 3C and 2C Demons, and they don't keep falling apart due to Torment... and they're actually more useful. Except all the ones who aren't loyalists.

I do worry what will replace that for the Great Curse, though. I've always disliked the Great Curse.

Again, this is kind of roundabout to do what? The Yozis want to just let Infernals Fuck Shit Up. And might give them the resoruces to do that. That's to me the big thing. The Yozis are not in a place to want shit. So they're using the Infernal Exalted to get some semblance of relevance in the world they no longer can ever really touch or have. This isn't nice. They see people who are hurt, think "I'm hur too...and this is what I would do" and empower them thinking that what they would do is what you would do. The modicrum of empathy they show only ends where it serves them and thier wants and needs to hurt things. If you give a betrayed general Exaltation and a boss daiklave, she'll conquer that kingdom, form a new empire and purge its ranks. Their power allowed it. Their champion upended the Destiny the gods of Heaven wanted. And even if they killed her, another one like her will come up at some point. The Infernal Exalted don't need to serve them as slaves so long as they upend the world that was denied them, basiclaly.

You don't need Urges for this. The Yozis look for folks who already align with them. That the people might do something else is a known side-effect, but well, they aren't Diminsehd by the looting and they generally are cynial about how humans take power even if your character need not be that bad.