(Super)Natural Disasters in Creation

[MoroseMorgan]

Hopefully this doesn't come off as uncouth, but given the recent events, I've been thinking about natural disasters and how they might play out in Exalted.

Has anyone had any in their campaigns? Success stories or otherwise?

I'm hard pressed to think of any canonical examples of major weather issues. In the Time of Tumult I don't see why Heaven's power to remediate more severe weather should be so absolute. If Fate can say that this nation-state is supposed to be razed in a war, and people accept it, why can't Fate dictate a massive earthquake, hurricane, and or wildfire?

[The Unsung Hero]

Having just finished Words of Radiance, I have every intention of bringing Highstorms to my Exalted games in the near future. For the uninitiated into the Stormlight Archive, Highstorms are storms with winds so massive they actually uproot boulders and send them flying for miles. They pass in one direction and are semi-predictable. And they are unimaginably destructive. Buildings have to be constructed specifically to resist them.

[MoroseMorgan]

That sounds like an interesting almost geographical feature rather than a freak weather occurrence. Also, really cool art.

I'm thinking more like, you're in Champoor, and a 1,000 year hurricane is barreling towards you off the Dreaming Sea, what do? Yeah, it'd be weird, it's probably throwing out random wyld critters that were swept up in it, but what are a Solar's options for dealing with potential mass devastation like that?

CNNT to whip up some storm shelters/flood breaks in record time. Use athletic charms to hero about saving lives still in peril from whatever wasn't abated. Summon Wind Bears to try and divert/abate the storm.

[AtG]

Relevant: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/posts/9393139/

Ledstromy are titanic elementals of the Northern forests. Their bark hide is covered in a cold, white, mossy fur. Regions of this are punctured by razor-sharp needle leaves. Adult ledstromy live solitary lives resting in place for centuries at a time, moving only to avoid encroaching nuisances or find a more comfortable seat.

As Creation’s climate has varied through the ages, glaciers have covered vast areas. When conditions are right for those areas to become ice-free once more, seeds form underneath, sprouting into young ledstromy that grow, dormant, for years and decades. After they reach a certain size, they start pushing the glacier towards the sea. Glaciers borne by a great number of ledstromy can move over a dozen yards per day. When the entire cohort reaches maturity all at once, they express their full might and lift the glacier off of the ground, during which time they can shuttle it overhead at around a mile per hour, until it is wholly deposited into the sea[1].

Once the glacier is gone, each ledstrom picks itself up out of its deep hole to take a nice, long nap in comfortable snow surrounded by pleasantly laconic trees, leaving behind a landscape dotted with lakes in the depressions they formed.

Capabilities: Humans rarely interact with ledstromy, although most of the Celestial Bureaus have to coordinate to handle the final maturation. The rare sorcerer or Exalt may try to beg assistance of one - they are among the strongest creatures in Creation - but as they have few needs or desires beyond comfort and isolation, attempts to bargain are rarely successful. Ledstromy are ferocious fighters when attacked, and most of their number were destroyed resisting the Balorian Crusade.

[1] This is usually catastrophic for every coastal city within several thousand miles.

[BrilliantRain]

That sounds like an interesting almost geographical feature rather than a freak weather occurrence. Also, really cool art.

I'm thinking more like, you're in Champoor, and a 1,000 year hurricane is barreling towards you off the Dreaming Sea, what do? Yeah, it'd be weird, it's probably throwing out random wyld critters that were swept up in it, but what are a Solar's options for dealing with potential mass devastation like that?

CNNT to whip up some storm shelters/flood breaks in record time. Use athletic charms to hero about saving lives still in peril from whatever wasn't abated. Summon Wind Bears to try and divert/abate the storm.

I'd say that it really depends on when you find out about the oncoming disaster. Creation doesn't have weather tracking satellites and emergency news updates, and, while Creation is flat, you can't really see much farther than you could on Earth because of all the stuff in the way. So, barring some kind of warning system, I'd guess you'd probably only have a few hours to prepare at best.

So, first thing is Awareness charms to know the storm is coming.

[nalak42]

Well there was the Everstorm, from the same book series. Went the opposite direction as a high storm ,though just as intense, came up pretty much out of nowhere oh and there are spirits in it that are literally tied to the undiluted wrath of god that possess certain people.

[The Unsung Hero]

Yeah just because they're regular in the books doesn't mean they have to be in the game. Just make it a random thing and it becomes a horrifying disaster.

[Matt the Bruins fan]

I'd think human habitation would have to be underground in areas where winds are flinging boulders around like confetti. That would scour normal architecture and even the topsoil away every time it hit.

[nalak42]

I'd think human habitation would have to be underground in areas where winds are flinging boulders around like confetti. That would scour normal architecture and even the topsoil away every time it hit.

Yeah that was a concern raised, or really it would be if most of the world knew what soil was. As for the rest as high storms always came from the same directions you just had cities built in ways or locations where they wouldn't get the worst of it.

Oh there was a fun one in the last of the original Mistborn trilogy. You had a mist that would roll in and people caught in it would just cause some sickness, I think seizures were involved in it. Was not a pleasant condition, most survived, a percentage died, and a smaller percentage would be sick for I believe exactly 16 days. It actually got hilarious to me when they realized the number connection as my first thought was "Well the end times are heralded by an OCD plague. That's probably not a good thing."

Also would Sharknado count for this thread? That seems pretty supernatural to me.

[LeTipex]

Wyldstorm are mentionned in the core, but not much of their effets... it would be interesting to see what people here think about what those could be?

Also, to take ideas from previous editions: a llama-yu migration is a good supernatural disaster.

[Leetsepeak]

From Prasad's preview, Dex Davican gave some striking description of wyld storms from the Dreaming Sea and the havoc they wreak.

The coast of the Dreaming Sea teems with kingdoms and empires, each fighting to hold their homes against strange and aggressive fauna, Fair Folk raiders, and each other. Gods and elementals claim earthly territory with impunity. The region varies from one journey to the next: even when national borders aren’t shifting, Wyld storms roll off the sea and alter the coastal terrain. Scavengers find sites not seen since the First Age, if ever, and lose those sites just as suddenly.

So they cause such havoc that they reshape the coastal terrain sometimes. In addition to mutating things, that's an excellent kind of effect to draw on. I could see one terrible wyld storm washing up, and ripping a city up from the ground, floating it on the sea like an island, while another strikes a city, and with every belt of prismatic lightning, a building disappears, relocating beneath the waves. Another one sends flooding through the city that disturbs no objects or buildings, but causes people to float and get pulled away into the water, leaving an empty city for people to move into.

And of course, giant sea monsters that cause weather systems to appear.

An idea we've been talking about in my Dreaming Sea game is that the Dreaming Sea experiences a monsoon season, which combines the intensity of a monsoon with stuff like wyldstorms and critters. I imagine this is the season when you're most likely to have the coastline get reshaped.

[AtG]

From Prasad's preview, Dex Davican gave some striking description of wyld storms from the Dreaming Sea and the havoc they wreak.



So they cause such havoc that they reshape the coastal terrain sometimes. In addition to mutating things, that's an excellent kind of effect to draw on. I could see one terrible wyld storm washing up, and ripping a city up from the ground, floating it on the sea like an island, while another strikes a city, and with every belt of prismatic lightning, a building disappears, relocating beneath the waves. Another one sends flooding through the city that disturbs no objects or buildings, but causes people to float and get pulled away into the water, leaving an empty city for people to move into.

And of course, giant sea monsters that cause weather systems to appear.

An idea we've been talking about in my Dreaming Sea game is that the Dreaming Sea experiences a monsoon season, which combines the intensity of a monsoon with stuff like wyldstorms and critters. I imagine this is the season when you're most likely to have the coastline get reshaped.

Speaking of the Wyld and the Dreaming Sea, a random thought occurred to me: a disaster where the Sea starts "leaking" into the Wyld, the water actually draining away.

[Leetsepeak]

Speaking of the Wyld and the Dreaming Sea, a random thought occurred to me: a disaster where the Sea starts "leaking" into the Wyld, the water actually draining away.

The Lowest Tide.

Awesome!

[Isator Levi]

Today, a hurricane has struck Ireland, the first of its kind in decades.

I'm in England at the moment, but being at the edge of the storm has created some unique weather phenomena. Down south, much of the sky had been turned a deep orange as a result of sand drawn up from the Sahara desert to contaminate the atmosphere. Up in Yorkshire, where I am, in the late afternoon the sky had cleared so thoroughly that the sun was absolutely blinding, and turned all of the sky for kilometres a pale, golden yellow that gradually transitioned to blue. I think that colouring might have been the sight of that sand from a distance and illuminated. Whatever it was, it was one of the most striking meteorological phenomena that I have ever seen.

That particular image, of the sun blazing so and dyeing all of the sky around it (while the rest of the sky remained normal) is the kind of thing I would want to place in an Exalted game, if I could.

[The Wizard of Oz]

It was super weird. Some of my students said it was looked like the end of the world.

But for me, the weird thing was how it was like an entirely normal north-eastern Chinese mud-storm haze, and yet I didn't need to wear a mask.