Your Headcanon II

[Daredevil]

Tell me about your headcanon.

A continuation of Crumplepunch's glorious Your Headcanon thread.

[Daredevil]

The 5 second rule is true in Creation.

An Eclipse delegation shrunk themselves down to hash out a treaty with the various gods of disease on their territory (including major and least gods of bacteria, viruses, molds, & fungus) to form this accord.

The gods in question thought it was all in fair play, but they did play hard to gain favors & wonders from Yun-Shan & the best Solar Craftsmen of the Deliberative. These strange wonders exist on the micro sphere dimension such gods (& their Domain) operate on.

In various Solar tombs exist the Artifacts that can shrink one down to interact with this dimension. If someone were to learn the provisions of the treaty & could egg specific parties to violate them, diseases would run rampant. Copies of the treaty can also be found in various Solar tombs (and Yun-Shan).

One of the Deathlords was originally among the Solar delegation that enacted this treaty.

[glamourweaver]

As Creation is built on the slopes of the Pole of Earth which expands downward and outward far below the ground around the Imperial Mountain, it is slightly convex. It has roughly five time zones as a result. These are not formalized in any sense, but sunrise in Wavecrest is about five hours after sunrise is Halta, not that many mortals would ever know this.

The Imperial Mountain is the axis around which the heavens turn. As such constellations do not rise and fall over the horizon as in our sky. Instead someone’s location in Creation in addition to time of year would determine what sign they were literally born under, with the positions of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn among the constellations being additional X factors in all astrological readings.

Shepherd of the North Star is renamed Shepherd of the Pole Star, referring to the always stable Star at the apex of the sky above the Imperial Mountain.

[JohnDoe244]

Shepherd of the North Star is renamed Shepherd of the Pole Star, referring to the always stable Star at the apex of the sky above the Imperial Mountain.

I was with you until here. This makes navigation hella difficult. Unless you know the precise date and have accurate star charts... you basically can't navigate creation now.

[Ramnesis]

I don't remember how the books described navigation in Creation, that said...

If you didn't know the date and time and have accurate star charts then navigation was hella difficult in our world. The north star made finding your direction easy, but finding your location was a much bigger problem.

Given that the stars are, if I recall correctly, much closer to the surface of creation their parallax should be massive. If you can see the stars and have accurate charts, any two stars should tell you your exact position. You might not even need a timepiece depending on how the stars move (I don't remember that part). That's considerably simpler than in our world. From there, determining your direction from the Pole Star would be fairly easy.

[JohnDoe244]

I don't remember how the books described navigation in Creation

Compasses point to the Elemental Pole of Earth. The Shepherd of the North Star sits over the Pole of Air.

So you can basically always triangulate your position.

Thinking about the movement of the sun, it's probably not a deal-breaker to have the Shepherd moved to the Pole of Earth, so long as the Sun always rises dead over the Pole of Wood and sets over the Pole of Water.

[glamourweaver]

I was with you until here. This makes navigation hella difficult. Unless you know the precise date and have accurate star charts... you basically can't navigate creation now.

Hmmm, well as the literal “axis mundi” the Pole of Earth really should be the axis around which the heavens turn as that’s literally what that means.

It’s an easy enough fix for compasses to use additional jade needles to point toward an additional cardinal direction to triangulate.

[KymmetheSeventh]

Jade needles to point towards the other cardinal directions is a really awesome idea!

Inspired by one piece, I imagined that sailors way out in the West would use something like a Log Pose, a sort of weaker earth-attuned compass, that zeroes in on the nearest island to help them navigate across far-flung archipelagos.

[Sith_Happens]

I don't remember how the books described navigation in Creation

Not that it’s the only way to navigate but getting your latitude and longitude is described vaguely and as being difficulty 3 (+2 without all the proper equipment and +1 without a Sail specialty in Celestial Navigation).

[Blaque]

Not that it’s the only way to navigate but getting your latitude and longitude is described vaguely and as being difficulty 3 (+2 without all the proper equipment and +1 without a Sail specialty in Celestial Navigation).

The process was only ever described in detail in Savage Seas. Basically there are two parts.

First is finding true North. Creation doesn't really have time zones, and the North Star seems to always be Due North wherever you are. So at night you need to find that. This orients your position.

Then you can use a jade needle compass, all of which point to the Imperial Mountain. THis gives you your angle from the Blessed Isle at least, though note that for example, the angle for Arjuf, City of the Steel Lotus, and Goldenseal are close enough that you could get a similar compas result from any of them. So you gotta then find how far North/South you are.

So while Creation doesn't have time zones East-to-West, the Sun wanders North-to-South over the course of the year, and relative to your position. So if you have the right charts, you can during the day at high noon see where the Sun is in relation to True North. This combined with knowing the time of year give syou your longitude basically, which you can triangulate with the compass to get lattitude.

Something the book notes in this context is that since it's easier to keep reckoning if you keep the compass angle a certain way, this results in "swooshy" navlines on maps. (Not their words.) Which is what you actually see in the 3e corebook map with a lot of the nautical trade routes.

[Iceblade44]

I'm considering when Exigents get released that the Umbral Exalted will be some of the people in setting to know about the Great Curse. How much they know depends on the individual and their age but given how unlike every other Exalted, the fact that they have a semblance of control over their curse and its manifestation(Shadows) is implied to be sentient it makes sense to me that they would have some awareness of the true nature on the Exalted's tendencies to go extreme and it adds an interesting element i feel to their overall role and background in the setting. Since the Great Curse is by every other part of the game non-interactable this way can help center unique Umbral play experiences and allows the Great Curse to actually feel a part of the game

[slovorg]

Crystal healing, faith healing and other scientifically disproven medical practices work in creation.
Any description that includes words such as microbes, pharmaceutical or transplant rejection fail automatically, after a kind reminder from the storyteller to get their fantasy immersion on.

I do this because I work in a medical field and I rather have someone spew bullshit at my table than have my players guessing and being wrong. In my creation a popular and working medical treatment for fatigue is just injecting ox-blood into someone and it works wonders.

[Sith_Happens]

Exalted is not the prehistory of the World of Darkness (but you already knew that)... It’s the Time Before of Mage: The Awakening.

Disclaimer: This is based entirely on a single sentence I just read in the Tremere chapter of Nameless & Accursed.

[vampire hunter D]

Exalted is not the prehistory of wither the WoD or the CoD.

It is in fact a future of the WoD. I base this on how the description of the canon ending in Ascension resembles the Deep Wyld.

[Carl.ollivier]

This is more like a houserule than a headcanon, but it mostly affects the setting: Thaumaturgy is the '0th' Circle of Sorcery. It can be used to perform Terrestrial Sorcerous Workings, e.g. summoning unbound 1st circle demons (using the rules for breaking the barriers). There are a fair number of thaumaturges in Creation; perhaps 1 in 1000 people. Occasionally someone with Thaumaturgy has the potential to initiate into Terrestrial Sorcery, so mortal Sorcerors seeking apprentices (such as the Sorceror-Princes of Ysyr) look first amongst village witches, tea-leaf readers and other such minor talents.

Shadowlands are places where the barrier between Creation and the Underworld is thin and ghosts can cross over easily in such areas, but physical passage to the underwold is limited to powerful necromancy or a small number of true gateways. Such passages to the underworld are usually found in deep caves, especially with underground rivers. Journeying to the underworld is an epic feat in itself, not something that happens by accident if you walk the wrong way at night.