Your Headcanon II

[The Hug Ninja]

Y'danna is a very alien place to its neighbours due to a dualistic pantheon of gods that are believed to occasionally invert between order and chaos which they track through various omens.
This can make the island nation very unpredictable which seems to have aided more than it's hindered it against the rival kingdoms of the Dreaming Sea. This perhaps suggests it's more than just a collection of superstitions, but it may well be that this system of omens was created to allow Y'danna's priesthood to sheppard the fate of the nation by manufacturing or reinterpret the necessary omens to nudge its royal family in a direction they prefer.

[Baaldam]

Once came to be, sometime between the Divine Revolution and the Niobraran War, the empire of Ur-Anu, a coalition of air elementals aligned with but independent from the Deliberative, a nation so extensive in reach their citizens would come to be known as People of the Air.

Though solar propaganda would exagerate the relevance of their diplomatic role in supporting the establishment of their nation - to the point of sages of later eras misinterpretating the inhabitants of the aerial citadels and palaces as the "creations of the exalted" in the tales lionizing the exalted or villanizing the anathema - the nation and its many people had a long history and culture very much its own, influenced to some degree by the "adoption" of young sorcerously-created air elementals just released from service in as probationary citizens but barely beyond a superficial (and conveniently self-serving) level.

The conflicts of the Usurpation, the Shogunate that followed it, along with the tensions of the Rain Wars between Air and Water courts would lead to the incremental weakening of their civilization that would eventually shatter with the Contagion and Fae Invasion, with the hedonistic palaces of the Cloud People, the belligerent fraternities of nomadic thunderbirds and mysterious empty citadels floating amidst the stormy skies or the highest fog-shrouded mountains as some of the most long-lasting remnants of this long storied legacy.

One that might be far from completely gone, as the elemental cloudfolk of the windborne City of Blue Gauze, who visit Palanquin to trade with mortals, remember and cherish that memory, spreading the tale (and diaphanous seed) among locals who will share in nostalgia and passion of festivals with them. And some whisper or seek out in secret half-forgotten heirlooms and treasure hidden in plain sight, ancient rumours of a heaven beyond heaven enclosed by elder gods or titans even, in obscure chronicles undone through the turmoil of ages in all but the ever changing retellings on countless voices across the aeons, not the least among them.

[Baaldam]

The decadence and final fall of the People of the Air's civilization was influenced in no small part by a wave of societies and cults formed of masses of mortals offering themselves in virtual slavery & debasement for the sake of escaping the Contagion-plagued metropolises and small kingdoms of the surface world, many of these servants, lovers & playthings to the point of using one magical feather too much and encountering dissolution as clouds & rainfall for that decision.

In fact all too many thousands EMBRACED this slavery in debauchery and eventual demise through dissipation or dissolution as a more merciful alternative to endings through plague or hunger, leading to the spread of strange pleasure-suicide slave cults all across the cloud cities, their lives and deaths forever tainting the airy essence of these places and beings, spreading a spiritual malaise that lingers well into the Age of Sorrows, their skies now also windows into celestial spheres where the stars of beings that are not gods thread...

[Accelerator]

Video game arcades exist in Creation.

I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm somehow going to make it work.

[Lioness]

Video game arcades exist in Creation.

I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm somehow going to make it work.

An amusement arcade is doable but it would probably be more carnival games and the occasional clockwork automation in the style of the old coin operated machines that's probably at least boarderline irreplaceable.

[Accelerator]

An amusement arcade is doable but it would probably be more carnival games and the occasional clockwork automation in the style of the old coin operated machines that's probably at least boarderline irreplaceable.

You know what we need? Something along the lines of the Sierra Madre. A long dead gaming-arcade, with automated defenses and commerce services. Play the games, and win fabulous prizes! Or run afoul of the security's many unknown rules, and be thrown out or worse.

[evtrax]

Video game arcades exist in Creation.

I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm somehow going to make it work.

I can easily imagine two variants of this.

First is an old First age amusement place which has video games and is guarded by malfunctioning automatons.

Second is one that has a second circle demon themed after polybius and having First circle demons that have the typical jumanji game plays you sort of thing going on.

[Dezeroth]

I can easily imagine two variants of this.

First is an old First age amusement place which has video games and is guarded by malfunctioning automatons.

Second is one that has a second circle demon themed after polybius and having First circle demons that have the typical jumanji game plays you sort of thing going on.

I'd definitely have technomagic arcades in the major cities, if nothing else they are powered/run by bound hegra illusion demons

[Dezeroth]

Autochthon always being paranoid of the future and the possibility that he may not be able to out heal his techno - organic cancer built a backup system into the foundations of creation, should he ever expire creation will begin an auxiliary function. Acting similar to the process of Lethe for mortals, if Autochthon were to fall to his disease his essence will be collected by creation itself and he will slowly reform from creation's features.

This process was only meant for Autochthon but due to the nature of his disease he had to make the process adaptable. Then Autochthon's brothers and sisters were slain by the Exalted (normal history from this point)

What Autochthon didn't know is his adaptable process for resurrecting himself has been puzzling out how to perform it's duties on the Neverborn but instead of treating them as separate entities it has been siphoning off small amounts of necrotic essence from each of them and reconstituting entirely new essence matrices.

Now, in creation large amounts of essence flows through the dragon lines, pooling into multiple demesnes within close proximity to each other. Entire generations of mortals and animals alike in these areas start to have dreams and nightmares of impossible things, things they have no context for what so ever but still feel some vague connection to. Then, the last mortal or animal component comes of age and they all feel a pull. Animals, mortals, and the very landscape itself all converge between the demesnes and in just a brief moment pure chaos exists within the bounds of creation. An infinitely powerful essence singularity is formed at the heart of this bubble of pure chaos forcing causality into a bubble of chaos held within a bubble of ordered creation. For just an instance there are no laws again, time does not exist and within the chaos bubble time not has reformed. The contradiction forces the bubble to collapse on itself and a new gestalt primordial has awakened, it is both the sum of all its parts and so much more

[Accelerator]

I'd definitely have technomagic arcades in the major cities, if nothing else they are powered/run by bound hegra illusion demons

That's a wonderful idea. Hegra has most definitely not been used a lot. I see a lot of 1st circles for fighting, war, creation, planning, thought, but Hegra's entertainment and media and literature niche has most definitely been underused.

Though Creation may vary. Some might consider those arcades to be dens where the youth are corrupted and signs of delinquency.

[Erinys]

I have so much headcanon I haven't shared.

1. Most crops and the vast majority of grains grown in Creation are perennial species bred in the First Age. I also have a bunch of specific ideas about cuisine, especially in Lookshy.

2. Many cultures use bronze, arsenical bronze, brass, or stone and can’t smelt iron, but iron tools and weapons are still widespread, though not cheap nor common.

3. The Tarpan Wastes are not a natural desert with a failing Solar Working. There are no natural deserts on the Blessed Isle, instead it was formerly semiarid but fertile grassland. It became a series of genocidal death camps and a huge shadowland in the Usurpation, just like Marama’s Fell. The Shogunate heavily salted the whole region at great expense, and returned it to Creation, but it remains too cursed for the Wood Aspects and sorcerers to restore its former fertility.

4. Linowan forge bronze and copper tools, weapons, and ornaments in addition to precious metals. They farm oaks, berries, and fruit and nut trees.

5. Halta cannot defeat or drive out the Fair Folk that took over the ground during the Balorian Crusade, and have virtually no access to iron. Faerie could easily eat them or kill their trees – ultimately, the Haltan are hostages. To not be eaten, Haltan have to keep an alliance. Sometimes Fair Folk are satisfied by theatre, staged debates, loud music, drunken revelry, worship, or the horrors of war, but many demand human sacrifice. The unacknowledged primary reason for the forever war is to sacrifice Linowans. Prisoners of war are sacrificed on the border or imported to villages farther away. Deep interior villages are rare and get by with draconian laws that make many crimes punishable by sacrifice. Linowans with some justification say all Haltan are faerie-worshipping ravagers and their whole forest is cursed.
5.5. Haltan and far-far Easterners with little access to minerals have no metallurgy or ceramic craft. They make heavy use of bone and ironwood for tools and weapons, including human bone. They use sky burials and make tools out of their relatives’ bones. Haltan pave their hearths with human scapulas and skull pieces, carved to fit. They trade for the stone and metal tools necessary to carve ironwood and bone – from human trading partners and the Fair Folk. Their agriculture is easier, since they can grow various epiphytes, vines, and fungi. With no salt and minimal use of fire, most of their food is preserved by vinegar, alcohol, fermenting, or honey.

6. Lunars can create self-perpetuating beastfolk lineages based on any animal they can become, it just requires more Charm investment and effort than basing it on their spirit shape. They can absolutely breed beastfolk directly, with humans, while in human shape. Doing it in the Wyld with mismatched shapes results in Wyld mutant offspring, which pretty much nobody wants.
6.5. Lunars can breed with animals, and the results range from Moon-born but nonsapient animals, to sapient animals with some human physical traits but no human soul, to intelligent yokai-animals that can (after many years) learn to shapeshift into a human or half-human form but are definitely not human at all. They can never have beastfolk offspring with animals.

7. Ghosts don’t make Oblivion bigger or stronger just by existing. Ancestor cults do funnel Creation’s Essence into the Underworld... but ancestors who intervene in Creation funnel Essence back the other way. And Creation can’t run out of Essence anyway, unless the Wyld or Underworld destroy it faster than the Poles can draw new Essence out of the infinite Wyld.

8. The preponderance of wordy, flowery names for charms and spells and the like is the result of something He Who Bleeds the Unknown Word built into the nature of Essence manipulation, back when the Primordials created the world. Whenever someone discovers a new way to channel Essence, they feel a slight compulsion to give their new ability a distinct, florid name ... even if it isn't a discrete technique.
8.5. The Dragon's Shadow undercut this by keeping all of his powers nameless, just to prove He Who Bleeds wasn't the boss of him.

9. Each Incarna has a favorite sacred animal: the mouse for Sol, the raiton for Mars, the gull for Mercury, the magpie for Jupiter, the peafowl for Venus, and the crow/raven for Saturn. Luna gives the impression of having multiple favorites, but ze actually just changes zir mind frequently.

[Blaque]

The Tarpan I actually do as kind of a mix of canon and what you ahve. Where it was origianlly semi-arid but the Workings terraformed it. And now that they're fading, the Wastes are actually becoming desolute becuase the geomancy got so effed that now it's become more desert than it ever was to begin with.

I actually did similar with the Incarna on animals, with eagles for Mars and owls for Jupiter. Tad cliche, but the other three Maidens do have bird constellations and those are ones I feel distinct enough from the other species used by them. And in Luna's cae, I actulaly had rabbits of a sort show up a lot in thier motifs due to both the East Asian stuff, and also stuff like Al-Miraj and making them kind of carnivorous mosnter-ones feels also on brand for them.

[Lioness]

It's seemingly dangerous to learn about the Yozi Cytherea, with many of the demonologists who try to find answers to this coming to sticky ends. There are four main schools of belief on this.

-Cytherea cannot be known and to attempt that is to invite death and madness.
-Cytherea no longer wishes to be known and will smite those who don't respect her wishes.
-Cytherea has been sentenced to be a secret known only to the Yozis by her siblings who perhaps consider her a traitor.
-That the fates of those who seek to learn more about Cytherea is a false correlation and that really, anyone that interested in the Yozis themselves was probably already dealing directly with the Unquestionables and generally asking for trouble.

[Erinys]

By the end of the First Age, every type of individual-useable weapon known to humanity, no matter how obscure or niche, had at least one supernatural martial art built around it.

[Accelerator]

By the end of the first age, there was also a shitload of weird essence training techniques that they went around the opposite ways of martial arts. Like 'I'm so good at meditating I can punch diseases out of you'. Or 'I'm so good at taking things apart I can also put them together'.

Long story short, weird bursts of semi-magical things aren't limited to martial arts.