Lioness' Ramblings

[Lioness]

Wrote this on a whim.

Demon Brew
A last resort of the desperate seeking power by any means necessary, a mortal imbibes a special form of Chalcanth, the distilled essence of a still-living first circle demon dissolved in Vitriol to create an inauspicious union of spirits.
While under the effect of this potion the character has a pool of 10 motes and a single charm appropriate to the demon she drank as though she were a powerful demon blooded of its lineage and may learn additional charms at 12 xp each but she has a bigger problem as the entity she consumed is far from gone and she also now suffers from the Two-Soul Sickness.

Two-Soul Sickness (Virulence N/A, Morbidity 3, Interval: One Month):
• Minor Symptom: The victim hears the demon’s thoughts in her head gaining an appropriate minor intimacy to the creature’s alien nature. At night the two beings battle for control in their shared dreamscape and the victim must roll (Wits + Integrity) at difficulty 3 to be able to gain any rest.
• Major Symptom: The demon is strong enough to have a presence during the day and the intimacy now manifests as a compulsion requiring 1 willpower to resist.
• Defining Symptom: The demon is visibly trying to twist itself free of its host, the victim gains an appropriate mutation to represent that the struggle is nearing its end.
• Death: The demon finally rips itself free or merges with the victim to become something new. Of the original character there are only memories.

If the Two-Soul Sickness is somehow cured (such as through exaltation), then the character loses her newfound power, and all experience spent on charms is refunded.

Note for Storytellers: It will probably be difficult to convince someone with Two-Soul Sickness to allow themselves to be cured if there’s even a possibility of management. Even before the subconscious influence of the demon they probably took the brew for a reason in the knowledge that it was dangerous.

[Lioness]

I meant to post an update here.
Ask the Devs 2 has been returned to the Exalted forum and is currently slowly drifting down the main page and along with the original thread is accessible by the link at the start of the new thread, thus far it's not caused any further issue with the software in this state but we'll see if any instability returns.

[Lioness]

Okay, forum is working again but I don't know how long that will last.

My advice? Start making backups of things you want to preserve.

[Lioness]

Similar message to before.

You may encounter a long load time after making a post but they are going through now.

[Erinys]

Okay, forum is working again but I don't know how long that will last.

My advice? Start making backups of things you want to preserve.

Seriously you think this forum is going to blow up like the old forum did? Soon?
Any idea how soon? There are probably thousands of threads, it's not something that can be preserved by individual action one at a time.

[Lioness]

Seriously you think this forum is going to blow up like the old forum did? Soon?
Any idea how soon? There are probably thousands of threads, it's not something that can be preserved by individual action one at a time.

I don't know but it keeps breaking.
The administrators won't just shut these forums down without warning but I don't want a repeat of the situation with the old forums/wiki if it can be avoided.

[Erinys]

I wish I knew some software that could actually save the content of something this huge, all at once. One week was not anywhere close to enough warning time to individually download/Archive/copy every individual thread in the old forum. It's just as hard here.

[Lioness]

Well, the main problem last time was that the forum went down while they were backing it up electronically.

[Lindharin]

I wish I knew some software that could actually save the content of something this huge, all at once. One week was not anywhere close to enough warning time to individually download/Archive/copy every individual thread in the old forum. It's just as hard here.

I don't know how it would handle the size of the site, but have you heard of HTTrack?
Here's a page that has some software for making offline copies of entire sites: https://www.geckoandfly.com/32437/download-websites/ The first option, HTTrack shows up in a lot of search hits for this sort of thing, seems to be the main option although there are others. I've used software like this years ago to make backups of sites with a couple thousand pages, but I don't know how it would handle the forums.

[Erinys]

My efforts have been concentrated on saving homebrew via the Wayback Machine, but if you or anyone is good with software like that please use it ASAP!

Of course, an offline copy isn't useful to anyone except the person who saved it, so... maybe not a good software for this.


Edit: By the way, please don't use Google Docs for saving homebrew. Google Docs cannot be Archived in the Wayback Machine at all and on September 13 Google is going to change many or most of the urls. I am racing to download all the homebrew ever before the urls all become invalid.

[Lioness]

Edit: By the way, please don't use Google Docs for saving homebrew. Google Docs cannot be Archived in the Wayback Machine at all and on September 13 Google is going to change many or most of the urls. I am racing to download all the homebrew ever before the urls all become invalid.

This warrants a signal boost.

[Lioness]

So, a small problem I have with Exalted Essence's travel venture as-written is that unless you’re trying to get somewhere within a specific time frame the dice roll is mostly to negate potentially interesting complications when ideally it should make better use of Creation’s vast unexplored world. My idea draws some inspiration from Pathfinder’s exploration mode and another house rule which I use in a different context.

Ultimately the point of this is to encourage players to imagine what’s in the blank areas of the map and embrace unexpected encounters on long journeys.

Step 1 Interests –
Each player states an Interest, an Interest is something that their character was focused upon during the journey; these can be broad in scope and reflect tasks that helped the rest of the group such as periodically patrolling ahead to look for potential threats. The Interest can be more character focused, such as spending more time with another character. Lastly, an Interest can also be used for limited dramatic editing to describe something seen/heard about on their journey that might warrant further attention.
Step 2 Obstacles –
The Storyteller considers potential obstacles such as the weather, access to supplies and if the circle even knows where they’re going when assigning a difficulty rating to the journey. This will still be a relatively low number compared to the dice pools that an Exalted PC can throw at the problem.
Step 3 Leadership –
Once you’ve established the difficulty the players choose someone to lead them who rolls against the predetermined difficulty. In Exalted Essence this is Navigate + the appropriate Attribute, in Ex3 the roll is typically (Intelligence + Survival) for land-based travel and (Intelligence + Sail) for journeys via ocean.
Step 4 Consequence –
If the roll fails, the group suffers a complication in their journey determined by the Storyteller. I would advise caution in how the complication is connected to any of the Interests, while it can be fun to world build on top of what the players have provided it can lead to the person who had an interesting idea getting the blame for the negative consequences which might make them less inclined to share those ideas in future.

If the roll succeeds the circle is making good time on their journey and has time to take a more leisurely pace or an opportunity to stop and explore. As with normal Ventures the successes more than the difficulty may be converted into Advantages which may be used to support another player’s Interest with reasonable justification for how the pace of travel or environment is assisting in this. For example, a character pursuing another romantically might be aided by the circle lingering near a picturesque forest grove. From here, work out what adds the most value in being portrayed as a scene or is best left as an interesting background detail.

[Lioness]

So, I thought Siakal in Adversaries was a little less interesting an opponent than I hoped. I've had thoughts on representing the directional war gods mechanically for years and thought it might be worth sharing some of them.

Boundless War God Bloodlust; (1m+; Reflexive; Instant; Perilous; Essence 4):
Flavour Text: A predator by nature, Siakal is quickened by battles as they draw closer and closer to their conclusion.
Effects: Siakal may add dice to any action in combat. She cannot add more dice to a roll than the combined wound penalties of the fight’s participant (including herself and her allies, incapacitated and slain participants count as 5 for this purpose as do shattered Battle Groups), to a maximum of ten dice. Join Battle rolls prior to combat may always have up to ten dice added. (This replaces Boundless War God Wisdom.)

Terrible Shark Queen Endurance; (6m; Reflexive; Instant; Universal; Essence 5):
Flavour Text: Some familiar with Siakal make a fundamental misunderstanding that she turns into a siaka, one of the great sharks of the West to battle on the ocean. The truth is that Siakal is a siaka who occasionally walks on land.
Effects: Siakal gains the effects of Legendary Size against a Withering or Decisive Attack while in her humanoid form. Should she be slain in this form she immediately appears in the nearest body of water with her -2 and -4 health levels restored and may continue to fight on in her true form. If there is no suitable body water available this may be very embarrassing for her.

My broader thoughts on Siakal are that as a war god she's all about the life or death struggle while a patron of pirates she's more likely to favour a non-combatant with the instinct to fight back than an skilled and well-funded raider who doesn't think they're in any danger from soft targets. Afterall a shark isn't merely inconvenienced when its prey escapes.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

You're too kind. I think that she's inherently uninteresting and overdone concept - one part Khorne mixed with debunked shark fears from the post-Jaws era, which before her coalesced into D&D's Sekolah. The method of sacrificing humans to sharks to gain her favor is also bad, not just because of the mustache-twirling factor, but because humans are worse than nothing for larger sharks when it comes to food, the shark equivalent of Big Pink from Futurama. I wouldn't even expect siaka to respond to human-sized splashing in the water, or even blood in amounts less than what would already kill one adult human if lost, which leads into an alternate event where Sesus Rafara's nannies are actually still alive and well but with different identities and where she won't find them, having made it out of the water fairly easily (though likely not without a great deal of fear) when the attention of the 35+ foot sharks was on the ships and the whale parts that they would have to use for bait.