Exigents and Gods of Nothing

[shkspr1048]

Suppose, hypothetically, a god whose portfolio was erased (by the Wyld, the Three Spheres Cataclysm, etc.) manages to obtain an Exigent. Would the Exigent's powers be reflective of the god's portfolio as it was, or on whatever scraps of power the god currently maintains?

[nalak42]

Probably what's left of the god's power. Plus the abilities of whatever other gods were necessary to catalyze the exigence as it would be a rare god to have their portfolio completely expunged from reality at the conceptual level and still have enough power to fully make an exigent on the ashes of their former power.

[Baaldam]

Suppose, hypothetically, a god whose portfolio was erased (by the Wyld, the Three Spheres Cataclysm, etc.) manages to obtain an Exigent. Would the Exigent's powers be reflective of the god's portfolio as it was, or on whatever scraps of power the god currently maintains?

I guess it depends on the kind of deity it was. If he was a terrestrial one, its portfolio would be a place or landmark, something with material heft and whose concept of would sort of exist even if the specific example a deity was steward of is gone. So even though, let's say, Omlaut of Diorite Spires, is gone from Creation along with the Mount Murang it was carved upon, cities, carved from the body of mountains or not, are still a known quantity in Creation and consequently the deity's charms would still have meaning and identity to draw upon, though much diminished by its divine steward's loss.

Now, if we are speaking of a fallen celestial deity, one that was connected to an abstract concept, well, there you might have a problem indeed, because the deity losing its portfolio implies that concept is no more and if such is the case how does one personify/represent something that does not exist? That is a sure road for incomprehensible things and madness indeed, depending on how close or distant was the lost purview to still existing concepts.

Now, about if an Exigent's powers would be reflective of the god's portfolio as it was, or on whatever scraps of power the god currently maintains - i would say, based on the fluff of the sample exigent we get in the corebook (that of Wu Jian's city-god), a bit of column A, a bit of column B. An Exigence can be considered as magnifying lens of sorts, in that it not only makes an image clearer, but makes minute details more visible and amplify's one scope.

An Exigent would start by reflecting the god as is, but with luck to survive and grow might mature into its power and, through the sun-borne potential hidden within, start to see nuances of concept, essence and scale that expand from its patron surface to its past depths and from there to even broader vistas of connected concepts and so on perhaps. Much like the Exigent of Wu Jian when she exalts has glimpses of the whole of the city's history, then of the Goddess of the Shining Metropolis, the ultimate city-deity above all and from there of Yu-shan, the primordial conception of a center of civilization before there was even a world, itself.


Incidentally,one might want to take a look into Yukino-Takka the Broken God (Hundred Devils Night Parade 157-158), that i think definitely fits the bill for an extreme example such a deity - in that he not even remember god of what he was supposed to be after a Raksha noble had its way with him but turned into a quasi-elemental being that now calcifies in Creation just like a Fae, among other peculiarities.

[Eric Minton]

Suppose, hypothetically, a god whose portfolio was erased (by the Wyld, the Three Spheres Cataclysm, etc.) manages to obtain an Exigent. Would the Exigent's powers be reflective of the god's portfolio as it was, or on whatever scraps of power the god currently maintains?

A god's "portfolio" stems from its office in the Celestial Bureaucracy, not from the actual thing it oversees. Either the god loses its job and thus its purview, or it keeps the job as a sinecure and keeps its purview.

[Baaldam]

A god's "portfolio" stems from its office in the Celestial Bureaucracy, not from the actual thing it oversees. Either the god loses its job and thus its purview, or it keeps the job as a sinecure and keeps its purview.

Would the second be the case for gods whose job has been rendered mostly void, like the deity of a city ruined by war, plague or calamity like the Contagion or Fae invasion?

[HamSandLich]

Exalted are Chosen of the God's, not Purviews. A current purview probably informs an Exigent's powers but I'd say that the God's self image is more important

[Baaldam]

Suppose, hypothetically, a god whose portfolio was erased (by the Wyld, the Three Spheres Cataclysm, etc.) manages to obtain an Exigent. Would the Exigent's powers be reflective of the god's portfolio as it was, or on whatever scraps of power the god currently maintains?

Now going back to the elephant in the room - what would a god whose portfolio was (mostly) erased from existence require an exigence FOR?

[Xerxes]

Now going back to the elephant in the room - what would a god whose portfolio was (mostly) erased from existence require an exigence FOR?

I could see a god without portfolio potentially use an Exigent to displace a rival and secure a position. I don't think such a god would be able to secure the Exigence from UCS unless there was a very specific set of circumstances ("please let me have a champion to take back the land I oversaw from the Wyld" being the one I think most likely to be granted there), but the black market and straight up theft us always a thing.

I think that probably the best route to a portfolio for such a god would actually be to trade the Exigence for a position and go from there, but I can see a particularly selfish god using the Exigence to create a champion, and then use that champion's strength in their name to fight for a purview for their patron.

In that case, such an Exigent would probably be wholly formed from the personality of their patron, with a healthy dollop of ambition and greed.

[Baaldam]

I could see a god without portfolio potentially use an Exigent to displace a rival and secure a position. I don't think such a god would be able to secure the Exigence from UCS unless there was a very specific set of circumstances ("please let me have a champion to take back the land I oversaw from the Wyld" being the one I think most likely to be granted there), but the black market and straight up theft us always a thing.

Yes, but as treasures go, Exigence is something of a loaded gun - using it will take something out of you and there's a not insignificant chance of it costing your own existence depending on how big or small one already is. Acquired through virtue or trickery, it's still a huge gamble for any deity to take and that much more so if one already has a foot on the grave, so to speak.

I think that probably the best route to a portfolio for such a god would actually be to trade the Exigence for a position and go from there, but I can see a particularly selfish god using the Exigence to create a champion, and then use that champion's strength in their name to fight for a purview for their patron.

In that case, such an Exigent would probably be wholly formed from the personality of their patron, with a healthy dollop of ambition and greed.

For good and for ill, it calls for a spirit to be very passionate/desperate about whatever it wants out of a champion to make such a choice instead of going with much safer choices like seeking out an outcaste or elemental to take as an agent/pupil of sorts or take a slightly slower path of making a few god-bloods (or god beasts) of one's own to do all kinds of jobs, so to speak.

Creation is a fairly huge place - for every place or population that was destroyed between the twin dooms of Contagion & fae invasion a possibly as large number of deities were undone in the ensuing chaos. There are many places or groups of people in corners across all directions waiting for the right being, mortal, divine or something in between, to nudge them toward prosperity and greatness that an ambitous spirit may work with.


I guess it's the "jobless/god of nothing" conceit that i've started taking issue with since back in 2e - losing one's position is something that may happen, but for one to stay for long into such a situation, no land, no concept, no surviving worshippers to speak of, requires some pretty particular set of circunstances to be at play. There's always room for one to adapt or poach into if it looks hard enough.