Question about 3E - Concerns about Sidereals, Question if any of these are changing?

[Erinys]

So, I asked this question elsewhere:

Is Sidereals being kickstarted? Are the Devs taking any feedback of what players are hoping for in the splats they have played/want to play? I am not emotionally or financially able to participate in any Kickstarters now but I really have big worries and concerns about Sidereals and Infernals. There are several things in the previous Sidereals hardback(s) that strongly disturbed me, and made me utterly hate them, and I am worried about some previous stated plans for Sidereals. But I also loved playing one in Wonderandawe's forum quest. I wish 3E Sidereals to make me love them, not hate them.

I was very sick during the Kickstarter and couldn't have afforded to contribute anyway . So I don't have a good way to ask Devs about my concerns? Verzio suggested I ask about them here.

I mean, maybe the thing to do is open a thread about your concerns about Sidereals in the Siderreals sub-forum, and people who backed the Kickstarter can talk about whether those are even live concerns given the released-to-backers draft?

So, I have read that in 3E there are no Factions? Or the Gold Faction never existed until the Empress vanished? Also, I have glanced through the 1st Ed. splatbook at a book store and saw things that made me just... totally uninterested in Sids. I am concerned whether or not they are still be canon in 3E.

Note: I am not posting these to start a discussion about these opinions. I'm not asking "do you agree or disagree with my concerns?". I'm only trying to find out if any of this was addressed in the KS or will be changed in 3E? Please don't answer sarcastically, I can't understand sarcasm or it looks like anger to me.

1. How can the Gold Faction just... not exist even during and after the Balorian Crusade? How can every single 3E Sidereal 100% support the Bronze Faction agenda for over 1500 years with no dissent, in all that time? That isn't possible without a Borg hive mind? The Bronze Faction is not just "we killed the Solars long ago". They also made additional decisions, and they have several specific agendas, actively pursued throughout the entire 2nd Age, that any Sidereal character should be capable of disagreeing with or opposing. If there have never been factions then what about the entire Gold Vision in the Great Prophecy? What about Sidereals who disagreed with building the Jade Prison and wanted to let the Solars reincarnate after assassinating the corrupt individuals? What about Sidereals who didn't want to extend the Usurpation to the Lunars, or didn't want to allow/support the genocides during the Usurpation that created horrors like Marama's Fell? What about characters who disagree with supporting the Wyld Hunt, or disagree with the eternal Forever War against the Lunars and want to make peace, Sidereals living through the Balorian Crusade who wanted to team up with Lunars against the Fey, Sidereals who witnessed the Balorian Crusade and concluded that the Bronze Vision failed and can't keep Creation "safe" as promised, Sidereals who wanted to open the Jade Prison during the Balorian Crusade so the Solars can help defend Creation, etc.? Wonderandawe's Shogunate Sidereal quest wouldn't have been fun if Svante was so brainwashed he had no ability to decide his own political opinions. Or if he was the only dissenter ever and just... all alone with no allies.

2. Sidereals depicted in 1E as unable to acknowledge things outside of fate or remember that their prophecies don't apply to those things, and unable to conceive the possibility that they are fallible. I think that's the "Blind Seers sidebar", but I'm not sure.

3. The Bronze Faction in 1E explicitly declaring that the Balorian Crusade and Great Contagion were not "significant", and .. I think it said [they think] their prophecy is infallible and it doesn't matter that they didn't predict those events. I can't recall if they explicitly claimed that Creation is and was "safe" during those events, but it seemed implied.

4. There was an explicit statement somewhere (1E Sidereals? or Compass: Yu-Shan? I forget) saying something like: the Guild slave trade is the only kind of patterned trading that works. So both Factions wholeheartedly support the slave trade and constantly harass the god of abolition with frivolous audits. That if the slave trade ever stopped the raksha would start destroying Creation, or something. This kind of setting statement, making some atrocity Objectively Right, disgusts me. I got the impression you couldn't play a Sidereal who dislikes slavery, and that the author meant that any abolitionist like Strength of Many is somehow endangering the whole world by opposing slavery.

5. The Bronze Faction is allied with the raksha and helps or enourages or invites lots of them to settle in the Threshold for.... some reason. That is just straight-up treason against Creation, I don't like them being written this way. I can't recall if this was in Compass: Wyld (which I do have) or 1E Sidereals.

Please, nobody attack me for my opinions or derail this thread with a debate about them. Please just ... only tell me if any of these has been addressed in the KS? (not just swept aside or dismissed)

I do not have access to any KS-only info, and decided not to buy the 1E Sids hardback, so please please don't get mad at me for not knowing the details, even if you disagree with my concerns. And please, don't make fun of me for being afraid of hostile reactions from other forumites.

[Isator Levi]

The Bronze and Gold Faction are still part of the setting, right down to the latter having existed throughout the Second Age. There are some adjustments to tidy up the concepts a bit, particularly where the Gold is about a bit more than just advocating for the dead Solars for a thousand years, but the essence of them remains.

There's a keyword for relevant Sidereal Charms now to make their prophetic powers not applying to enemies of fate* actually how they work rather than a thing described in the fiction but not in their actual powers. The fiction makes no reference to the idea that blind spots in their prophetic capabilities are something unnoticed by them, and indeed greater reference is made to them and Heaven as a whole recognising the limitations of destiny (in particular that trying to account for the Exalted in it is a bit of a non-starter). That said, the Sidereals shift a bit away from sitting around trying to divine the future and more about taking an active hand in creating it.

I don't recall anything depicting the Bronze Faction as obstinate about the Great Contagion beyond the extent that they might need to be to still think that having the Realm control the world is still the best course of action. One thing that should be understood is that in this version, giving control to the Dragon-Blooded like that is a hastily implemented plan B; they originally intended to take the reigns more directly themselves, but the breaking of the Mask put a kibosh on that. In this version, that happened because that constellation is where they hid the Jade Prison.

I'm not really sure if your recollection about slave trading as something to preserve Creation is in the earlier books at all, it's certainly not in Charting Fate's Course.

Nor the idea of being friendly to raksha. That one is certainly not in the Third Edition book; beyond some circumstantial friendliness that might be more a matter of individual Sidereals, the Fair Folk are firmly defined as enemies of fate*.

* This term is preferenced over things being "outside of fate", possibly in the interests of the book being a lot more firm on consistency of terminology. To whit: fate is the natural laws of Creation and general principle of causality, destiny is the plans of Heaven for the unfolding future. The new Yu-Shan makes destiny the business of all the Celestial Bureaucracy, as something that helps reinforce Creation against the Wyld, with the Bureau being the ones who have key roles in its planning, coordination and actual implementation. An enemy of fate is an entity who is not under the authority of Heaven and whose very existence constitutes a constant danger to the orderly progression of destiny and integrity of a coherent reality on the whole.

[Erinys]

Thank you Isator Levi! It looks like at least the biggest problems have not been repeated. That's great.

[Isator Levi]

A couple of things to note:

The Divination Keyword does not render Charms completely blind to enemies of fate. Their presence and actions can be foreseen, but not anything specific about the perpetrators. If a Sidereal had directed their notice to the future of Thorns, they would see a city conquered but the identity of the conquerors would be a blank space in their vision. It would be enough to know that an enemy of fate was the perpetrator, but that alone would not specify which variety.

I think the description in fiction of Sidereal prophetic capabilities would be a bit more consistent with the powers they have. There's no straightforward "look at the future" Charm, there's things like Of Truths Best Unspoken which knows things as though they were an account made from long after the fact, or Wise Choice where they can contemplate their own options to know which is the best in the short term to their immediate objectives. The capacity to foresee massive disasters is limited even if looking for them specifically.

The Loom of Fate no longer serves a function for predicting the future, or indeed looking at the disposition of any specific individual thing. The Bureau of Destiny can instead use it to evaluate the composition and intersections of fate so as to know which destinies have greater or lesser plausibility. It doesn't tell you whether or not the king is going to be poisoned by his vizier so that his infant daughter can become successor under a regency, it tells you whether or that the details of that scenario make sense (it can be a harder sell if the vizier is supremely loyal or strongly inclined against stealthy murder). If somebody then wants that to become destiny, it gets woven into the Loom, the main value of which is that it coming about reinforces Creation, the Wyld held off with the premise that the unfolding of history is something orderly and divinely ordained.

This probably means that in most cases it's sensible to create destiny out of things that are probably going to happen anyway, but in cases where the outcome is more undefined I'd say just being added to the Loom pushes things closer to that direction. Where it doesn't seem to be going according to plan, gods are permitted to intervene to push things more along the party line; spirits of treachery doing things like putting weight on the vizier's motives to do it, maybe a god of poison ensuring that the king will succumb without delay.

The Sidereal Exalted are reserved for the most important interventions of destiny; sometimes that means ensuring the poisoning happens when all else fails because there's a lot that rides on this particular destiny, but more often because the delay is being caused by somebody with power actively interfering. Often that means enemies of fate (the ghost of the king's father offering warnings of deadly advisors), but it can also be other gods or Exalted who happen to be motivated to keep the king alive or thwart the vizier.

[Erinys]

This is pretty interesting, thanks.
May I continue asking questions?

1. Is the Night of Falling Stars massacre still canon, with Lupo as the only [known] survivor?

2. Is there any Silver Faction? I get the impression that 1E-2E Lunars were so insignificant that Sidereals barely had opinions about them. But now... yes Lunars are replying to the eternal warfare in kind, but that eternal war is also a choice the Bronze Faction re-commits to every day. So are there any Sidereals who want peace with Lunars, but not necessarily with Solars? (I assume independents still exist.)

3. Do directional and non-directional Conventions still exist?

4. What stretch goals were achieved? (Or where can I go to view them?) Will there be novellas?

5. What martial arts styles are in it?

[Blaque]

1. Is the Night of Falling Stars massacre still canon, with Lupo as the only [known] survivor?

There wasn't anything like that in 3e to my gathering. The Solar Purge/Usurpation was mostly a straight-up slog and grind, whcih took the better part of a decade, resulted in deaths in all groups, and was mostly in the end won by the Bronze Faction's Sidereals after a lot of damage done for everyone. Lupo hasn't come up at all this edition.

2. Is there any Silver Faction? I get the impression that 1E-2E Lunars were so insignificant that Sidereals barely had opinions about them. But now... yes Lunars are replying to the eternal warfare in kind, but that eternal war is also a choice the Bronze Faction re-commits to every day. So are there any Sidereals who want peace with Lunars, but not necessarily with Solars? (I assume independents still exist.)

The Gold Faction doesn't by default care about Solars, it's about change to the status quo/reform. Some members do, but htat's not the MO of the Faction. The Factions are more Status Quo (Bronze) v. New Tact (Gold) at this point. So in this context, a special Lunar one is kind of moot.

There's a textbox in the Lunars book about how there have been attempts to mend relationships between the Lunar and Sidereal Hosts, but generally what you have is a situation where enough sabotage has happened on both sides by third parties that there's a lack of trust. Indivdual Sidereals and Lunars acting together is that: Individual Luanrs and Sidereals acting together. There's no real unified movement with Sidereals to curry Lunar favor, and the SIlver Pact has a lot of Lunars who aren't big fans of Sidereals.

3. Do directional and non-directional Conventions still exist?

Yes.

4. What stretch goals were achieved? (Or where can I go to view them?) Will there be novellas?

This post summarizes the Kickstarter's goals hit:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/sidereals-charting-fates-course-for-exalted-third-edition/posts/3694182

Contents from that and the Companion are as follows:

• 14 Martial Arts styles
  • Arts of Destined Battle, the sister styles of Violet Bier of Sorrows
    • Golden Barque of the Heavens Style
    • Cerulean Lute of Harmony Style
    • Crimson Panopoly of Victory Style
    • Forbidden Manse of Ivy Style
  • Thousand Weapon Arts: Weapon-based styles.
    • Even Blade Style
    • Flowing Whip-Arm Style
    • Threshing Grain Style
    • Crimson Killing Field Style
  • Battle Arts of the Back Alleys. Shady underworld martial arts
    • Seven Drunken Gods Style
    • Devil Pipe Style
    • Roaring Iron Style
    • Prince-Eating Mendicant Style
  • Sapphire Veil of Passion Style
  • A martial art associated with the Flying Guillotine spell
• Secrets of Jupiter's Tome x2: More Emerald and Sapphire spells, including Flying Guillotine noted above.
• Streets of Heaven x2: Detail on various Heavenly districts and associated plot hooks.
• Salon of Celestial Personages. QCs for a variety of gods and other denizens of Heaven
• Roll of the Maiden's Chosen. Various Sidereal QCs, including Chejop Kejak and Ayesha Ura.
• Hallowed Vaults Unsealed. A variety of starmetal artifacts and associated Evocations
• Celestial Geomancy. Descriptions of notable heavenly manses and a variety of new hearthstones.
• Bureau Intelligence Briefing. Handouts for new players, filling them on the basics of the setting, the Bureau of Destiny, and the Bronze and Gold Factions.
• Additional Storyteller advice and plot hooks for Sidereal missions
• Backer-picked canon Sidereal QCs x9
• Spirit or other heavenly denizen QCs x5
• Backer-defined Martial Arts "Secret Technique" charms, of which at least 5 are for SMAs x22
• Backer-defined Sorcery Spells x9
• Backer-defined Artifacts x11
• Backer-defined PC or NPC art x8

Stretch goals not in the Comapnion

• Jumpstart Adventure
• Storytellers Screen
• Digital Wallpaper
• Novella
• Redbubble T-Shirt
• Mobile Wallpaper

5. What martial arts styles are in it?

The manuscript had the following normal and Sidereal styles:

• Martial Arts
  • Throne Shadow Style
  • Violet Bier of Sorrows Style
• Sidereal Martial Arts
  • Charcoal March of Spiders Style
  • Citrine Poxes of Contagion Style
  • Emerald Gyre of Ages Style
  • Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style
  • Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Style

[Verzio]

So, a few quotes from the section on the Gold Faction:

The Gold Faction emerged in the Shogunate’s early days, a political alliance brokered between Sidereals who’d fought against the Solar Purge and those who’d come to regret their part in it. . . . The Purge — or as the Gold Faction knows it, the Usurpation — was their rallying cry in those days, their opposition to the Bronze agenda founded as much on personal enmity as principle.

The Great Contagion marked a turning point for the Gold Faction’s understanding of itself. ... Though they were still far smaller than the Bronze Faction, this influx was the Gold’s largest in centuries, bringing new perspectives, ideas, and agendas into the mélange of the faction’s politics.

The Time of Tumult has breathed new life into the Gold Faction again. With the Bronze Faction facing the collapse of all they’ve worked for and the return of their ancient enemies in the Solars, the Gold Faction’s never had greater reason for hope. Lapsed members, former independents, and young Sidereals alike have joined the fold, swelling the Gold Faction’s ranks to their largest in memory. This growth has proven something of a double-edged sword — every recruit brings a new agenda into the faction, and potentially a new dissenting voice.

The Gold Faction has yet to unanimously recognize a single leader, de facto or otherwise.

So, insofar as there's a group of Sidereals who want to put the Lunars in charge, in 3rd edition they would be one subgroup of the Gold Faction.

The most Solar-oriented subgroup in the Gold Faction seems to be that around Ayesha Ura. In the new lore, she was a devoted Immaculate as a Shogunate Era mortal, then a protegee of Chejop Kejak as an Exalt. Disillusioned by the fall of the Shogunate and how it made all the moral compromises propping it up worthless, she defected from the Bronze to the Gold. There she was a fringe player who spent time working with the Cult of the Illuminated (originally a Shogunate Era garda bird cult), shaping it into a support system for the few Solars who hadn't wound up in the Jade Prison, during which she developed a real respect for the members of the religion. Now that the Jade Prison is broken, the Cult has had a bunch of successes, and that's made her the most prominent member of the Gold Faction.

[Erinys]

Cool, thank you.

[Isator Levi]

I think the Conventions this time around have a much stronger foundation in the general business of Heaven concerned with destiny and the extent to which expertise about cultures and environments is necessary to make it work.

Also, the Convention of the East is actually consistent about the idea that lots of Exalted out that way makes destiny harder rather than being "this helps, actually, despite what earlier sections of the book said".

[Erinys]

So... did they keep the idea that any Essence channeling causes snarls in the Loom? I really hoped they would dump that because it never made any sense.

[Blaque]

The Loom as noted doeesn't dicate Fate or is the machine that runs causality. Creation does that on its own and the Loom is more something that allows forecasts of where fate is going and allows the pattern spiders through it to manipulate probability for minor tweaks.

The big thing is that Essence users are super unpredictable and unreliable and tend to get into contact with enemies of fate, so destinies typically are planned that don't depend on them intervening as that's just putting less strain on your own job.

[Isator Levi]

That's the other thing, that "snarls" in fate aren't really a part of the setting anymore, whether they come from Essence-users or not. The Sidereals are not charged with locating instances in which causality broke down as a matter of course. I feel as though that concept has been largely consolidated into the point that if a destiny is defined but fails to come to pass, that makes the Wyld more likely to break in.

Possibly one might also see some of the idea in the way that Third Edition's take on the setting is a bit weirder, more likely to include inexplicable oddities, it's just that if such things are deviations from fate then they're part of the established standards of what does so (shadowlands, Wyld zones, demonic appearances) rather than Creation being a bit flimsy. It may be that some such occurrences frustrate Sidereals and they feel a need to act to contain them, but it's not as if other things that are perfectly in keeping with fate such as the Exalted, the gods, or even sometimes the whims or mortals are never equally frustrating.

So the key thing is that no, a Solar just being a Solar is in no way presented as something that risks breaking down reality just because. It's rather that the actions they can take with such capabilities can threaten to derail destiny, the plans of Heaven, and that is something that can cause some bad things to happen.

But as was said, Yu-Shan generally accounts for that by trying to have destinies that the likes of the Exalted won't interfere with, as well as occasionally deploying the Sidereals themselves to try and prevent such interference.

It helps to know what the Exalted are capable of and why they do what they do, which is why Lytek is still an incredibly important god even though he categorically has nothing to do with their actual Essences anymore. His is the job of documenting the lives and deeds and personalities of all Exalted, which is very useful to anybody who wants to plan destiny around them.

[Erinys]

So, there are no longer situations like some guy dying but still being alive whom you have to go assassinate?

Though I don't think Pattern Spiders are considered gods anymore and if that's the case they can't technically use the Exigence.

Does Charting Fate's Course say Pattern Spiders aren't gods?

[Verzio]

So, there are no longer situations like some guy dying but still being alive whom you have to go assassinate?

Does Charting Fate's Course say Pattern Spiders aren't gods?

Implicitly. It says "Heaven is known as the city of the gods, and they comprise its substantial majority, but aren’t its sole inhabitants. Its populace includes . . . unique spirits like the pattern spiders[.]" And later "Destiny is planned by heavenly committees, and it isn't self-fulfilling, requiring the intervention of pattern spiders, gods, and Sidereals to make sure it’s fulfilled."

Exactly what the distinction means is not particularly obvious to me.

[Blaque]

Kind of notable, Exalted 3e is fine with some spirits just not fitting in the main four category of god, elemental, demon, ghost. It appears in this case, pattern spiders are just kind of a unique spirit that doesn't really fit in the broader taxonomy.