Getting into Exalted

[CaptainChewbacca]

A friend of mine is big into it, and I like any RPG where I'm not the DM. I made a character; An eclipse-caste Solar who is a 'pirate king'. My only virtues are Valor and Conviction, since I'm a hedonist pirate (I exalted after capturing a treasure fleet while drunk and without pants, on a dare). I've maxed out Throwing, Dexterity, Dodge, and Sailing, and for backround I've got guild backing and a shitload of contacts/allies.

I didn't get Exalted at first, but my brother explained it to me thus; In exalted, the character you start with is already a level-20 D&D character.

Any advice/suggestions on things to do or avoid doing as I go about trying to become the pirate king of the Threshold?

[Duckie]

A friend of mine is big into it, and I like any RPG where I'm not the DM. I made a character; An eclipse-caste Solar who is a 'pirate king'. My only virtues are Valor and Conviction, since I'm a hedonist pirate (I exalted after capturing a treasure fleet while drunk and without pants, on a dare). I've maxed out Throwing, Dexterity, Dodge, and Sailing, and for backround I've got guild backing and a shitload of contacts/allies.

I didn't get Exalted at first, but my brother explained it to me thus; In exalted, the character you start with is already a level-20 D&D character.

Any advice/suggestions on things to do or avoid doing as I go about trying to become the pirate king of the Threshold?

Exalted is sorta like, if D&D is dudes hitting eachother with swords, "Robots vs. Ninja at the beginning of time" or whatever- It's basically the 300 RPG in terms of epicness. The world is literally the size of the earth, with no punches pulled on travelling time or scale. Oh, and it's approximately >50% water which gives it much more surface area.

Quick rundown on ancient ancient history since you said you don't get Exalted. Avoiding the mistakes of past empires is what you need to do- Exalts can build empires, but keeping them standing is harder:

There's formless chaos, right, called the Wyld. Beings, really actually more shapes and ideals called Fey or Fair Folk live there. Some of them get really really high and become the idea of Order or whatever. So that's bad. Cause they're living in Chaos.

So these Fair Folk, calling themselves the Primordials, literally build the universe inside the Chaos. The other Fair Folk are understandably pissed, because reality and laws of nature are deadly to most of the fair folk who can't survive in a universe like that (ignoring the fact they could keep their infinite space of chaos and let the primordials have their own finite chunk of reality, because the fair folk are assholes).

The primordials win, because they're on the defensive inside a fortification (the universe) that the enemy can't attack any more than you or I could swim in magma.

The primordials start to play the games of divinity, which is something mysterious gods do. Nobody knows. Probably not even the designers. Except two, Gaia and Autochthon (aka Autobot, since that name is hard to say and spell).

Now, the Primordials sorta let their world go to shit, so they make Gods and beings to take care of it, and institute a rule of reincarnation for them so that if Gods die their portfolios and powers sorta pass on (there is a god/spirit of everything, from Pratchett style small gods for a boat to gods of blood or cattle or freedom or whatever) and so that the souls of men keep coming back. Wait, on that men thing, see the next paragraph.

The Gods do their housekeeping, and the world runs smoothly. Men at this time are stone age slaves kept in reservations and living at the edges of the technologically advanced Dragon King empire. The Dragon Kings are dinosaurs. Yeah. Anthropomorphic lizards or whatnot. Underground, the Jadeborn, basically animated rock dudes caused by the fact that some Fey Folk got trapped in the Imperial Mountain (The... 600 mile, IIRC, tall mountain at the center of the world) when it sprung into being. They basically are high tech dudes too. Humanity meanwhile hasn't invented metal.

The Gods get kinda bored, though, because janitor work can only be so exciting. So they plan a rebellion. Which is hard, because they've sworn by the very fabric of reality not to fuck with the Primordials or their plans, and not to have any Dragon King or Jade Born or Fey Folk be given aid to do so.

But then the Unconquered Sun, Sol Invictus, notices the little mammal dudes. And he gets this crazy idea. He goes to the rest of the gods and says "Let's give massive powers to mankind, so great that they can beat the shit out of our overlords."

And strangely enough, everyone agrees. Because that's seriously the best plan they've got. Gaia is there too, betraying her kin, because she is the consort of Luna, the second most powerful god. Autobot is there too because the Primordials laugh at the crippled titan of artisanry and don't let him build as much stuff. Autobot and Gaia intercede, making the Jadeborn and Dragon Kings, their respective "children", not use their technomagical might against the rebellion (they basically have nuclear weapons, airborn battleships, artillery, guns, everything in parity or better than the modern day).

The Sun gives 300 dudes the power of the Sun, making them kickass at everything. They become god-kings and generals.

The Moon gives 300 dudes the power of the Moon, making them slightly less kickass beings who walk the line between formlessness and order. They basically become shapeshifting barbarians.

The Five Maidens (Mercury: Journeys, Venus: Serenity, Mars: Battle, Jupiter: Endings, Saturn: Secrets) each give 200 dudes the power over fate. They become ninja. The Sidereals are basically kung-fu fate-editing ninja.

The 5 Elemental Dragons, subsouls (gods are like computers, they have subprocesses and individual divisions) of Gaia, are smarter and enchant 10 virile men and 9,990 women and have massive orgies for a while. In the preparation stage of the rebellion, while the thousand or so kickass beings are drilling and learning magical warfare and shit, the 10,000 multiply and become the Terrestrial Exalted, basically the cannon fodder in the war of the gods, immensely superior to a mortal but incomparably weak compared to a full blown exalt of the other types.

The rebellion goes down. Since men reincarnate, the Exalted are like Persian Immortals and never really die, even if their memories get mostly wiped and their skills reset every time they die. They kill half the primordials. The other primordials, seeing the writing on the wall, surrender.

The victorious Sun-God laughs and declares they're all to be put to death. As the primordial gods (sans 2 traitors) prepare to fight their last battle, Gaia shows up and intercedes (probably because her twin/lover is one of them), pointing out that this sets a bad precedent and is sorta wrong. So the Primordials are instead given a subsection of reality built out the body of one of their own, Malfeas, just like the world is built from Gaia.

The Primordials are made to swear on their Names (which are in fact gigantic epic poems, in abbreviated forms still being the size of buildings, that describe them utterly, and swearing on them rewrites those books) an oath to never thwart the Gods or attempt to reclaim reality from the Sun or whatnot.

This oath is not very ironclad, since the Primordials have tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of years to sit there and play lawyer with it. They become Yozi, and their subsouls and subsouls of those subsouls Demons, as they sit in anger and impotent rage in a hell of their own devising. They could live peacefully if they would put down their vendetta, but can't because they're too damn pissed that the world escaped them.

But for the First Age, this oath basically works.

The Solar Deliberative is set up, with the Solars changing from Generals to God-Kings and the Lunars from Barbarian Warlords into the consorts of the God-Kings. The Sidereals change from Ninja to Bureaucratic Ninja. The countless Terrestrial Exalted become Bureaucrats, Soldiers, etc.

Everything runs totally smoothly. Kinda.

See, the dead Primordials are a bit of a problem. Killing a primordial is against the laws of nature, it shouldn't be possible. The dead corpses of the primordials sink into their own negative pits, the Underworld, where their gravity attracts souls that should go into Lethe to be reincarnated. Those are undead and ghosts. The dead Primordials are not quite dead but not quite alive, since they can't die since they're not living beings as we know them. They want to return everything to oblivion out of spite since it they can't rule the world, they don't want anyone, Yozi or God, ruling it. 13 Solars, who don't want to die and forget their memories, become their Champions the Deathlords by accepting the power of oblivion in exchange for anihiliating everything. They basically get the part of the bargain "You die last", Cthulhu style.

The bureaucracy still kinda works. Except it doesn't. The Primordials, as they were banished or killed, cursed the Gods using their power. They basically implanted character flaws in the Exalts-
Solars- Overexaggerated Emotions
Lunars- Rage?
Sidereals- Hubris
Terrestrials- I forget.

Oh right, before I forget, the first act of the Solar God Kings is to literally call on the gods to make a magical nuclear first strike against the Jadeborn. The Dragon Kings were pwned in the war and rendered basically extinct, their civilization crushed, but the Jadeborn sit safely underground, greater than even mankind. And the Solars can't have that, because Darwin says there can only be one, highlander style.

So Autobot is pissed and gets his panties in a wad and leaves, building his own universe of steampunk and metal and taking it sailing away.

Anyway, the Solar Deliberative is corrupt and such. The Sidereals see this, and make a grand prophecy:

They have three options:
1) Do nothing- the world is unmade by the solars being pricks.
2) Tell the Solars to stop being pricks- The world is about 95% likely to be unmade.
3) Kill every Solar in a surprise massacre/assault- The world will survive but it'll totally suck compared to the glory of the current age.

They choose 3, unaware that their own Hubris (or arrogantly ignoring it) may make their options not the only options or inaccurate.

The Dragon-Blooded and their Sidereal puppeteers rise up and kill 90% of the Solars in a single night of long knives at a huge festival for what's their equivalent of the turn of the millenium (or billenium, since they live way longer).

The other Solars are hunted down and killed, and the Lunars retreat into the bordermarches of the Wyld to avoid dying.

The Shogunate, a Dragon-Blooded solar deliberative is set up, and it creates a magical prison to keep the souls of the Solars from getting back in. The cage is a bit leaky, so they have to go kill a few every now and then, but it mostly works.

But since the Dragon-Blooded are sucky, they can't control an empire the size of the world.

The Second Age would have gone on smoothly had the Underworld not delivered a huge plague at this time, trying to kill everything and make it more Oblivion-like. The plague kills 9 out of every 10 people.

At the same time, the Fair Folk who live closest to reality, the Raksha, as they are known by their more pure chaotic bretheren who hate them, launch a crusade to chaoticize reality and remove the natural order that pains them so much. The world shrinks as its borders are consumed by chaos. About 1/3 of the world or so by surface area gets subsumed.

The entire world was going to end, except a woman named the Scarlet Empress, who basically makes Alexander the Great and Leonardo Da Vinci together look like bad statesmen, conquerors, and geniuses, manages to enter the Imperial Manse, the NORAD control room for all the awesome guns and defense outposts the Solars made.

Only she survives the traps and other bad stuff in there (or perhaps she killed or sacrificed her comrades to get through) but she engages the main cannons and guns and stuff and pwnts the Fair Folk, in the process the gun (lacking fine control it used to enjoy) causes earthquakes that ravage the world. The Fair Folk are repulsed, but the Empress' new empire can only encompass the Blessed Island at the center of the world (appx. 25% world surface area) if she doesn't want to richtor scale it repeatedly to lay down nuclear explosive level pwnage.

Okay, so the Shogunate is sorta subsumed, and the states around the blessed empire are made into tributaries, roman style. Except Lookshy, which is founded by the technologically advanced (for the time) Seventh Legion who refuses to surrender and basically sits there taunting her right beyond the safe range of her magical doomsday gun. That's the origin of why the River Province/Threshold is so Balkanized and unimperial.

You should know the modern story- The scarlet empress dissappears at the exact same time the box that holds the solar souls springs a huge leak. Half the souls are gobbled up by the Yozis and the Neverborn Primordials (who split it 33/66) for use in the Abyssal Exalted for the Underworld and god knows what the Yozis plan, but half return to reality normally. Ass kicking revolutionary stuff occurs.

If by Pirate King you mean a badass pirate like Blackbeard you're thinking too small, that can be done easily. If you mean king who is a pirate too then so what you need to do is pull a Scarlet Empress. Train some troops- you need a big army. Solars can be charismatic, find a good face person who can hypnotise imperial loyalists just by looking at them into being fanatics for you. Get a solar or some other exalt whose specialty is training and/or artifact forging and crank out weaponry and armour for your elite troops.

Odds are, even if there aren't 5 players, you'll get 5 solars including yourself who make up your core group. Try to get these 5 archetypes for a good empire builder.
1: Kickass General/Warrior (Exalted leaders lead from the front), probably you
2: Charismatic Diplomat/Preacher to expand the cause.
3: Artisan/Magic-User to crank out useful stuff. When your troops have replicas of ancient armour and swords that slice through steel like butter, they beat guys with regular chainmail and spears.
4: One guy who in addition to whatever he does needs to be the support mage. Healing and CANT STRESS ENOUGH War-related training charms like Tiger Warrior Training. This will let you produce troops awesometastic enough to make the Freehold Operatives look unwanked.
5: Go crazy, I can't think of anything else you need to conquer the world.

Play powers off eachother and harrass the Imperials enough to provoke a small response you can defeat Bull of the North style to prove your awesomeness, unite the Threshhold by diplomacy and warfare, and then go to town reforming the world.

Exalted at its high levels, Solar Campaigns, is meant to be a game where at the end you literally can reform the entire structure of the heavens and reality. Think it's unfair that gods and exalts rule over mankind? Fix it. Think the Solar Deliberative at the beginning was really good except for the Great Curse of the Primordials? Fix it.

Solars are basically invincible warlords and god-kings. Go forth do some public works for a city to make it loyal to you, use your godly powers to make it own its rivals in the face, and let it all snowball up into a world power.

After all, you're gonna live for 5,000 years. You can afford to play politics over generations and take it slow, unlike D&D characters.

Be Che Guevera. That'd be cool. Become a really popular figure- heal the sick, fight for the common man, etc. Communist Solar Pirate would be hillarious.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Thanks for the history rundown. He tried to explain it, but your explanation was way more easy to understand. In our group (of 3) we have me, the hedonistic pirate king, a messianic preacher/warlord, and a twilight caste sorceress who was born to privilige and hates commoners.

Should be fun.

[Duckie]

Thanks for the history rundown. He tried to explain it, but your explanation was way more easy to understand. In our group (of 3) we have me, the hedonistic pirate king, a messianic preacher/warlord, and a twilight caste sorceress who was born to privilige and hates commoners.

Should be fun.

Right, one last thing: Know thy enemy. These are the goals of all the main factions:

Lunars: Charge in and raze civilization to the ground, living in harmony with nature and darwinian toughness will prevail since civilization is the cause of all that has befallen before.

Sidereals:
Gold Faction: Take the Solars and use them to build a new Solar Deliberative with the Sidereals pulling the strings as usual behind the scenes like the Illuminati. They already have the Cult of the Illuminated, a secret society of people worshipping Messiah Figures that coincidentally resemble Solars almost exactly, spread about for this.
Bronze Faction: Status Quo. Use the Immaculate Order, their priest-warrior caste in the Terrestrial Society, to repurge the Solars and fasten them down to avoid them ever coming to power.

Terrestrials: Since they are controlled by the Bronze Faction unknowingly, Status Quo. Also, expand the Empire if possible.

Abyssals: Destroy everything and kill everyone in the name of their Neverborn Masters, who will then kill them and commit suicide presumably.

Jade-Born: Break the great curse laid on them by the Gods and rise back up from a middling band of rockmen living inside caves to reclaim their old position as the greatest race in the world, displacing and presumably marginalizing or extincting humanity as it goes. Darwin kinda sucks like that.

Fey Folk: Crush reality and/or keep enough of it alive to feed on the delicious souls of humanity. Fey Folk have the same complex as the Necrons- we're tasty.

Yozi: Rise back up, defying the oath or circumventing it, and reseize reality from the Gods, chaining it down and allowing no one to ever be free from their control again.

Alchemicals (Autobot's exalts): Reinvade the universe to get more materials and souls- Autobot is running out and he's sick and has had to run on emergency power at a low capacity for quite some time. Autobot's universe and its inhabitants need more resources or they'll all die a slow heat death.

Naturally most of these factions won't be your friends. Some may not come into play, especially the Autobots, Fey, and Jade-Born who don't really have the power to try without assistance from others. There are others like Lookshy having some plans and different factions in the Scarlet Empire but that's a rundown.

The Cult of the Illuminated might be a good idea to start gathering resources. The Sidereals will be only too happy to help you covertly. Naturally being vindictive little bastards you can repay them for their treachery later in kind ^_^.

[Sharp-kun]

Dice adders are your friend

[CaptainChewbacca]

So, is trying to get into the Palace a non-starter as far as plans go?

[Crazedwraith]

Dice adders are your friend

Indeed. Stunt all rolls, preferable by adding back flips off various bits of scenery.
If you do become Solar Exalted remember everyone hates you so don't reveal it to anybody unless you have to. IF you're night caste you can hide the slighlty obviously glow you get when doing charms.

Also, something I learned from the Exalted Game I played this semester: Don't charge tha Abyssal that just landed on your city's wall, when she's wheree crazyily good artifact armour that soaks more dice than you get with your normal sword. It doesn't work.

Also don't let the GM 'purple flash' you to location along with 3 player character Abyssal that have just learnt you're "a dirty dirty anaethma" they will kill you before you even get a go in combat.

[Tatterdemalion]

So, is trying to get into the Palace a non-starter as far as plans go?

The Imperial manse? Actually that's a very good plan for taking over The Realm. Only problem is the manse is smack-bang in the middle of the Imperial city surrounded by the most powerful dragon-blooded (and Sidereals, but you don't know that) in the world who aren't likely to sit around twidling their thumbs while you work out how to get past the security systems.

Hence it's advisable to get a really, really big army of tiger-warriors (performance charm enhanced soldiers) bound-demons (which make surprisingly loyal troops. Exalted demons have to follow the spirit of the contract not just the letter, just don't let em break free) and spirits. The Imperial manse is generally the end point of a campaign rather than its beginning.

Alternative ways of taking over creation include (all of which present their own challenges):

1) Going up to the doors of heaven and pursuading the Gods that, hey solars kick ass and dragonblooded really suck, so why not stop playing the Games of Divinity (aka godly Evercrack) and help us reinstate the natural order.

2) Gods suck! Storm the gates of heaven and pursuade the smaller gods to rise up in Revolution! By the time the big gods pull themselves away from the Games of Divinity to take notice you'll have half of heaven under your control.

3) Find the Scarlet Empress and use social fu to convince her to marry you, change the Realm's stance on the Anathema. Note: This is far, far harder than that one sentance makes it appear, possibly harder than all the other options combined and quite possibly puts you up against some of the most vicious and powerful bastards in reality... so naturally it's the one everyone goes for.

4) Head out into the wild, beat up fairfolk for a bit till you find a Shinma (basically a Fey so powerful it's come to embody an entire concept of reality somewhat similar to a primordial) kill it and use its death to reshape reality like clay. Note: This one is the most likely to fail as your GM probably has a very different idea of how the Wyld works to mine.

[consequences]

Nice summary, my only quibble is that I think there's only supposed to be a hundredish sidereals, and you have a thousand(which might just be an accidentally added '0').

Lunars: Charge in and raze civilization to the ground, living in harmony with nature and darwinian toughness will prevail since civilization is the cause of all that has befallen before.

This has actually been somewhat retconned in the new edition. Razing civilization as it stands to the ground isn't automatically the goal of all Lunars any more(just some), they're willing to contemplate any number of different paths to get people to improve themselves.

Dice adders are your friend

Clarification: For charms, success adders are your friend. They don't have hard caps like dice adding charms do.

But go just as nuts as you possibly can with the dice-adding artifacts, hearthstones, and anything else you can manage.

[consequences]

So, is trying to get into the Palace a non-starter as far as plans go?

That's definitely a long-term plan. You start with Essence 2 presuming you are a normal starting charcter, three if you spring for it, and four if you put everything you can into raw power to the exclusion of everything else. At any given Essence level, you will mercilessly bitchslap a dragonblooded of the same Essence, and can quite possibly credibly dance with those of an Essence one or even two higher than you, all other things being equal. The first problem is that the Dragonblooded run right up to Essence seven, given that some of them are going to be well into their third century, and ou can't hit that level until age 250. The second problem is that without buildup on your part, all other things are not going to be equal. They are, on average, better trained, with twice the toys for any given expenditure of effort, and the ability to draw on the resources of an entire empire at need, at the cost of less raw physical ability, less power, and less supernatural tricks, which are also less powerful. Unfortunately, what tricks they have tend to be more efficient than yours. The third problem is that you can expect odds of three to one or more when doing anything other than stabbing them through the outhouse wall.

On the outskirts, you won't automatically run into these problems, as it will take the Realm time to localise you, and then concentrate forces against you, while maintaining adequate security against the other 249 Anathema active and probably engaged in annoying them along with incidental miscellaneous threats(in which catgory lies entire other nations). If you charge up to the palace in your first century, you deserve exactly what you are going to get(like the whole garrison of the Imperial City, the thousands of dragonblooded who just happen to live there, the entire sorcery school, the entire Immaculate Order, and the Sidereal instructors to the last two, all coming out to kick your ass.) Stealth would be the better option, but even that isn't guaranteed against the toys the Realm, not to mention the Bronze Faction, have available.

[CaptainChewbacca]

That's good to know about Essence points. I've only got two, and the other two folks in the group have three. I have almost no magical skills, but I do have some good combat charms, as well as some one-point artifacts that'll make my ships faster.

Should I try and find first-age artifacts to improve our power base, or does that sort of thing just make us a target? I'm afraid stealth isn't really an option with my character, but I can act as 'crazy as usual'.

[Tasoth]

Isn't Exalted the legendary times that almost all of the WoD settings alude to? It sure seems that way to me from the descriptions.

[Tatterdemalion]

Isn't Exalted the legendary times that almost all of the WoD settings alude to? It sure seems that way to me from the descriptions.

Sort of. In the earlier material they really played up the link with WoD, presumably to try and get WoD fans interested, but as Exalted took off in its own right they kind of went in a different direction. The last direct reference I remember was back in the 1st edition Sidereals book where there's a throwaway line about the 'worst possible outcome' the Bronze faction had forseen was the Sidereals degeneration into something akin to the technocracy, with only a few clinging to the old traditions.

[Tatterdemalion]

had a bit of time so I thought I'd look at your guy in more detail:

That's good to know about Essence points. I've only got two, and the other two folks in the group have three. I have almost no magical skills, but I do have some good combat charms, as well as some one-point artifacts that'll make my ships faster.

Sounds fairly good for a new character. What's your main combat skill? If it's throwing like your first post suggested I'd highly recommend picking up a few melee or martial arts charms to supplement it, as throwing is probably one of the weaker of the combat skills on its own. (Which doesn't mean it's crap, just that you don't have the luxury of being so far away a powerful opponent cant get into melee with you like archery). Melee is probably the easiest combat skill to just dip into, and it's defensive charms can stack with dodges and make you quite hard to hurt.

Aside from that I recommend spending your first experience working up to a good combo, preferably one that allows you to make a dodge/parry at the same time as an attack. Since dodge seems to be your main defensive skill.

If you're using first edition exalted, I highly recommend you have a quick read of Arianna explains... not dying! It's a shortish, amusing little tutorial on how not to get killed by the first Wyld hunt that gets sent your way. If you want to play rediculously min/maxed combat twink you can also try Mnemon explains solar combat tactics but the infomation in there isn't nearly so vital so don't let it stop you from working to your concept.

Should I try and find first-age artifacts to improve our power base, or does that sort of thing just make us a target? I'm afraid stealth isn't really an option with my character, but I can act as 'crazy as usual'.

Don't worry to much about getting in too deep. As a solar you are automatically one of the most powerful creatures in Creation. Unless you do something really, really stupid like get sucked into Malfeas or go into the Wyld naked with no protection you should be fine.

That said if you're new to the setting and want the GM to give you some tips on what you can do within the universe or where you should go you could always take a few dots of Mentor. I find the best candidates for a mentor, depending on what you want to do with your solar are: A god of some description (probably the most versatile of options but usually substantially less powerful than an exalt... although there are a few REALLY powerful gods like the ones who rule Great Forks), a Lunar exalt (maybe your spouse from another lifetime), a Gold Faction Sidereal (caution: may turn on you if you don't play ball) or even a Deathlord (trying to corrupt you naturally).