Exalted101:Storytelling advice
Hey, I thought the PCs were supposed to be heroes here? The way this is written, {Lyta, The Wyld Hunt, Ma-Ha-Suchi, First and Forsaken Lion, Chejop Kejak, the Balorian Crusade, the Mountain Folk, Unhesitatingly Loyal Weapon} are going to kill them! How are the PCs supposed to do anything?
Well first, you’re underestimating the PCs (well, you probably aren’t, you’re probably not the hyperbole-crazed straw man who we’re having speak for you). Secondly, Exalted is extremely modular, and each faction group or individual has perfectly logical reasons why they’d never show up in your game, let alone notice and squish your PCs.
Note that these explanations are not binding – generally the game is set up so it’s also reasonable to argue the opposite for the purposes of a story.
'Solars:' Solars are mighty, but few. They have little cohesion, and many pressing concerns. Being epic individuals, they will frequently fixate on their personal quests and devote themselves to them, but with the sheer size of Creation the legends their earth-shaking battles might take years to reach the PCs. Solars could be totally absent in your game because the Wyld Hunt is successfully repressing them, because they’re chasing after personal agendas far away, or simply because Creation’s sheer size makes it unlikely to see them anyway. Alternately, to really get rid of them, have them actually have some cohesion, gathering a might host…and tearing off to war against something else you want out of your game, like the Deathlords, which kills two birds with one stone.
'The Dragon-Blooded:' While the Realm is absolutely set up that heroic Dragon-Blooded could revive its fortunes, those fortunes are most certainly flagging. It’s possible that a Wyld Hunt will show up bedecked in Warstriders and lead by Immaculates, but that’s only with serious political muscle behind it, and grows more unlikely with every mile out from the Blessed Isle. All Dace had to deal with was one young secular DB and a handful of reluctant troops. It’s believable for any Realm effort outside the Blessed Isle to be ineffectual or absent because at the moment many of the Realm’s people in the Threshold are the incompetent, the politically unfortunate or the frighteningly over-zealous – those who aren’t able to play the game for the throne, or have already lost. That’s not to say they all are – if it’s politically important for some reason, the Realm’s efforts can be massive and terrifying – but there’s no reason such things have to happen in your campaign. The Realm is bleeding political capital at the pores, and its officers and officials are looking homewards towards the civil war. Hell, set the civil war off, and nobody will expect to see the Realm around at all. Finally, the Realm has to take Lookshy into account every time they think about going East, and they may not *want* to provoke the power-armoured ninja.
Lookshy itself is even easier to deal with, despite their habit of acting as a military police force in their region. They are mighty but conservative – if they suffer a military disaster along the lines of the Tepet massacre, they could lose their core competitive advantage – the sheer concentration of their military power. They have an isolationist political faction – it would be very easy to say that they’ve gained enough sway to keep the Seventh Legion from getting too adventurous. Lookshy and the Realm engaging in a tense Cold War across the Inner Sea could believably keep them off everyone else’s backs, and there’s the simple fact that if you’re not threatening the East, Lookshy probably doesn’t care what you do.
'The Lunars:' Despite the common misconception, only about half the Lunars are members of the Silver Pact [1]– there is not, by default, a standing army of 300 shape shifting berserkers ready to descend on your campaign. The non-Pact Lunars can be dealt with in similar fashion to the Solars – they’re off pursuing their own agendas, though generally weighted towards the outer edges of Creation, which spreads them even thinner than the Solars, and the added point that some Lunars have no interests other than survival and maintaining their territories. The Pact is also spread out to the edges of Creation, where they have been for some time without stomping all over Creation – and they don’t know for sure yet that the Realm Defence Grid isn’t going to blast them to pieces if they have a go at sweeping the world clean of civilisation. Not to mention that a beastman army takes time and effort to put together! Finally, the Lunars and the Fair Folk, sharing the edges of Creation, are a classic example of “keeping each other busy with mutual slaughter”.
The Lunars, however, like the Sidereals, have a special concern – First Age Exalts. These towering and terrifying beings could quite easily make you feel as if they’re overshadowing your PCs and your campaign. However, it’s worth remembering a few things – firstly, while these people survived the end of the First Age, no mean feat, they weren’t wise or powerful enough to forestall or avoid it. Nor, after all this time labouring under the Great Curse, is their wisdom necessarily any more equal to the end of the Age of Sorrows, so it is possible – or hell, likely, given the general function of NPCs in this game – that for what seem to them to be very good reasons they are doing exactly the wrong thing, arming themselves against the wrong enemy, leading their people in the wrong political direction, or simply resting upon their laurels, savagely defending their territory and taking their ease while the sky falls around them. They could be so focused on the events of the past that they are blind to the opportunities and threats of the future, their animalistic drives could keep them living as beasts (albiet mighty ones) in the wilds, or they might marshal their army, drive it into Creation, and be slain as a footnote to your game.
'The Abyssals:' Mask of Winters is an example of a fairly rash and hasty example of a Deathlord, and he hasn’t done anything particularly noticeable since conquering Thorns several years ago. The Deathlords are terrible and aim at destroying all things, but they have no reason not to be patient – they have forever, particularly as their goal is to provide a definition of precisely how long forever is. While no doubt their machinations, and those of their Abyssal slaves, are even now wearing away at Creation, there’s no reason to assume they’ll come to fruition soon, especially when the Deathlords have all the vastness of the Underworld to contest over politically and militarily. Add to that the rarity of the Abyssals, and it’s fairly easy to see why the forces of the Malfeans might simply not choose to involve themselves in any given matter.
Of course, feel free to have your players feel that the eyes of the Deathlords are upon them, but they’re simply not doing anything about it…yet!
'The Sidereals:' This is a *lot* easier than it may look at first glance. The Sidereals certainly paint themselves as the infallible master-manipulators who direct the course of Heaven and Earth alike, but there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that’s not necessarily the case. The Great Curse upon them is insidious and terrible, rendering the mightiest amongst them generally convinced that their wisdom is absolute, so when they get something wrong (as they inevitably do by trusting overmuch in tools their most insidious enemies are immune to), it stays wrong, and the efforts of any to convince them otherwise will generally result in the ancient Sidereal convincing their would-be corrector. Their bitter factionalisation can put a huge brake on their effectiveness as their constant schemes against each other cancel each other out, leaving them achieving nothing for all the sound and fury of their efforts (“So I’m down a dice from the Bronze and up one from the Gold…whatever”). The corruption of Yu-Shan can leave them entangled in bitter legal and political pursuits that keep their attention far from Creation. Finally, their literal paid employment is to maintain fate, which means they spend a lot of time doing maintenance tasks that might seem bizarre or trivial, and if they succeed, Creation keeps functioning pretty much as you’d expect it to. Between their vocation and the sheer immensity of their political wrangling, it’s very easy to see the Sidereals as struggling furiously to simply maintain the status quo, let alone find time to risk any of their tiny number in the affairs of your campaign.
'The Fair Folk:' It’s true that many Fair Folk want to sweep in a vast army across the borders of Creation and consume it all, but there are also plenty who look upon this roughly as you might look upon someone proposing to take an axe to the kitchen at your favourite restaurant. The Fair Folk desperately seek passion, and it’s far from unbelievable to suggest that they might get this passion from warring amongst themselves over the issue of whether or not to invade Creation…they’ve certainly been keeping themselves quite busy since the Contagion. Furthermore, they simply do not view time in the same way those in Creation do, and the mad rush many of them are engaging in to raise armies with which to invade might take five, ten, thirty years!
The Mountain Folk are even easier – between their eternal subterranean war against a seemingly endless array of horrors and the Great Geas laid upon them, they’re not, by default, going anywhere.
'The Alchemicals:' While obviously Exalted: the Autocthonians will offer a number of scenarios by which the Alchemical Exalted could interact with Creation, much like the Locust Crusade in Time of Tumult, these will be options – by default, the Alchemicals live within the body of a Primordial not actually connected to Creation.
Original Author: Kasumi on RPG.net
Footnotes: [1] - I disagree with this statement, very strongly. It does not stand up to any sort of analysis beyond "I want all the goodies but don't want to have to deal with the Silver Pact". The cited statement in the Lunars book is obviously an editorial oversite as it is at odds with the rest of the book and the philosophy of the rest of the line. Specifically, all the "fat splats" give you a choice: Either play a member of the society that is associated with the type of Exalt in question and get all the goodies and restrictions that come with it or play someone from outside the society who trades goodies for freedom from the restrictions of society. Playing a Lunar who has the tatoos and all the charms and Background and Abiliy points of a Pact Lunar without being beholden to the Silver Pact is simply cheating.
My opinion and welcome to it. Neverway 19:01, 26 Jun 2005 (PDT)
