[OSSR]Exalted: the Lunars

[Koumei]

Tricky. The biggest Sidereal, Sidechop Jackoff*, is a complete fuck and his actions and plans have killed so many people that an acceptable campaign is actually a war crimes tribunal where you play the prosecution at the Hague.

Because the game is written to be Solar-Centric, there are two main factions of Sidereal: the ones that go WE WERE RIGHT TO KILL THEM (and it's all about maintaining status quo regardless of how shitty it is, and paying attention to Solars by dint of hating them) and the ones that go WE WERE SO WRONG, WE LOVE THE SOLARS (and thus pay too much attention to them). In general, they're the incarnation of the problem of suffering in God's Plan: whenever something terrible happens, that was destined to occur and they foresaw it and could have acted to prevent it. But didn't. This at least doesn't have the problem of omnipotence (it's possible that Sidereals tried to stop it but couldn't), and also allows for individual groups of plucky young heroes to go "Let's stop the bad thing!" but they then get tied up in the Lion's Red Tape Mantra as elders stop them from acting.

So... a group of Player-Character Sidereals could very easily be the good guys and be as good as you can actually get. As an established faction, however, it has a vile head, and an evil bureaucracy that allows a lot of bad shit to happen.

*I forget his actual name. It might actually be Kebab or something.

[gamerGoyf]

Tricky. The biggest Sidereal, Sidechop Jackoff*, is a complete fuck and his actions and plans have killed so many people that an acceptable campaign is actually a war crimes tribunal where you play the prosecution at the Hague.

Are you just talking about when they killed the Solars, because that seemed pretty justifiable, or are there other black marks on his record

This might just be because I haven't read too much into the setting but the Sidereals seem compelling in a way the other splats aren't. They seem to be the only faction that has their shit together and is actually working to save the world. Sure they've probably fucked a bunch of stuff up, but at least they actually have some kind of organization and commitment to the common good. Especially since the other splats are "batshit insane godkings who almost destroyed the world last time around", "baby eating barbarian wankers", Killfuck Soulshitter, and "Killfuck Soulshitter but on fire".

[TiaC]

Tricky. The biggest Sidereal, Sidechop Jackoff*, is a complete fuck and his actions and plans have killed so many people that an acceptable campaign is actually a war crimes tribunal where you play the prosecution at the Hague.

Are you just talking about when they killed the Solars, because that seemed pretty justifiable, or are there other black marks on his record

This might just be because I haven't read too much into the setting but the Sidereals seem compelling in a way the other splats aren't. They seem to be the only faction that has their shit together and is actually working to save the world. Sure they've probably fucked a bunch of stuff up, but at least they actually have some kind of organization and commitment to the common good. Especially since the other splats are "batshit insane godkings who almost destroyed the world last time around", "baby eating barbarian wankers", Killfuck Soulshitter, and "Killfuck Soulshitter but on fire".

The thing to be aware of is that the Sidereals can predict the future, but due to a curse that none of them know about they get it wrong. The more important a matter and the more Sidereals that have input the more likely they are to get things wrong. So when they decided to kill all the solars rather than attempt to cure them that was probably the wrong choice. They also like secrets too much and broke reality so that no one will remember them.

[TheFlatline]

And, let us not forget, other kinds of were-animals. Because Cat People was creepy but people do kinda want to play Kzinti.

Holy shit I remember my first experience with WtA: It was like 6 people playing, and 4 of those were Bastet because Cat People = WIN apparently. Even though this was specifically supposed to be a Werewolf game, and werewolves and bastet hate each other. Whatever.

[Voss]

The thing to be aware of is that the Sidereals can predict the future, but due to a curse that none of them know about they get it wrong. The more important a matter and the more Sidereals that have input the more likely they are to get things wrong. So when they decided to kill all the solars rather than attempt to cure them that was probably the wrong choice. They also like secrets too much and broke reality so that no one will remember them.

I don't actually remember the details of that last one, but I'm pretty sure its one of those WW 'curses' that they waste a lot of ink angsting about that is really a huge mechanical benefit

[Koumei]

I don't actually remember the details of that last one, but I'm pretty sure its one of those WW 'curses' that they waste a lot of ink angsting about that is really a huge mechanical benefit

It's one of those things that is actually a pain in the ass to roleplay (what with needing to spend character resources on "there is an NPC who remembers who I am" and other PCs potentially needing to carry notes that remind them who you are if you're playing a mixed group). It can also be beneficial as non-Sidereal enemies will forget exactly who it is they're pissed off about. For an actual character, it would be pretty terrible though - it would be an actual curse unless you never leave Yu-Shan and only hang out with other Sidereals and with gods (in which case, what's happening in your game that you get to chillax there all the time? Nobody is ever letting you stay there with your awesome living conditions and Salary).

[Ancient History]

Honestly, when werewolf got into the other Changing Breeds they jumped the shark. Fucking Mokole had the "impregnate everyone, lol" power.

[TheFlatline]

Honestly, when werewolf got into the other Changing Breeds they jumped the shark. Fucking Mokole had the "impregnate everyone, lol" power.

I don't mind them in the "they were once around but we fucking killed them all and that's why we're at the point where we are at" capacity, but yeah, pushing the books made it Furry: The Apocalypse.

[Koumei]

Honestly, when werewolf got into the other Changing Breeds they jumped the shark. Fucking Mokole had the "impregnate everyone, lol" power.

I see what you did there.

[Ancient History]

No, you're thinking Rokea. Mokole were the were-lizard/crocodile/dinosaur/dragons.

[fectin]

Tricky. The biggest Sidereal, Sidechop Jackoff*, is a complete fuck and his actions and plans have killed so many people that an acceptable campaign is actually a war crimes tribunal where you play the prosecution at the Hague.

Because the game is written to be Solar-Centric, there are two main factions of Sidereal: the ones that go WE WERE RIGHT TO KILL THEM (and it's all about maintaining status quo regardless of how shitty it is, and paying attention to Solars by dint of hating them) and the ones that go WE WERE SO WRONG, WE LOVE THE SOLARS (and thus pay too much attention to them). In general, they're the incarnation of the problem of suffering in God's Plan: whenever something terrible happens, that was destined to occur and they foresaw it and could have acted to prevent it. But didn't. This at least doesn't have the problem of omnipotence (it's possible that Sidereals tried to stop it but couldn't), and also allows for individual groups of plucky young heroes to go "Let's stop the bad thing!" but they then get tied up in the Lion's Red Tape Mantra as elders stop them from acting.

So... a group of Player-Character Sidereals could very easily be the good guys and be as good as you can actually get. As an established faction, however, it has a vile head, and an evil bureaucracy that allows a lot of bad shit to happen.

*I forget his actual name. It might actually be Kebab or something.

Everything is like the People's Front of Judea. Something like 90% of sidereals fall into either the "Bronze Faction" (hates solars, something kind of like 75% of Sidereals) or the "Gold Faction" (loves solars; they're something kind of like 15% of Siddies). That accounts for 90% of them. Apparently, most of the rest are undecided, abut a small fraction are the "silver faction," and want to turn creation over to the Lunars. Here's the thing: there are exactly 100 Sidereals. A "minority" of 10% of 100 is at most 4 dudes. Probably less, because not all exaltations are always up and running, etc. Hilariously, these four dudes are described as a "faction". That means a) you are inherently breaking canon if you ever decide to play a silver faction party, and b) the "even smaller" humanist faction is probably just one guy, standing off to the side and yelling about about Galt or something.

And I always heard Chejop Kejak's name pronounced "notorious fish-peddler and puppy-thief Ketchup Carjack"

[TheFlatline]

No, you're thinking Rokea. Mokole were the were-lizard/crocodile/dinosaur/dragons.

Yeah, Mokole also had the sun as a patrons spirit and had gold as their mystic metal weakness.

In said Cat-person game someone managed to talk the GM into allowing a Mokole, and they rigged their chargen so that their dinosaur/war form was basically a sauropod.

His favorite way to initiate combat is to climb up somewhere high, take a running leap, screaming "THIS IS FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE SUN!" and then transform into a brachiosaurus and crush the target.

Cue Rage Against the Machine music.

I think that character lasted 2 combats before being specifically banned for making heads hurt too much.

[Koumei]

Oh, that's right. Damn.

[Longes]

Tricky. The biggest Sidereal, Sidechop Jackoff*, is a complete fuck and his actions and plans have killed so many people that an acceptable campaign is actually a war crimes tribunal where you play the prosecution at the Hague.

Because the game is written to be Solar-Centric, there are two main factions of Sidereal: the ones that go WE WERE RIGHT TO KILL THEM (and it's all about maintaining status quo regardless of how shitty it is, and paying attention to Solars by dint of hating them) and the ones that go WE WERE SO WRONG, WE LOVE THE SOLARS (and thus pay too much attention to them). In general, they're the incarnation of the problem of suffering in God's Plan: whenever something terrible happens, that was destined to occur and they foresaw it and could have acted to prevent it. But didn't. This at least doesn't have the problem of omnipotence (it's possible that Sidereals tried to stop it but couldn't), and also allows for individual groups of plucky young heroes to go "Let's stop the bad thing!" but they then get tied up in the Lion's Red Tape Mantra as elders stop them from acting.

So... a group of Player-Character Sidereals could very easily be the good guys and be as good as you can actually get. As an established faction, however, it has a vile head, and an evil bureaucracy that allows a lot of bad shit to happen.

*I forget his actual name. It might actually be Kebab or something.

Koumei is lying a bit.

In reality, two factions of Sidereals are "Solars are dangerous, let's kill them all again" and "Solars are dangerous, let's puppeteer them all".

The reason Sidereals aren't the Greater Good in Exalted is because:
1) They've manipulated slaughter of Solars, in the game where only Solaroids are important.
2) The world is literaly falling apart, and the only people who can do something about it are Solaroids with their reality warping power (which is, oddly enough, in Lore charm tree) and the Unconquered Sun, who is busy huffing paint celestial xbox.

[Username17]

Everything is like the People's Front of Judea. Something like 90% of sidereals fall into either the "Bronze Faction" (hates solars, something kind of like 75% of Sidereals) or the "Gold Faction" (loves solars; they're something kind of like 15% of Siddies). That accounts for 90% of them. Apparently, most of the rest are undecided, abut a small fraction are the "silver faction," and want to turn creation over to the Lunars. Here's the thing: there are exactly 100 Sidereals. A "minority" of 10% of 100 is at most 4 dudes. Probably less, because not all exaltations are always up and running, etc. Hilariously, these four dudes are described as a "faction". That means a) you are inherently breaking canon if you ever decide to play a silver faction party, and b) the "even smaller" humanist faction is probably just one guy, standing off to the side and yelling about about Galt or something.

Yeah, the Exalted authors pretty much never consider the implications of the extremely small number of exalts. So when they talk about all the players exalting in the same tribe and then being trained by the tribal elder council of lunars of different castes... you have to wonder what the fuckity fuck fuck. There are hundreds of tribes. Even if all the Lunar exaltations were in play at once, which they specifically are not, there is less than one Lunar per tribe. There is no fucking "group of New Moon Lunars" to decide what caste you're supposed to get, just the fact that your tribe has five player character Lunars in it means that it is already exceeding its allotment of Lunars by over five hundred percent.

The entire Silver Pact and Face system is written from the perspective of there being thousands if not tens of thousands of Lunars. Which there aren't. It's totally incoherent.

-Username17

[DrPraetor]

the entire setting is a prequel, so we know that it turns out that you fail.

Okay, I'm a bit curious - does Prometheus win? Autocthon, whatever. He's the closest the setting has to an actual good guy (I rather like Alchemical Exalted), so that's not unreasonable.

every group of people and supernaturals is made puppy-kickingly repulsive,

Like the Technocracy (whom I suppose they turn into?), I think that the Alchemicals have the right combination of being noticeably-less-evil than their antagonists, and being pretty cool (they tried to port that coolness into nWOD as Prometheans and it mostly failed, although I think Promethean has some cool ideas in it.)

[Longes]

the entire setting is a prequel, so we know that it turns out that you fail.

Okay, I'm a bit curious - does Prometheus win? Autocthon, whatever. He's the closest the setting has to an actual good guy (I rather like Alchemical Exalted), so that's not unreasonable.

every group of people and supernaturals is made puppy-kickingly repulsive,

Like the Technocracy (whom I suppose they turn into?), I think that the Alchemicals have the right combination of being noticeably-less-evil than their antagonists, and being pretty cool (they tried to port that coolness into nWOD as Prometheans and it mostly failed, although I think Promethean has some cool ideas in it.)

You need to fix the quote tags. You have an extra one in the beginning.

oWoD/Exalted coupling never fully materialized past the 1e core book, so no real answer exists. The closest analogue to Autochton in WoD is Autochtonia - the realm of a machine-god revered by the Iteration-X branch of Technocracy (who also use it as their home base). By the Final Nights, machine-god is revealed to be an evil demon, locks the realm, borgs the Iteration-X mages inside and goes full SHODAN on humanity.

I'd argue about Autochton being in any way good though. He commited genocide of the first race he created, discovering Soulsteel in the process. Soulsteel is made by taking souls, and hammering them into a brick of steel, until no trace of identity or reasoning is left - only pain. Autochton's creation of Exalted is pretty much the equialent of a bullied kid bringing shotgun to school.

Autochton is currently suffering from robot-cancer, unsolvable without help from Solars. If Autochton dies, he becomes Engine of Destruction - a Neverborn making more and more terrible weapons in his undead state.

[DrPraetor]

In spite of slathering the grimderp about soul eating - the consequences of which are unclear, given what may or may not happen to the various types of souls after they die or go to heaven or whatever it is they do - the Alchemical exalted are by far the least repellent faction in Exalted.

The Alchemical Exalted are beings that inspire humanity, not ruleover and oppress it.

Now if you read the book they don't quite live up to that, but it's a better mission statement than any other flavor of Exalted get.

This is part of pattern, the only way White Wolf games include sympathetic characters is if they overdo it in making the antagonists sympathetic in the same way that they overdo it in making the protagonists "edgy".

[Lago PARANOIA]

I need to read Alchemicals again. It's seriously been like 10 years since I read this shit and I wouldn't be surprised if they had some hidden 'surprise! You've just been CHRONO CROSSED' bullshit that makes me feel dirty for ever liking the faction.

I wouldn't rule out them getting the Tau treatment either during this timespan. Because White Wolf has the brains of a cheese sandwich.

[Longes]

In spite of slathering the grimderp about soul eating - the consequences of which are unclear, given what may or may not happen to the various types of souls after they die or go to heaven or whatever it is they do - the Alchemical exalted are by far the least repellent faction in Exalted.

The Alchemical Exalted are beings that inspire humanity, not ruleover and oppress it.

Now if you read the book they don't quite live up to that, but it's a better mission statement than any other flavor of Exalted get.

This is part of pattern, the only way White Wolf games include sympathetic characters is if they overdo it in making the antagonists sympathetic in the same way that they overdo it in making the protagonists "edgy".

Oh, I agree that Alchemicals are the most likable Exalted. They are not trying to take over the world and they don't have divine right to anything. They are just fighting robot cancer that devours their realm for the sake of all Autochtonian humanity. My point was that Autochton himself is not a good guy.

[Longes]

I need to read Alchemicals again. It's seriously been like 10 years since I read this shit and I wouldn't be surprised if they had some hidden 'surprise! You've just been CHRONO CROSSED' bullshit that makes me feel dirty for ever liking the faction.

I wouldn't rule out them getting the Tau treatment either during this timespan. Because White Wolf has the brains of a cheese sandwich.

The hidden "fuck you" of Alchemicals is that they have attribute called "Clarity". As it increases, you become less human (you've never been human to begin with. Alchemicals are made by inserting souls of ancient heroes into robot bodies) and more efficient, ruthless machine. At the end you either go crazy and become SHODAN, or turn into a city.