Exalted: Shadow and Steel - Interest Thread

[Krylo]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure replacing limbs with robot limbs is generally a surgery (medicine) roll, and making them can be done as artifact creation. But there's lots of thaums that aren't useful to exalts. Like the art of demon summoning. I can just take sorcery and summon all dem demons so much easier. Or the art of enchantment, which mostly just lets you make items perfect quality.

Problem is... With craft charms? Not that hard to make them perfect in the first place.

Etc.

There's a few that do things you can't do though. Like distilling orichalum. Or making alchemical weapon fuel. Or anything from astrology.

[Relm Zephyrous]

I mean, I can think of a lot of stuff I'd like to try out with them, although I'm not sure if it'd work better as sorceries and such. But that'd all be custom designed and I have no idea where to begin on that and even if I did, I know sorceries, to make a single new spell takes months and months. And I don't know if there's a similar option for the lower mortal magics.

[PhoenixFlame]

Bear in mind it does let you summon demons without using the essence or spells involved in sorcery. Can be useful if you want a lot of them on the cheap. You also get it as part of the general guards and wards degree, which sorcery can't really do well, if at all. Lunars and stuff can hide from essence sight pretty easily, but not from anti-exalt (Lunar Celestial) wards, although the more powerful will just break them, but what's more satisfying than making an opponent waste ten motes and 1 willpower breaking something you did with a mortal skill roll?

[Red Mage Black]

I do suppose that maybe I'll make a Zenith with Weather Working or a heroic mortal with Warding and Exorcism. Most likely the former, when I think about it.

[Aerozord]

Arbiter's BackstoryIts normal for an abyssal to lose his name when he exalts, but Arbiter of Dust and Shadow lost much more, and not for the reason you'd think. Like all abyssals he exalted right at the moment of his death, unlike most abyssals his cause of death was blunt cranial trauma. Thanks to that his earliest coherent memory is a warhammer pulping his skull.

Exaltation put his brain back into fully working order, but it didn't do as good of a job with reconnecting his memories. Oh they are still there. Whenever he hears a language only to discover he understands it, or reading a scroll only to be hit with deja vu. Not to mention the nightmares, oh the nightmares. Seems not even amateur lobotomy can release him from past traumas.

He has been able to piece together that he traveled often, and just as often dealt with people most would rather not. As a result he made some enemies, atleast one of which wanted him dead. Arbiter constantly fights his need to know, with his desire to remain ignorant.

Ironically he spent much of his post-exaltation days in the realm of memories, the underworld. Here he learned of what he was, and of the injustice of the world. The senseless wars, avoidable deaths, so many lost because of simple misunderstandings and prejudice. Finally he had enough and donned the title of Arbiter of Dust and Shadow. Acting as a negotiator and arbitrator.

He doesn't know what he was, but he knows what he is. If life and death can co-exist within his own body, perhaps we can all co-exist.

Flaws, Amnesia (its actually more like 1e 5 point version, but will accept 3 point one), Nightmare 2, Enemy 3 (representing those that dislike peaceful solutions and the unknown enemy that tried to kill him)

Merits: Linguistic Genius 3, Silver Tongue 3

I chose my flaws for two reasons. First is I loved the justification for them. Second is it provides alot of plot fodder. Thanks to the amnesia not only does he have enemies and continual nightmares, but no clue of what actually happened.

Merits, well he is a cunning linguist.

[Sithdarth]

Changed things around semi-significantly in terms of stats and such. Still have 4 bonus points to spend. I also assumed artifact armor would be at least one dot less expensive. I've got a back story brewing I just have to get it written down.

[Red Mage Black]

You know, I did have a better idea. One I can actually flesh out if I wanted. The idea is more or less a blind Sidereal of Endings(or Secrets), with Vibration Sense and possibly Acute Sense:Hearing. Well, to further drive my idea home, I did come up with a small description for it, since 'Blind' isn't in Scroll of Heroes and if it does exist, no idea which book it might be in. Anyway....

Originally Posted by blind

Character has no sight at all and cannot gain it back by any mundane methods. All Perception + Awareness rolls based on sight automatically fail. Attack and Dodge/Parry DV suffer at a -4 penalty if a test of the same difficulty cannot be passed.

Probably not a very good description, but it's the best idea I got. Vibration Sense and Acute Hearing were suppose to lighten them a little. Less 'debilitating', more character flavor then anything. As I said, I could flesh out this character a whole lot better then any other.

[Krylo]

Blind exists. It's diminished sense at six points:

Originally Posted by Scroll of Heroes

For six points, the character is completely blind. Any rolls made for the character based on visual perception automatically fail. The character can attempt a ranged attack on anyone within 100 yards, but suffers a three-die external penalty on the attack (and possibly even a higher penalty if, for example, the target is attempting stealth or has access to cover the blind character cannot see). In addition, the character is incapable of reading unless she has some magical or technomagical means of perceiving text. Any character incapable of reading is generally also incapable of studying sorcery or necromancy unless she has a highly dedicated tutor and/or some form of magical auditory instruction device.

[The Kneumatic Pnight]

Originally Posted by Krylo

Heroic mortal thaumaturge?

Edit: With craft magitech.

Edit 2: And a specialty in steam punk prosthesis?

Surprisingly, no. My other unhealthy fixation.

Backstory:Backstory: Truth in Jade was born in Pless, a major Jadeborn city-state near the fringes of their dominion. Pless lies beneath the volcanic island of Kerkeis in the Neck and is known mostly as the hub of the Jadeborn interaction with Yu-Shan, and slightly less known as the hub of the most insular of Jadeborn factions.

Truth in Jade appreciated much about this environment, despite the fissures between her and it. The pathways throughout the mountain of Kherkeis lent themselves to her wandering, and too-common excursions onto the mountainside to observe the second sea rolling off to infinity. The small but constant trickle of gods, exalts, and jadeborn in their paths to and from Yu-Shan fit Truth well; while zeal for knowledge and skill is the domain of the Artisans, Truth's single-minded joy (and "energetic" attention span) were somewhat more rare, and she delighted much in learning the stories and skills that she could pick up from the passers-by. These same traits alongside her unflagging optimism were much more problematic for Truth's mentor: a particularly ancient and stern Jadeborn of the conclave. Eventually, the fractures grew too common and, in a fit of pride, the pair abandoned each other, to much censure from the conclave.

Truth wheedled her way into a small merchant caravan headed for Yu-Shan. There, she attempted to continue her education as best she could, among the surprisingly tolerant Artisans and the concerned but dutiful enlightened undercastes. Eventually an aged Raptok of no note by the name of Sesalan found Truth's naiveté and energy in a Jadeborn an oddity, but a familiar one. Reminded-of-what-was, he took Truth under his wing (Raptoks do not have actual wings) and used the merits of his empty sinecure position and knowledge of the past to pursue Truth's education, and give her the skills to protect her idealism against the more jaded. He also took to calling her Khalesh in his unfocused reveries, a nickname that Truth took to heart.

Truth's "vacation" in Yu-Shan would come to an abrupt end a little over a year later when the Conclave of Pless became "fed up with her bullshit" and sent a small retinue of Jadeborn to deposit her in the College of Divine Enlightenment. Truth went willingly and spoke penitent words and for her youth, largely escaped the harsher punishments, but was sent to the College of Divine Enlightenment of Urvar. Despite this, her unbounded energy (and slightly advanced age) left her to thrive within the walls of Urvar, and she emerged from the college with a surprising amount of respect and support from her peers and mentors.

In the years that followed, Truth would become entangled for a while in Urvarian politics, eventually gaining notice through her treatises as a bold philosopher and advocate of of entwining the Jadeborn's future and politics with those of other races: both through trade and the open sharing of knowledge (if, admittedly, carefully monitored knowledge). Her wanderlust would eventually creep back up on her, and she left Urvar, traveling to the fringes of the Jadeborn dominion and particularly key points of trade, where she would attempt to garner support for closer trade ties with the Jadeborn and would attempt to spread a positive image of their dominion wherever she went. Of particular interest to her was Pless and Yu-Shan and she made an unusual number of acquaintances within the Celestial Bureaucracy, though many of her more active overtures were foiled by bad luck and poor timing.

It was one of these acquaintances who sought out Truth and bid her to go to the East. Though this was largely through cryptic riddles and vague portents, the cryptic riddles and vague portents of Yu-Shan are not typically to be ignored so Truth dutifully acquiesced.

[Aerozord]

Inspired by Manacles of Night (codex pg 41) I came up with this

Thousand-Link Prison
Artifact 4
Commitment 8
Eclipse/moonshadow only

While in the First Age exalts got away with much, they did not always escape justice. Tempered Sun was an eclipse caste charged with settling disputes and arresting the guilty party. She believed all deserved a fair trial but capturing such powerful beings alive was no small task and essence negating restraints still required the opponent being subdued first.

For this she commissioned the Thousand-Link Prison, a manipulable fighting chain that binds and saps the strength of the victim (same as manacles). However Tempered Sun feared this tool of fair punishment being turned into a device of execution had a curse placed into it as well. Any time the one bound would receive damage it is delivered to the one attuned to the artifact instead.

After all, it is a jailers job to deliver the prisoner unharmed, even at the cost of her life