Leliel
2010-04-29, 07:28 PM
Because the thought of Solar Exalts batting away our favorite flying vampire jellyfish with their minds and Dragon-Blooded Samus (with enough Magitech to take on aforementioned Solars) is awesome.
Anyway, this is sort of a group project where we make Metroid-related things in Exalted, from Ridley, to Phazon, to, uh, Metroids.
I'll start with some Chozo fluff.
The Chozo, Peaceful and Wrathful Lords of Magitech
One of the many races created by the Primordials, the strange bird-people known as the Chozo were unique in that they saw the Three-Sphere Cataclysm coming. It was, after all, completely in line with She Who Lives In Her Name's personality and powers, and with the Aurora Unit living supercomputers, it was easy to puzzle out what she could do if upset. The only thing they underestimated was the sheer magnitude of her devastation-if they had known her crystal flames could eliminate so much of Creation, they would have covered far more of it in the flame shields then just their civilization and colonies. In any case, they were some of the most pleasant and benign people to ever grace the face of Creation, as well as one of the most dangerous.
To Magitech and Automatons as the Dragon Kings were to Genesis and magic, the Chozo were a race of peaceable warrior-scholars, with rigorous mental and physical discipline combined with introspection and a desire to learn. Always a more secretive and private race, most of them preferred to live away from the Solar Deliberative, only venturing out for trade or repelling the occasional monster. Unfortunately for a few arrogant Twilights, while the Chozo were very slow to anger, their tactics in war were merciless and total, their logic being to get back to peace as soon as possible and dissuade their enemies from ever fighting again. Natural craftsmen, the Chozo were skilled in the area of complex robotics, creating such wonders of sentient and sapient technology that the Deliberative turned green with envy.
Unlike their colleges in the Deliberative, however, the Chozo never succumbed to hubris-besides the lack of a Great Curse to impair their judgment (while they supported the Incarna in the Primordial War thanks to Autocthon's persuasion, they never made their interference known), the Chozo nature of self-contemplation allowed them to judge when they were going too far, and enabled them to cast a critical eye at themselves. That may be part of the reason why they vanished-unable, and to an extent unwilling, to see why humans had fallen into vainglory and self-importance, it's quite possible that they took heed from the Unconquered Sun and simply left Creation, dedicating themselves to eternal exploration of the Wyld and it's waypoints, presumably in hopes of finding another Creation. In any case, they're gone now, but, perhaps in hopes that humans would one day learn from their mistakes and prove responsible students, they left behind much of their technology and lore, just waiting to be discovered...
Assuming it hasn't gone rampant and thinks of itself as a mechanical god now.
New Specialty: Chozo Engineering
It may sound strange to have a Specialty instead of a Skill here, but the basic principle remains the same as any Magitech-using sorcery and science to create artifacts more than the sum of their parts. In the case of Chozo engineering, however, a significant part of it's lore is dedicated to creating Animating Intelligences, allowing a crafter with this specialty to create a one-dot little god inside his Artifacts for the cost of one extra dot. This comes at a price though-doing this automatically causes the pseudo-automaton to develop Virtues of the mechanical variety-the Chozo were ideologically adverse to creating sentient creatures without free will to an extent-and thus, opinions of it's own. In the case of things that were already meant to have an intelligence-such as an advanced Clockwork Servant-this allows one to gain experience on it's own, and so increase it's functional ability without the need for upgrading to a better dot rating, but this is very risky due to the bizarre process of rampancy-a sequence of events by which the little god that composes the Animating Intelligence and the "natural" intelligence of the automaton fuse into one, causing it to develop organic Virtues (Transmission becomes Compassion, Power becomes Valor, etc.) and true free will., uninhibited by programming. This, combined with the fact that many rampant automatons think of themselves as artificial Terrestrial Gods (since part of them is a least god) means that many of them will rebel against their former masters if they feel unappreciated (what qualifies as "unappreciated" varies from machine to machine, but generally, a less powerful one will have less of an ego than a more powerful one).
The most infamous case of rampancy is the weather-control Aurora Unit Mother Brain, whose nature as an N/A Artifact caused her sense of self-worth and entitlement to swell to delusions of grandeur, viewing herself as the equal of any dragon, if not more so.
Anyway, this is sort of a group project where we make Metroid-related things in Exalted, from Ridley, to Phazon, to, uh, Metroids.
I'll start with some Chozo fluff.
The Chozo, Peaceful and Wrathful Lords of Magitech
One of the many races created by the Primordials, the strange bird-people known as the Chozo were unique in that they saw the Three-Sphere Cataclysm coming. It was, after all, completely in line with She Who Lives In Her Name's personality and powers, and with the Aurora Unit living supercomputers, it was easy to puzzle out what she could do if upset. The only thing they underestimated was the sheer magnitude of her devastation-if they had known her crystal flames could eliminate so much of Creation, they would have covered far more of it in the flame shields then just their civilization and colonies. In any case, they were some of the most pleasant and benign people to ever grace the face of Creation, as well as one of the most dangerous.
To Magitech and Automatons as the Dragon Kings were to Genesis and magic, the Chozo were a race of peaceable warrior-scholars, with rigorous mental and physical discipline combined with introspection and a desire to learn. Always a more secretive and private race, most of them preferred to live away from the Solar Deliberative, only venturing out for trade or repelling the occasional monster. Unfortunately for a few arrogant Twilights, while the Chozo were very slow to anger, their tactics in war were merciless and total, their logic being to get back to peace as soon as possible and dissuade their enemies from ever fighting again. Natural craftsmen, the Chozo were skilled in the area of complex robotics, creating such wonders of sentient and sapient technology that the Deliberative turned green with envy.
Unlike their colleges in the Deliberative, however, the Chozo never succumbed to hubris-besides the lack of a Great Curse to impair their judgment (while they supported the Incarna in the Primordial War thanks to Autocthon's persuasion, they never made their interference known), the Chozo nature of self-contemplation allowed them to judge when they were going too far, and enabled them to cast a critical eye at themselves. That may be part of the reason why they vanished-unable, and to an extent unwilling, to see why humans had fallen into vainglory and self-importance, it's quite possible that they took heed from the Unconquered Sun and simply left Creation, dedicating themselves to eternal exploration of the Wyld and it's waypoints, presumably in hopes of finding another Creation. In any case, they're gone now, but, perhaps in hopes that humans would one day learn from their mistakes and prove responsible students, they left behind much of their technology and lore, just waiting to be discovered...
Assuming it hasn't gone rampant and thinks of itself as a mechanical god now.
New Specialty: Chozo Engineering
It may sound strange to have a Specialty instead of a Skill here, but the basic principle remains the same as any Magitech-using sorcery and science to create artifacts more than the sum of their parts. In the case of Chozo engineering, however, a significant part of it's lore is dedicated to creating Animating Intelligences, allowing a crafter with this specialty to create a one-dot little god inside his Artifacts for the cost of one extra dot. This comes at a price though-doing this automatically causes the pseudo-automaton to develop Virtues of the mechanical variety-the Chozo were ideologically adverse to creating sentient creatures without free will to an extent-and thus, opinions of it's own. In the case of things that were already meant to have an intelligence-such as an advanced Clockwork Servant-this allows one to gain experience on it's own, and so increase it's functional ability without the need for upgrading to a better dot rating, but this is very risky due to the bizarre process of rampancy-a sequence of events by which the little god that composes the Animating Intelligence and the "natural" intelligence of the automaton fuse into one, causing it to develop organic Virtues (Transmission becomes Compassion, Power becomes Valor, etc.) and true free will., uninhibited by programming. This, combined with the fact that many rampant automatons think of themselves as artificial Terrestrial Gods (since part of them is a least god) means that many of them will rebel against their former masters if they feel unappreciated (what qualifies as "unappreciated" varies from machine to machine, but generally, a less powerful one will have less of an ego than a more powerful one).
The most infamous case of rampancy is the weather-control Aurora Unit Mother Brain, whose nature as an N/A Artifact caused her sense of self-worth and entitlement to swell to delusions of grandeur, viewing herself as the equal of any dragon, if not more so.