[Exalted] Infernals: The Burning Hate

[TimeWizard]

“Hate is a virtue”

I've been working on a character concept/unique artifact that I want some help on. I've gotten around to designing and/or playing each solar caste, as well as an Abyssal, and a Lunar, but I haven't made an Infernal. I had a design for a Zenith Caste that I ended up not using, so I had the idea to repurpose him as an Infernal, and this gave me a great hook for the Character:

Ahriman Ahura Guru Gran Sahib*, or Sahib for short, was supposed to become a Zenith, this was predicted many years before his birth by his tribe of Desert Nomads. He was raised to venerate the UCS in all things. Unfortunately his tribe was attacked by [Someone] and he failed to stop them, being easily bested by the [Exalted of some kind] attackers (this causes him to be passed over for Zenith-hood). The only member left alive after the attack, he has sworn his soul to any who would give him power for vengeance, and Cecelyne answered him. Now Sahib has turned his piousness to hatred, and uses his power to oppose the Sun and his Champions at all turns, while also finding any reason to justify his Righteous Anger on bandits, slavers, and Exalted in general. He has Adopted the moniker of "The Burning Hate".


So I don't know much about Infernals, but I want Sahib to be a well made character mechanically. Cecelyne fits his Desert Nomad persona. I'm not sure what Caste fits him best. I'd like him to have a great Resistance, Martial Arts, Survival and a passable Medicine. He hates Exalted, Governments, bandits, slavers, or basically anyone other than the poor and meek. He especially hates anyone who justifies their actions with Might Makes Right (other than himself and his bosses. Intentional hypocrisy.) but, really, he's just looking for an excuse to self justify outlets for his hatred and the Yozi send him around to break things they don't like being whole, either physical, living, or immaterial (like political parties, nuisance family lines). He should be extremely hard to kill, and if possible use some kind of pressure point fighting style, if not just barehanded. My biggest influences were Anji, the Destroyer (Ruroni Kenshin), and Joshua Graham (Fallout: New Vegas). Also influencing his design are Asura (Asura's Wrath), the Modern Terrorist a la Bane (Dark Knight Rises), Kenshiro (Fist of the North Star), and lastly Pelor, the Burning Hate (WotC boards).

Now, you may have noticed I said I wanted to introduce a Custom Artifact. I had this in mind:
In an era best forgotten, The great sages and smiths of heaven sent an envoy to the simple but pious wise men of the desert nomads, to whom they entrusted a powerful artifact to watch over in secret. Cast in the Sun's own light, this artifact appears as two golden arms connected by a thin gold band. These arms were made in the likeness of Sol Invictus's lower arms, that the wearer might emulate his Perfect Martial Glory. While attuned, the arms allow the wearer to fight as is if they were part of his or her natural body, significantly increasing that person's fighting abilities, however, the hatred of Sahib has corrupted them, and now its golden fists exist to punish the Wicked and the Just alike. While not in use, they coat the torso of the wielder's body in shiny metal as though poured over his or her very skin, granting the wielder a significant increase in protection..
I want the Resplendent Deva's Auric Fists to be an Artifact 5 that gives Sahib more power in unarmed fighting: such as allowing for extra attacks (more arms, more hits), or bolstering a single attack (two right hooks as one blow). When the arms are not materialized, they cover the torso in metal, probably increasing soak. This is an Artifact 5 because its an integral part of his character, so I want it to be powerful enough not to eclipsed by other weapons and things. Can be either still Oricalcum or Corrupted Brass (changing their name to the Conquered Fists)

Other Miscellany: Sahib has a full back tattoo in an ancient dialect of a lost language that is a Ritual to the Unconquered Sun. Not sure what relevance that will have, but he doesn't know what it means. Definitely all about the Endless Desert charms, for character flavor. If it's possible, I picture his shintai as a white hot sandstorm. His biggest trait is Hate, the way Hulk's is Anger and Batman's is Conviction, so if there was a way to mechanically get that across such as a combat bonus against negative intimacies or the Intolerance Flaw that would be awesome. Sahib is from the South, naturally. His role in the nomads was trainee holy man, so I'm thinking Occult, Lore and Medicine in some amounts. Sahib will probably carry a twohanded scimitar or oversized Shotel for general general coolness or if Melee charms tend to work better. Keeping options open.

I just got a copy of MoEP:Infernals, so I'll update as I read it. Thank you.

*I know, but none of my friends know about the tenets or history of Sikhism or Zoroastrianism, and the name sounds cool.

[Mewtarthio]

The obvious solution is to make Sahib a Malefactor who favors Malfeas and has the Malfean Urge. I mean, pretty much every single Malfeas Charm fits perfectly. The Malefactor Caste is the "evil priest" caste by default, plus it makes Cecelyne's Charmset favored.

[TheCountAlucard]

Kimbery has great Charms for hating people. Normally you're capped at (Willpower + Compassion) Intimacies, regardless of whether they're positive or negative, but with Kimbery Charms you could literally have Intimacies of hatred for everyone, individually, and can't erode them. You can even defend yourself with hatred with her Charms: one boosts your Dodge DV by all your negative Intimacies, effectively acting as a perfect dodge once you hate enough people.

Malfeas Charms are also good for conveying your limitless rage. Plus, what kind of GSP doesn't have Green Sun Nimbus Flare? :smalltongue:

Infernal Monster Style's a good choice, since you were going MA anyway.

[Friv]

Yeah, I would vote Malfeas/Cecelyne with just a dash of Kimbery (although for Kimbery, you need to get ahold of the PDF "The Broken-Winged Crane").

[TimeWizard]

I've been considering flipping the character thematically, making a Cecelyne dedicated Slayer. I haven't got to charms yet, though, so we'll see.

Can you give me a Kimbery summary until I get BWC?

also, I'm not sure if this is addressed in book, but why are Infernal charms blocked as Kimbery 1, Kimbery 2, Kimbery 3, etc... Are they seperate domains? Sorry if that's answered in print but I popped over to the White Wolf Wiki to see what's up with Kim and was really confused.

[Mewtarthio]

Kimbery is associated with the ocean, poison, possessive love, and enduring spite. Note, however, that the combo Alucard mentions requires you to take Intolerable Burning Truths, which is one of those Infernal Charms that permanently corrupts your character, so be sure you're okay with that.

[TheCountAlucard]

Permanent Charms are only as permanent as you want them to be, if you have access to Graceful Wicked Masques. There's a Charm in the All-Consuming God-Monster that lets you carve off traits, including no-longer-useful permanent Charms and toss them in the trash at your discretion. Some may call this a "waste of XP," but I call it "the only condition it's acceptable to have Witness to Darkness on your sheet."

[meschlum]

Spare Hands

The Creation-born are strange, with a fair number of them complaining that they lack enough hands to accomplish their goals, while the hands of others stand idle. Thus, the ever helpful Raksha have designed the Spare Hands, to aid those in need.

One who bears the blessing of the Hands will find a spare pair of hands manifests when necessary, and is otherwise occupied with parrying incoming blows and distributing damage inflicted so that it is dissipated. Abusing the Hands will cause them to fall off at some point, and take the mind of their erstwhile owner with them.

Mechanics
1-dot Oneiromancy
Assumption of the Person's Heart - the Hands are part of you
Mad God Mien - and they cannot be dispelled or removed by common means
Fire (Earth?) Transformation - at Essence 3+, the Hands can activate to give you a spare set of limbs.
Rarefied Air of Inevitable Victory - the Hands will deflect blows from any weapons not made of cold iron
Gossamer Wing Flight - and they'll even grab the godlings of the air itself, to lift you into the skies
Ordinary Object Conjuration - the Hands can manifest a pair of Very Sharp Knives at will
Ordinary Object Conjuration - or a pair of high quality shields

1-dot Behemoth
Assumption of the Person's Heart - the Hands have a driving sentience that is subservient to their owner
Surpassing Excellence - they are Very Good at fighting, defending their owner, and using Defend Other on their owner's behalf
Opalescent Gossamer Raiment - they are hard to damage and can transfer this resilience to their owner
Knife Hand Dream - the Hands can stop weapons bare-Handed, and inflict terrifying damage.

The Behemoth aspect can transfer its combat prowess to its owner (+2 specialty dice, stacking with existing specialties up to +5 dice and +5 damage, unarmed combat can parry weapons, do Lethal (or Aggravated) damage).

If you're really dedicated to being hard to hurt, get a 4 dot Behemoth for 20/20 base soak, give the Hands some extra soak increasing mutations, get gossamer full plate for another ~20/20 or so. And grab Bastion of the Heart, for immunity to lots of damage types and bonus successes against the rest.

[Longes]

He hates Exalted, Governments, bandits, slavers, or basically anyone other than the poor and meek. He especially hates anyone who justifies their actions with Might Makes Right (other than himself and his bosses. Intentional hypocrisy.) but, really, he's just looking for an excuse to self justify outlets for his hatred and the Yozi send him around to break things they don't like being whole, either physical, living, or immaterial (like political parties, nuisance family lines).
Sounds like a great Adorjan material to me! You can be a deadly wind flying through the desert! Or Ebon Dragon. He is big on the "hate" thing.

[TimeWizard]

Meschlum made a custom Fae charm for me. Life Complete.

[TheCountAlucard]

It's an artifact, not a Charm; meschlum generally doesn't write Charms, he just uses the incredibly-versatile raksha Charmset to craft fey artifacts to suit a person's needs.

[Friv]

I've been considering flipping the character thematically, making a Cecelyne dedicated Slayer. I haven't got to charms yet, though, so we'll see.

Can you give me a Kimbery summary until I get BWC?

Kimbery is the worst, spiteful, pageant mom that you've ever seen. Her infinite oceanic depths allow her to crush to death anyone who tries to escape from her smothering embrace, and she will shower you with gifts, empower you, and then flip the hell out the first time you forget Mother's Day and doom you and everyone you care for to an eternal landscape of hellish agony.

Her Charms govern the literal ocean, giving her incredible abilities in and around the sea, as well as the concepts of poison, gratitude, and vengeance.

For your purposes, the direct "I HATE YOU" Charms are Intolerable Burning Truths and its cascade. IBT lets you make a small but critical permanent change to your outlook on life, not unlike Cosmic Transcendence does, giving you various advantages but creating a situation where you have to spend Willpower to not do something. The three that matter most to you are:


Existence is Agony (which allows her to ignore the pain of those she does not care about, while preventing her from showing mercy), Never Forgive (which enhances her ability to convince others to hate her foes, while preventing her from abandoning her own hatred) and Hate Springs Eternal (which increases the number of things she can hate and aids her defense against such hated characters, while preventing her from ever aiding those she reviles).


also, I'm not sure if this is addressed in book, but why are Infernal charms blocked as Kimbery 1, Kimbery 2, Kimbery 3, etc... Are they seperate domains? Sorry if that's answered in print but I popped over to the White Wolf Wiki to see what's up with Kim and was really confused.

The 1 - 2 - 3 thing is a wiki artifact, not a Kimbery artifact. Most Charm trees on the wiki get divided by purpose - so Lunar Strength Charms are subdivided into "Feats of Strength", "Combat", and so on. But Infernal Charms can't subdivide by purpose, because their purpose wanders all over the place. Instead, they subdivided them by prerequisites, and then numbered the Charm tree charts.

[TimeWizard]

Ok, can I get some Charm recommendations for Malfeas, and Cecelyne? I'm making a MA focused Malfean Malefactor. How good is the Green Sun Nimbus Flare line? Because it seems good.

[The_Snark]

Ok, can I get some Charm recommendations for Malfeas, and Cecelyne? I'm making a MA focused Malfean Malefactor. How good is the Green Sun Nimbus Flare line? Because it seems good.

It is. Green Sun Nimbus Flare is a nice supplement to your damage, and it becomes better once you pick up Wrath-Stoked Bonfire Soul (which you should do as soon as you've got Essence 4). There are a lot of other upgrades which let you do other things: burn spirits to death, kill people with radiation poisoning, leave sorcerous marks to burn people who displease you, or hurl spears of green fire. Pick the ones you like

Malfeas in general has pretty solid Charms. The other branch (starting with By Pain Reforged) also has quite a lot of neat stuff.

Cecelyne is more hit-or-miss; she doesn't have all that many straightforward combat or social Charms. A few, but not many. What she does offer is an array of gimmicks, which aren't useful for everyone but can be great in the hands of the right character. Locust Mana Plague, for instance, allows you to conjure demon-locusts as food; these taste much better than they sound, provide full nutritious meals, and incidentally make anyone who eats them more inclined to like and/or worship you. Not useful for everyone, but if you want to feed the hungry and/or found a cult? Very useful. The wish-granting line is similar.

She also has a number of Charms which deal exclusively with demons, which I've never found all that attractive. But if you expect to deal with demons a lot, they might be handy.

[TimeWizard]

Righteous, Snark. Thank you. Who do you recommend going to after? I'm told Kimbery is good for poison attacks. Any other good moves I should get?

Also, can I just take charms from whoever I want? How do I know which Yozi are favored?

[The_Snark]

You get 1 caste Yozi, determined by your Caste (tautology!), and you get to pick 1 favored Yozi on top of that. (Don't feel silly if you couldn't find that information - it was left out of the original book. See the Scroll of Errata, p. 93.) All the others are non-favored, but you can still take their Charms. It just costs a little more XP.

Kimbery is indeed good if you want poisons; Mother Sea Mastery and Spiteful Sea Tincture will get you a basic poison attack/trap, which you can upgrade with further Charm purchases if you feel like investing further. (A repurchase of Spiteful Sea Tincture will give you a better poison, while Great Mother's Tears gives you an array of upgrades to pick from, including mutagenic poisons, subtle poisons you can't feel until you keel over, and soul-twisting poisons that ruin Intimacies.)

There are enough good Infernal Charms that it's hard to give generic recommendations. Anything specific you're looking at? Anything you'd really like to be able to do?

[TimeWizard]

Murder people to death with hatred. Ultimate goal is to bring the world to an apocalyptic ruin where he can lord over everyone like an evil Kenshiro. Basically, though, he does and evil version of Walking the Earth: Yozi send him to a place, he kills most everyone, then: make the survivors fight each other to death, have them start a cult of wicked righteousness in his name, burn and salt the Earth, etc... I'd like him to be the Brute and the Evil Apocalyptic Messiah. Melee/MA is a big thing, with any Charms that make him hard to kill or needlessly cruel. I will never willingly initiate Social Combat unless it's demanded by the story. Other than Malfeas/Kimbery/Ceclyne, I'm not sure where to go really. I'm thinking Artifact Fist Weapons and maybe some light armor after I get that Tarnished Brass Body version 2 Charm of Malfeas. I like that Kimbery and Malfeas enable the inversion of the wandering healer trope.

Basically, I want to play a bad guy.

[horngeek]

Sounds like Malfeas/Cecelyne to me, since the latter is all about desolation and the first does HATEMURDER quite well thank you.

[The_Snark]

Indeed. You're in luck - there's a lot of Infernal Charms that work for that concept.

Note that there's a lot of stuff here, far too much to grab at character creation; I'm just listing things that seem appropriate and useful. Color-coded for convenience. Dark orange indicates Malfeas Charms, silver denotes Cecelyne, and sea green means Kimbery.

Murder people to death with hatred: Green Sun Nimbus Flare! See also: Wrath-Stoked Bonfire Soul (more damage!), Cold Fire Desolation Brand and its follow-ups (radiation poisoning), maybe Infernal Monster Style (berserk rage and over-the-top brutality). Also, Spiteful Sea Tincture if you want to poison people. Sandstrike Blast and its enhancements are possible - eventually you can create giant sandstorms - but I get the impression your guy prefers to kill up close and personal.

Hard to kill: By Pain Reforged, By Agony Empowered, Pathetic Distraction Rebuke, Scar-Writ Saga Shield, Viridian Legend Exoskeleton, Transcendent Desert Creature, Sands Through Fingers Defense, Soul-Sieve Transmutation, maybe Bitter Heart Unbleeding.

Needlessly cruel: Intolerable Burning Truths. Of the selected options, you'll want to pick Never Forgive or Hatred Springs Eternal, maybe Existence Is Agony (fits perfectly, but the benefit is pretty useless for you). Or all of the above.

Social stuff: Impervious Primacy Mantle and/or Solipsistic Rejection of Impossibilities, to ignore people who try to social you. Magnanimous Warning Glyph and Fealty-Acknowledging Audience, to brand people as your slaves. Also consider Crowned With Fury; I know you say he's not much for social combat, but bear in mind that it's most useful for social attacks like "kneel or die, wretched filth!"

Salt the earth: Gifts of Invisible Flame, Sun-Salted Fields, and The Green Mile are basically made for this. So is Geomantic Redistricting Oblation, but it's really really specific and may not be worth bothering. Holy Land Infliction can work too.

Cult of wicked righteousness: buy a Cult and maybe some Followers. I'm not sure how much you can enhance this with Charms. Penitents Like Scattered Grains and Temple Self Apotheosis will help you get more out of your cult, but they're not easy to get (and one of the prerequisites, Demonic Primacy of Essence, will hurt you more than it helps).

Other: All Things Betray is a combination surprise negator and Join Battle-enhancer, very useful. Purity of Madness Defense is a Shaping defense, which you may want eventually.

[Longes]

Cecelyne is interesting, because her charms are ur example of how the infernals/primordials work.
Zenith would use his social-fu powers to gather people and unite them into an army under his banner.
Malefactor would summon a ****load of demons and threaten/make laws to guide them to his goals. Infernals don't work with people when they need something. When Infernal needs something, he summons a demon for that.

Same with Malfeas - you don't convince people that you are worthy of being their king. You just give them choice: bow or die.

Snark, what do you think of "Fond remembrance of Adrian" as a shaping defense?

[TheCountAlucard]

Can't help but feel that Kimbery's "my blood is now poison" Charm would be useful here as well. If anyone DOES get through your hard brassy shell, they see you're just as vitriolic on the inside. :smalltongue:

[TimeWizard]

Thanks Snark! just what I was looking for.
Can't help but feel that Kimbery's "my blood is now poison" Charm would be useful here as well. If anyone DOES get through your hard brassy shell, they see you're just as vitriolic on the inside What charm is this? it sounds so wonderfully villainous in a way that is needlessly petty and completely contemptuous!

[Longes]

http://wiki.white-wolf.com/exalted/index.php?title=Charms%3ASea_Within_Veins_Prana

[TimeWizard]

Thanks. What do you guys think about Infernal Monster Style? It looks like something I'd need to take to use as a base for my other Infernal Charms.

[TheCountAlucard]

Nothing says "I hate you" like throwing a person into the sun.*




* Provided, of course, that you timed it just right. :smalltongue:

[horngeek]

* Provided, of course, that you timed it just right. :smalltongue:

Take it from someone playing Kerbal Space Program, getting that timing right can be damm difficult at times.

[TimeWizard]

I kinda think that IMS and SHS are a little Boring But Practical (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BoringButPractical). I don't know how to punch someone into the Sun unless it's that MA x 5 yards punch thing.

[TheCountAlucard]

Crack the Sky; break a grapple by punching them out of it, sending them flying MILES.

[Longes]

IMS is hilarious if you combine it with Crane style or Black Claw style. "HULK SMASH!!!" "Oh, but you like Hulk. Hulk is good. Bad people attack first!"

[Mewtarthio]

Be sure to look at the Ink Monkeys Infernal Monster expansions. Nothing says "Evil Apocalyptic Messiah" like violently tearing people apart in their nightmares!