[Lets Read] Exalted: Essence Previews

[Lord Raziere]

Well. on the first one, thats easy: in Essence, firing a bolt of essence is called Glorious Exalted Bolt and it has many Exalted modes, and the Infernal mode grants you a two dice damage bonus against targets you have a negative intimacy for, so perfectly in theme for your Azimuth Caste to hateburn their enemies to nothing with the pwoer of Malfeas. Requires either Ranged Combat or Sagacity 2. (Sagacity is your Lore/Occult/Medicine all in one stat for Essence)

so....yeah, pretty easy to blast the Green Sun's fury around.

as for Spirit of the Living World....I haven't seen it. But! remember that it was a pretty unique charm, that I don't we've seen the entirety of the charms or the chapter, this preview was only 53 pages long. and it was all about the Universal charms. here is my interpretation of that: there are some charms you simply can't do with modes, because they are not similar enough to something else to lump it under those, this was all stuff that any Exalt could do with some modifications involved.

so there is probably a section with Exalt specific charms that don't have analogues in others, and Spirit of the Living World is probably one of them. this is stuff that is universal to all Exalts primarily, including things I'm surprised they allowed to be universal such as Irresistible Presence Technique, which is basically the Solar's Hypnotic Tongue Technique but for everyone, though Solars, Abyssals and Infernals get a mode that makes it better for them.

Spoiler: Exalted Essence Preview 5: Chp 6-2

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Yeah, I was right: there are sections for each Exalts with unique charms. For ease of reading I'll break this down into certain sections so I can comment on each charmset presented on its own:

Abyssal Charms:
Oh cool each section has a blurb summarizing their themes, Abyssals have: death, penalizing the enemy and more damage.

first interesting charm: Corpse Questioning Technique. its basically speak with dead as an awareness 1 charm. so a E1 Abyssal can kill someone and question their corpse without needing interrogation. yikes.

the next awareness charm after is basically one that allows an abyssal to determine morbid things like "who did this guy kill last? how many people have they killed?" at a glance. okay they're going full death metal with Abyssals here.

one of their close combat charms trapping someone in an iron maiden suit armor to kill them and bring them back as a corpse cataphract to serve them. okay. just.....lets.....hm...

ah theres the charm that allows Abyssals to kill with speeches......and an upgrade that allows them to literally kill with a look. just glare at someone and they die. Exalted: Onyx Path's ever continuing quest to make metaphors into things that are actually physically dangerous

the basic Abyssal integrity charm helps defend positive ties to the living or dissuade them from violence. they're REALLY going all in on "murder death sith lord" thing here. really going all in.

okay note: don't listen to Midnight Castes talk, sing, don't look at them or try to interpret their sign language, they can kill you with any social medium.

oh no, Abyssals can learn charms to be near unkillable.....except if ghost-eating technique is used on them. lol. so you imitate spirits, big deal.

and the war and sagacity charms are all about raising undead armies to fight for you

overall, they're really hammering home how grandiloquently evil Abyssals are here. just as intended, just as expected.

Alchemical Charms:
These charms are based on the Essence attributes huh. one of the first charms is one that basically allows the Alchemical to be a walking toolkit of whatever mundane thing they need, just be able to take tools out compartments in themselves to do this or that. already starting strong.

one of their charms though allows them to copy another persons power temporarily, so thats weird.

a lot of these charms are about efficiency and machine like as expected. nothing seems out of place here.

Dragon-Blooded Charms:
These charms unique to them are things that are either hearth oriented or very obvious element oriented, such as Elemental Burst Technique, Dragon Vortex Attack, Ramparts of Obedient Earth, Oath of the Ten Thousand Dragons, Wind Carried Words technique, all the DB classics that feel right only they have.

Getimian Charms:
now we're getting into the real interesting stuff. Getimians as a reminder have two modes to their charms: Flowing and Still, if they have more motes of one type, they are currently in that mode. you have more Flowing motes, your Flowing for example. which means that if I spend a lot of flowing motes to the point where my Still pool is more, that means I go into Still mode, and vice versa. hm.

okay so they can make potions to give others Power, can gain dice from people refusing to bargain with them, cross distances instantly and without any trace of passage, summon people and resources from their origin world just out of thin air by spending motes what. thats....thats allowed? as....an Essence 3 charm with no othe prerequisites? WHAT!?

oh and they use attributes, not skills, so basically: all the fatebending nonsense of Sidereals meets the flexible attributes of Lunars. Getimians are going to freaking insane.

next they can instill intimacies by feeding people potions which depend on what mode your in, be in two places at once, edit someones memory-then make them infect other people with the edited memory so they remember it that way to, slay a god and either make sure no one remembers the god....or hack the Loom of fate and redefine reality within the gods purview up to including doing things like "reviving a never-forged empire". and that this leaves obvious errors in fate and are subject to storyteller approval.

Next up we have Getimians being able to talk with people as if they remember something from an alternate reality, then stealing other peoples legends and merits, reverse social standings so troops turn on a general or a prince is forced into exile, permanently transforming things by passing through them, and then just teleport themselves and their allies with a Fortitude 5, E3 charm to anywhere they've already been in Creation or in their timeline okay, and oh then a charm to make targets confront their own lies called "Truth is Relative" which I think I'll personally call "The Persona 5 charm".

their artifact making charm is pull a temporary one from their timeline that can kill extras and replace them with extras from their own timeline fighting on their side that then vanish along with the weapon when it vanishes. okay.

overall, a lot of things where they either summon or change the world to be more like the one they left and some where they just outright break the laws of Creation and cause rifts in space. I already love Getimians with all my heart because all this insanity makes Sidereals pale in comparison. I mean sure, fate ninja bureaucrats are cool I still like them, but I think the Getimians just from this have usurped their place in my heart and rewritten my heart so that I always liked them more before I ever knew they existed.

Infernal Charms:
Devil Body incarnation, the first one we have, starts off strong with just allow you to transform into a form that reflects your innermost nature with no prereqs. customizable, can be purchased repeatedly to enhance and customize it more. okay. cool.

bunch of charms to get rid of positive intimacies I'm seeing, but these are Malfeas and Ebon Dragon charms with the yozi ties erased so they're just general Infernal stuff now. so makes sense.

most of these just seem to be normal infernal charms updated from 2e, but Ceaseless Demon Hunger seems to be inspired by Metagaos given that it allows you to eat any mundane substance. thats.....pretty broad.

with Dark Miracle Mimicry they can copy charms and magical abilities like the Alchemicals can but this one explicitly focuses on towards people you hold negative intimacies for only, and cannot copy abilities based on "light, sanctity or positive meotions"

Inner Devil unchained allows you to turn people into demons, so thats back.

and another charm allows you to curse people rather than kill them. placing curses on people seems to be a running theme with Infernals.

and um.....thats all unfortunately. um.... no Spirit of the living World I can see. which is not the best thing BUT.....we still got Devil Body Incarnation which means that the devs haven't forgotten about the whole "Infernals inner world" thing. and on the kickstarter there are people who are already expressing the lack of "become an inner world and make my own little spirit pantheon" concerns about the Infernal charms here. so possibly could be fixed this is only a preview, and if not well.....between the fact that Solars have a E5 charm in 3rd edition to literally create spirits and raksha from thin air and the Getimians are just full of effects to whip out stuff from their Origin timeline, I think we have enough mechanical foundation to just homebrew the Devil Tiger stuff back in if we want to.