[Exalted] Casting "Banish Ghost" On A Deathlord and It's Implications

[Leliel]

Well, I just got the White and Black Treatise last week, and it struck me: Do Deathlords count a ghosts for casting "Banish Ghost" on?

I assume they do-Deathlords are Solar Ghosts after all-but then I wondered that, if you somehow managed it (after all, they'd probably hit you with Countermagic, unless I'm misreading something), what you would do to keep them in the Underworld so you don't have an insane god-ghost with a badly bruised ego screaming for your flesh on your sweet, juicy behind in three days (assuming the Neverborn's wrath/the other Deathlords smelling blood didn't get him first).

Then I wondered at the kind of social implications a Deathlord suffering a humiliation like that would be in the Underworld, and what the necromancer who pulled that off would be viewed as (other than "major threat").

So anyway:

Does "Banish Ghost" work on Deathlords, and if so, what would be the fallout from one being successfully sent packing to the Underworld?

Well, every Deathlord except Eye and Seven Despairs. His Banishment would just render him even more of a miserable prick then normal, and the reaction would be "Oh, the idiot got what was coming to him. Can we please get rid of him now?"

[The Rose Dragon]

Well, see, an average necromancer will roll 12 dice per action. A Deathlord will roll 20 dice. You can spend a ridiculous amount of dice to make banishment more likely, but at that point you are casting the equivalent of a Void Circle Necromancy in terms of mote cost. Considering Adamant Circle Sorcery can banish Third Circle demons, it is possible to banish a Deathlord, albeit difficult. And do note that a Deathlord will remember the necromancer that dared force this upon him - and he will have his revenge.

[Jerthanis]

Well, every Deathlord except Eye and Seven Despairs. His Banishment would just render him even more of a miserable prick then normal, and the reaction would be "Oh, the idiot got what was coming to him. Can we please get rid of him now?"

And then everyone wonders why he's still got pretty much exclusive access to the Bayou of Endless Regret and has the most kickass Manse in all the underworld... and how he managed to evade the punishment from the Neverborn for the Fair Folk invasion plan...

I really like Eye and Seven Despairs and hope he never gets a more complete writeup because I like that you can run him as a criminally incompetent waste of time deathlord, or the genius who has made himself the strongest by seeming the weakest.

[potatocubed]

A couple of things, tangentially related:

1. There's an Abyssal charm which lets a character circumvent her deathlord and hook herself straight into the power of the Neverborn - this is the sort of character who would banish a deathlord and may well have the personal power and the preparation to make it stick.

2. Exalted is all about the player characters scribbling all over the default setting - trying to keep things to the status quo is an exercise in missing the point. If a PC sends the Mask of Winters back to the underworld and co-opts Juggernaught as their personal transportation? Well, that's Exalted for you.

The actual fallout from doing it could be widely variable, depending on circumstances. A lot of Resonance for the banisher would be a start, unless they were acting with the will of the Neverborn. Other questions would involve what the deathlord's presence in Creation was sustaining, if anything: an army of the undead held up by the will of their creator, maybe?

There's also the usual fun consequences of a power vacuum - unless the PC fills it themselves, which they're more than capable of at this stage - which basically involves everyone in the vicinity with a bit of power making a grab for the empty throne.