Exalted!

In 3e, they're not autonomous N/A artifacts anymore, but miracles of the gods.

It's possible, then, that there no longer is any of that Exaltation Reincarnation stuff anymore.

The comic had a plot centred around the protagonist being the reincarnation of the dude who discovered evocations, so they'll probably be in there somewhere.

I wonder if there is anything I can glean from reading Tales from the Age of Sorrows. Normally I'm not a big fan of supplementary fiction for games (video or tabletop), but this is more for research than entertainment.

Also I remember Mørke saying something about the Exigency being able to reincarnate, depending on the specifics of what brought it about, so why not Exaltations?

Hmmm.

Yeah, I did think it was funny that they said they were drawing away from Exaltations being these distinct artifact-entities upon themselves while Exigencies seem to be exactly that.

I think calling Exaltations "artifacts" is trivializing what they are (and especially later in its life, 2nd Edition was great at trivializing what should have been fantastic), but I like the idea of a "third soul" too much to let it go entirely.

Well, to me, it's like say that calling the Death Star a space station with a really big gun trivializes it. I don't, I think that accurately describes it, even if it's sort of parcing it down to the bone and kinda misses the point.

Like half of released fictions for 3e are garbage that doesn't give a whit of a damn about setting consistency. They have a dragonblooded reexalting as a solar.

Meanwhile the devs themselves on the forums wave "it's mythical!" as an excuse to any logical inconsistencies. For example, solar exaltations were still trapped in the prison and returned when the prison was broken, and would have done so even if UCS keeled over in the interim. And YET, the return of the solars is a direct act of UCS' benevolence returning to the world.

edited 21st Aug '15 4:11:45 AM by Adannor

Probbbably not a good idea to generalize from the things that explicitly have uniqueness and variability as their schtick.

Huh? How is the Exigence more artifacty than other Exaltations?

I think saying that calling exaltations artifacts trivializes them actually trivializes artifacts more.

Compared to what Exaltations were supposed to be in 2nd Edition? Artifacts are supposed to be trivial. Exaltation is supposed to be divine power without end passed onto humanity, a power that can, in the fullness of time, empower hundreds of artifacts. This doesn't mean artifacts are meaningless or unimportant - it just shows that, even compared to the greatest wonders of humans and gods, Exaltation is more.

Exaltation is the greatest wonder of human or god. How can you claim that artifacts are trivial when they include such wonders as the daystar, exaltations, and creation itself (technically)?

And if it's possible, in 3e, for Terrestrials to trade Exaltations, that is in fact consistent with the setting. It's not consistent with 2e, true, but they've been pretty up-front that they're changing the setting.

This was, very explicitly, one of their stated goals - to make Creation feel less solved and back into a version where the most arcane physics of the setting had not been worked out with diagrams and equations 5000 years ago.

Weren't they going back to the gods having the final say in who their Exaltations bond with? Because if so, I can very easily see how both of those can be true - the return of the Solar Exaltations would have happened anyway, but without the guiding hand of Ignis Divine, there would have been no return of the Solars because those Exaltations wouldn't actually be going out and creating new Exalts.

Such a change in setting would've made it into actual book, but there ain't shit like that. Those fictions are simply even lower than 2e's most idiotic moments on amount of oversight went into them. So there isn't any consistency or internal logic in setting and you can do whatever the hell and excuse it as "mythical!!!1", riiight. Total quality writing. No. Double no. There would still be solars happening even without UCS. The few free exaltations were still cycling around even before he turned his attention back. And all of them would still be out and about creating solars if he was ded. That was explicitly acknowledged in that conversation in that thread.

Ah, okay. I probably didn't read "that thread", whichever thread that may be, because I noticed that a lot of 3e discussion turned incredibly toxic really quickly and just wanted to spare myself the aggravation.

Never mind, then.

It was in Ask the Devs thread on rpgnet.

edited 21st Aug '15 5:22:48 AM by Adannor

I don't even like the concept of the Daystar in the first place, but even that is still lesser than Exaltation. Creation, being an act of Primordial artifice dating to before things like meaning or causality really existed, obviously breaks certain rules.

This is part of something I often disagreed with in the later parts of 2nd Edition: specific classification of near everything as Artifact, Manse, Demesne or Charm, even things that didn't need to be defined so strictly. Creation didn't need to be called an artifact that Gaia attuned, for example (though this might be more something the Exalted boards used instead of any canon writing).

Oh, I don't like the idea of Gaia attuning it or anything. I just define artifact as "magic thing what someone made". Exaltations are technically artifacts whilst also being most definitely beyond the artifice of even the solars.

Hey Khantalas, does this answer your questions about reincarnation?

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So did he address the obvious question of the Primordials' command over the gods, or is that no longer a thing in Third Edition?

It's mythical.

To the players, sure. I'm kind of hoping that the designers have a clue, so future content does not end up being completely nonsensical.

Then again, I don't have much faith in Mørke in having an answer that will satisfy me, because what he has in mind for Exalted is usually completely different from what got me interested in it. At this point the most I can hope is that he has an answer at all.

That's because someone decided the sun in Creation's sky was not the Sun, or a chariot ridden by him, but instead a giant spaceship piloted by a completely different god. Until then everyone I knew was fine with the sun being in multiple places at once.

edited 21st Aug '15 11:00:26 AM by Khantalas

My impression is they are not going to answer a lot of things implicitly.

And I do not blame them, because the level of nitpicking that goes on with every setting factoid is fan-fucking-ridiculous.

The bit about being in two places at once is just there because it was part of the exchange that said the Primordial geas isn't an issue, because the only thing it can command Incarnae to do is not personally shank their creators. Which is awfully straightforward, so I dunno why you'd find it unsatisfying.

That said, the Daystar isn't carrying over to the next edition, so I guess there's no problem there either.

I wrote that before I saw the post directly above it, so...