Exalted vs World of Darkness

[HairyHeretic]

Take care of yourself first. Worry about games later.

[Muse]

Ack!   

i'm sorry if i rushed you, Andy.  It was not my intention.  If you can't do this, that's okay.  I apologise if i contributed to your stress. 

[Hexed]

Take care and here's hoping the best for you. Thank you for introducing me to the game system and explaining things in it.

[RSGAlex]

Yeah, take care of yourself.

[AndyZ]

Basically I feel like a major douche for trying to start a second after the first failed, but it was the very day I found the Revised version and I was so excited.

I have some write ups that I decided to just post as works in progress.  You were going to be given a safe house with a Dragon Nest to start out, and a mortal former ghoul named Dana as a caretaker for things like answering lore questions, being a professional nurse if you had to spend a week healing in the infirmary room, getting you drinks, etc.  The videos if nothing else I figured would still interest a lot of you to read.

Understand that this is all a work in progress, but after the video starts, there’s clear spots where I’d wait for post interactions.

[AndyZ]

Each of you receives a letter, snail or e-mail, with obviously fake return information:

Dear [Name], Solar of the [Caste] Caste:

It has come to my attention that you and four others have recently Exalted as a perfect circle of Solars.  Allow me to offer you the chance to come together for a meeting at a safe house of 41 Dert Street, New Westhaven, ZIP ##### at noon of this Sunday.  The extra several days will give some of your number time to investigate and ensure that the offer is legitimate.

A caretaker is there, Dana Kyleson, who will handle mundane affairs for you unless you have some reason not to want her.  She won’t recognize you on sight, but expects five people with a copy of this letter.  Although she isn’t supernatural herself, she has extensive knowledge and abilities, and should work quite well for you as a retainer.

I know the way that my choosing to introduce myself leaves you with many questions.  One group of Solars has already attempted to settle long past scores of vengeance.  It’s my hope that we can all now work to make the world the place of peace and harmony that it should always have been.




[Andy’s Note: never finished.  Here’s the ending.]

“So, my name’s Dana.  Without going into too much yet, I used to be a vampire’s slave slash pet until Solars freed me and helped get me to caretaking a safe house on behalf of Mr. Papageorgio.  I’ll be keeping the place clean and stocked with food, managing the internet connection for everyone to ensure it doesn’t get compromised, answering questions to the best of my ability after the video, and if someone gets hurt badly enough that they can’t get up on their own, I’m trained as a registered nurse and can watch over you in the Infirmary until your body heals back up.”

She turned on the TV to a blue screen.  “I have a DVD to show everyone which goes over a great deal of the supernatural in order to help those who don’t remember and ensure they’re brought up to speed, but if you want me to show you around, get you some snacks, whatever, just ask.”  She’d apparently already watched said video.

[AndyZ]

“Hello, viewers.  Call me Professor Pravda.”  It was the only thing written on the black board.  “If you’re watching this, you should either be an Exalt or a caretaker for one of Papageorgio’s safehouses, and if that safehouse is invaded despite the wards, it should be one of the things you destroy to keep it from getting into the wrong hands, if not soon after you’ve memorized all the information.”

The picture shifted to a handpainted map.



“Any number of cultures and religions have their own myths about the start of the world and the universe.  Some claim that the various worlds collided together as those who sought to explore found their way to other lands and people.  I refuse to speculate on matters I cannot verify.  What any Exalt who remembers being told will tell you is that the world - called Creation - was created out of the pure chaos of the Feywild by the Primordials.  They created the gods and the humans, and they were tyrants.”  Venom dripped through her tone at the very last word.  She had a particular hatred for tyrants.

“The gods themselves were bound from doing anything against the Primordials, but the most powerful gods worked together in secret with Gaia and another Primordial to create the Exaltations.  Specific human beings became powerful enough to slay even the Primordials in the Primordial War, either slaying them so utterly that the entire Underworld formed to contain their dead husk-souls, or mutilating them and transforming them into something you’ll understand as a demon.”

The next slide shows the five Solar Caste Marks, the three Lunar Caste Marks, and the sigils denoting the five Dragon-Blooded.  “No doubt each of you will at least remember about each other, and Lunars ended up changing to these three from the original five, but I want to keep things at least reasonably simplified.  Caretaker, resume the video when they’re ready.”

As the video went to blue screen and paused by itself, Dana looked over the other five.  “There’s going to be a lot here before we’re done, but if you have any questions or anything, I should be able to answer.  Or, if one of you remembers and wants to answer, by all means.”  She was fairly quick to add, “Or, if anyone wants a drink or anything.”

[AndyZ]

As the video resumed, the screen showed the painting of a beautiful city apparently set up in the desert, skyscrapers made of what looked to be crimson glass and her exceptionally livable.  “The gods more or less gave the Exalted ruler ship over Creation, and the Solars made all sort of architectural marvels that humanity is only beginning to be able to achieve.  Yet the Solar Exalted also became tyrants.  Lunar Exalts tell horrific stories of being bound to a Solar mate, and the Dragon-Blooded were never anywhere near as powerful as other Exalts, but they were incredibly plentiful.”

The next painting showed horrific war, with overwhelmed Solars and Lunars being attacked by various Exalts wrapped either in one of the four Greek elements or of wood.  Various machinery showed itself like something that appeared to be a mecha, but plenty of others whose functions weren’t as obvious.  “The Usurpation was a horrific war not only because of the incredible losses of people, places, and things, not only because the Lunars deserved none of it and continued to be hunted well after, but because the Dragon-Blooded were ill-equipped to take over as the rulers of Creation.  Yet they won, and every single Solar Exaltation was sealed within the Jade Prison.”

As the painting faded, the image returned to Professor Pravda, grim and serious as ever.  “Some mark that as the end of the First Age, but when history was rewritten, plenty of Exalts never even knew it happened, remembering dying and then remembering another age altogether.  Details are vague on the next point, but somehow, thirteen powerful ghosts of the Solar Exalted gained untold power - the Deathlords, though some were women - and unleashed a horrific plague across the world called the Great Contagion.  Well over 90% of all the people of Creation died outright, and the Dragon-Blooded were helpless to do anything about it.  Whether the Age of Sorrows began after the Usurpation or the Great Contagion is thus ultimately a matter of debate, for which I refuse to take a side.”



“The next several hundred years can be boiled down to that the Dragon-Blooded did everything they could to keep Creation going and made significant losses.  They had so much left over by the Solars but didn’t always have the means to maintain it, let alone repair it.  Eventually, the Solars returned, but along with them came the Abyssal Exalted, the deathknight servants of the Deathlords, and Infernal Exalted that worked with the demons.”



“Our painter has a very vivid memory of a full circle of Abyssal Exalts.  Anyway, things get very sketchy and difficult to pin down during this period, with effectively wars springing up over all of Creation.  I can give detailed events as we have them and would love to have you write me letters chronicling whatever you’re willing to offer, but here’s what we know: every single type of Exaltation - meaning every kind of Exalt but the Dragon-Blooded, who pass on their power through genetics and bloodlines - was sealed into The Vault, another prison for Exaltations.  The Dragon-Blooded hid it deep within the Underworld, and the world changed around them as they lost the ability to be proper caretakers.  From here on in, history has gigantic gaps, but most of it at least parallels what you’ve heard in school.”

As the video froze onto a blue screen once more, Dana looked to everyone, ready to do whatever she could to help.

[AndyZ]

The video returned to Professor Pravda and her blackboard.  “Now, when discussing the other types of supernatural beings out there, I like to start with mages.  It makes it easier to understand the rest in context.

“Mages undergo an Awakening in a similar way to an Exaltation, but usually with a Vision-Quest of some sort where they meet a spirit-guide and learn how, according to them, reality really works.  And, it does, for them.  The list of things is extremely small that a mage didn’t believe was at least possible with the right knowledge of how to work their magick-with-a-k, with the possible exception of destroying an Exaltation, and a few have told me that it’s impossible to bring vampires back to life.  That’s not a complete list, but you get the idea.”

Without the pictures, it became more obvious that the frames skipped from time to time, jump cuts made presumably to eliminate dead spaces in the video.  She never seemed out of breath or at a loss for her thoughts.

“To hear mages explain it, every single person in the world has a belief on just how the world works.  The world is round, everything falls at a fixed rate of acceleration that we know as gravity, and the void of space will destroy the human body.  The Traditions - various supernatural mages you’ll recognize as traditional wizards and witches, but have a lot more diversity than that - have been fighting an invisible propaganda war with the Technocratic Union, who teach that the supernatural doesn’t exist and has gotten a lot of the world to believe it.  They call it the Ascension War, hoping to convince humanity at large to believe their side, and it’s not hard to see who’s winning.”

The next image showed a YouTube video on Bigfoot with millions of views, a picture of what looked like a Yeti with bad pixelation, and awful comments from trolls.  “There’s only one other supernatural group besides Exalts that doesn’t demand that humans be either kept in the dark, enslaved, or killed, but the Technocracy is the most efficient at it.  No technology exists that isn’t constantly monitored, and your caretaker will be giving you secure cell phones.  I don’t know how much they know about Exalts, but their course of action for any supernatural being involves a lab rat dissection nightmare that you’ve seen plenty of times in movies with the faceless bureaucrats and government agents, which is ultimately who they are.”

Back to Professor Pravda.  “When you’re dealing with a mage, what you’re usually going to get are what appear to be a ridiculous sequence of coincidences and lucky streaks.  Imagine a man who doesn’t appear to be a regular of the neighborhood suddenly run into a dark alley, reach into a dumpster, and pull out a fully-loaded assault rifle as if someone had planted it there for him.  Reality has hardened to the point where breaking the rules damages them, so they bend the rules, and nobody cares.”

Another jump cut on the video.  “There’s also plenty of other mages beyond the Nine Traditions and the Technocracy, many of whom aren’t interested in the Ascension War, some of whom don’t even know about it.  I’d say they’re the only type of supernatural being where every one is effectively unique and the only real difference is political.”

An assortment of objects came up, from a carved wand beset with various runes, a dream catcher, a pair of custom dice made of what one hoped was ivory and not human bone, a Japanese prayer strip, an iPad, a Star of David, and a colander with a mess of wires attached to a large red button.  “Depending on the mage, they may do any number of wild things or use any sort of focus to channel their powers.  What works for one rarely works for another unless they’re part of the same group, and often not even then.  Your caretaker can go into specifics, but I think I’ve given you enough and can move onto the next group.”

Once more the blue screen, and Dana just smiled, ready to help however she could.

[AndyZ]

“In the first two Ages, the Fair Folk, also known as the Raksha, inhabited the Feywild for as far as anyone from Creation was able to venture.  Strange and mercurial creatures who had to take a stable form to enter Creation, they had little understanding of human morality.  Many would drain people of everything that made them unique - dreams, passions, desires - leaving people who we’d think of as living robots today.  Plenty of them wanted to return Creation to the chaos of the Feywild, and for the first two ages, they were fought back at every turn.

“At some point, as our known history continues on and the world stopped being encircled by the Feywild, the relationship became less antagonistic.  A number of mages from the Middle Ages record primarily cordial alliances and pacts.  Yet as the Ascension War solidified reality, the changes became as anathema to them as one might expect.  They developed some method of protecting themselves from Thai growing banality by enshrouding themselves in human babies, to grow old and reincarnate as humans do, hybrid creatures of both Fae and human soul, called Changelings.

“People can be Enchanted to see them as they truly are, but anyone but an Exalt just forgets large swaths of it all afterwards.  Cold iron works as a way to destroy their very fae souls even as Changelings; someone resuscitated after dying from a cold iron weapon is just an ordinary human with gigantic bouts of amnesia.

“What we think of as the Feywild is now the Dreaming, one aspect of the many levels of reality, upon which the physical is only one.  Or, if you prefer, different dimensions.  There’s also the High Umbra, the spiritual realm of sheer thought and platonic concepts, the Middle Umbra, where you find things like animal spirits and spirits of elements, and the Lower Umbra, better known as the Underworld, the realm of ghosts.”

The image reverted to Professor Pravda.  “Vampires next.  They have to drink blood, human blood is far preferable, and they don’t have to kill their victims.  Others only become vampires if their would-be sire drains them completely and then gives them a taste of their own blood.  Garlic, holy items, running water, and silver have no effect except on a rare few, most of them do have reflections, a wooden stake through the heart leaves them physically paralyzed but fully mentally cognizant, and if you choose to attack their undead bodies with bludgeoning weapons or bullets, aim for the head or the heart.  They roast in sunlight and fire works the same on them as it does on ordinary human beings.”

Jump cut.  “Not that you’re necessarily going to, let alone required to, be going out hunting for any of these beings, but the first questions I always seem to get, and that caretakers report, are of the like.”  Jump cut.

“Their two major political factions are the Camarilla and the Sabbat.  The Camarilla are more what one suspects: a secret society led by vampires corrupted by centuries of unlife, not necessarily evil but rarely staying good and pure.  They call keeping the supernatural existence secret ‘The Masquerade,’ and have been doing it well before the Technocracy.

“The Sabbat, by contrast, tend to revel in being evil incarnate, and are all too happy to show people what they are right before killing them.  Most vampires need permission from their particular ruler to turn someone - they call it the Embrace - but Sabbat are notorious for capturing and killing dozens of people, Embracing each one, and then launching them at whatever they consider their enemy.”

Dana paused the video.  “She doesn’t get into ghouls, but a lot of caretakers have stories like mine, not necessarily ghouls but I’ve heard of ex-Technocratic operatives and the like.”  It was clear she’d resume when everyone was ready.

[AndyZ]

“Werewolves can transform at will to any of the five forms you see.  Silver affects them, and it’s not a curse but a genetic condition similar to the Dragon-Blooded.  Also similar to the Dragon-Blooded, they claim to be created by Gaia to fight the inherent corruption of the world.  There’s other shapechangers as well, and they all tend to be animals that humans find inherently menacing.

“They can demonstrate a history back thousands of years before recorded history, when they culled humanity to keep it in line.  Dragon-Blooded corroborate this, and stayed hidden because they knew they were no match for these creatures.  All werewolves and nearly every shapechanger has a barely-controlled temper, has superspeed, and is never truly alone.  If you forced me to speculate on the greatest threat to the Exalted at large over the next few centuries, it would be the Technocratic Union, but if you asked me to pick a side between five established werewolves against five new Solars…”  The video cut to Professor Pravda shaking her head to show that she didn’t see a clear victor.

“Now, ordinary humans who see them in their middle hybrid form go into some form of insanity, perhaps catatonia, or blind fear, or blind fury, and almost never seem to remember.  Many claim that it’s because of the thousands of years of suppressed reincarnated memories all roiling to the surface, but those same humans who see a ghost will respond in exactly the same way.”

Jump cut.  “Wraiths, colloquially called ghosts, sometimes called the Restless, usually do know they’re dead but can’t bring themselves to move on to reincarnation.  They have various people, places, and things that they’re tied to, their Tethers, and a Zenith has a relatively easy time of sending one onwards.  I say ‘relatively easy’ because digging up a corpse in a cemetery is as nothing compared to the quests many of them attempted to undertake to pass on.

“Some are good, some are evil, more often called specters.  They used to be an elaborate society set up all over the Underworld, but a lot of horrible things happened in the summer of 1999, and psychic shockwaves and prophecies went wild all over the world, including that big red star that you’re now able to see in the sky since you Exalted.  One of them is that an Antediluvian, what they call the progenitors of the thirteen vampire Clans, woke up and was destroyed by all kinds of unlikely allies working together day and night.  For another, someone set off a nuke in the Underworld, setting off the Sixth Great Maelstrom, basically a constant and perpetual tempest in the Underworld with few places of respite.  For nearly twenty years, mages had trouble crossing to anywhere in the Umbra without getting that Awakened soul sliced up, nearly formed wraiths ended up deposited in the physical world but entirely insubstantial where passing traffic could slice them up if they weren’t careful, and Exaltations came back to the world, presumably because the Vault was destroyed.”



“Now that I’ve taken you nearly to the present and arguably the end of the Fifth Age, let me rewind time to Ancient Egypt.  I’ll be mentioning Egyptian deities and using their Greek names, such as Thoth and Anubis.  Whatever Anubis truly was or is, we have plenty of material witnesses to corroborate his existence.

“Commonly-known mythos states that every aspect of the soul is weighed against the feather of Ma’at - the name of the goddess for the eponymous word that means truth, law, goodness, harmony, and balance, all without the distinctions that later came from Greek philosophy.  Egyptian wraiths existed in Amenti, the Shadowlands version of Ancient Egypt, and Anubis explained how they still had some aspect of themselves that was lacking but were not evil enough to be devoured by what Exalts remember as Oblivion.

“The Soulstorm - their Egyptian term was the Dja-akh, mages called it the Avatar Storm, wraiths called it the Sixth Great Maelstrom - tore into Amenti the same as everywhere else, leaving the most powerful and substantial of Egyptian wraiths as little more than fragments of their strongest personality aspect, and all the rest destroyed utterly.  The survivors lamented that their souls would now never be pure, they would never reach A’aru, the Blessed Field.  Yet Osiris came to them and taught them a way not only to be whole again but to return to the living, immortal as promised.

“Out in the living world, on the wrong side of the Shroud that the dead are supposed to be on, the newly dead came to terms with their existence.  The Amenti made an offer that must be consensual, lest it is impossible, and they had to find someone freshly dead whose soul was completely lacking in the way that their own soul was strong and virtuous.  A powerful Egyptian warrior may find a coward, and a Scroll-Bearer’s love of knowledge is completely lacking in your stereotypical sports jock or cheerleader, as easy examples.  The deal was simple: return to life as one person, made not only living by the Spell of Life but completely immortal.  They took on the name Amenti after the lost city; most everyone else calls them mummies.

“Now, immortal doesn’t just mean unaging.  Put enough bullets fast enough into any humanoid being of flesh and it’ll go down, and not all of them will stay that way, but decapitate the body soon after and it’s a done deal.  However, you can run an Amenti’s body through a woodchipper and eventually they’ll reform, back to life once again.  I hope none of you takes this as a challenge, but we don’t even know if a Solar can destroy Amenti souls the way they can ghosts, and I doubt one has ever tried.

“Remember that the Amenti are still weighed against Ma’at and all that it entails.  If they don’t remain pure of heart, they get chucked into the Grand Maw, one of the many terms I’ve heard for Oblivion and my personal favorite.  Alone among the other supernaturals, they aren’t required to keep the Masquerade or Veil, though they still get hunted by the others if they get too flashy.  A common axiom states them effectively as the closest ally of the Solar Exalted, and if there are any in your city, your caretaker will know.”

Dana shook her head.

Professor Pravda reappeared on screen.  “One last thought: it’s rather obvious that the various Exaltations will bring chaos to order and order to chaos upon the entire Earth, and many people ask what will happen in the long term.  Mister Papageorgio is afraid that you’ll want revenge; when he was much more open with Solars, one attempted to take it.  Others,” she looked directly at the screen, “offer our help partially as a way to beg you to never again become tyrants.”

Once more the screen went blue, and this time Dana shut the TV off, looking around.  It was a heavy topic, but all of it was part of a war that was well above her head.  She understood that each one of them could kill her in a heartbeat but had no reason to, and seemed just to have a more sunny disposition of everything working out and everyone becoming friends.

“The other things I’ve heard,” she finally added.  “The Camarilla tend to congregate in small numbers on the north side, though some Sabbat are setting up on the south, which is a war ready to happen. 

“Wraiths haven’t been prevalent since the Soulstorm, but from what I’ve heard, this city has tiny numbers of them even for the usual.  Either someone is helping them move on - not a bad goal - or something else is going on.

“Finally, I was told that as of your letters being sent, there are no other Solar Exalts and no Dragon-Blooded at all in New Westhaven.  No other information on the other types, but at least it’s helpful to know.”