I'm running out to attend my daughter's graduation, but wanted to send out one more sneak peek preview to keep us excited through the weekend!
On Tuesday, backers will get the back half of Chapter 3, which contains the Exalted that we've already seen, but also...
Other Supernatural Entries
God, demons, and stranger things haunt all the corners of Creation, and often cross paths or purposes with the Exalted.
Demons
Strange inhabitants of the hell-city Malfeas, demons are amongst the oldest enemies of the chosen. All demons have the following qualities: Immaterial, Immortal (Demon), Measure the Wind. All Second and Third Circle demons have the Heroic and Significant qualities.
Erymanthoi, the Blood-Apes
Often summoned en masse to serve as an army or labor pool, the ferocious Erymanthoi are famed for their brute strength and thirst for blood. These hulking simians reek of gore even when immaterial, and favor direct, violent action. In Malfeas, they're often found in positions that let them indulge their instincts: shock trooper, enforcer, shock troopers or enforcers.
Virtues: Ambition (Proving their personal might)/Courage Primary Pool(9): Climbing, Feats of Demolition, Intimidation Secondary Pool(6): Crude Manual Labor, Raucous Song Tertiary Pool (4) Essence: 2 Health Levels: 8 Resolve: 3 Defense: 5 Hardness: 3 Soak: 5
Attacks and Qualities
Murderous Blow (Exalted Essence p. 317), Principle of Motion (Exalted Essence p. 319)
Brutal Pounce: Spend1 Mote. The Blood-Ape makes a withering attack; if it generates 5+ power, the target is knocked prone.
Rending Claws: Spend 1 Mote on Step 6 against a grappled or prone opponent to gain Double-9s on the damage roll. Against a target that is both grappled and prone, gains Double-8s instead.
Erymanthoi tend towards brute force and overwhelming violence, grabbing or knocking over their victims before brutally savaging them. Their hunger for blood leads them to impulsive behavior, even when bound. Summoners with a brutal streak of their own can leverage it to command their loyalty, or at least convince them to obey on pain of death.
Patrok, the Havens of the Wanderers
These demons appear as beautiful mortals with golden eyes and brazen spikes lining their spines. Each Patrok is marked by a sense of grief or emptiness, and wanders the world in eternal pilgrimage, seeking companions to heal its suffering. When it desires, a Patrok may briefly swell to immense size, engulfing another within its ribcage. In most cases, the Patrok acts as a strange, wandering sanctuary, keeping its charge safe within its body. Rarely, the Patrok's charge is exactly who it needs to feel whole. In the case of mortals, the charge merges with the Patrok's body, transmuting into a heart of brass and alabaster. Other beings may face a different fate, as the Patrok grows furiously possessive.
Virtues: Compassion/Wonder Primary Pool(9): Combat Movement, Pleasant Social Company, Protecting Their Charge Secondary Pool(6): Pilgrim Songs, Profile Individual Tertiary Pool (4) Essence: 3 Health Levels: 6 Resolve: 2 Defense: 5 Hardness: 4 Soak: 3
Attacks and Qualities:
Brazen Shelter: Engulf a willing target, protecting it within an armored ribcage. While inside, the Patrok's ward is protected by a reflexive Defend Other action, and benefits from two bonus Soak. Whenever the Patrok moves, its ward is safely carried along.
Perilous Vise: When making a normal grapple attempt, the Patrok may trap its target inside its ribcage, ignoring the Enormous Size quality. The Patrok may take other actions while grappling a target this way, and makes contested grapple rolls reflexively.
Patrok protecting a ward avoid obviously dangerous situations, going so far as to ignore their ward’s wishes to the contrary. Forced into defensive combat by enemy’s pursuit or the commands of a summoner, they attempt to knock enemies down or away so they can extricate themselves as swiftly as possible. When hunting, the Patrok’s demeanor changes entirely, and they will attempt to grapple, vise, and batter even dangerous foes as long as the Patrok senses a chance at victory.
Sesseljae, the Stomach Bottle Bugs
These small, beetle-like demons live to consume filth and poison. In Malfeas, their tastes make them a nuisance to other demons, who tend to see them as vermin at best. While they normally scuttle and hop about, they can also swim through living flesh as though it were water – allowing them to filter toxins from a host's veins or guts. Sesseljae find surgery enjoyable, and take to it with playful glee. Many sorcerers keep them on hand as personal doctors, and insurance against poisoning.
Virtues: Compassion/Courage Primary Pool(9): Medicine, Resist Magical Poison/Disease Secondary Pool(6): Begging for Poison, Singing Tertiary Pool (4) Essence: 3 Health Levels: 6 Resolve: 2 Defense: 5 Hardness: 0 Soak: 3
Attacks and Qualities
Internal Surgery: Spend one mote during a recovery scene to grant a host greater recovery. Spend 2 motes to count a recovery scene as Minor Milestone for the purposes of their host recovering from a Dramatic Injury, once per session.
Poison Sipper: A sesselja's host gains the benefits of Vile Repast as long as it's inside their body. The sesselja suffers any magical poison-based effects in their place.
Shield of Flesh: While inside a body, a sesselja benefits from an automatic, reflexive Defend Other action by its host.
Vile Repast: Sesseljae are immune to nonmagical poison and disease.
Sesseljae scurry to safety at the first sign of trouble, but poison and filth can inspire them to self-destructive cravings. If unable to flee or hide inside someone's body, they'll attack with mandibles or improvised weapons, but only as an absolute last resort. A sesselja will use its Internal Surgery quality on behalf of their host, or anyone else their summoner indicates.
Florivet, the Whim-of-the-Wind, Second Circle Demon
Formerly known as the Masterful Scholar, Florivet cast off his title and took up a life of exploration and adventure. He carved his own skeleton from his flesh, and replaced it with Cecylene-glass struts; he used his bones to craft the Foremost Gale, his prized land ship. Drawn onward by the lure of the unknown, he travels the length and breadth of Malfeas – and Creation, too, when summoned. Mercurial and impulsive, Florivet is as quick to anger as he is to forgive. His fiercest anger is reserved for those who wound his pride. This rage takes form as vitriol within his glass bones. Florivet uses it to scar those who offend him, the better to identify them in the future.
Florivet is lean and tall, with the head of a wolf and the wings, neck, and talons of an owl. Wherever he goes, the wind favors him, often shifting to match his mood. Many air elementals find themselves charmed by his roguish demeanor.
Divine Excellence (Exalted Essence p. 319), Domain's Beneficence (Wind) (Exalted Essence p. 319), Flying, Principle of Motion (Exalted Essence p. 319)
Wastrel's Wanderlust: When aiding a travel venture, following Florivet’s guidance or riding aboard his landship allows the travelers to negate the consequences of cutting corners once per venture, in return for a dramatic scene of the demon carousing or taking a detour to pursue his sudden interests.
Florivet is a bravo at heart, but he still seeks knowledge and new experiences. He can easily be won over with the promise of certain discovery, but his temperament can complicate arrangements if he feels slighted or disappointed. In combat, Florivet typically opens with Domain's Beneficence, which grants him additional offensive and defensive options. He takes full advantage of his flight, attacking foes from above with his bow. If given the opportunity and incentive, he'll attempt trick shots, aiming to hinder his foes while showing off.
Elementals
Ageless spirits embodying Creation’s natural elements, elementals are material spirits found across every Direction.
Fog Brothers
Hundreds of towns and cities are nothing but tumbled ruins, entire nations wiped out in the Contagion. The reclusive brume-giant elementals called Fog-Brothers are drawn to these places, descending from their mist-shrouded mountains to set up homes. Some simply protect these places, baffling travelers and treasure-seekers in endless fog, but more enthusiastic Fog Brothers seek to restore what they imagine was lost, ensnaring travelers to gradually recreate a community in the mist.
The Fog Brother of Buld
Once, Buld was a thriving caravan stop on the edge of the cold Northern Desert. The contagion came, and killed off thousands, and the desert swallowed it, the survivors moving to better lands. Now, it is streets, tumbled houses, and mist. But it is growing. Yeddim trains pass by, and do not leave. The gods of Buld, long since reassigned, hear prayers that they have not heard for generations. And its new citizens freeze and scrape the dry earth and know in their bones they do not belong here.
Immortal (Elemental) (Exalted Essence p. 319), Domain’s Benefience (Exalted Essence p. 319), Domain’s Curse (Exalted Essence p. 319), Enormous Size (Exalted Essence p. 316), Excellency (Exalted Essence p. 318)
Field of Forgotten Dreams: Characters must pass a successful, Difficulty 5 Sagacity, Integrity, or Physique roll to make recovery scenes in a Fog Brother’s territory. Additionally, it is surrounded by a Difficulty 5, 0 damage environmental hazard, that encompasses several miles an interval of “Scenes,” that gives a -2 Penalty of “Uneasy Visions” to mental rolls when failed.
Down From the Mountain: The body of a fog-brother is surrounded by a swirling mist, granting all characters within Long Range concealment to all targets but the Fog-Brother.
Hidden By Time and Thought: Commit 3 motes. The Fog Brother gains +4 Soak, which is reduced by 1 for every Intimacy it possesses that the attacker is aware of. Fog-Brothers have intimacies related to the ruins of the places they inhabit.
Eyes Like Shrouded Suns: Spend 3 motes to make a special gambit with its primary pool to enthrall a target, filling their mind with a memory of a false existence, spending power equal to their Hardness if used in combat. If it surpasses the target’s resolve, they replace their intimacies with a set appropriate to their new life. This lasts until the Fog Brother’s death. Significant characters may roll to resist this each scene and make take a Hard Bargain to act normally in scene.
Fog Brothers protect their villages, and those within their thrall, driving away or enthralling those who would linger. They do not like to see mortals suffer, and employ less powerful elementals, and enthralled animals as protectors, but are jealous and wary of everyone and everything. They are willing to part with those under their enchantments in exchange for the recovery of treasures or scraps of knowledge of the places they protect, but do not do so happily.
Tune in on Tuesday for Ululaya, the Blood-Red Moon (Third Circle Demon) and the Wood Spiders!
In the meantime, have a great weekend, keep spreading the word about this campaign in your social circles and on your social media, and let's unlock our third stretch goal as we race toward the finish line!
