Thus Spake Zaranephilpal/ReturnToGlory

The vibe I get from all this talk about Mountain Folk is 'gods that were cut down to size'. This is a really bad thing for me - since a large part of my campaigns involve restoring the glory of the past - and no door need remain unopenable.

Except, now, this one, because if I open the Door to the Mountain Folk's past glory - letting all of them become Enlightened, then, as written, the Dragon Blooded are outdone. ~100,000 DBs might individually be stronger than a given Enlightened Mountain Folk, but, if there are ten million Enlightened - a million or so could spare the task and lug around and make the Dragon-Blooded obsolete.

This leaves me curious as to why the DBs were even made - combining the Mountain Folk with the Dragon Kings and their some two hundred million plus numbers makes me wonder why Dragon-Blooded were made so weak and their numbers so few.

• thinks*

Ok, you correctly identified the Dragon Kings as remnants of glory. That's definitely what theyare all about. Even if you restore them, you're restoring a tiny fraction of the total population of souls that was cut down by the Primordial weapons. They won't ever be what they once were; their time is past. So even if you civilized every single one of them, the impact on the setting would be comparatively minimal.

Lifting the Great Geas would []not[/i] be minimal. It would be earthshaking and would transform the setting. If you're going for "I will fix all that is broken" as the theme of your game and you were hoping for a Dragon King-esque scenario, I can see why you would be frustrated. Here are the reasons I did that:

In the time before humanity, the Mountain Folk and the Dragon Kings were the top races of the world. There were others, of course -- many, many others, of which a mere handful remain in any diminished capacity. But in the world above, the Dragon Kings were savagely awesome. They dominated the seas, the the skies and the land and magical sentient superpredators. In many respects, the Dragon Kings were like early drafts of Exalted. They were hardy conquerering types who tamed the world and fought and generally had that hero vibe that the Exalted radiate. Far below, the Mountain Folk had a vast technologically-advanced empire of super-geniuses. Oh, they held a hegemony over their underground neighbors (in the time before Workers, someone had to pump the bellows), but they weren't interested in conquest. They weren't heroes like the Dragon Kings. They were inventors and savants whose sole purpose was to make cool new toys and get all orgasmic about doing so. Autocthon didn't make them to be warriors, and though they could fight, that wasn't their function. If they waged war, they did so because they needed certain resources, be it a deposit of ore or a new labor pool, but not because they inherently wanted power over others. They were mostly self-sufficient, really, so they just kept churning out artifacts after artifacts in rapid succession.

Then came the war. The Mountain Folk didn't directly involve themselves. Autocthon didn't ask them to. They felt the earthquakes and dealt with the monsters that lumbered into their tunnels, but for the most part, they bunkered deep and did their best to ignore it all. They were the scientists who built the big bombs and wouldn't really consider using them, rather than the generals willing to deploy superweapons of mass destruction. Because they didn't get directly involved in the fighting, they weren't butchered like the Dragon Kings were. And that, of course, was a problem. The Dragon Kings were broken, and the Exalted could afford to be magnanimous with their former masters. The world had changed, and the age of dinosaurs had passed. The lintha were scattered and broken and most of the other races were extinct.

All except the Mountain Folk. When the Solar Exalted prayed to the Unconquered Sun for him to intercede and diminish these people, they were being treacherous and cruel. These weren't enemies. They were allies. They had provided war machines and now the Exalted threatened to turn those machines against their creators. You can blame the stirring whispers of the Great Curse, and to a degree, that is valid, but that's kind of like saying "The Devil made me do it." There were other considerations. The Mountain Folk may have been universal geniuses, but the Exalted were no slouches, either. It doesn't take much brainpower to realize that this intact magitech empire could be a threat to the Exalted mandate. Thus, the Exalted decided to make the equation simple and brutal: us or them. The decision was xenophobic, but it was sensible. To make this the age of man, all the aliens had to go or fade away. Part of why I made the early Mountain Folk so powerful was to highlight the significance of that decision, because it changed the world and changed the course of history.

If the Exalted had not had the Great Geas imposed, Autocthon might have stayed around longer and perhaps the Great Maker might have found a way to lift or mute the Great Curse... or at least alert the Exalted to the existence of the Curse so they could deal with it. Or maybe the Great Curse would have provoked the Exalted to do something else that offended their ultimate creator, and this would have driven the Primordial to leave a scant few decades later. Or centuries. No one can really predict how that might have turned out. Had there been no Great Geas, the Exalted would have ruled the world above and the Mountain Folk the world below, but how long could that last? With their innate ambitions, the Exalted would expand their hegemony to the edges of the world and then what? Inevitably, they would look down and wonder what treasures lay in the depths that were hidden from them. Inevitably, the Great Curse would have deepened their paranoia. Inevitably, tensions would rise and then skirmishes and border disputes and finally war. Still united in their hierarchy, the Exalted would have won that war, though not without terrible casualties. In place of the Usurpation Great Contagion, the flashpoint for a Fair Folk invasion might have been the smoldering wreckage of that war. Chances are good, the Exalted would have driven them out as they did, and probably with greater ease, too, but to what end? What price? I'm speculating, of course, but these were the speculations of the Exalted, too. What do we do about these strange and ancient people who spend their free time stockpiling nuclear weapons? Can we share with them? Can we risk that they will betray us? Can the world risk that?

The tragedy of the Mountain Folk is a tragedy of evolution. One species found itself in ascendance, and to do that, it had to push out all the competition. Were the Exalted wrong to do that? Morally speaking, yes. Was it the best plan of action? That depends on who you ask. For humanity, definitely. For the Mountain Folk, the Great Geas fundamentally shattered their species and way of life. I leave that dilemma to you to resolve. Which is more important? Morality or survival of the fittest?

If you are playing a game with Exalted protagonists who learn of what their precursors did, the choice won't be easy. Good people can and should writhe at the brutal no-win unfairness of it all. The Great Geas turned the Mountain Folk into a militaristic people, and with the Geas lifted, they would still be a militaristic people who resented the treachery of the Chosen. Freeing them might be the "right" thing to do, but it certainly wouldn't be the best thing to do -- at least not from the perspective of humankind. What kind of hero chooses to let his species fade into the background for a nebulous concept of fairness? What kind of arrogant monster passes judgment on his own kind like that? The gall... the treachery! In the end, such a person would be no different than an akuma, because the Yozis also hold a claim as the rightful owners of the world, but that didn't stop the Exalted. The Mountain Folk Geas is dirtier, because they were allies, but the principle is the same. Evolution is a bitch.

Within a Mountain Folk game, lifting the Geas is clearly a good thing, which would probably usher in a new age of the world. But then, the world already stands at a brink. As a game, Exalted asks "Who will stand and meet the challenges and enemies of the world and transform it in their own image?" and also "What will the transformed world be like?" If the resurgent Solars win, you're looking at an empire built on the foundations of memory but going forward toward new heights, new glory, the civilization of man triumphant. The Solar future is a shining future of towering cities and sorcery. The Lunars champion a future in which the cancerous cities are torn down and humanity strengthened by assuming so-called "barbarian" morals. Strength and wisdom and cunning will rule, so that humanity will be strong enough to endure while living in harmony with the world. The Sidereals offer a future much like the present, a sustained culture of the mighty ruling the weak, guided by the puppet masters who advise and nudge. They offer a Second Foundation to the Solars' First Foundation. This model transcends both factions, since the only difference between them is their choice of puppets. The Dragon-Blooded offer more of the Realm, a world of men and supermen ruled by the latter, lesser perhaps for its lack of god-kings, but stable and even prosperous. The Abyssals aren't trying to save the world, but destroy it, and if they win, they will plunge the universe in shadow mirroring the darkness of their own souls. They will bring the faded ashen glories of the Underworld to Creation. Likewise, the akuma and the Yozis will free the demon hordes and rampage forth and chain the world so that it never defies them again. The rakshas would unravel form and shape to unmake the world in their own image. And then the Mountain Folk would bring the world to order beneath their Enlightened rule, raising cities and wonders. Their agenda is most like the Solar agenda, but lesser in scope because the Mountain Folk are lesser in scope. It would be glorious, but it would be a world in which floating palaces of the Jadeborn skimmed above the fields tilled by mere mortals, who are little better off or useful than Unenlightened Workers in the twilight of the Second Age. If you're a game of Exalted, the stakes are epic, and the Mountain Folk, unlike the Dragon Kings, have the potential to wield as much transformative epic power as the Chosen -- if only they could find a way to lift that Geas. Evolution is saying "My way. My survival!" for everyone. But who will win? That is for your games to decide.

Comments

Well isn't this a can of worms. Regardless, I still don't believe Nephilpal quite understands the scope of ten million people in the INT 6 range. In modern times we see and work to manipulate things we once thought to be constant and find constants in places there really shouldn't be, feasibly contemplating other existances.

And changing constants, going there. Redefining our Universe. No, we're not even close now, but Creation is a far more mutable existance than ours is - it's explicitely mutable. If there ever were ten million enlightened for any length of time, Creation would have been defined by the Mountain Folk.

If the Great Geas is lifted a la Nephilpal's post, you'll see that in a few decades, at most. Then they'll start playing with things. Not even the Shinma would be safe, really. -Xeriar

Shinma? - DigitalSentience

The mightiest of the Unshaped Raksha, They are raw concepts that exist somewhere in the deep wyld - Malikai