CharmRelay/Retribution

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Retribution

These are SolarCharms.

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Meditation of Half-Remembered Crimes (AntiVehicleRocket)

 Cost: 12 motes, 1 Willpower
 Type: Simple
 Duration: The character's Essence in hours
 Minimum Investigation: 5
 Minimum Essence: 3
 Prerequisites: Unknown Wisdom Epiphany

The finest Solar magistrates and judges of the First Age were well-known for being unstoppable agents of justice, investigators so exacting in their memory and intuition that even their assassination could not cease their hand, merely delay it. As their heirs in the Second Age grow to keener understanding of their natures and their Essence, they have begun to learn these ancient techniques of memory retention across incarnations and use them to solve the mysteries and crimes of antiquity.

A Solar using the Meditation of Half-Remembered Crimes assumes a meditative position and concentrates on a crime or mystery from the far past. She must invoke the Charm in a safe place, for when she does so, she enters into a deep meditative state that lasts for her permanent Essence rating in hours. (The character is totally insensate to the real world during these hours and may only be awakened from this state by being wounded. If she takes any damage, she awakens and the Charm ends.) During the trance, the character will see visions of her previous incarnations' actions or investigations regarding the mystery on which she initially concentrated. These visions place the character in the viewpoint of her previous incarnation and are quite lucid; although the character is a passive viewer, unable to change the events of the visions, everything within the visions seem very realistic. Thus, the character may learn what evidence her previous incarnations may have gathered about the mystery and what conclusions they may have come to, and she might make Awareness or Investigation rolls to note valuable details. (It may also provide useful subsidiary information, such as the operation of a First Age artifact; the visions will not explicitly teach the character anything about First Age machinery or lifestyles, but she may of course learn from observation.) As long as the character's previous incarnations had any knowledge of or experience with the mystery at hand, the visions will reveal it. This Charm will only fail in cases when the character's previous incarnations truly knew nothing at all of the mystery or in which Lytek deliberately pruned the memories of the incident from the character's shard (both at the Storyteller's option). When the character awakens, she will remember the events of her visions as if she had lived them herself.

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Syneidetic Evocation Discipline (Moxiane)

 Cost: 10 motes, 1 Willpower
 Type: Simple
 Duration: Instant
 Min. Investigation: 5
 Min. Essence: 3
 Prerequisites: Guilt-Finding Inquisitor Method

All across Creation people occasionally find themselves suffering from a twinge of conscience, hearing a little voice from the dark recesses of their mind that reminds them of each and every single crime that they have commited, every wrong that they have done. This amplifies a thousand-fold the strength of a person's conscience, with every immoral or illegal act playing out before their eyes as if they were the victim, rather than the perpetrator. At best this will cause the subject of the Syneidetic Evocation Discipline to collapse to their knees and confess their crimes, no matter how petty. However, for those of a darker character, who have commited offences such as murder or rape, their conscience makes itself known in the form of wounds that spontaneously appear over their bodies, and there were records of times in the First Age when this Charm was used and the victim fell over dead instantly, their crimes too great and powerful to resist. Unfortunately, this Charm will not affect anyone who has a permanent Essence higher than the character. (Note: this is a plot device Charm, so any mechanics would get in the way).

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This Is For The Children Stance - willows

Cost: 7 motes, 1 Willpower

Duration: Indefinite

Type: Simple

Min. Investigation: 4

Min. Essence: 3

Prereq Charms: Ten Magistrate Eyes

The character binds a part of himself into a stormy spirit of vengeance, guaranteeing that the perpetrators of a crime are punished. He identifies a crime; the ST rates it on a scale of 1 to 5 (with the rating being equal to the amount of damage the crime has caused, in terms of Backgrounds) for less complex crimes, going up into infinity for things on a grander scale. While the Charm is in effect, the character can automatically identify whether a person in his presence has responsibility for the offense. If so, he must add the crime's rating in dice to attempts to kill him. This explicitly includes not only physical attacks but also the social wrangling involved in building up torch mobs, hiring assassins, etc., as wel as sneaking around, building traps, poisoning, training attack animals, and so forth. Any method can be enhanced by the power of the endless retribution spirit. Furthermore, he must make Compassion checks at a difficulty of the crime's rating to avoid attempting to kill a perpetrator. While any perpetrtors of the crime still live, the Solar cannot end this Charm voluntarily, though forced decommitment of Essence might break it.

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Assured Retribution Defense - TedPro

Cost: 3 motes

Duration: Ten Thousand Years

Type: Supplemental

Min. Melee: 4

Min. Essence: 3

Prereq Charms: Golden Essence Block

Used to supplement a parry attempt. The Exalt emulates the destructive death-throes of the Primordials, cursing her murderer even in the moment of defeat. If the parry attempt fails, and the attack successfully kills the Exalt using the Charm, the attacker suffers a long-lasting curse. From that point forward, any attack on against the Exalt's murderer gains a number of automatic successes equal to the Exalt's Essence. These successes aapply to all attack, effect and damage rolls, but only for attacks which cause direct lethal or aggravated damage. This Charm requires no Essence to commit, and can only be removed by someone with an Essence of at least double the Exalt's.

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Harmony of Celestial Sanction - willows

Cost: 7 motes, 1 Willpower

Duration: Until Released

Type: Simple

Min. Melee: 5

Min. Essence: 3

Prereq Charms: Ready in 8 Directions Stance, Irresistible Salesman Spirit

The Eclipse using this Charm makes a salute to his opponent, and touches her with his sword, an action requiring simple success on a Melee roll if the target resists. As the Exalt is not seeking to wound, conventional parries and dodges are not efficacious against this "attack", but any defence that works without counting successes on an action—such as the Solar perfect defences, the Lunar simple-success defences, and the Sidereal imperfect parry, Impeding the Flow—will interrupt the Charm. The Charm simply fails against targets with Essence greater than the Exalt's own.

If he succeeds in touching his opponent, the Solar binds her into a perversion of a traditional duellist's oath; the Exalt promises to return every blow given in kind, and the target promises to accept this with good humour. When the opponent attempts an attack against the Exalt, he may count the attack against him, or he may release the Charm, making one counterattack at his opponent (as per Solar Counterattack) per attack he has counted. He may not count more attacks than his Essence + Melee, and he may not counter (through other means) an attack that he chooses to count. These counterattacks do not count against the attacker's Rate.

Only members of the Eclipse Caste and those with the ability to simulate their oath-binding anima ability use this Charm, but others may learn it as a theoretical exercise.

Comments

Okay, I'm giving this theme a try. I know this isn't the most intrinsically "retributive" Charm, but I see it forming the foundation of a retribution/revenge plot, and I like the idea of being able to use First Age memories in investigations. This is fairly crunch-minimal, but I figure it's mostly a matter for roleplaying. -- AntiVehicleRocket

I don't think that this is a Charm at all. It's maybe a particularly interesting use of Past Life! That's about it, though. The applicability is so narrow that no character in his right mind would spend time and XP developing a Charm like this. - willows

I could see it as a Charm, but for Lunars or Sidereals or Abyssals. Not for Solars. It just doesn't fit their theme at all, Solar's dont really deal with their past incarnations. - Telgar

To reply to both the comments at once -- willows, you're certainly correct that this isn't exactly Ox-Body Technique in terms of universal utility, but it's intended to be broader in scope than it might appear. I'm working on the principle that most First Age Solars were living thousands of years and involved themselves in many different arenas, so barring some sort of weird plot reason otherwise, every use of this Charm should yield something useful about the First Age. Of course the Storyteller can say "nope, sorry, you get nothing," but an appropriately irritating ST could do that with most anything, and one of the principles of Exalted IMHO is that the characters' awesomeness shouldn't arbitrarily not work except because of other people's awesomeness. (Would it help mechanically if there was no Essence/WP cost attached if the Charm failed?) As for Telgar -- what makes you say that Solars don't or shouldn't deal with their past incarnations? The only reason they don't do much with it in canon is that their history has been so broken and suppressed that it's nearly impossible to find anything out (as opposed to Lunars and Sidereals, who both have a fairly-unbroken strand of history, and Abyssals, who have the Underworld and the Deathlords). I don't see any reason why it's intrinsically off-tone for Solars, but that may be just me. -- AntiVehicleRocket

It isn't broader in scope than it appears. It says, "I simulate the Past Lives Background in reference to a single mystery." That's like, only useful in a game where you are going to be studying mysteries of your past lives that you already remember, and where you have probably taken the Past Lives thingy anyway. It's not only redundant but non-awesome.

Edit: This Charm clearly operates on the assumption that you have memories that you don't regularly have access to. Based on my interpretation of Sidereals and the core, this is a divergent opinion, or at best one of several different, good interpretations (For instance, I assume that Lytek removes, rather than locks up, any memories that he doesn't want to give out access to). It needs to state that this is the assumption it's working under, or it doesn't have any discernible effect. In addition!, I think that this could be dramatically improved by explicitly allowing it to restore memories that Lytek has excised. This guarantees that it's useful, assuming that it has already been established that one's past self was involved in some matter in the past. - willows

Solars are great heroes, they do everything better then best and glow with the holy power of the sun. That's about it. I don't think ANY Exalted should deal with their past lives, but if anyone does it'd be the Sidereals who can look up files on themselves magically or the Lunars who can do some freaky shamanistic magic or an Abyssal summoning up his previous incarnation's Higher Soul to answer questions. Solars...really just don't have a connection to their past incarnations. They're heroes in and of themselves. They don't need help from dead folks. - Telgar

Err... just to nitpick a bit, I believe the higher souls of slain Abyssals tend to get dragged screaming into the Mouth of the Void. But then, it's a little unclear, because in the very next paragraph of E:tA (pg 116) it talks about the souls of honored deathknights being treated with fame and renown, which seems unlikely treatment for a lower soul. - DigitalSentience

This is my attempt to restart CharmRelay after almost killing it. Idea stolen from a couple of sources. :) - Moxiane

I like this a great deal; you're probably right not to give it many hard-and-fast mechanics, because it should be a plot point Charm. I'm curious about a few things, though. First, how severe do the offenses have to be to cause wounds? Does it have to be a rape- or murder-caliber crime, or can it be anything the target feels particularly strong regrets about? (Presumably this does have the whole "as appropriate to the plot" thing going, though.) Also, how does this function on those with absolutely no regret or remorse (demons, psychopaths, and so on)? -- AntiVehicleRocket

New Charm created. Wasn't sure how to play balance it. It might be too cheap or too expensive; I just liked the idea of a Charm with a Duration of "Ten Thousand Years." Anyone up to closing out this Relay with a final Charm? --TedPro

That's a cool Charm! I'd drop the cost down to 1 mote, to match the "dying curse" spells in sorcery. I'm working on a final charm as we speak! - willows

I made dropped it to three. --TedPro

I like that charm too. -- Darloth

Interesting Charm, willows! I'm a little confused on something, though. It's described as "binding to a duellists's oath" but that isn't explained any further, and the rest of the mechanics seem to involve massive counterattacks, rather than any duellist's oath. It's a great Charm, but the oath part should either be fleshed out a little or dropped. Also, does any attack count, or only a successful attack? -TedPro

Any attack counts; I've made the text clearer. - willows