BogMod/MALunarandEverything

Recently got the players guide and it caused me to go on a philosophising tangent. This is just a writeup of my weird thoughts.

Consider lunar unfettering. Its a technique they all can do. It frees them from the demands of both reason and instinct, treading a line between the two. Lunar magic is all about mastering their bodies, and the essence that flows through them. A martial artist seeks to become a living application of certain principals and such. A lunar shapes his being into forms. Both involve a change in perception of the world and what you are. A lunar when he exalts can't help but be changed, and neither is a martial artist after they begin to master their ways.

A lunar becomes something, and a martial artist understands it.

A martial artist will always lack something since they can not 'be' it. But a lunar is limited because he will always be it, and not be able to step back and see it from the other way to understand it.

A truely advanced lunar achieves the same level of spiritual progression as any sidereal master might, but do it differently and come to a different end result. The sideral comes to understand the All, while a lunar becomes the All. Two completely different things, each powerful yet incomplete. So then it comes to me that the lunars have an 'equivalant' type thing to the sidereals ability to truely understand it all.

So where does this leave solars? They have neither the shapeshifting and merging of reason and instinct, nor the natural gifts to understand teh true principals of everything. They are however the most spiritual advanced of any exalted. One thing comes to me.

A sidereal may understand everything in Creation and the principals that it runs under. A lunar may at his final mastery be able to be those things. A solar however will at the pinacle of his enlightenment come to understand essence. Not any one thing. Just essence. Sidereals master the concept of something but in the end, even concepts are just essence. A lunar might be able to become anything at the higher levels but even they things in the end they become are just essence.

Comments or Discussion

I'll confess that I'm still not entirely fond of the lack of Lunar capacity for Martial Arts, but this is certainly an excellent and eloquent rationale for it. Bravo. (Incidentally, what does it say about Lunars that they have to destroy something in order to become it?) -- AntiVehicleRocket

It could be worked on more, thanks for the opinion though. As for lunars, it doesn't say anything special that they must destroy to become, just like it doesn't say anything that the other exalted do not destroy things when they duplicate it. As I said, different routes towards a single goal, producing different results. -BogMod

I think AVR might be refering to the thing where Lunars need to consume the heart's blood of the animal they wish to become. They need to kill that animal to be able to take on its shape. I am not very, very groin-grabbingly knowledgeable about Lunars, but I think all of their shape-shifting requires them to kill something and consume its heart's blood in order to assume that shape.

My take: A Sidereal can understand it. A Lunar can be it. A Solar can conquer it. -Ben-San