Thus Spake Zaraborgstrom/AbyssalsNotOutsideFate
rebeccaborgstrom - 10/31/2003 22:31:11
Hm.
It's worth note, when the Abyssals' near-death state comes up, that corpses, Lethe, and reincarnation are all part of fate. Fate doesn't end with death; it just doesn't really cover the Underworld.
It's also worth note that First Circle Demons fail to meet the technical definition of "creature outside of fate". There's a reason for this, and it's not that the loom tracks their lives.
Being a creature outside of fate means that when you walk through the world, you're shoving fate out of the way. It means the loom has no power over you because the loom is a smaller and meaner thing than the Yozis and the Malfeans. It's not just "you have no fate"; it's "you *can't* have a fate". It's "this whole fate concept? Doesn't apply to you."
Think of Creation as the Internet.
The Yozis and Malfeans are hackers.
AI gods who wanted *all* the Bejeweled locked them off the net, and revoked their terminals' privilege.
The Third Circle Demons are the Yozis' plans. The Second Circle Demons are their hands. The Deathlords, similarly, are the Malfeans' hands and eyes.
Lesser servants are *code*.
The AI gods can't stop the humans from releasing programs into the Internet. And the Five-Maidens Prediction Package can't do anything to predict the next order the humans are going to type to those programs. But just because the Endless Desert writes a worm doesn't make that worm 'outside of the net.'
It's sort of like that. No, the analogy doesn't hold up perfectly if you start pushing at the war. :)
If you want the Abyssals to be outside of fate, that's okay. But I don't think it's necessary. And it might actually interfere with the idea of their having a tainted destiny to serve Oblivion.
Rebecca
Thus_Spake_Zaraborgstrom/ANOF_Comment
Response to discusion about Resonance and Fate
Hm!
Look. I think that people are succumbing to temptation to overcomplicate things.
Geoff's notes said that some creatures (Deathlords, Second and Third Circle Demons, and some other examples) should resist some Sidereal Charms.
Fate bent to the Primordials, rather than the other way around. It still does.
I wrote a game mechanical term for this---for the list of creatures that fate bends to. (Yes. Me. I created this term. To mean a specific thing.)
In my mind, I saw it as a flatland thing. The sphere isn't in flatland. The sphere is just visiting. It's fundamentally outside the whole flatland context. It's not just from another part of the 2-D world---it's something entirely different. It's using the laws of another kind of world. So I defined the term:
"Creature outside of fate."
The game mechanical meaning of this term was "creature against which certain Sidereal Charms don't have their full effect."
I believe Geoff expanded this term, when developing the book, to have a few other mechanical meanings.
There isn't any justification going on. It's not an argument. When I talk about "too big" for fate, or programmers being outside the VR, or flatland, or tell you, "Yeah, that spider-web example is pretty good," it's not an argument. It's just me noting why the term is defined to include the creatures it does.
"Fate" in Sidereals is technical vocabulary. It's like "death" in Abyssals and "Essence" in the corebook.
The book spends a lot of time telling you how to use fate---the technical term---to tell stories about "fate"---the various personal myths you might have. Don't treat them as the same thing, because it will make you unhappy. Just because you can use Sidereal-style fate to simulate prophecy, doom, defied fates, mismatched heirs, dharma, and so forth, doesn't mean that that's what the term fate in Exalted is. The real-world meaning of fate covers a thousand contradictory concepts, and this is not a game of the Bureau of a Thousand Contradictory Concepts. That would be a great name for a Heavenly bureau. But it wouldn't be the one the Sidereals work for.
At its core, when the Sidereals book talks about fate, it's not presenting theories about how destiny works. It's just summarizing the mechanics for something that is called fate because---well, mostly, because that's the best translation.
There was a flamewar on RPG.net once because the Malfeans and ghosts are "dead" but still take actions. It's not that different. You can be "subject to fate" and still a creature unnatural to the world who resists the Sidereal power. It's fate that makes sure that when you fight someone, the result is a victory or a loss, and not "blue."
Or, to pick the more relevant example of Berengiere and her veil,
It's fate that makes it so that when you look under someone's veil, you make a Perception roll to identify details of their face, not an Athletics roll to avoid an avalanche.
The only question I've spoken on is whether Abyssals are in fate according to the technical definitions as presented in Sidereals. And, really, I've mostly talked about whether they're "creatures outside of fate", which is game terminology and not really the same question at all. ^_^
Whether they're in fate according to your personal beliefs of what that should mean---that's up to you.
**
Please. This is not an argument. This is important. I will happily accept blame if that helps, and say, "Man, Sidereals sure should have said this explicitly."
If that helps.
But the point isn't about right or wrong. It is that if you come to Exalted: the Sidereals with your own sense of what fate should be, and consider the book in error when it talks about something different, you will not understand the book, you will not enjoy the book, and you will be unhappy with your purchase or the time invested in reading it.
So please. Remember. Fate is a technical term. It means what the book says it does. And most specifically it means what the game mechanics in the book say that it does.
Rebecca
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