[Home]AllsFairInLoveAndWar

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English aphorism which quite nicely encaptures the nature of compettion between humans of roughly equal strength. Often misquoted as "All is fair in love, war and [something else]."
E.g. All's fair in love, war and Scandinavia
Cool, I'll emigrate immediately! -- Senji
But if you do, this will no longer be true!
Oy! -- Senji
Are you, or are you not, brown haired?
That may, or may not, depend on how you define brown.  And how sunny it has been recently.  And how long my hair is. -- Senji

Surely you don't have to redifine brown -  you merely have to redefine fair so that it is no longer mutually exclusive with brown?

But you said you'll emigrate immediately. Are you, or are you not, brown haired currently?
Do you know how hard it is to look at your own hair? -- Senji
But looking at the reflection of it in a fairly colour-faithful reflective device should not be too difficult, surely? --MJ
There's a lack of those at work.  My wife tells me that my hair is currently pink, but I think it's probably brown, because it's long and it's summer. -- Senji



Also an Sidereal Exalted RPG being run by StuartFraser this year.

The Loom of Fate appears to have hit a snag, or perhaps several. A couple of threads belonging to relatively nondescript merchants in the southern city of Chiaroscuro become crossed, and the tapestry rapidly becomes hopelessly tangled. The party, junior members of the Convention of Fire of the Bureau of Destiny, are despatched in an attempt to return order to the chaos.

(Why in heaven the party was picked to do this is left as an ExerciseForTheReader) --SF
That'd be because we're 6% of the entirity of the whole of the Sidereals... -- Senji
The "entirity of the whole", huh? --SF
You know what I mean... -- Senji

Rapidly, they discover that the situation may be far more complex than even the wisdom of the Bureau's elders know, and that those outside of Destiny's grip are as involved as they...

But they still have plenty of time to say silly things whilst they're saving the world, so that's OK.

PC death count, in chronological order: Possibly 1. Bad damage roll - 0. Definitely 1. Hurried mending of the Loom of Fate - miraculously 0.
That was a good damage roll. 10 body levels in one attack. I was quite happy to do 14 damage levels to the party in that battle, but more spread out would have been better...
Just demonstrating the GlassNinja? effect -- Senji
Syrtis would like to take this opportunity to (a) smile serenely, and (b) reiterate that he is NOT Tulas.
Hmm, lets see.  You're a Mortal Rights activist, you've healed people who're essentially dead and you've just seduced an NPC... -- [Kira].
Erm, the NPC seduced him. (They summoned the island spirit. It turned out to be a nymph, who was very scared of the evil fae who'd been visiting lots recently and wanted help. It was in-character...)
To be fair, Syrtis failed to resist the temptation to seduce, IIRC --CH
And that is the way Kira interpreted it... -- Senji.
Hmmm.... Does putting "Tulas Bait" flags on an NPC count as seducing my character? --Edith
I refer you to the fact that Syrtis does so far have the highest kill count in the campaign despite all this. --Requiem
*mutter*mutter* damn dice don't like me... *mutter*mutter*.  I might have to take up 'tenka's habit of training them... -- Senji

We used a bomb! To mark us out as Sidereals, this was an astrologically favoured bomb (wrt unnatural disasters) in an astrologically unfavoured clearing (wrt dodge and parry), and it was advised on by the God of Explosions (and his "employee", the God of Fuses); but still, it's good to know traditions are held across campaigns.


Well, that has to be the most incredible (in the literal sense of the word) plan ever. The party, having proved their ability to do dirty work and get surprisingly good results, was sent on a mission to ask the Spirits of Great Forks how they defeated the local Deathlord. Much pretence at being Dragon Blooded, and large gifts of gold and first-age books later, we convinced one to tell us. Apparently, since Deathlords are outside of fate, they weave their own destinies - the upshot of which is that if they believe something strongly enough it becomes true. The spirits convinced the local deathlord (Beautiful Princess of the Coral Lips and Robes of Black Feathers, if memory serves) that she had a particular weakness, then engineered a situation that put her with that weakness.

Are death-lords incredibly stupid and/or gullible then?  --ChiarkPerson
This is an RPG and you're talking about the badguy.  The answer is 'basically - yes'  I would, however, be interested to hear the kind of rationale that allows an enemy to be persuaded of their having a specific weakness.  It sounds like a useful PlotDevice.  --Vitenka
Deathlords, and indeed the Incarna, are kinda like Greek or Norse gods -- they're very powerful, but they're still human really, and they do stupid things. -- Senji
Yeah, but we're talking about a level of stupidity here in excess of normal human stupidity. This really is god-like stupidity.
Who better than a god, then?  ;)  Seriously though - until we hear how they convinced her that she had this particular weaknesswe can't really pass judgement on quite how daft she'd have to be to fall for it.  If, for example, you repeatedly protected her from something innocuous (orange leaves, say) then claimed, I dunno, that it caused weakness and memory loss and thus you were constantly vigilant against it and had ordered the orchards burnt - well, just maybe doubt would set in.  And if it might really be that deadly, would you test it?  I don't know enough about the setting to know whether just this nagging doubt is enough.  But maybe you could use the 'returned visitor is a native' trick to increase it.  Hmmm..  Now how can I work this in to my plots? ;)  --Vitenka

Hence, we determined that a good aim would be to convince all the deathlords they had weaknesses we could exploit. Even better would be to let all the deathlords know, roughly simultaneously, what the weaknesses of all the deathlords are, as that would spark huge civil war in the underworld. The following plan was formed to facilitate this aim. It is known only to the party, and the head of the Bronze Faction, Chejop Kejak.
  1. Taking the single known "weakness" (of Princess with the silly name), and forming 13 other similarly poetic but attainable ones (one for each deathlord), we construct a formula which, when given a deathlord's title, produces a weakness, ensuring the formula is consistent with the 14 chosen weaknesses.
  2. We write the "journal" of a first-age Solar who was interested in cheating death, and becoming a lord of the underworld. We detail experiments he had made into achieving this aim, and also of his discovery of the formula which ensured he would have a terrible weakness, bad enough that he resolved to give up his attempts to not-die. "He" quotes the formula.
  3. We curse this journal under the Banner, causing it to be the source of infamy and rumour.
  4. We select a deserted and remote island of the Western Archipelego containing an unexplored but safe first-age ruin.
  5. We re-architect the ruin to look like the abode of a first-age necromantic Solar, and place the journal in it.
  6. We cause a box of old texts, written in Old Realm, to wash up on the beach of a poor fishing village near this island, and ensure a local fisherman finds it. He will give it in tithe to his local Immaculate temple, as it costs him no taxes this year.
  7. The temple's speaker of Pidgin Old Realm recognises that the texts are very likely bits of the Immaculate equivalent of the Apocrypha, and requests from the temple over them a scholar in Old Realm to come nd decipher the texts.
  8. Such a scholar, who happens to be an agent of the All-Seeing Eye, is duly dispacted. He spends a year or two working on the texts, and thereby building a local reputation.
  9. After this time, we cause a ship to be blown off-course onto out ruin island, whereupon the crew (including at least one Dragon Blood) find the ruin, and either commence or call for an archeological investigation (or tomb-raid, as it's more commonly known).
  10. The journal is found, and seen to be important but unreadable - it being in old realm. The Dragon Blooded passes it to the local authority on Old Realm, our man from the All-Seeing Eye. It passes through the Immaculate temple en-route, who unsurprisingly demand to take a copy of the translation.
  11. The scholar translates the journal, takes a copy for the Eye, gives one to the temple as requested, and possibly even one to the Dragon Blooded.
  12. There are now 3 copies of a book which is the source of rumours and infamy, and is in the hand of the Immaculate order and the All-Seeing Eye. It passes rapidly through these networks, being copied all the time as people quite want to retain a local copy.
  13. With such traffic, it rapidly comes to the attention of the spies we know the deathlords must have in the realm, because they'd be silly not to.
  14. The deathlords get passed the document, and discover their own weaknesses. If they decide to trace the chain back to see if it's some sort of ruse, they end up with a random shipwreck discovering a hitherto unknown Solar tomb and finding a work of great import in it. Nothing unusual.
  15. The deathlords become convinced that these weaknesses apply to them, so they do. They also learn of the other deathlords' weaknesses, and launch large scale civil war. The Solars and Dragon Blooded can probably be convinced to help. All is chaos in the underworld, and our job gets a lot easier.

It's crazy, but it might just work...


It is becoming notable that the "binary dice rolling" (lots of or no successes; so called because a 0 counts as two successes and a 1 subtracts a success) player that each campaign seems to have is the GM. Notable last session were me getting eight successes on six dice and one success on 13 dice. --SF

Website for campaign [here]. Features session histories, character summaries, a selection of quotes, and a small Exalted utility section.

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