OtherPlanningNotes - A Meditation on Whirling Stars in their Rising and Falling Aspects

Notes from the end of February

External Shards in the form of Spiders.

Just pre-game, the Spiders manifest and start talking.

Two major plot sources: Fate Violations in Creation with evidence that Heavenly records and planning were way off, and Heavenly politics itself as the factions squabble over the vanished Maidens.

AT: One point we discussed was the idea that only the 5 PCs are not blind to the fate violations. Everyone else thinks they're normal, based on an effect similar to an RD (except this one works on the other Siderials).

Caste	People	Spiders
Serenity	Bring back and re-establish the Solar Deliberative	Misrule the Bureau to justify the return of the Yozi
Battles		Drown the world in War? Invite in all the enemies of Creation?
Endings	Trim the Corruption of Creation, largely by killing things.	Overpressurize the Underworld, re-incarnating the Neverborn.
Journeys	Add Poles? Construct Hoardings? Add a third axis to the flat Creation?	Manipulate the Poles to change the border with the Fair Folk.
Secrets	Abolish Essence use not under the control of Heaven.	Break the Games of Divinity, stand down the Exalted and revoke their Mandate, and establish the direct rule of the Gods.

Notice that each of the Spiders is severely blind to the threat of one major doom for Creation.

AT: I'm not sure that's true. Journeys isn't actually inherently bad for creation in any way, and might need adjustment based on that. Secrets isn't clearly bad for Creation, just bad for the Exalted (and maybe secretly bad for Creation if the Great Curse gets re-directed to the Gods).
- tmack: The flaw in the Journeys spider's plan is that Creation's size is what keeps the Fair Folk from sweeping through it and instantly taking it over; they're distributed along the 30,000-mile circumference of the Wyld. If Creation is compactified, it wouldn't have any boundary for the Fair Folk to amass on, but it would then be small enough that very bad things would happen if the Wyld ever returned. I agree with you about the Secrets spider's plan not necessarily being ruinous for Creation (although Nameless Crow would vehemently disagree). On the other hand, screwing over all the Exalted definitely seems like a horrible idea (and, frankly, this game is about the Exalted). For that matter, depending on how far it's taken, the idea of drowning the world in endless war doesn't have to involve the Sidereals at all.

BTS: I need to start writing up FactionsOfHeaven and FateViolations.