Una palabras de los autores: Green Sun Princes y los Yozis

por Maese Mateo Dom Jul 19, 2009 9:38 am

Bueno, para el que le interesa, aquí les dejo unos textos de dos de las mejores autoridades de la línea de Exalted hasta la fecha.

Uno es de Holden, que es uno de los escritores de Alchemicals y fue uno de los playtesters originales de Infernals (además de hacer trabajitos de edición y seleccion de Charms para ese libro).

El otro es de Michael A. Goodwin, quien es uno de los actores más revolucionarios de la linea: Autochtonians (1st Ed), los charms de Infernals, Core de 2da, charms de DB de DoTFA, etc.

Desde ya están en inglés. Alguien me los pasó hace unos días y me parecen los mejores textos que he visto para entender a los GSP y a los Yozis. Una lastima que no incluyeran algo así en el libro de Infernals.

NOTA: Si a veces hacen referia al comentario de otra persona, es porque esto está extraido de medio de un post.

por Maese Mateo Dom Jul 19, 2009 9:40 am

Holden:

Let's take this back to basics.

The Yozis are beings of profound hatred and malice.

Even the nicest ones—Adorjan, SWL and Cecelyne—are still absolutely furious about getting rolled for lunch money and shoved down Malfeas's throat. And they still don't fit any recognizable human value of 'nice.' Adorjan is homicidally insane (it just isn't personal), SWL wants to obviate free will, and Cecelyne simply wants a method to the madness of your torment. She wants to abuse and punish you, just, you know, systematically, rather than at random like the ED and Malfeas. Except that the system will itself be inherently capricious and random, so this isn't really much of a step up.

Given their druthers, the Green Sun Princes would just be akuma with superchargers in place of caste marks. Given their druthers, the Infernal Exalted would have their brains scooped out and replaced with silver sand, able to do nothing but act as perfect vessels of Primordial vengeance. Ideally, their Princes would retain only enough self-awareness to fall down in terrified awe before the Yozis, worship them with every last terrified shred of their hearts, and then go forth to topple the nations of men, gift the Exalted with blindness and weeping sores and laugh as their blood boils them from the inside out, and then eat the gods one mote at a time.

This is how most of the Yozis believe the universe inherently works. The fact that they don't get everything they want, as soon as they want it, is some kind of terrible, ongoing mistake that they're attempting to correct without really understanding that this is the outcome of the cosmos they designed, when viewed through a perspective other than their own.

The Yozis are insane, but not fishmalks.

The Yozis are mad by human standards, generally manifesting an enormous, divine version of obsessive-compulsive disorder. They're broken and lessened by their imprisonment, yes, but the fact of the matter is that their madness generally does not emerge from their imprisonment.

Consider Autochthon and the Mountain Folk. It took the dumb bastard three tries to produce a functioning race. He made the First, and was like "cool" and wandered off. And then much much much later he ran into the First again, who was sitting there despondent without a purpose, and Autochthon was like "uhhh... make more dudes." Because, hey, it made him happy. So the First made more dudes, and then they all sat around kind of despondent not knowing what to do. And they finally got ahold of Autochthon again, and what was his suggestion for their Grand Purpose? Why had they been brought into existence? "Uhh... make stuff." Hey, it worked for him. He was God to these people, but he had no interest in purpose. He just liked making stuff. His bliss was in the building. He liked humans because they used his three favorite inventions (faith, dogma, tools). He didn't even care what they did with them, he just liked that they used them.

And he's probably the most functional of the bunch.

Before Malfeas was the Demon City, he was the Holy Tyrant. Look at his Charms. They're mostly not being tongue-in-cheek—he has to have a damned psychic fracture to even conceive of anyone else's opinion mattering. The Ebon Dragon is actually incapable of understanding heroism except through opposition to it. That urge to reach down deep, and to rise above? He can't fathom it. He doesn't even really believe in it. It's a glitch in the pattern of how he believes the universe works.

Yozis embody what they are and they are what they embody. Their multitude of souls are less tightly constrained, helping to facilitate their interaction with a universe that is not made up of the complete mental absolutes that Yozis deal in, but still...

As an example—we (the crunch guys of the line) are pretty sure at this point that Yozis can't actually practice martial arts. At all. Their entire Essence structure is dedicated to hard-core embodiment of the titan's integral concepts. They can't make it imitate a tiger or the prismatic arrangement of Creation. (The Ebon Dragon, of course, has kind of a loophole here, but even then, he's just acting in his function as the Shadow of All Things. He can only mock other peoples' enlightenment, he has none of his own.) Their souls can learn martial arts, and to some degree emulate things other than what they are, and this helps them stretch beyond their own mental boundaries a bit. But Yozis themselves remain cosmic absolutes.

The point I'm getting at here is, they're really smart, but part of their inherent nature also makes them really stupid at times. Up until the Exalted came along, they were powerful enough that nothing could really make them face the consequences of those stupid moments.

The Infernal Exalted were designed by committee.

The Neverborn, to put it very bluntly, have better Exalted for their purposes. They have all the time in the world. The Abyssals are inexorable world-killing weapons. They've got a nice control mechanism, but it really doesn't even matter if it works—the Neverborn think their Abyssals will kill the world even if they're trying not to. They were designed with a unified goal (kill everything), and it's a very simple goal (kill everything) that can be accomplished in an almost infinite variety of ways. It really doesn't matter how they do it. Just wind them up and turn them loose.

That's not the Infernals. The Infernals were designed by five bickering titans whose insanity works at semi-cross-purposes. She Who Lives In Her Name wanted, basically, super-akuma. This would have presented the same problems that already plague the akuma they have. She didn't care. She cannot care about anything more than a place for every thing and every thing in its place. She had to be ordered to stand down from the idea by Malfeas, and that only worked because her place is to do what he says. Malfeas, in turn, wanted to just scream and yell and beat the shit out of the Princes to motivate them, because that's how he motivates everything. He can't, on his own, conceive that them not liking that sort of treatment would matter. The Ebon Dragon, ultimate embodiment of backstabbing fuckery that he is, had to clue the Demon City in on the likely consequences there.

The Infernals are not an ideal design. And they're carrying out a decidedly non-simple goal. And they're not all that elegantly matched to the goal. Instead, they have carrots, and sticks, and these are applied crudely at various intervals.

People in Creation are pretty much like people in the real world—and the Exalted are pretty much just people.

With 'heroism' in Exalted's milieu pretty much just meaning 'wow,' what's the biggest criteria you generally see Solar shards choosing for? Strong moral standings (of some sort) and ambition seem to be the big two. This is the guidance system for the Infernal Exaltation.

So the Yozis are picking out of a pool of candidates who are mostly men of powerful conviction (which faltered in the crucible), or great ambition (which blew up in their face). The Yozis say, "The gods gave you a shot, and you were judged unworthy. The world is cruel and it cares nothing about you. But Hell sees that you have worth. It wants to give you another chance. It wants to give you the power to change everything. Are the Yozis not merciful?"

People will usually jump at that.

But that isn't quite the bargain they get. They have the stolen power of a Solar Exaltation, and they have their Motivation, but the Yozis don't care what it is. You still want to become the world's greatest thief / seduce the most beautiful woman in the world / punish those who prey on the innocent? That's nice. Your Urge is to murder Lytek. Sure, you've never heard of Lytek, and you don't care about him, but that's what we want for the Reclamation, and we're going to Torment you if you don't go fucking kill Lytek.

But it's cool. You get demon hookers and demon crack and a townhouse in Hell. Monsters sing your praises. The booze is without compare. And here's a shiny blade of infinite blasphemies, and a cult that worships you as the terrible bringer of all their darkest dreams. You have magic that makes you mightier than a hundred men and as terrible as the wrath of any mere god. So, this is a pretty good deal!

No, you don't get to use it to be the world's greatest thief / womanizer / vigilante. GO KILL LYTEK. Do it or the worms in your brain start to sizzle and the red haze comes down and you'll wake up to find yourself covered in the gore and intestines of your concubines, in the smashed shell of your townhouse.

But it's okay. We still forgive you. You had to learn. Now go kill him. We'll fix you up with a new townhouse, and more whores. And when you're done with Lytek? We've got more goals.

They understand venality but they don't understand self-determination, because they don't think humans should have any, even though the Ebon Dragon insisted that they need to keep it. They still don't understand that the Exalted fought for themselves. They think it was all those fucking treacherous gods. The Exalted were their instruments. They can conceive of the gods as things-that-matter.

The Primordial War went down for human reasons. Why did humans accept the Exaltation? Because it gave them the power to chase their dreams. Why did they go to war for the Incarnae? Because their promise was that, if the Exalted won, people would not have to live in filth and fear, as the playthings of mad titans and the slaves of the mighty.

The promise of the Yozis is, "when I rise up to blot out the sun and turn Creation into an endless abbatoir of vengeful atrocities, I'll spare you. You can still have blow and hookers, rather than agony and death."

This becomes a less and less appealing proposition as a given Green Sun Prince's power approaches the point where he can march up and slap the taste out of Malfeas's mouth. This is one of the reasons the Yozis want the Reclamation to happen, like, yesterday, rather than letting it take its sweet ass time the way they Neverborn are with their agenda..

por Maese Mateo Dom Jul 19, 2009 9:42 am

M.A Goodwin:

I notice a recurring statement presented as though it were self-evident, that to transform creation into hell is inherently evil. That this is an absolute, and from that assessment of morality, then Infernals must be evil. What is so very fascinating about this perspective is that you sound like a Yozi. My perspective is right, it is right in all circumstances and it is so right in fact that nobody anywhere can have a different opinion.

You point to the suffering of demons in hell, in the state of its society and the agonies of its world and say "That's evil and anything that would spread that must be evil." Why? Because you say so? Because your value set defines this? Because it is inconceivable to you that a world like that could be good? Remember that the Yozi are equally certain that they are right, that their opinion is the only one that matters. They tolerate siblings because they have to, because none of them are so powerful that they can truly ignore each other.

As I wrote the Charms, as you advance in them, it changes you. You become more like your patron, because the dirty secret of Yozis is that they are made of Charms. They don't just have magic. All those effects together make them what they are. Just as importantly, even the scary stuff absolutely does not have to make the world a more terrible place, because the difference between a warlock and a Yozi is that a warlock can contain more than the perspective of the magic that is changing him. In fact, he automatically does, because that power is grafted onto a human being. Because a Green Sun Prince is more than a single perspective, he is already more adept than a Yozi at responding to the world and using that power as he sees fit, because he can be flexible. When brute force is the best solution, the Ebon Dragon still can't take it. It's not that he thinks his way is better. He can't see another way. He's blind to it. When guile is better, Malfeas can't bring himself to do it. It isn't his way.

If you are a Green Sun Prince, then you are in many ways better than a Yozi. You are weaker, for now, but the more you grow, the more you really don't need your patron any more. You want your Yozi to be super-geniuses and they are, but they are supergeniuses who are as sure of their paradigms as you seem to be about your moral absolutes. Exalted as a setting posits the idea that there is no force defining absolutes except those with the power and will to do so. There is no detect evil, because not everyone is going to subscribe to your notion of good and evil. You do. And I get that. Personally, my own ethics agree with you and the 8 year Solar series I ran dealt heavily with the protagonists doing their best to shove that paradigm down the throats of the entire universe.

The saga of being a green sun prince is expressly NOT about being evil. The people who accept the bargain are sometimes bad people and sometimes not bad people. But what has been placed in them is -- like with all Exalted -- the power to decide what they want and impose that on the world. Yozi are paper titans. They are nigh-omnipotent idiot savants so that they can simultaneously outsmart you and be outsmarted by you. This is how the Exalted beat them before and the Green Sun Princes can do it again. In fact, the power they have makes them more likely to do it than anyone else because it encourages them to be a little more like their ostensible masters in their certainty that they are what matters, not these broken limited concept monsters. Fuck them. Let them rot.

The default assumption about where Green Sun Princes go narratively is that the Yozis get kicked in the balls. Again. And these things they made go on to be more than they could be and better. They are far, far more likely to rebel than to follow through with the plan, because the plan isn't in their best interest and it never was. What is in their best interest is to take that power and go be awesome with it. Change the universe. Maybe build a new one. Or two. Maybe a better and more just one. Maybe one where its denizens don't get the same chances to rebel because the perspective of a Prince isn't nearly so limited as to fail to see how to plan around it and recognize other perspectives. Warlocks are absolutely not damned unless they want to be. They can be killed, hurt, have their dreams crushed, but they are never beyond aspiring to more as long as they live and getting a shot at it so long as one breath remains.

I also note that you haven't addressed the issue of "My champion went rogue; what the hell do I do about that?" You point to sending demons after that person or other princes, and you say how rare and precious the resources are. So why send them after someone who has some of your concepts in him and is spreading them by using your charms when you could allocate the same resources to destroying a threat that is doing nothing except undermining you. If the Yozi have the power to go after their waywards, then they have the power to strike at enemies they hate even more, which misses the point of why they dared to engage in the whole Reclamation in the first place and try out this risky plan that is, in fact, blowing up in their faces from day one.

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Una palabras de los autores: Green Sun Princes y los Yozis

Una palabras de los autores: Green Sun Princes y los Yozis

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Re: Una palabras de los autores: Green Sun Princes y los Yozis

Re: Una palabras de los autores: Green Sun Princes y los Yozis