There are two additional keywords heavily used by the Alchemical Exalted: Municipal and Colossus. Space restrictions prevent them from receiving a full treatment in this product, but these guidelines should help Storytell- ers incorporate the reality of these Charms into their games.
Colossus effects are those Charms that only by Essence 6–7 Alchemicals using warstrider-scaled bodies can sustain, allowing them to accomplish transhuman feats of warfare, social conditioning and mechanical genius. Colossus-level Alchemicals often incorporate siege weapons such as light implosion bows and warstrider weaponry into their bodies. Two of the best-known Colossus Charms are Integrated Mobile Sanctum and Remote Drone-Body Guidance. The former folds space within the Alchemical’s body, creating a large staging area carved out of Elsewhere that allows the Exalt to act as a mobile troop transport or even to outfit her body with a fully staffed factory-cathedral. The latter allows her to grow a replica of her former human-scale body and outfit it with a remote-controlled dummy soulgem, allowing her to carry out operations on a human scale. This Charm is somewhat dangerous, however, since the Alchemical’s real body remains inactive and unaware wherever she chooses to leave it.
“Municipal” is the name applied to Essence 8+ Alchemical Charms. These wonders of industry go far beyond mere bodily implants, generally taking the form of large-scale elements of Autochthonian civic infrastructure. A Municipal Charm could include an entire factory (or a factory could simply be a small component or submodule of an Essence 10 Municipal Charm).
Most Autochthonian mortals constantly benefit from a wide array of unseen Municipal Charm and submod- ule effects. Their food is kept edible and safe by Health-Promoting Filtration Baffles. The output of the factories (themselves Charms) are further enhanced by the Industry-Optimizing Timetable Manipulation submodule. The spread of illness is minimized by the city’s Rat-Slaying Electrification Grid.
A metropolis is normally seen and felt as a living being only through Hologlyphic Projection Station nodes. In times of war, though, Autonomic Civic Defense Emplacement Charms are brought online. Then, invaders face electrified streets, lashing moonsilver lighting installations, hidden turrets and worse.
Finally, Avatar-Launching Silo is worthy of particular consideration. This Municipal Charm is a staging bay containing one or more replicas of the Alchemical’s former Colossus and human-scale bodies. Because patropoli and metropoli cannot afford to divert their full consciousness away from maintaining the cities they have become, they spin off one full subsidiary memory-facet of their former lives to guide each Avatar-body they choose to em- power. While an Avatar is still fundamentally the Alchemical—it has all of her skills, memories, Motivation and Intimacies—it is more strongly colored by the past life imbuing it than the Alchemical’s normal personality is, making Avatars notoriously eccentric and difficult to anticipate.
Prerequisite Charms: Conductive Principle of Authority, Unassailable Lightning Dance
Those who would assault representatives of Autochtho- nia’s order will face the wages of their own dissidence. The Flashing Wire insinuates an oscillating tremor into his whips, causing them to hum and visibly sizzle through the air as though transmuted into bolts of lightning rather than merely conducting them. Until the end of the character’s next action (i.e., the action following the activation of this Charm), her whips have Speed 3, Rate equal to their wielder’s Martial Arts rating and the cost to add electrocution damage to an attack with Live Wire Form is zero motes rather than one mote. As a final benefit, if the martial artist has any empty hands when she activates this Charm, the appropriate number of whips formed of actual lightning appear in her grip for her to wield for the duration of the Charm. These weapons use standard whip traits plus the benefits above.
VOIDTECH
Some Apostates manage to hide their condition for months, years or even decades before they are either discovered or forced to flee to the Far Reaches. More than a few of these twisted geniuses have built collections of abhorrent custom Charms for themselves, the full extent of their functionality realized only in retrospect by horrified vats technicians. Others planned well in advance for their escape, gutting gremlinized factory-whales or other enormous custodians and converting them into crude vats complexes. Their most ostentatious creations were stored in these lightless facilities. When they disappeared, the rest of their panoply went with them.
Such illegal Charms are referred to as Voidtech. Al- though the templates for their construction are retained in the central vats noetic archive (primarily because the Sodali- ties have never found a way to actually remove information from that archive), their actual construction and installation is absolutely outlawed in all Autochthonian nations. Even requisitioning information on them is sometimes enough to bring an Exalt under suspicion of Gremlin Syndrome or to provoke a full inquiry into a mortal’s associations and possible heterodoxy.
Still, some Voidtech Charms are extremely tempting. They are known for their power, their tendency to push the edge of the Alchemical condition or their sheer strange- ness. There is always an Exalt who thinks he knows what he’s doing or who simply considers the potential gain to be worth any danger involved. Where there is a will, a way generally emerges.
And there are dangers. Installation of any Void-keyword Charm gives the user a temporary form of the Gremlin Syndrome mutation (see pp. 112-113) that lasts as long as any Voidtech remains installed in the Exalt’s Charm Slots. Should the Alchemical reach Dissonance 10 for any reason, the infection metastasizes and spreads to his Essence reser- voir, making the mutation permanent and rendering him a creature of the Void. Because Voidtech is invasive and
disrupts Essence profiles that are not fully aligned with the Void, it cannot be removed with Vat Surrogate Reweaving Technique (see p. 194).
The following is only a tiny sampling of the strange Charms Apostate Alchemicals have innovated:
V
OIDTECHS
UBMODULESThese submodules infect any Charm into which they are installed by adding the Void keyword and imposing hideous cosmetic warping to the visible components of non-Internal Charms. Charms infected this way are treated like any other Voidtech, but Alchemicals without permanent Gremlin Syndrome can choose to install “clean” copies of Charms without their tainted submodules at the time of implanta- tion. Each submodule listed here identifies what Charm(s) it can upgrade.
Degenerative Directed Evolution (1xp): This submodule improves Manifold Transhuman Implants (see pp. 167-168), allowing each installation of the Charm to contain up to (Essence rating) points of negative mutations in its package. Each point of negative mutations added this way allows the package to contain an additional two points of positive muta- tions, increasing its power at the cost of insanity, physical deterioration or worse.
Apostatic Ordination Node: This submodule improves the power of Motivational Vocoder (see p. 147) to enslave other creatures of the Void. Against such targets, Virtue channeling is impossible, but the character adds bonus successes equal to his Essence rating. If the target is a gremlin with equal or lower Essence and succumbs to the Charm, the Apostate may give it any Motivation he desires, and it cannot even spend Willpower to escape until it goes more days than its master’s Manipulation rating without interacting with him. Until the gremlin escapes or the Apostate reinstalls his Mo- tivational Vocoder without this submodule, the gremlin must obey him like a demon bound to his service (see Exalted, pp. 252–253), though the Intimacy behind the obedience is hateful fear rather than loyalty. The Intimacy remains and shifts to pure hate if the gremlin breaks free, and it acts ac- cordingly. When targeting a gremlin it can bind, the Charm can be used in personal combat with a Speed measured in ticks rather than long ticks, as a single imperious command assaults the spirit’s mind.
Bloated Taint Reservoir: Installed into an Auxiliary Essence Storage Unit (see p. 168), this submodule allows the Apostate to respire one mote per hour spent sleeping or meditating in a blight zone. This Essence is generated by the Charm itself in sympathetic resonance to the area’s corruption. He also doubles Essence provided by any cult he has while in a blight zone.
Chaoentropic Rending System: Upgrading Piston-Driven Megaton Hammer (see pp. 122-123), whenever an attack enhanced by that Charm inflicts three or more levels of non-bashing damage, the Apostate may inflict an amputa- tion wound on the target (see Exalted, p. 152 for examples).
Doing so with a close combat attack allows the Apostate to rip the organ out and stuff it into his distended mouth, restoring four motes. Organs ripped from corpses offer no nourishment, so a killing attack offers only one feeding opportunity. If the enhanced attack mortally wounds or kills an animate being, its body and Essence shreds into a smoking mass of gore that leaves only indestructible possessions intact. Such death is permanent for spirits.
Essence Desiccating Implosion (Essence 4): A Toroidal Shockwave Catalyst (see pp. 124-125) with this submodule does not merely exert outward physical force, but also exerts an inward spiritual force that devastates Essence within its radius. All Essence users other than the Apostate who are caught in the shockwave lose three motes as a Shaping effect, and that radius becomes a blight zone for the next month. Increase the Essence drain to five motes if the entire radius of effect is already a blight zone, in which case there are no lingering effects as the two zones seamlessly merge.
Essence-Seeking Siphon: The Apostate may attach this submodule to Mind-Ripping Probe (see pp. 149-150), affixing a gruesome soulsteel barb to the tip of the interface stiletto. The base damage of the Personality Override Spike increases to +6L and even “gentle” insertion inflicts one level of le- thal damage. Whenever the Charm’s Essence drain feature is used, it transfers at a rate of 10 motes and still takes five motes if the victim spends Willpower to resist. The spirit absorption feature is also upgraded to permanently transform Autochthonian machine spirits it captures into gremlins as a Shaping effect, provided their will is already broken when the spike consumes them.
Taint-Imprinting Agony Inducers (Manipulation 5): This submodule makes Transcendent Brutality Programming (see p. 146) a weapon of conversion. If the Charm reduces a mortal to a single Willpower dot, that mortal gains tem- porary Gremlin Syndrome as a Shaping effect for a number of days equal to the Apostate’s total Dissonance at the time of activation, as though the victim had Voidtech Charms installed. If the victim reaches Dissonance 10 during this time, the infection becomes permanent. An Essence 5+ Apostate can even apply these effects to an Essence user, provided the victim’s will is already broken and her Essence is not higher than his own.
Metacaustic Blacktog Injection (Essence 4): A Multifunc- tion Hypodermic Apparatus (see p. 168) programmed with this formula can inject a tarry, corrosive fluid equivalent in toxicity to a dose of Yozi venom (see Exalted, p. 131). It can take effect immediately or remain dormant for any time specified by the Apostate, up to one year. Another dose dur- ing dormancy resets the duration as desired. Dormant toxin remains in the victim’s system as an inert magical Poison effect for the duration, then takes effect.
Riftslide Tesseract Device (Essence 5): A Mobile Sensory Drone socket (see pp. 161-162) enhanced with this submod- ule becomes a travel device. The Apostate must spend two consecutive actions controlling the drone without placing
either action in a flurry. When his DV refreshes after the second action, he can spend 10 motes and one Willpower. Doing so causes the drone to leap into the air and burst into a momentary rip in the Design through which the Apostate teleports. He cannot use this means of travel if there is insuf- ficient space to receive him. Attacks made against him on the tick in which he teleports automatically miss.
Void Sight (Permanent Gremlin Syndrome): This submod- ule upgrades Optical Enhancement (see pp. 158-160). The Alchemical can actually see the smoky, cancerous stains of befouled Autochthonian Essence within (Perception) yards, allowing a difficulty 4 (Perception + Awareness) miscellaneous action to know whether a perceived target is a creature of the Void and its total Dissonance rating, if it has one.
Weave-Shredding Paradox Engine (Permanent Gremlin Syndrome, 12xp): A Man-Machine Weaving Engine (see p. 170) perverted by this submodule reawakens in spite of its bearer’s Dissonance, but no longer interfaces with the Design. Instead, the Charm allows the Apostate to learn and cast spells as if she knew the Charms Terrestrial Circle Sorcery and Shadowlands Circle Necromancy. Such spells cost 12 experience points apiece, but the Exalt can also permanently excise a known (and now useless) protocol from her mind in lieu of paying this experience. Spells may be learned as other Exalted learn them from texts or teachers. Alternatively, Apostates can study a blight zone to unlock the secrets of Autochthon’s decay as though learning a spell from an actual mentor, in which case the player pays the cost at the beginning