Before we get to today's sneak peek, I've got a few other bits to share with you. First up, two recent Onyx Pathcast episodes have covered some very interesting Alchemicals topics.
In this podcast episode, the Pathcast hosts talk to Jon Matyus and MJ Monléon, Exalted writers, about their work on Alchemicals: Forged by the Machine God!
In this episode of the podcast, the pathcast team talk about Alchemicals: Forged by the Machine God.
Give those episodes a listen when you've got some time to get a peek behind the curtains (and a lot of other discussion about occasionally-related things).
Next up, let's talk about Stretch Goals, because we've quietly smashed another target!!
[ACHIEVED] At $120,000 in Funding - ALCHEMICALS COMPANION: Ramos-Autrama, Riven by War - Once, Ramos-Autrama was not one city, but two: one from Yugash, and one from Sova. In the wake of the bitter War of Ashes between the two nations, the two war-torn metropoli found themselves forced together by Autochthonia’s theotectonic movements, isolated from both nations. Now, only the intervention of foreign powers keeps the city’s divided populace from turning on each other and restarting the war.
And now, let's mark a few milestones to help us keep pace as we work through the third week of the campaign before adding more to our Alchemicals Companion. At $123,000 in Funding - ALCHEMICALS Digital Wallpaper - Awesome Alchemical Exalted artwork will be used to create a wallpaper for your computer desktop. This digital wallpaper will be added to the rewards list of all backers supporting this project. At $126,000 in Funding – ALCHEMICALS VTT Token Pack – Digital assets will be created to support online play for Alchemcials, including key character and creature tokens from the book. This online asset pack will be added to the rewards list of all backers. At $130,000 in Funding - ALCHEMICALS COMPANION:Servants of the Machine God - Quick Character traits for a variety of machine spirits found in the Realm of Brass and Shadow.
Beam Weapons
These artifact weapons project a glowing blade of Essence rather than a conventional cutting edge. They take the form of intricate cylinders constructed from magical materials, encased in a shell of reinforced alloys, and tipped with a concave crystal disc. Each magical material produces a blade of different characteristics: orichalcum beam weapons are formed from radiant sunlight, blue jade from crackling lightning, and starmetal from prismatic rainbow-hued light. The hilt of a beamklave, the beam version of a daiklave, is typically around a foot long, straight or slightly curved. Other weapons, like beamlances and beamscythes, have staff-like shafts. Beamkhatars and beamclaws instead take the form of alloyed gloves that project the blade from the back of the wrist.
A beam weapon can take the form of any hand-to-hand weapon that cuts or pierces. Many beam weapons have the concealable tag, their emitter-cylinders being small enough to secrete about one’s person. Others may lack this benefit, like a beamcleaver with a heavy full-length haft or an unusual beamklave that projects a cutting edge from a solid blade.
All beam weapons provide the Essence Core Ignition Evocation for free when first attuned.
Essence Core Ignition
Cost: 3m (2i); Mins: Essence 1 Type: Reflexive Keywords: Dual Duration: One scene Prerequisites: None
With a hiss and a flare of light, the gleaming blade of the weapon ignites.
The wielder activates the beamklave, allowing her to wield it as an artifact weapon. It has the following effects:
Attacks with it ignore three points of soak and Hardness.
When the wielder succeeds on a disarm gambit against a non-magical weapon, she can reflexively pay two Initiative to destroy it.
The wielder can also pay two Initiative to destroy a non-magical weapon after successfully blocking an attack made with it if the attacker failed by two or more successes. (This doesn’t affect weapons that use projectiles). Against an unarmed attack, she can instead inflict two dice of decisive damage, which ignore Hardness.
The wielder adds two automatic successes on feats of demolition when using the weapon to destroy objects and scenery (Exalted,p .229). She can complete feats to destroy objects or cause similar personal-scale damage instantly.
The ignited beam weapon emits light comparable to a glowing anima banner (p. XX).
Voltspindle was forged from a fingertip of the Subminister Shedik, Accumulator of Debok Moom. Shedik draws lightning toward it wherever it goes, resulting in an ever-growing electrical storm that only abates when the machine spirit pours its accumulated power into some great work or terrible foe. Mortals encounter Shedik more than they might wish, as it’s quite curious, moving through the Reaches with frightening speed in pursuit of whatever or whomever captures its interest.
Shedik treasures whatever willing companions it may find among those it stalks. The priest-artificer Effulgent Beacon of Praxis was numbered among them. When Shedik’s old friend came in search of a weapon to slay her traitorous lover, the subminister gladly gave her one of his blue jade fingertips to an artificer.
Since then, Voltspindle has changed hands quite often, as its wielders are known more for their passion than their pragmatism: Resolute Doctrinal Sledgehammer, breaker of the Elevated; Broken Engine Psychopomp, fabled among Jarish’s gremlin hunters; Furnace of Burning Law, who used it to slay a grand autocrat before the entire National Tripartite Assembly.
Voltspindle’s hilt is an irregular, roughly-cylindrical chunk of blue jade flecked with golden impurities. bound in a precisely-calibrated steel wire cage. When activated, the beamklave emits a finger-thin, blue-white blade of energy that spits sparks at the slightest contact. The weapon feels lighter when active, hissing joyfully through the air as if urging its wielder to keep moving.
Attunement: 5m Type: Medium (+3 ACC, +12 DMG, +1 DEF, OVW 5) Tags: Lethal, Melee, Balanced, Concealable Hearthstone Slot(s): 1 Era: The Ascension of Jast
Evocations of Voltspindle
Voltspindle’s wielder awakens Essence Core Ignition (p. XX) for free upon attuning it for the first time.
Stray electric arcs buzz along Voltspindle’s blade as it builds up charge, and even the sound of the beamklave cutting through air heightens in pitch.
Voltspindle’s wielder can build lightning charges while wielding the beamklave. She gains one lightning charge when she uses Essence Core Ignition, wins Join Battle, or lands a decisive attack from Initiative 12+ that resets her Initiative. As long as she has any charges, she gains the following benefits:
Her withering attacks add one die of raw damage for each charge she has.
Her decisive attacks add one die of damage for every two charges she has, rounded down.
When determining the wielder’s effective Initiative for turn order, each charge adds +1 to her effective Initiative. She loses this benefit while crashed.
Some Evocations require the Voltspindle’s wielder to spend lightning charges. Any charges spent enhancing an attack are still included when determining the bonus this Evocation adds to the attack.
Voltspindle can store up to six lightning charges. All accumulated charges are lost when the weapon is deactivated.
Thin fingers of electricity reach out and grasp Voltspindle’s target, guiding the blade to its destination like a lightning bolt.
The wielder adds an automatic success on an attack roll. On a withering attack, she adds Storm-Heart Capacitor’s damage bonus to the attack’s post-soak damage, instead of its raw damage. On a decisive attack, she adds one die of damage for each charge, instead of every two charges.
An enemy damaged by the attack is numbed by the electric shock, suffering a −1 penalty on all rolls until the end of his next turn. The penalty increases to −2 if the wielder has four or more charges (including the charge spent on this Evocation).
Resonant: This Evocation’s lightning charge cost is waived against crashed enemies.
Voltspindle's blade can barely contain the electric Essence that builds with each clash of weapons.
Voltspindle’s wielder can use this Evocation reflexively after she lands a withering attack or blocks an attack. She gains one lightning charge and one Initiative, and Voltspindle’s blade flares as bright as a burning anima until the end of the round (p. XX).
Resonant: Voltspindle is drawn to flat-footed opponents like lightning to a rod, granting an additional lightning charge against crashed enemies.
Radiance (Orichalcum Beamklave, Artifact •••••)
The first factory-cathedral of ancient Claslat was a humble thing by the standards of later eras’ transcendent manufactories, though still a marvel by any measure. The Champions of old spun filaments of orichalcum by hand to forge their temple’s fabricator-limbs, and wrought its magnificent crystalline icon-arrays by painstakingly etching and chemically treating each lens in turn. The First Fane of the Maker was a hub of burgeoning industry in those needy years, spinning duct-sheathing into wearable garments and nutrient paste into wholesome food, while also serving as the forge of Claslat’s Champions.
Then the Blight came, and the First Fane fell. As Claslat fought for its survival, Incarnate Engine of Prosperity sifted through the temple’s wreckage. She followed the light of shattered and sputtering fuse-lamps, refracted by broken adamant, She found herself before the last of the intact icon-array lenses, and was struck by divine inspiration. When she emerged from the wreckage of the First Fane, a golden light filled the darkness, a blade of divine judgement to drive back the Blight.
After her victory, Incarnate Engine of Prosperity did not remain in Claslat for long. She departed on a holy pilgrimage into the depths of Autochthonia, where she came to join the Eight Divine Ministers’ Machine Saints. After Engine’sdemise, her beamklave, Radiance, became part of the Ministers’ divine arsenal, enshrined within the Crystalline Sanctum of the Godhead. Over the millennia, they have bestowed it upon worthy Alchemicals, both Machine Saints and Champions of the Octet. Radiance seeks a wielder with a cause to uphold, and the Divine Ministers seek out such heroes to bear it.
Radiance’s story has been told in flashes of light across the Octet’s history: the revolution against the tyrant Champion Weaver of the Eternal Banner, the purge of the heretical Circle of Fallen Iron, the redemption of the rogue subminister Koth-Duem. Each time the blade appears, the world of Autochthonia changes.
Radiance’s hilt is a fluted orichalcum cylinder, with a hearthstone socket as a depression at its pommel. Its ignited blade is an array of brilliant white-gold filaments that resemble circuitry in the shape of a double-edged longsword.
Attunement: 5m Type: Medium (+3 ACC, +12 DMG, +1 DEF, OVW 5) Tags: Lethal, Melee, Balanced, Concealable Hearthstone Slot(s): 1 Era: The First Blight
Evocations of Radiance
The wielder unlocks Essence Core Ignition (p. XX) upon attuning to Radiance for the first time.
Engraved around the beamklave’s emitter ring are these words: “Faith is a blade.”
Upon learning this Evocation, the wielder chooses one of her Major or Defining Principles, which becomes her Axiom. While Essence Core Ignition is active, she gains the following benefits:
She adds +1 Accuracy against enemies whose actions violate, threaten, or otherwise oppose her Axiom, and deals aggravated damage on decisive attacks against them.
She adds +1 Resolve against influence that’s opposed by her Axiom.
If she uses Radiance as part of a stunt when she makes an influence roll, she adds an automatic success if the influence aligns with her Axiom.
The wielder can change her Axiom to a different Principle once per story. If her Axiom is lowered to Minor intensity, the wielder can choose a new one at the end of the scene.
Resonant: The bonus die from this Evocation’s Accuracy bonus is converted to a non-Charm success.
All-Conquering Refulgence
Cost: 3a; Mins: Essence 2 Type: Reflexive Keywords: Dissonant Duration: One scene Prerequisites: Brand of Burning Gold
Anima and beamklave burn as one, a beacon to light the Realm of Brass and Shadows.
The wielder transfers the light of her bonfire anima into Radiance. For the rest of the scene, the beamklave’s blade sheds light as if it were a bonfire anima (p. XX). The wielder gains one Initiative at the start of each round, as do all allies in the scene whose actions align with her Axiom. Such allies also gain +1 Resolve against influence that’s opposed by her Axiom.
Dissonant: This Evocation ends if the wielder is crashed.
Radiance flares to an unbearable brightness, extending its edge to sear away the ranks of the unworthy.
The wielder makes a single decisive attack against everyone within close range of her, or in a line out to short range. She can exempt allies from this attack, unless they’ve acted in a way that opposes her Axiom in the current scene. She divides her Initiative equally between each hit target, rounding up. She adds (Essence) additional damage dice against each target that opposes her Axiom. Characters damaged by this attack is blinded, suffering a −3 penalty on vision-based rolls for the rest of the scene.
While using All-Conquering Refulgence, this Evocation’s range is extended by one band, letting the wielder attack everyone within short range, or in a line out to medium range. She can end All-Conquering Refulgence to extend its range by an additional band.
Dissonant: This Evocation can only be used while All-Conquering Refulgence. All-Conquering Refulgence doesn’t increase the attack’s range, and she can’t end that Evocation for an additional range bonus. Blinded targets recover their sight when All-Conquering Refulgence ends.
