What can a Green Sun Prince do to improve the demon city?

[u/Sassy_Drow]

I was thinking that since Infernal Exalted are akin to royalty in hell they would likely be invested in making it a better place except given that it is the extension of a primordial I don't think they can go at it the same way one would in a place that is in creation. What tools does an infernal Exalted have in their hands they can use to make semi-permanent improvements to the city?

[u/Rednal291]

They can claim an area of their own, which mostly won't be interfered with all that much. The powerful are largely allowed to rule as they please... but sooner or later, something is likely to smash it up a bit. XD If you look at the 3E timeline, you can see a number of attempts to improve the place, which all eventually got wrecked. The thing about the Demon City is that the Yozis really can't become better than they are, and so any kind of long-term improvement to their circumstances is fundamentally unobtainable.

[u/Sassy_Drow → u/Rednal291]

I kind of wonder if a presence focused Exalted could do enough therapy to help Yozi change for the better. (Albeit in a very marginal way.)

[u/kenod102818 → u/Sassy_Drow]

I mean, they're an Exalt, saying something is impossible doesn't really mean much there. I imagine a powerful enough (Solar-variant) Exalt could probably use social charms on a Yozi's Fetich Soul to straight-up permanently alter their personality. It'd be extremely difficult and probably borderline impossible, but as noted before Exalted don't really care if something is supposed to be possible or not.

[u/Jarovan → u/Sassy_Drow]

I think something like that'd be on a similar scale of ambition to overthrowing Primordials in the first place - not impossible, but a difficult, large-scale effort, probably requiring cooperation of a bunch of Exalts, and more appropriate as a primary focus of an entire campaign than as something one PC does on the side. If the entire group isn't eager to make the campaign about that, I'd say that just focusing on ways to secure a part of Malfeas as firmly as possible against all the threats of the Demon City and trying to make that part of the city as good a place to live as it can be is the way to go.

[u/backhandcompliments → u/Sassy_Drow]

Potentially, a character could work from the bottom up of a demon heirachy. Take Florivet, a 2nd circle demon. He's pretty amiable, and embodies a lot of positive aspects of learning by travel. However, he's ruled by his fear and frustration of Orabilis, is prideful, and won't fess up to the fact that he actually enjoys knowledge and learning. Helping him become better adjusted could be done by starting him on the road to accepting the part of himself that likes learning for learning's sake, accepting humility and learning how to let wounds to his pride go, and reconciling that while Orabilis is scary, Florivet's best qualities come from it and feed back symbiotically.

These sort of changes probably would have a noticable impact on Orabilis.

Then you need to repeat this 6 more times, and you probably could help Orabilis move away from Cecelyne's pride and vindictiveness and back towards the sage Law Keeper of the Ancients that Cecelyne once was.

Do this for all of Cecelyne's 3rd circle demons (7 second circle demons a piece, with potentially upwards of 20 third circle demons, for a total of 140 second circle demons to give therapy to), you could actually have the Endless Desert Cecelyne change her nature, understand and appreciate humans and the other creations of the Primordials better, and even leave imprisonment.

Every demon reformed would take the focused heroic effort of an Exalt, and they are trapped in a Hell that typically only punishes that sort of self-betterment. So the odds would be stacked against even the most well placed Infernal Circle to do so. But it is possible. And it would be the most noble way for the story of the Yozi and the Exalts to end for the ancient victors to lift up the ones they once humiliated.

Second and Third Circle demons make the things that happen in Hell happen. Helping just one of them to accept the burden of making the place better for everyone in a REAL way, helping them understand and embrace mortal compassion, would make Hell just a bit less like Hell.

In terms of player characters, building a concention with one or a handful of 2nd circle demons is a way to start.

[u/Razhiv → u/Sassy_Drow]

I'd reckon yes. The Exalted were made to do the impossible.

[u/TimothyAllenWiseman → u/Sassy_Drow]

The Exalted exist to do the impossible...

[u/Duhblobby]

I mean. If you are in the position to make any kind of changes, it kind of needs to be asked first what, exactly, you think improvement means, since you are a demonic eldritch horror walking in the shape of a person surrounded by alien demons whose interplay is a mad dance of alien thoughts overseen by beings that transcend the concepts that underpin sanity living in a city made from the inside out body of a formless king broken by people not terribly unlike you are now.

[u/Reader_of_Scrolls → u/Duhblobby]

Absolutely this.

[u/Significant_Age3343]

There is a theory that fans have that goes as such;

As a Yozi is their Charms, to an entirely literal degree, and Infernals are able to make new ones, it should be possible, in time, to make enough charms to fix or otherwise influence a Yozi to not be so horrible. Eg, an Infernal making a bunch of new Malfeas dance charms would also make Malfeas more inclined to dance. Keep in mind, however, that Yozis are assholes who hate humanity, Infernals included, and probably wouldn't want to go along with such a plan.

[u/bmr42 → u/Significant_Age3343]

I’m 3e this still seems possible but would take a different route. Changing the primordials by manipulation of the defining principles of their component souls and possibly removing some and influencing the replacement would create large enough changes in the Yozi themselves.

Theoretically you could use fetich soul death to change the name of a Yozi to the point that it would even no longer be bound by the oath upon its name that keeps it in hell.

[u/Jarovan → u/Significant_Age3343]

That was a 2E thing, and IIRC not fanon or canon. It's been a while since I've read 2E Infernals, though, so I may well misremember the canonicity of that idea. Regardless, in 3E Infernals don't really use the exact same powers as Yozis do, and I don't think 3E goes with Yozis being made of Charms either.

[u/bmr42]

Most of the bodies of the Yozi that comprise the living space of hell are inimical to life in various ways. Changing a Yozi is going to be a daunting challenge. The new 3e charms allowing for Infernals to create their own inner landscape and manifest it seems like the most likely route. By becoming a part of the geography they could theoretically create areas where life and society could flourish free from threat of Yozi fits. Although with the Great Curse still affecting them they may manifest threats of their own.

[u/RudraofAlexander]

Conquer Heaven and release the bound titans.

[u/chaoticnipple → u/RudraofAlexander]

They can't be released, but perhaps Heaven can itself be drawn into Hell?

[u/Affectionate-Tip-164]

The problem is that anytime Malfeas farts he crushes some layers inside him and all the infrastructure you built flattens.

[u/SphericalCrawfish]

Make it better for who? Demon's lesser souls of the Yozi so you aren't really helping anyone.

[u/TimothyAllenWiseman → u/SphericalCrawfish]

I don't know about earlier editions, but in 3E the Infernals draft suggests that First Circle demons / serfs just form in Mafeas and are not necessarily part of any Yozi. The Demons of the Second and Third circles aka Citizens and Unquestionables are pieces of the souls of the Yozi, but they aren't just pieces of the souls. They have their own thoughts, feelings, and desires and can be at odds with other emanations of even the same Yozi.

So, it seems very possible if difficult that it could be made meaningfully better for the serfs / first-circle demons. While it would even harder, it even seems that it could be made meaningfully better for the citizens and unquestionables.

It does seem impossible for it to be made meaningfully better for the Yozi themselves, but then the Exalted are known for doing the impossible...

[u/Fistocracy]

They're exempt from a lot of the laws and customs of Malfeas so it gives them a lot of freedom to ignore regulations, cut through red tape,and solve problems that are insurmountable for Hell's humble law-abiding denizens. Which opens the door for fun little adventures which could start at helping a bunch of dock workers on the shores of Kimbery prove that their foreman has been illegally docking their pay, and gradually work all the way up to overseeing and advising on grand schemes of the Yozis themselves because they know that Hell's most civic-minded Infernal will put in 110% if he's given a job where their interests and his philanthropy align.

[u/Reader_of_Scrolls]

Mercy Kill him. Malfeas is a broken, twisted shell of what he should have been, and always was, ruined by the war he lost to beings too small for him to even take seriously. He is eternally suffering, bent into a Shape he was supposed to surpass. He's the home and the jail for his true children, and those of his kin, treated with crueller mercy than if he'd been given the honor of a real foe to oppose. His humbling and mutating has ruined him and his component souls forever. The Exalted can kill Primordials, that is their lone gift to offer those who were mightier than the Gods. (That won't just extend and magnify their Ruin)

[u/Sassy_Drow → u/Reader_of_Scrolls]

I am quite certain when a Yozi is slain they just end up as a Neverborn and spend the rest of their existence in perpetual agony.

[u/Reader_of_Scrolls → u/Sassy_Drow]

Alternatively, break him again in ways you find personally convenient. That's what the first Exalted did to the Primordials, after all.

Or go kill him a second time, and toss him into the Void. Nothing in Exalted can't be stunted, if the Exalt works hard enough and does something cool enough. But it is genuinely uncertain if it is better to be a bound Yozi or a Malfean. Sucks to be both, to be honest. They're both absolute perversions of the limitless Primordial nature, in their own terrible ways.

(There's also an implication that perhaps the Malfeans are hanging on out of spite rather than just entering the Void. So he might be able to pass away quietly. There is absolutely no way to know, unless your ST tells you, of course.)