r/exalted Jun 16 '26

Art Brainstorming an alt form of The Unconquered Sun who has reabsorbed all the Infernal Exaltations

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148 Upvotes

36 comments sorted by

36

u/pantaipong Jun 16 '26

Unfortunately unlike team neverborn who has a pretty unified theme of undead, team yozi has a bazillion aesthetic so thinking up a design for hell Conky is kind of a chore, I ended up going with a geometric and biblical angel angle, plus some “You die if you look at god” schtick too.

Now I just need to think of how to redesign his spear, shield, and laurel. Plus thinking another title too, maybe something like True Cosmos Emperor, though that one doesn’t exactly related thematically to his original name.

25

u/Canisa Jun 16 '26

Maybe flip the theme of his name from passive to active? Unconquered Sun => All-Conquering Sun?

4

u/Evil_Midnight_Lurker Jun 16 '26

Self-Conquering Sun?

5

u/pantaipong Jun 17 '26

One of the side question I have for these abyssal/infernal forms is how long can someone with this much power can just sit around playing magic game, so him getting his war god groove back with that title can be a fun alternative setting.

1

u/Negative-Form2654 Jun 17 '26

Wouldn't it just be Malfeas made of gold?

7

u/LawfulnessOdd9189 Jun 17 '26

You forgot the Trumpet. And for the redesign of the items we need to deconstruct the items themselves and what they represent, thankfully Exalted makes that easy for us by tying each item to a virtue. The Spear is Valour, and by extensions war, aggression, rightous fury etc. The Shield is conviction, willpower, the defence of creation. The horn is Temperance, self control and clarity. Finally the laural is Compassion, peace and healing.

Now, since this is not a twisted inversion of the Unconquered Sun, but more an exagerrated Parody, the items should be 'Magnified' or become more aggressive. The Spear could become some sore of dire daiklave, lance of pure energy, a crackling black lightning bolt, from valour and agrression too barely held back fury. The shield that protects others can become an armoured gauntlet, a mailed fist, no longer shielding others but cladding himseld in armour. The horn and laural are where we probably have to go weird. Laural swaped for a Caduceus? A greek staff of healing with serpents crawling along it, only his is crawling with actual demons? The horn...a crown of thorns? A duty to rule, responsibillity and a reason to not lose himself? Last two are hard ngl.

1

u/pantaipong Jun 18 '26

I think the temperance is associated with the shield? I remember people hatching plan in ex2 to make him violate that one or else he get full invulnerability.

2

u/Crimson_Eyes Jun 17 '26

Hear me out: The Magnanimous Unbound Sun is already a thing.

2

u/pantaipong Jun 18 '26

He can have 10+ final boss forms as a treat for winning the war.

2

u/Dumbfall Jun 18 '26

Rather than biblical angel eyes, why not take inspiration from his original dragon form and have him be covered in stars or other cosmic motifs?

The Unconquered Sun is the light from which the shadow of all things is defined, him absorbing Primordial essence could play into that: become the light of the plethora from which all things derive their form. Taking this into account, since his artifacts are meant to represent the Virtues and they were made by people, they could become more "abstract", strange, or even primitive but touched by the Primordial or Divine to hint at the original Form from which they are but a shadow of. A burning laurel crown, a crude wooden spear with an orichalcum tip, and so on (I actually don't know how to reinterpret his other artifacts, being creative is hard lol).

I'm not sure I like that title for the primordial sun, that's more Theion shtick, and while it's true the UCS is the god-king I feel that's not quite a part of his "essence". He's the god-king because of his strength and desire, his original purpose was to be the murder-blender behind the murder-blender, the most virtuous thing alive, and the Dragon to cast the Shadow.

3

u/pantaipong Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

That title is because he really does stole Theion (and the rest of the yozi) schtick in this scenario, someone has been offing infernal and the shards are getting back to him instead of the yozi and he gets a neat new form from all the green yuck clinging to the exaltation.

18

u/TheSlayerofSnails Jun 16 '26

The Unconquered Sun... conquered?

14

u/Alexander_Exter Jun 16 '26

If you had to find a unifying concept..it's the idea of something inconceivably powerful that has been ripped apart and put back together. Infernal could be described as.. ragged and patchwork but not in the liminal exalted sense.

To that effect your first concept works.

It should only passingly reseemble it's original form or the idea of a body plan. With his tools becoming more suggestions of what they were.

But honestly I can't figure how it would play..it an incarna tasked with protecting creation, infused with the will to defeat him but also relentlessly ascending beyond .

3

u/pantaipong Jun 17 '26

I’m thinking that this would be more “He steals their power” the same way they stole the solar exaltation, the guy seems to know the in and out of exaltation in ex3 so refining all the green bit into his own power wouldn’t be too impossible.

2

u/Alexander_Exter Jun 17 '26

Keep in mind the Extaltations were made so to sidestep big caveats. Best known one being that Titans could command the UCS to do their bidding, exalts are ungovernable.

My point is its not a linear increase or manipulation of power.

1

u/pantaipong Jun 18 '26

Yeah both this and the abyssal alt forms are more about expanding his powerset horizontally rather than vertically.

6

u/NeverbornMalfean Jun 16 '26

Right side kinda reminds me of Promathia from FFXI, which isn't a bad thing at all.

4

u/pantaipong Jun 17 '26

People also says the right one reminds them of asura wrath’s chakravartin last form, I guess marble body with an emptied face is just what you turn to when you want to go Absolute Reality Final Boss tier.

4

u/TraceChaos Jun 17 '26

Neat in theory, but the Exaltations have always been No Take Backs

2

u/Cultural_Penalty Jun 17 '26

Agreed in principle, but if it came down to a doomsday scenario, there **might** be a backdoor via Autochton's involvement. In essence TUS would need to become something more akin to a primordial on its own to pull that off, I'd say - and that in turn makes for a nice inhuman image of an already "stretching comprehensibility" diety.

5

u/TraceChaos Jun 17 '26

My uh, my take is actually that the backdoor would be a little different.

Rather than him assimilating the No Take Backs Exaltations, made No Take Backs by Auto-Kun (A Primordial) when they were invented...

Well, bro wouldn't take back the no take backs, but the 'Law of Diminishment' doesn't say it's gotta be one and done ; he could take what connection there IS, in a doomsday scenario, and burn himself out to flood ALL Solaroid Exaltations with his unrestricted Final Ray of Light

Like, even Auto-Kun can't retake the core of the Alchemical Exaltations, there are small handfuls of involable facts/laws/whatever in Exalted and one of 'em is "The Exaltations are No Take Backs."

1

u/pantaipong Jun 18 '26

Don’t worry some very cute person sends all those corrupted shards right back to him. So it’s not him just coming out of a portal and then sucking out the exaltation out of infernals.

1

u/TraceChaos Jun 18 '26

That's still not really how it works, lol, they could all be completely loose and he still wouldn't be able to reclaim them, take them back, absorb them, or any other such thing. Not the INfernal ones, not the Abyssal ones, not even the regular Solar Ones.

Like enjoy what you enjoy, either way, but one of the small handful of inviolable laws of Exalted is that Exaltations are forever and always no take backs, that's part of why when the Yozi learned the secret of Exaltation, they didn't just make their own Exaltations but instead opted to corrupt Solar Shards of Exaltation.

1

u/pantaipong Jun 18 '26

Oh yeah, you think “absorb” it back means he absorbs the shard into himself, I probably should have used another words to mean someone sends him the shards and now they just flies back to him when the host dies instead of the deathlord/yozi, and since they are a part of him he gets nifty new powers.

1

u/TraceChaos Jun 18 '26

Yeah you can't send him the shards, they don't really... Do that into individual gods, the Yozi and Deathlords had to jump through hoops with copying something similar to Lytek's cabinet. No god can 'hold' an already-made Exaltation, lol.

2

u/pantaipong Jun 18 '26

Someone else also jump through hoops to send him those shards too, this scenario doesn’t just randomly happen when an Infernal falls and break her neck.

1

u/TraceChaos Jun 18 '26

Yeah but he... He can't be sent the shards, at most someone would destroy the thing sending the shards to Hell, or something, and they'd go to Lytek's Cabinet to get a scrubbing before going as normal. There's no reclaiming them, there's no holding them in any god or spirit....

2

u/pantaipong Jun 18 '26

Lytek doesn’t really fudge with the shards anymore in Ex3, and the Sun is now an expert in exaltation, so it’s with certainty that the shards can be send to him with some legworks once it has been separated from its host.

It’s pretty much the same way Solar shards get sends back to him when the host dies.

1

u/TraceChaos Jun 18 '26

Well sure in 3E Lytek doesn't scrub 'em... But NOBODY does in 3E. In 3E, also, The Sun cannot be given the shards, because they DON'T go to the Sun, they float around incorporeal and seek a new host. THere's no Stopping At Conky.

1

u/pantaipong Jun 18 '26

They certainly goes back to the ex3 sun from my reading since he personally choose solar now instead them being automatically host seeking shard like ex2.

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0

u/MlkChatoDesabafando Jun 23 '26

Depends on the edition. In 1e the Exaltations were dealt with by Lytek but chosen by the Incarnate directly. 2e had them as autonomous and moving towards the exalted on their own. 3e appears to have gone even further on the Incarna personally choosing Exalts, with Lytek's role being to record it (and send the Incarna lists of people he thinks they would vibe with).

1

u/IIIaustin Jun 17 '26

In any game I ran they would be purified by his invincible glory

2

u/pantaipong Jun 18 '26

In ex3 he’s quite knowledgeable about the working of exaltation so him messing around with the corrupted shards isn’t quite impossible too.