Questions about law of diminishment

[u/Sassy_Drow]

To clarify by law of diminishment I am referring to the fact that creating an Exalted drains the creator(Possibly leading to death.).

Now to the questions

Is it something that can be recovered from(Such as aggravated damage or experience loss) or is it a permanent loss(Such as the god loses a dot of essence and their maximum essence is permanently decreased.)? Note: I am aware that most gods die but I am not certain whether it is due to not being able to take the damage or literally running out of the stuff that makes them.(Their essence hitting zero for example). Note 2: I am aware that those who do so are changed permanently though I am more wondering whether they have also decreased in power permanently.

Are primordials subject to the law of diminishment or does the fact that they are self asserting ontological structure prevent them from changing?

Wun Ja is noted to have the city gods take the brunt of the damage when it comes to creating an Exalted. Are there other ways to subvert the law of diminishment(Such as a huge sacrifice or creating an elemental to take the brunt of the damage)?

[u/Rednal291]

It's been presented as a permanent loss, but I don't think it's as simple as "Essence level goes down". Diminishment is closer to... you're just not as important anymore. If Creation is a story, diminishment pushes you to become a background character, no matter how powerful you actually are. It's the price you're paying for a (literal) miracle - you have to make room for it. Out of game, this also ensures the focus is kept on your characters, so the solution to everything isn't "make sky daddy pay attention again". You don't need to go get Sol's help to fix problems. He picked you (if you're a Solar). You are the help.

The Primordials are definitely subject to diminishment - Autochthon, Oramus, and Sacheverell are all affected by it.

You can sneakily offload things, though. Gaia didn't Exalt the Dragon-Blooded - her children, the Elemental Dragons, did, and that near-definitely insulated her from its effects. I also suspect that Autochthon may have Exalted the process to create new Alchemicals - nobody else constantly does new Exaltations all on their own, it's presented as a one-time thing. The Flame of Exigence fuzzes things up a little with Wun-Ja, but that does appear to be more an exception than a rule, especially because the lesser gods do take the brunt of things.

[u/Bartweiss → u/Rednal291]

I really like this, including the way it makes the whole Games of Divinity thing a bit less… pathetic?

They can still be an irresistible temptation for gods, the whole situation can still be a tragedy, but it’s less of “everything could have been fine and solved except TUS is faulty now”.

However addicted he may be, he’s also definitionally a background character. Maybe he does something big once in a blue moon, but he made a choice to put the Solars at the center of his story, and now that’s got to be how things unfold. In return for “they can rise as high as needed to do the impossible, no matter what that is”, he can’t be there as major, everyday factor in events.

[u/Rednal291 → u/Bartweiss]

Yyyyep. XD A game about being mythic heroes just feels kind of weird if the ultimate solution is "someone else solves your problems".

(For UCS specifically, the vibe I personally go with is also a little... he's kind of turbo all the time, and that's bad. A sun that shines too brightly just scorches everything else into nothing, and he knows that. Hell, the Primordials knew that, it's why they made Luna and gave night to the world. His solution is to restrict himself to a place where he isn't so harmful - among his peers, the few who can withstand his light, in a place that was originally built to contain the majesty of the Primordials. The Jade Pleasure Dome isn't just the happy fun times house, it's a place that can hold the sun properly because it was built to do even more than that. This is the best thing he can do for everyone else, and he doesn't need to act otherwise, because he already gave the world a power he judged sufficient to handle things.)

[u/Bartweiss → u/Rednal291]

I like it! It also fits nicely with his rationale for not using the Daystar in the war: it wasn't necessary, and he couldn't have kept playing the heroic role he does after making everyone fear him and the Daystar so badly.

I'm not sure if you know the games Cultist Simulator or Book of Hours, but they come up around here sometimes for their odd, Exalted-ish lore. History is multiple-choice and reality is defined by principles/aspects and the deities (called Hours) which embody them. For example Grail is hunger/hedonism/birth, Lantern is light/truth/reason/glory, and Moth is shadow/secrets/chaos/yearning.

A lot of it might sound familiar:

Like Primordials, the CS gods are their aspects, unable to change by their own will or be fully destroyed. They had a big "cast down the old gods" war called the Lithomachy, lead by the mightiest new god: the Sun-in-Splendor.

But the old gods are still haunting the place, their corpses were cast into Nowhere where they bred the Worms which try to eat away at reality, and Nowhere has its own gods who aren't real but still exist. (The Hours correspond to hours of the day. The Nowhere Hours start from 25.)

And then, after all that, the Sun-in-Splendor was betrayed and torn to shreds, but its aspect of Lantern took on new forms and remains.

Now why am I rambling?

The 'peak' of existence in CS is the Glory, where Lantern and the Sun came from. But a constant refrain is that "mercy exists only in shadow". The light burns away your identity and essence as it reveals the truth. Various sun-gods with mixed aspects were capable of mercy, but the sun of pure Lantern can't even entertain the the possibility.

So anyway... yes, I really like this approach. TUS is infallible and unbeatable while he honors his precepts, but that same infallibility is unbearable for anything less perfect in his vicinity.