I make the train jump the track like that
Jun. 18th, 2009 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
geebsOkay, there won't be too many more of these Exalted posts now that I'm done with the book.
Combat!- Comparing the solars and their demon and underworld brethren, the Death Knights, and Green Sun Princes, there's actually subtle differences in their combat styles. Solars are all "I am really powerful, here is a really powerful attack!" Their attack charm boosters are chock full of raw damage or attack success multipliers, throwing a lot of dice out there in an attempt to get past soak and cause damage.
Abyssals are somewhat similar, though a few of the mirrors, rather than increasing to hit or damage sux, instead cause nasty trait damage or crippling effects. So unlike the solar, they won't necessarily put you down with raw damage (though against mortals and weaker exalts, they can), but they can take their enemies out of the fight fast by lopping off/crushing limbs (if they can't fight back, there as good as defeated) or making them literally lose the will to fight, making them hollowed out shells of themselves.
Infernals, or rather the GSPs, work a little differently. With the whole charms based of Yozi instead of skills thing, there aren't straight analogs to the solar and abyssal attack charms. I mean, each yozi has attack charms, but Cecelyne and She Who Lives In Her Name's charms are actually more akin to sorcery, attacking with spell like effects. The Ebon Dragon's few attack charms are centered around cheap shots and dirty tricks. His charms can cause extra damage if they hit, or prevent the target from regaining health, essence, and/or willpower for the rest of the battle (which is not insignificant, between battles between exalts, stopping them from regaining health or motes is pretty bad).
But the charms most akin to the archery/ma/melee/thrown charms are those of Malfeas and Adorjan. Malfeas is all about unstoppable berzerker overkill, while Adorjan is of the "speed kills, yo!" school. And since Malfeas and Adorjan are all about killing, combat is obviously under their purview and their first excellencies apply. Well, with some caveats. Since Malfeas is about overkill, you MUST add at least half the maximum bonus dice to your attacks. As for Adorjan, she favors swift and sudden attacks. So her charm can modify surprise attacks and attacks that are part of flurries (so none of this attack once crap). But she also abhors attacks at range, so you can't modify archery and firewand attacks unless you're firing at point blank range.
But overall, Adorjan lets you hit fast and often, and Malfeas can do some nasty things to you if he manages to cause damage. The issue I see though is getting past soak and defense charms of high level exalts. Since they lack the dice multipliers the Solars get, it may be harder to punch through the defenses of exalts wearing super heavy plate with their defenses up, as they lack the charms (other than their excellencies) to boost their dice pool to get through and cause damage. Even with the whole doing at least your essence in damage for ping damage, you still have to at least beat their soak. The only thing in Adorjan or Malfeas' charm set to try and tackle this is Adorjan's Thousandfold Typhoon Hand to make an attack unexpected, and if part of a flurry only works for the first attack. Then again, maybe this is amgood thing, because the Malfean charms get really nasty if you do take damage.
I'd mentioned Green Sun Nimbus Flare as the "meat and potatoes" Malfean attack charm. One thing I failed to notice was that if the attack hits and does damage, it doesn't do additional dice of damage afterwards, it does additional LEVELS! Its starts out at a base 2l, but eventually becomes (your essence level)aggravated. Which makes the brands even more potent, because if they disobey, they're not risking taking a certain number of dice, they're risking actual damage. Amusingly enough, that is not the worst thing they can do to you. With Cold Fire Desolation brand, in addition to those levels they're infected with Green Sun Wasting, an extremely nasty and lethal disease. I guess another advantage is that it works against spirits and other incorporeal things (and kills them dead, dead, in a lesser number of charms than solars and abyssals have to get to not only hit dematerialized spirits, but actually truly kill them, not just blast them only to have them reform at a later date)
So Solars are all about ostentatious displays of skill and damage. Abyssals attacks are aimed on literally tearing their foes apart to put them out of a fight quick. GSPs hit pretty well, but not as well as their undead or lawgiver brethren can, but if they do manage to cause damage, the guaranteed levels make up for the less dice. Plus, while the Death Knights can cripple and take the opponent out quickly, the Green Sun Princes go the other way. With the infectious disease they cause, even if the victim manages to survive the fight, the disease puts them under an almost assured death sentence unless they're an exalt or have access to magical healing. (Even then, at higher levels the brand can infect the victim with a more virulent strain that's just as lethal to exalts)
Combat charm specifics- First, lets compare the excellencies. The Infernals first and second excellencies are more expensive and cost more xp. For Infernals, its 1 for 1 conversion of motes to dice, as opposed to the 1 mote for 2 bonus dice that Solars and Abyssals get. Accordingly, its 2 motes to buy a success on the second excellency, as opposed to the 1 for 1 solars/dks get. xp wise, Infernals must rebuy the first excellency a number of times as they're essence level. I.e. since they start with essence two, in character creation, if you want the first excellency, you have to expend 2 of the charms slots you get for it. And if you raised your essence to 3, there goes another slot. During actual play, when you raise your essence, you must buy the first again to match. While this does sound sucky, remember, its an excellency that applies to multiple things, not just the one skill it was purchased for with Solars and Abyssals. Take the Adorjan for example, it can apply to melee attacks, certain athletics and stealth checks, even certain social checks. So those two levels of first Adorjan excellency for the infernal is almost the equivalent of four or more different excellencies the other exalts have to purchase.
Weirdly enough, I think they didn't do the parallels right. The Yozi's third excellency, instead of allowing re-rolls, give a different bonus from stunts. Depending on the yozi, extra willpower or double the usual motes one gets from a stunt. But there's also (Yozi) inevitability technique, which I think is the closer parallel to the third excellency of the Solar/Abs- rather than giving a re-roll, take the better of the two, it permanently modifies the first excellency so that when one does that, they can also choose to spend a willpower, wherein the target number for a success on a die is reduced from 7 to 6. (How sidereal!)
The Yozis do get the "excellency as inate power rather than charm use so it doesn't count towards the number of charms one uses in an action" thing, just like their counterparts. But rather than having the "commit essence to a pool and you can spend up to the pool size number of motes on use of the excellencies for free", the Yozis get a "mote cost goes down by 1 with each use in a scene, cumulatively". So, after you use it 5 times, the activation is 5 less than it would be the next time.
Adorjan- swift death!- I talked about Malfeas' Green Sun Nimbus Flare, but Adorjan's go to combat charm is "Self as Cyclone Stance". Self as Cyclone is her extra action charm. But unlike the other combat extra action charms, these actions can be anything, not just the same type of attack. However, the weapon's rate limits are imposed (and in the case of infinite rate actions, they're reduced to a rate of 5)and its each extra attack imposes a cumulative -1.
I don't know how that compares to things like Peony Blossom or Iron Whirlwind. Cyclone costs 4m and 1 will power. Peony Blossom and its Abyssal equivalent, Unfurling Iron Lotus, allow the exalt to make essence+1 extra melee attacks, each attack costing 2 motes. However, these ignore weapon rate, and are at the full attack pool. Trance of Unhesitating Speed/Withering Feathered Maelstrom do the equivalent for archery attacks, though its 4m per attack if used with a firewand type weapon instead of a bow. Iron Whirlwind/Time Scything Technique cost 5 motes and 1 will, and allow the user to make dex+1 number of attacks.
Hmm, Cyclone allows more attacks than the other two, as you basically have as many attacks as your dice pool can sustain, though the whole not ignoring weapon rate does become a hassle- even though the Infernal can do more attacks, they can still only attack twice with the bigger daiklaives or grimcleavers or what have you. So the Solar/DK has a higher damage potential because they can attack more times with heavier weapons than the Infernal can though the Infernal get more actions. There is a Adorjan charm, "Dread Panoply of the Silent Wind", which lets the Infernal dismiss an essence number of weapons to elsewhere that can be reflexively recalled and dismissed later for a cost of a mote for each weapon recalled and used. And since the charm is only invoked to chain a weapon to be able to be reflexively dismissed and recalled and not for the actual dismissal and recollection it doesn't count toward charm use for that action, one could dismiss a couple of different heavy weapons, but than you have to pay all those attunement costs. So that's a moot point. Cyclone's benefit seems to be in allowing non attack actions in addition to attacks, and even though it gives potentially more actions, they're limited by weapon rates, so again, the solar/DK can put out a heavier damage output with their extra action charms since they can go beyond the low rates of the heavier weapons, if they use those.
D-Fens!- The perfect defense of the Infernals are both better and worse than those of the Solars and Abyssals. Solar and Abyssal perfect defenses have one of the four flaws of invulnerability, and upon purchasing a perfect defense charm, it must have one of those flaws, based on one of the 4 virtues. One can get the same charm again with a different flaw, but you can only get it twice. You can never get the same charm for all four flaws so you can pick and choose which flaw you want to apply to it depending on the situation. But, you can get other perfect defenses with different flaws. So if a certain flaw applies, you may have another perfect defense that applies not vulnerable to the current situation.
For the Abyssals- the compassion flaw is that they can't use it if a person they have a positive intimacy for (they're abyssals, why would they have such a intimacy?!) or who they BELIEVE holds a positive intimacy towards them is around. Conviction, they can't use it if they're doing an action that runs contrary to their motivation. Temperance, they have to attack whoever attacked them until their DV refreshes, while Valor, they have to get as far away as possible from the attacker until their DV refreshes.
Infernal perfect defenses don't suffer from such silly flaws, but their perfect defenses do have a real specific weakness that can be exploited. Malfean perfect defenses only work in "areas cultivated for living", though even the crappiest primitive village counts. So they're fine fighting in a city or slaughtering a village, but in the open plains? Cecelyne is all about might makes right, which means acquiescing to those mightier than her as well. So, her perfect defenses do not work against attacks from folks who have two essence levels or higher than the defender. Which is a pretty dangerous flaw, as it seems like its attacks from those that much more powerful than you are the ones you really want to defend against. Same with the Ebon Dragon's, that don't work against Holy attacks. Which, given the infernal is a demon, is very likely to be attacked by goody goodies with such attacks. That's great!
She Who Lives In Her Name, always get to use hers, but at a cost. If the attack is enhanced by a charm or supernatural effect the infernal has never encountered, it costs 5 more motes. So against someone you've never encountered before, there is the potential to hemorrhage essence fast. Also, even if you have encountered every charm in a combo used against you, unless you've seen that actual combo, the extra cost still applies. Which again, is a pain as its against combos you often need perfect defenses for. There is one benefit though. Because SWLIHN represents law (as in "the way things work", i.e., the laws of the universe) her defense trumps chaos entirely, and doesn't have to pay extra against Wyld attacks.
Finally, Adorjan, as long as the Infernal keeps dashing, they're invincible. Moving in quick circles doesn't count- the Infernal has to be at least as far away from their starting position as a move action will take them. Which is usually 2 yards, despite how ridiculously fast their dashing speed gets. At first, I thought, NBD, particularly since they're charms allow them to run on anything, in any plane of reference, and fly. So its hard to limit their movement. But I forgot about someone doing the whole Marv from Sin City thing that he did against Kevin, chaining himself to Kevin so he couldn't move away. So, a freedom stone is a must for a Scourge or other Adorjan favoring Infernal. Then someone else brought up the tricking the Infernal into following someone into a small cell.
I guess such a person could work on both Malfean and Adorjan charms (as I believe the majority of Infernal fighter types would do) and get the Malfean perfect as well, because if they're in a place where small rooms were hewn into the rock, I think that counts as a "developed place" for Mafleas' weakness. Though I supposed the Infernal would still run into trouble in caves.
Essence regaining- I was wondering why the essence recovery attack charms gave only one mote per successful attack as opposed to the large amount abyssals get with their Ravening Mouth charms or special martial arts charm that let them get the motes their soulsteel weapons stripped away. But I forgot unlike Abyssals, Infernals respire essence in creation just fine. Still, the Adorjan "Murder is Meat" charm is kinda cool. They basically kill a bunch of things, and get an essence for each kill. (it has to be either sentient beings or animals no smaller than them) Even darker, this takes the place of sustenance. Instead of foraging for food or water, they just butcher a bunch of things and the glee of killing sustains them.
Speaking of the insanity of Adorjan Infernals, they do get an amusing perfect social defense wherein if someone makes a social attack on them, they counter and defend by just laughing maniacally like some kind of crazy person.
Misc- I do like the opening comic of Infernals. Its along the same lines of the Abyssal one, where Maiden of the Mirthless Smile (the signature Dusk) and The Seven Degreed Physician of Black Maladies (the signature Daybreak) are besieging an outpost, and after the Physician bombards the place with weird Abyssal weaponry, the Maiden rushes in and slaughters the inhabitants effortlessly and mercilessly. The Infernal one is slightly cooler. It starts with Cearr (the Malfean signature character) on an enemy airship. He's already slaughtered the majority of its defenders, and after he's killed all he can see, he jumps off and gets clear. The airship is apparently defending some sort of encampment around an excavation site. A nameless akuma is telling Captain Gyrfalcon (the signature Scourge) about all the troops at the encampment, so he just has them shoot the airship down (since Cearr is clear) with his ships Mammoreal cannon, so that it crashes into the encampment and takes out the majority of defenders so they'll be easy pickings for his demon sky pirate crew. After the slaughtering is done, Cearr shows back up, having apparently killed and eaten a couple of Dragonbloods who survived the airship crash.
I wish they had more of these stories. I'd like to see an Abyssal/Infernal team up. After all, I think they're fine with working each other on short term things, they just have different end games. But again, attacking creation suits them both. So working together against a particularly difficult city or land might be interesting.
Combat!- Comparing the solars and their demon and underworld brethren, the Death Knights, and Green Sun Princes, there's actually subtle differences in their combat styles. Solars are all "I am really powerful, here is a really powerful attack!" Their attack charm boosters are chock full of raw damage or attack success multipliers, throwing a lot of dice out there in an attempt to get past soak and cause damage.
Abyssals are somewhat similar, though a few of the mirrors, rather than increasing to hit or damage sux, instead cause nasty trait damage or crippling effects. So unlike the solar, they won't necessarily put you down with raw damage (though against mortals and weaker exalts, they can), but they can take their enemies out of the fight fast by lopping off/crushing limbs (if they can't fight back, there as good as defeated) or making them literally lose the will to fight, making them hollowed out shells of themselves.
Infernals, or rather the GSPs, work a little differently. With the whole charms based of Yozi instead of skills thing, there aren't straight analogs to the solar and abyssal attack charms. I mean, each yozi has attack charms, but Cecelyne and She Who Lives In Her Name's charms are actually more akin to sorcery, attacking with spell like effects. The Ebon Dragon's few attack charms are centered around cheap shots and dirty tricks. His charms can cause extra damage if they hit, or prevent the target from regaining health, essence, and/or willpower for the rest of the battle (which is not insignificant, between battles between exalts, stopping them from regaining health or motes is pretty bad).
But the charms most akin to the archery/ma/melee/thrown charms are those of Malfeas and Adorjan. Malfeas is all about unstoppable berzerker overkill, while Adorjan is of the "speed kills, yo!" school. And since Malfeas and Adorjan are all about killing, combat is obviously under their purview and their first excellencies apply. Well, with some caveats. Since Malfeas is about overkill, you MUST add at least half the maximum bonus dice to your attacks. As for Adorjan, she favors swift and sudden attacks. So her charm can modify surprise attacks and attacks that are part of flurries (so none of this attack once crap). But she also abhors attacks at range, so you can't modify archery and firewand attacks unless you're firing at point blank range.
But overall, Adorjan lets you hit fast and often, and Malfeas can do some nasty things to you if he manages to cause damage. The issue I see though is getting past soak and defense charms of high level exalts. Since they lack the dice multipliers the Solars get, it may be harder to punch through the defenses of exalts wearing super heavy plate with their defenses up, as they lack the charms (other than their excellencies) to boost their dice pool to get through and cause damage. Even with the whole doing at least your essence in damage for ping damage, you still have to at least beat their soak. The only thing in Adorjan or Malfeas' charm set to try and tackle this is Adorjan's Thousandfold Typhoon Hand to make an attack unexpected, and if part of a flurry only works for the first attack. Then again, maybe this is amgood thing, because the Malfean charms get really nasty if you do take damage.
I'd mentioned Green Sun Nimbus Flare as the "meat and potatoes" Malfean attack charm. One thing I failed to notice was that if the attack hits and does damage, it doesn't do additional dice of damage afterwards, it does additional LEVELS! Its starts out at a base 2l, but eventually becomes (your essence level)aggravated. Which makes the brands even more potent, because if they disobey, they're not risking taking a certain number of dice, they're risking actual damage. Amusingly enough, that is not the worst thing they can do to you. With Cold Fire Desolation brand, in addition to those levels they're infected with Green Sun Wasting, an extremely nasty and lethal disease. I guess another advantage is that it works against spirits and other incorporeal things (and kills them dead, dead, in a lesser number of charms than solars and abyssals have to get to not only hit dematerialized spirits, but actually truly kill them, not just blast them only to have them reform at a later date)
So Solars are all about ostentatious displays of skill and damage. Abyssals attacks are aimed on literally tearing their foes apart to put them out of a fight quick. GSPs hit pretty well, but not as well as their undead or lawgiver brethren can, but if they do manage to cause damage, the guaranteed levels make up for the less dice. Plus, while the Death Knights can cripple and take the opponent out quickly, the Green Sun Princes go the other way. With the infectious disease they cause, even if the victim manages to survive the fight, the disease puts them under an almost assured death sentence unless they're an exalt or have access to magical healing. (Even then, at higher levels the brand can infect the victim with a more virulent strain that's just as lethal to exalts)
Combat charm specifics- First, lets compare the excellencies. The Infernals first and second excellencies are more expensive and cost more xp. For Infernals, its 1 for 1 conversion of motes to dice, as opposed to the 1 mote for 2 bonus dice that Solars and Abyssals get. Accordingly, its 2 motes to buy a success on the second excellency, as opposed to the 1 for 1 solars/dks get. xp wise, Infernals must rebuy the first excellency a number of times as they're essence level. I.e. since they start with essence two, in character creation, if you want the first excellency, you have to expend 2 of the charms slots you get for it. And if you raised your essence to 3, there goes another slot. During actual play, when you raise your essence, you must buy the first again to match. While this does sound sucky, remember, its an excellency that applies to multiple things, not just the one skill it was purchased for with Solars and Abyssals. Take the Adorjan for example, it can apply to melee attacks, certain athletics and stealth checks, even certain social checks. So those two levels of first Adorjan excellency for the infernal is almost the equivalent of four or more different excellencies the other exalts have to purchase.
Weirdly enough, I think they didn't do the parallels right. The Yozi's third excellency, instead of allowing re-rolls, give a different bonus from stunts. Depending on the yozi, extra willpower or double the usual motes one gets from a stunt. But there's also (Yozi) inevitability technique, which I think is the closer parallel to the third excellency of the Solar/Abs- rather than giving a re-roll, take the better of the two, it permanently modifies the first excellency so that when one does that, they can also choose to spend a willpower, wherein the target number for a success on a die is reduced from 7 to 6. (How sidereal!)
The Yozis do get the "excellency as inate power rather than charm use so it doesn't count towards the number of charms one uses in an action" thing, just like their counterparts. But rather than having the "commit essence to a pool and you can spend up to the pool size number of motes on use of the excellencies for free", the Yozis get a "mote cost goes down by 1 with each use in a scene, cumulatively". So, after you use it 5 times, the activation is 5 less than it would be the next time.
Adorjan- swift death!- I talked about Malfeas' Green Sun Nimbus Flare, but Adorjan's go to combat charm is "Self as Cyclone Stance". Self as Cyclone is her extra action charm. But unlike the other combat extra action charms, these actions can be anything, not just the same type of attack. However, the weapon's rate limits are imposed (and in the case of infinite rate actions, they're reduced to a rate of 5)and its each extra attack imposes a cumulative -1.
I don't know how that compares to things like Peony Blossom or Iron Whirlwind. Cyclone costs 4m and 1 will power. Peony Blossom and its Abyssal equivalent, Unfurling Iron Lotus, allow the exalt to make essence+1 extra melee attacks, each attack costing 2 motes. However, these ignore weapon rate, and are at the full attack pool. Trance of Unhesitating Speed/Withering Feathered Maelstrom do the equivalent for archery attacks, though its 4m per attack if used with a firewand type weapon instead of a bow. Iron Whirlwind/Time Scything Technique cost 5 motes and 1 will, and allow the user to make dex+1 number of attacks.
Hmm, Cyclone allows more attacks than the other two, as you basically have as many attacks as your dice pool can sustain, though the whole not ignoring weapon rate does become a hassle- even though the Infernal can do more attacks, they can still only attack twice with the bigger daiklaives or grimcleavers or what have you. So the Solar/DK has a higher damage potential because they can attack more times with heavier weapons than the Infernal can though the Infernal get more actions. There is a Adorjan charm, "Dread Panoply of the Silent Wind", which lets the Infernal dismiss an essence number of weapons to elsewhere that can be reflexively recalled and dismissed later for a cost of a mote for each weapon recalled and used. And since the charm is only invoked to chain a weapon to be able to be reflexively dismissed and recalled and not for the actual dismissal and recollection it doesn't count toward charm use for that action, one could dismiss a couple of different heavy weapons, but than you have to pay all those attunement costs. So that's a moot point. Cyclone's benefit seems to be in allowing non attack actions in addition to attacks, and even though it gives potentially more actions, they're limited by weapon rates, so again, the solar/DK can put out a heavier damage output with their extra action charms since they can go beyond the low rates of the heavier weapons, if they use those.
D-Fens!- The perfect defense of the Infernals are both better and worse than those of the Solars and Abyssals. Solar and Abyssal perfect defenses have one of the four flaws of invulnerability, and upon purchasing a perfect defense charm, it must have one of those flaws, based on one of the 4 virtues. One can get the same charm again with a different flaw, but you can only get it twice. You can never get the same charm for all four flaws so you can pick and choose which flaw you want to apply to it depending on the situation. But, you can get other perfect defenses with different flaws. So if a certain flaw applies, you may have another perfect defense that applies not vulnerable to the current situation.
For the Abyssals- the compassion flaw is that they can't use it if a person they have a positive intimacy for (they're abyssals, why would they have such a intimacy?!) or who they BELIEVE holds a positive intimacy towards them is around. Conviction, they can't use it if they're doing an action that runs contrary to their motivation. Temperance, they have to attack whoever attacked them until their DV refreshes, while Valor, they have to get as far away as possible from the attacker until their DV refreshes.
Infernal perfect defenses don't suffer from such silly flaws, but their perfect defenses do have a real specific weakness that can be exploited. Malfean perfect defenses only work in "areas cultivated for living", though even the crappiest primitive village counts. So they're fine fighting in a city or slaughtering a village, but in the open plains? Cecelyne is all about might makes right, which means acquiescing to those mightier than her as well. So, her perfect defenses do not work against attacks from folks who have two essence levels or higher than the defender. Which is a pretty dangerous flaw, as it seems like its attacks from those that much more powerful than you are the ones you really want to defend against. Same with the Ebon Dragon's, that don't work against Holy attacks. Which, given the infernal is a demon, is very likely to be attacked by goody goodies with such attacks. That's great!
She Who Lives In Her Name, always get to use hers, but at a cost. If the attack is enhanced by a charm or supernatural effect the infernal has never encountered, it costs 5 more motes. So against someone you've never encountered before, there is the potential to hemorrhage essence fast. Also, even if you have encountered every charm in a combo used against you, unless you've seen that actual combo, the extra cost still applies. Which again, is a pain as its against combos you often need perfect defenses for. There is one benefit though. Because SWLIHN represents law (as in "the way things work", i.e., the laws of the universe) her defense trumps chaos entirely, and doesn't have to pay extra against Wyld attacks.
Finally, Adorjan, as long as the Infernal keeps dashing, they're invincible. Moving in quick circles doesn't count- the Infernal has to be at least as far away from their starting position as a move action will take them. Which is usually 2 yards, despite how ridiculously fast their dashing speed gets. At first, I thought, NBD, particularly since they're charms allow them to run on anything, in any plane of reference, and fly. So its hard to limit their movement. But I forgot about someone doing the whole Marv from Sin City thing that he did against Kevin, chaining himself to Kevin so he couldn't move away. So, a freedom stone is a must for a Scourge or other Adorjan favoring Infernal. Then someone else brought up the tricking the Infernal into following someone into a small cell.
I guess such a person could work on both Malfean and Adorjan charms (as I believe the majority of Infernal fighter types would do) and get the Malfean perfect as well, because if they're in a place where small rooms were hewn into the rock, I think that counts as a "developed place" for Mafleas' weakness. Though I supposed the Infernal would still run into trouble in caves.
Essence regaining- I was wondering why the essence recovery attack charms gave only one mote per successful attack as opposed to the large amount abyssals get with their Ravening Mouth charms or special martial arts charm that let them get the motes their soulsteel weapons stripped away. But I forgot unlike Abyssals, Infernals respire essence in creation just fine. Still, the Adorjan "Murder is Meat" charm is kinda cool. They basically kill a bunch of things, and get an essence for each kill. (it has to be either sentient beings or animals no smaller than them) Even darker, this takes the place of sustenance. Instead of foraging for food or water, they just butcher a bunch of things and the glee of killing sustains them.
Speaking of the insanity of Adorjan Infernals, they do get an amusing perfect social defense wherein if someone makes a social attack on them, they counter and defend by just laughing maniacally like some kind of crazy person.
Misc- I do like the opening comic of Infernals. Its along the same lines of the Abyssal one, where Maiden of the Mirthless Smile (the signature Dusk) and The Seven Degreed Physician of Black Maladies (the signature Daybreak) are besieging an outpost, and after the Physician bombards the place with weird Abyssal weaponry, the Maiden rushes in and slaughters the inhabitants effortlessly and mercilessly. The Infernal one is slightly cooler. It starts with Cearr (the Malfean signature character) on an enemy airship. He's already slaughtered the majority of its defenders, and after he's killed all he can see, he jumps off and gets clear. The airship is apparently defending some sort of encampment around an excavation site. A nameless akuma is telling Captain Gyrfalcon (the signature Scourge) about all the troops at the encampment, so he just has them shoot the airship down (since Cearr is clear) with his ships Mammoreal cannon, so that it crashes into the encampment and takes out the majority of defenders so they'll be easy pickings for his demon sky pirate crew. After the slaughtering is done, Cearr shows back up, having apparently killed and eaten a couple of Dragonbloods who survived the airship crash.
I wish they had more of these stories. I'd like to see an Abyssal/Infernal team up. After all, I think they're fine with working each other on short term things, they just have different end games. But again, attacking creation suits them both. So working together against a particularly difficult city or land might be interesting.
