Hundred Sages Focus

Cost: 6m; Mins: Lore 5, Essence 3
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Mute
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Bottomless Wellspring Approach

Duration: Instant Prerequisite Charms: Truth-Rendering Gaze With the wisdom of the ages flowing through her mind, the Solar's concentration can induce an epiphany. With a moment of intense observation of practically anything — a natural phenomena, geographical feature, architec¬tural feature, riddle, puzzle, and so on — the Lawgiver can name the Lore difficulty to introduce a fact about what she is observing, and the Lore background needed in order to make that roll. This Charm does not give the Solar knowledge she doesn't have — it can't turn a geol¬ogist into a student of ancient histories — but it does tell her where to begin her studies anew. On Hundred Sages Focus I came up with this Charm while preparing to run my own personal game of Exalted. As I was seeding the environment with deeply-seated lore and "unsolvable" mysteries, I started looking at the hidden histories of my game and deciding what it would take for our group's Lore Solar to crack those mysteries wide open. In my game notes I started tagging environmental features thusly: "geological formation: geology difficulty 3", "co¬lossal arm of blue stone sticking out of the mountain: ‘biography of the Celestial Incarnae' difficulty 10" and so on. In the former case, geology is the needed back¬ground or "Lore topic." The latter refers to a book in a library in Yu-Shan, of which there is no other copy, and which has never been to Creation. Whenever I contemplate running an Exalted game, I always consider which Charms my players are using and which Abilities they are going to be rolling, and then I fill out the structure of every night's gaming with a list of interesting Ability checks and opportunities to use said Charms. I seed the environment with difficult challeng¬es. For my friend the investigator, I create mysteries and leave evidence. For the Solar savant, I fill the game with wondrous lore. For the occult specialist, strange and un-canny mysteries that are outside Lore's purview. In essence, I build my personal games of Exalted around my players. This Charm is an outgrowth of that, allow¬ing a player to mine the hidden secrets from the setting, to find the presents I have buried for the whole Circle to stare at — in wonder, in horror. One last thing: Harmonious Academic Methodology increases the gamut of your Solar's knowledge. So if you find your Storyteller has placed a mystery in front of you that is outside your Solar's background, hit the library, conduct interviews at the local academy, quiz a Sidereal, put a spirit in a headlock and make them teach you — whatever it takes to expand your Solar's mind — and use that Charm whenever you can, so your Solar's knowledge grows voluminously.