In today's episode, I will cover Swallows of the South.
Disclaimers
There are a few important disclaimers to get out of the way before we start.
First of all, I understand this was a fan project and should be judged accordingly. I am thankful for the effort the cast has put into entertaining us with their stories, but there will be some criticism of the podcast present.
Secondly, any criticism made against the characters portrayed or how the game played out should not be held as criticism or insults of the game master or the players. Not everyone is perfect and sometimes something doesn’t work out or falls flat in execution. It’s important to keep the art separate from the artist and focus on the former without being disrespectful to the latter.
Thirdly, since I’m also a part of an RPG Actual Play Podcast that features Exalted games, I might be biased towards one interpretation and way of handling things in Exalted that might not agree with how others view and play the game, that’s to be expected. That and some might see criticising other podcasts a conflict of interest or something, so here is your disclaimer.
Finally, there will be some spoilers for the show, it would be rather hard to discuss some things without that...
Overview and minor things
Swallows of the South is an Exalted podcast hosted by @MonkipiQuinn. The game features a shifting cast of Exalts and could generally be divided into two phases - early seasons with Godwin, Ajax and Ariston having adventures in the town of Djao Wei, and late seasons where Golden Might of the Dawn, Ashen Mask and Rizzo travel the world looking to acquire artefacts to stop Ray of Morning Sunlight from enacting his sorcerous workings.
The series takes the form of an audio-only podcast that has been truncated to 30-60 minute episodes devoid of much out of character talk, counting dice, etc. While early episodes do suffer a bit from lower audio quality, most of the series is not only a treat to listen to, but also an actual play that respects your time.
From what I understand the cast consists of professional improv / voice actors, which enhances the experience. The players also voice some minor NPCs throughout the series, which adds to the charm even further.
Player Characters
https://swallowsofthesouth.com/about-the-characters/
The game had a shifting cast of players and characters. Here are the most important ones for reference:
Godwin Corelli II - a Zenith performer and a musician, son of Lucinda Corelli, the titular Swallow of the South.
Ajax Ford - a Twilight investigator, living in the shadow of his parents, heroes of the city of Djao Wei
Ariston - a Twilight occultist and healer, an exiled nobleman of the mer-people
Rizzo - a Zenith sorceress, often seen with her wolf, Qui Gon Gin ‘N Juice
Golden Might of the Dawn (or just Goldie) - a Dawn fighter, a very bubbly and upbeat character, travelling with her familiars - Believing (a mouse), Loving (a bear) and Mercy (a lion)
Ashen Mask - a Night smooth talking thief and scoundrel
General Plot
The plot of the game, as mentioned earlier, can generally be split into two parts - the earlier parts of the game that is mostly spent in the city of Djao Wei, and the later parts where the party starts travelling the world in search for powerful artefacts to stop Ray of Morning Sunlight from enacting his sorcerous workings. Of course, things tend to weave in and out a bit with the group leaving and coming back to Djao Weir multiple times and the idols appearing throughout the story.
As mentioned before, there will be some spoilers ahead for what’s going on in the game, but the main focus is on highlighting the kinds of things you can expect listening to the podcast.
Highlights
High production value
Swallows, perhaps out of all the Exalted podcasts I listen to, has the highest production value. The podcast features good quality audio, the voice talent for a lot of characters, PC and NPC alike, is very good, etc. However most importantly perhaps, the episodes are edited down to 30-60 minutes to respect your time, cut out table talk, dice rolling, counting, etc. Kudos to the team for going the extra mile for everyone’s enjoyment!
Good content disclaimers
The podcast creator is very diligent about giving content disclaimers for more traumatic topics that appear in the show, which is a nice touch for those that need it.
Good NPCs
This podcast features a very colourful cast of named NPCs, and a swath of unnamed mooks that still bring fun when they’re around. It’s fun to hear the players lend their voices to some throwaway characters for the fun of it of course, but some of the normal NPCs just steal the show.
Let’s start with the secondary roles. I really liked Ru of the Resplendent Lacquered Wood, the god of the Smiling Eyes District, all meek and frazzled, Shermie the immortal sorcerous frog the PCs loved to abuse, Believing the familiar mouse, who started off as a brave scrappy character and over time picked up bad attitude from other NPCs and started embarrassing everyone with his foul language, and finally Yorglip the “hot goss guy”. The last one was introduced as a throwaway NPC in the north that trades the PCs some gossip, but he was played with such intensity and commitment to the role that it became one of the crew’s favourite recurring NPCs.
For the bigger NPCs that I enjoyed, I would have to name Forlorn Aria and Seven Symphonious Cords.
Aria was introduced as the queen of the river pirates which Godwin managed to hit off with, romance (despite her having a partner already), and convince to join the PC’s side. She and Godwin then became the Lovers of Djao Wei (rulers and liaisons to gods), which came at a price of a curse. When Godwin turned out to not be too interested in politics, she had to take the burden on by herself. Later when Godwin tried patching things up after a longer hiatus, she just gave him a deserved cold shoulder and explained why she wasn’t interested in him anymore. That and a few other things where she was sticking up for the interests of her people in contrast to what the PCs were focusing on really made her come across like a fleshed out character that lived her life independent of the PCs and their plots.
Seven Symphonious Cords was introduced as a local crime lord - running a gambling parlour, dealing in looted idols, etc. The PCs didn’t trust him one bit even before he turned out to be an Abyssal, but they had to rely on his help to fight off the Realm’s army. He wanted to create a permanent shadowland in the city so that the ghosts could easily interact with the living and offer them the knowledge and culture that would otherwise be lost to the ages. The PCs didn’t like the sound of that, they didn’t want to disrupt the local culture and didn’t like the idea of ghosts. This default negative attitude towards the Abyssals seems to be the norm for a lot of Solars in games (as we’ll see more of that when I take an in-depth look at ExalTwitch…). However, kudos to the game master for actually putting more depth to the character, despite the PCs’ hostile attitudes. Later on in the game the characters learn of his strong positive intimacies towards the city (which were actually hinted at seasons earlier but nobody picked up on them due to their animosity towards him...) and that he wants what is best for it. Because of that, despite their old prejudices against him, the PCs put him forward to be the successor in ruling the city, making Aria step down from her position.
Those two character arks really stood out to me, despite being so low-key in the grand scheme of things.
Calling out a bad influence
Throughout the series the character of Godwin was a bit of a shitty person (more on that later). He was also a musical prodigy with a famous musician for a mother, so he was the only character with a fan cult.
This isn’t unusual in Exalted games and is even a default for Godbound (a system that’s basically Exalted with serial numbers filed off we used for many of our games). Between the various games I’ve played and listened to I’ve come across some 20+ different cults like that, while Swallows was probably the only game to call a PC out for possibly being a bad influence on their people, which was refreshing!
The game didn’t dwell on it and Godwin being a bad influence on the cult was explicitly called out only long after the character retired from the game, but it was still a neat titbit to give the GM props for.
Lunch at Madam Fey’s
Halfway through the first (proper) season of Swallows we were introduced to a fun segment called “Lunch at Madam Fey’s”. It was a more free-form recording where the PCs got to hang out with an NPC in a tea house and goof off. Those interactions were non-canon, but still fun to listen to, also serving as a warm-up for the crew before the recording proper.
Unfortunately, a good number of them, especially early on, devolved into Godwin getting drunk and arguing about putting the alcohol on Ariston’s tab, which often overshadowed whatever interesting guest they might be having that day. This happened on more than one occasion, to the point it was getting tiring...
Standing up to OPP
During the run of the game some shady things from OPP came to light, and to Quinn’s credit he didn’t stay quiet about them, instead addressing them clearly during an intro to two of his episodes. Being open about such things and standing up for the developers is both commendable and rare, especially since it could threaten the future of the series. I respect that a lot.
Wrapping up the game rather than dropping it
From what I understand, towards the end of the game the main players that have been around for the whole game had to drop out in rapid succession, which threatened the future of the series. Luckily for us, the podcast managed to find some replacement talent that turned out to be really good. It’s really good to see a creator deciding to create a satisfying ending to the game, rather than letting it fizzle out and stop midway through a story.
Criticism
Swallows of the South was not a game without its flaws, or at least things that I didn’t enjoy while watching the show. Some of them will be down to personal preference, understandably.
Godwin
Swallows of the South is not without its faults though. A good deal of them unfortunately seem to revolve around the character of Godwin. I would like to once again remind you that my critique of characters and their actions should not reflect on the players portraying those characters. Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes we try playing a character one way that comes off different from what we had in mind, etc. With that out of the way…
The game started with a prelude where we met with Godwin, Ajax and Rizzo. Unfortunately, Rizzo’s player had to leave the show for a long time, so some other characters had to be brought in - Flowing Delta, a Dawn mercenary, which eventually got replaced by Ariston for a longer period of time.
This lead to a problem. Godwin seemed to be buddies with and trust Ajax and Rizzo, and the other characters that were brought in were treated by him as “outsiders” - people that weren’t originally part of the group. Flowing Delta helped them do a run for a split of profits, and Godwin repeatedly was trying to change the payout split. Finally, when Ariston joined the group, Godwin wouldn’t trust them for a long time and repeatedly insult him due to being “a fish person”, repeatedly getting drunk on his tab at “the tea house part of the episode” (to the point it became the main focus of multiple tea house sessions, detracting from anything else that was going on), etc. Heck, in the second episode of Ragaras and River Pirates when the Realm soldiers evict Godwin’s entire neighbourhood Ariston takes not only Godwin in, but also Godwin’s neighbour and crush Lucy, along with her entire family into his house and Godwin still has the audacity to complain about the house not being to his liking. In general, the character came off as a bully, which isn’t fun to listen to for seasons at a time…
Beyond that, some of Godwin’s character beats feel like they are from someone newer to roleplaying. First one comes during the Ragaras and River Pirates season he fights a Ragara Vijay, a Dragonblooded that came to essentially take the town over, called Godwin an anathema and set fire to the city. After the fight, he just sulks and mopes dramatically over it, how now he’s a killer and nothing is the same, and he keeps bringing it up for seasons on end.
The second questionable thing comes when Godwin decides to become the ruler of the city. In the story that involved the two current Lovers of the city to step down, for Godwin and his partner, Forlorn Aria (a former pirate queen that was the town’s enemy and then rescuer) to take on a few years of a curse for the Lovers breaking their curse, and then taking on the duties as the Lovers. However, as it turned out, Godwin wasn’t a very politically minded person, so that plot didn’t amount to much and Aria had to take over governing the city herself...
Some small payoff did come from all of that during Homecoming season when people became fed up with Godwin’s whinging. His former partner gave him the cold shoulder for making her break up with her old partner and getting roped into being the Lover and having to take on all the responsibilities herself, Tougi the Lovers’ advisor tears him down for the failed political stuff, and he finally gets punched by Ariston for calling him a fish person one too many times. Kudos for that at least, even if it took a few seasons to get there.
Not engaging other peoples’ philosophies
Exalted is a game that in theory can lend itself to debating about different world views and philosophies. Swallows did present a few of these problems to the players - the Realm wanted to force the city of Djao Wei to open its trade routes, Seven Symphoneous Cords wanted to integrate ghosts into the city, Ragara Samir and his people helped to rebuild the city and build schools, Bull of the North was locked in an ancient war, and Ray of Morning Sunlight had some qualms about Sol Invictus and his responsibilities to Creation. All of these could be an interesting excuse to engage with the different worldviews and re-examine one’s own assumptions, but most of them boiled down to the players declaring one side as being in the wrong and not engaging in their way of thinking.
This is perhaps the way with a lot of Exalted games, but at the same time it’s very reductive. Heck, as mentioned before, this way of thinking made the PCs not realise Seven Symphoneous Cords had the city’s best intentions in mind until the last season of the game because “he’s an Abyssal and a crime lord and ghosts will ruin Djao Wei’s culture”.
Large fetch quest
The core narrative of the game was ultimately a large fetch quest to find twelve magical idols. Personally I’m not a fan of such rigidly defined goals for Exalted games, but it’s an understandable way to keep the players moving in a cohesive direction if they can’t direct the story themselves. Especially seeing how Godwin handled the plotline of becoming a Lover and not having a follow-through, this might’ve been the best approach. This structure was also helpful with the changing cast of characters. Obtaining individual idols was also often an interesting set piece to a season.
But with all that being said, the very large number of idols (twelve) meant the crew wouldn’t interact with all of them before the game had to end. A few of them have been a bit rushed along to arrive, and about half were in possession of Ray at the end of the game. Moreover, it turned out that it didn’t matter whether the party had just one of them or half, the final ritual started as soon as they brought the idols close to the final showdown (which I understand was more interesting than it not going through, but still!).
So overall this plotline lead to some interesting moments, even if the overarching goal was a rather boring concept.
Spanky
Sometimes shows put out a more goofy episode out and that’s fine. Swallows did release a Halloween special during their run of the series which was played using the Dread system, while still being canonical to the main game. The episode was focused on a group of characters being stalked by one of the main antagonists of the series, Meijin “the spider lady” (guessing a Getimian Exalted). One of the characters there was Spanky the Butcher, portrayed by a guest to the show. Since the episode was a bit more light-hearted and even goofy, the character wasn’t too jarring there. However, that wasn’t all we saw of Spanky.
See, Spanky managed to survive the scenario and secure one of the idols the main group was questing for, so it was bound to either get picked up by the PCs, or by Ray. The former was picked, so it was time for Spanky to make a guest appearance during one of the normal episodes.
What followed was about half an episode of the regular group interacting with someone that came off like a mix between Borat and Edgar the Bug, one or two intelligent doors and a joke “riddle” thing that was just nonsensical throughout. That whole sequence was rather bizarre and rather tonally out of place for anything save for say, a Fae trying to pretend being a butcher and failing at it (Spanky was in fact a human and a Sidereal).
Golden Might of the Dawn
Another character I had problems liking for awhile was Goldie. She is a bubbly, cheerful and talkative person, but often her presence can be smothering, and the pure goodie-two-shoes demeanour is similarly a bit much at times. Adding to that the fact that her player is a lot better versed in Exalted than the rest of the players (GM excluded), her presence is overwhelming at first. I personally came around to her after her trials in the Temple of Mars during the Bellow of the Bull season, but she wasn’t without fault after that.
One thing that was a bit annoying later on was the phrase “I’m everyone’s type” when Goldie was referring to her superhuman appearance. She used that phrase against a PC saying she’s not his type, and later on it was again used when she learned that Tauia the Sidereal she had a crush on had romantic feelings for another Sidereal instead of her. That phrase and way of thinking just rubbed me the wrong way, being a very mechanical-focused way of viewing the world and all that.
Another of Goldie’s shortcomings, being a bigger topic, perhaps deserves its own section...
Directionless resentment of Sol
From what I’ve heard, a lot of Exalted games have a complicated relation with the character of Sol Invictus, being the big and important sky daddy everyone wants to come down and fix everything.
The central conflict of Swallows is built around Sol’s bastard son Ray resenting his father for abandoning him and his mother and generally turning his back on Creation. Goldie similarly despises him for similar reasons and for exalting her into an army-slayer.
At the end of the game the party had a chance to discuss all of this with Sol, but it ended up being more of a directionless resentment of him rather than much else. Goldie wanted Sol to fix Creation and right all the wrongs, but that would infringe on the free will of the people. She wanted him to stop crime, but Ashen Mask the party’s Night Caste and lovable scoundrel wasn’t too keen on that. Goldie wanted Sol to deal with the Realm, but that would once again impose on the free will of the people, plus the whole situation is very messy to begin with. She wasn’t happy that she got Exalted, but at the same time she used her power to save more people than she killed. This went on for a good chunk of the episode until things pretty much settled on Sol focusing a bit more to weed out corruption in the Celestial Bureaucracy and being more responsible about the bastards he leaves in Creation.
Despite having a good deal of issues with the Sun, the group also wasn’t interested in replacing him themselves. That would at least be an interesting twist, but the idea didn’t get too much discussion. It was quickly decided that Ray shouldn’t replace Sol, and that nobody else should replace Sol because no one person should hold that much power.
We generally discussed the topic of Sol Invictus in our Offtopic, and in general our opinion was that a lot of players want him to care and “come fix Creation”, but in reality that would be a boring story and a game-ender (with the entire setting being “fixed” there is no need for heroes anymore, now is there?). It’s much more interesting to engage with the approach that Sol is fixing Creation by sending his Solar Exalted. After all, the Celestial Exalted own Creation.
But yeah, all in all, the discussion with Sol was a bit underwhelming, which was a pity...
Anachronisms
Another thing that might put people off this series would be the anachronisms. During the early parts of the game, the game had a more carefree attitude (heck, that’s why the game is a sex pun…), which resulted in the players making a few random quips and running gags that don’t really fit into the framework of Exalted. The biggest of these was a repeated and big threat the players would use on their enemies of “I will give you a 1 star review on Yelp!”. This would come up again and again for a long time. Some other ones include talking about Earl Grey Tea, M&Ms, Skittles, etc.. Luckily these became less prevalent during the later seasons, but we were stuck with Qui Gon Gin ‘N Juice until the very end…
Adherence to Exalted
While the GM appears well versed in Exalted, the same can’t be said for a lot of the cast from what I gathered. Only when Golden Might of the Dawn joins the party over half way through the series do we see a player with actual Exalted experience and it does show at times.
One thing I noticed missing from the game mechanics-wise was the Limit system. I think it was mentioned a total of two times in the whole campaign, and I'm not sure if any character suffered a limit break (Ariston lashing out against Godwin would be the strongest candidate, but it wasn’t ever stated explicitly). It’s an interesting part of the game that can lead to neat story twists when used correctly, so it’s a pity we didn’t see it much in the show.
Other than that, the rest of the game was pretty faithful to Exalted.
Conclusions
Swallows of the South is a pretty good Exalted actual play, provided you can excuse the rocky start. It is very pleasant to listen to due to the extra effort the crew took to edit the episodes down. It is often light-hearted and even comedic, but at times can veer back into more serious territory.
The game’s strong suit are the range of NPCs that inhabit the world. You have a number of one-off gag characters you’ll remember (like the fish food store lady, or Chickadee the quail egg selling ghost), some well defined support NPCs (Ru of the Resplendent Lacquered Wood, Yorglip), and a number of important NPC movers and shakers with well-defined personality, aspirations and goals (Aria, Cords, a lot of the Dragonblooded enemies, etc.).
If you want to see if the podcast is for you, try having a listen to the “Ashen Mask and the Dream-Eaters of the Hidden City”, or the “Bellow of the Bull” seasons to get a taste of what the late-game quality is like before you go back to the beginning.
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