Exalted
Encyclopedia
Exalted is a role-playing game
published by White Wolf Publishing
. The game is classified as high fantasy
, but may be more accurately described as "mythic fantasy", as the developer specifically avoided drawing on J. R. R. Tolkien
, but rather turned to a mixture of world mythologies for inspiration. The game is currently in its second edition, and with revised and expanded second edition supplementary materials being released. First Edition is no longer in development, but was originally created by Robert Hatch, Justin Achilli and Stephan Wieck. The original core rulebook was published in July 2001.
s are chosen by a higher power and imbued with the powers of a demigod
(thus, "exalted", or "raised high"). There are numerous varieties of Exalted, though the core game is based around the Solar Exalted, with the Core Rulebook covering the Solars and their abilities and skills. Other varieties of Exalted are given rules in additional sourcebooks.
According to the core sourcebooks and the supplementary materials, the history of the setting begins with "the time before anything", where there were the Primordials: vast, unfathomably multifarious eternals similar to the Protogenoi
of Greek mythology
or the Outer Gods of H.P. Lovecraft's works, even going so far as to use similar epithets to the latter. The Primordials brought the Unshaped Chaos that was at the time, and formed it into the Creation – a flat world dominated by five elemental forces located in poles in the utter north, south, east, west, and centre of the world. The elements: Air (north), Fire (south), Water (west), Wood (east) and Earth (the Center). The Primordials created all life, and created the gods, numberless immortal spirits resembling a hybrid of the Titans
of Greek mythology and the Kami
of Shinto
, to govern all that they had made. Foremost amongst the gods were the Celestial Incarnae, or Celestines; seven deities representing the sun, moon, and major planets who were charged with the rule of Creation while the Primordials abdicated to play the mysterious Games of Divinity, the details of which have not been elaborated upon beyond their sublimity and addictiveness. These Celestial Incarnae are the chief deities involved in exalting mortals.
Peace reigned for millennia, but in time, the gods grew to despise the Primordials. The Primordials, particularly the Dragon's Shadow; Adrian, the River of All Torments; and the Unnamed Empyreal Tyrant-King, were ruthless and hazardous rulers, whose all-consuming, incorrigible egos wrought immense suffering across the world they had made. The breaks from the Games of Divinity that brought them to Creation left nothing but chaos for the mortals and gods who toiled thanklessly to sustain the reality they had shaped. The gods desired to fight to free Creation from Primordial rule and claim the Games for their own, but they could not. The Primordials had writ a Great Gaeas, preventing their divine servants from raising arms against their makers.
In order to strike at their creators, the Celestial Incarnae selected mortal men and women to be their Chosen, The gods exalted these mortals, giving them amazing power that is a reflection of (but independent of) their divine patron. Armed with terrible weapons by Autochthon, a Primordial who was tasked with repairing the deleterious modifications made to Creation by his siblings, while the goddess Luna convinced her Primordial lover Gaia, the Spirit of Creation, not to interfere with the war. After a cataclysmic struggle in which time and space were rocked to their foundations the exalted finally triumphed over the Primordials slaying many their number (a feat that the authors of existence had thought impossible, they had invented the concept of death, but never meant for it to apply to them.) and the imprisoning all but two of the survivors. The imprisoned primordials were primordials no longer, for upon giving their surrender oaths the exalted tore them apart and built a prison for their defeated foes from their own bodies. The primordials became twisted shadows of their former glory and the yozis were born, the rulers and geography of Malfeas, the demon city.
Upon electing themselves rulers of all from Heaven, the Celestines retreated to the heavenly city of Yu-Shan to oversee from on high and play in the Games of Divinity, leaving the Exalted to rule Creation as a reward for their services. The slain Primordials traveled to the Underworld, their place for the gradual annihilation and recycling of Creation, to become the Neverborn, quiescent monsters whose presence there disjoints the ordained cycle of life, reincarnation, and death.
Common to all of White Wolf's games, the primary character archetype, the Exalted, suffer from a character flaw. In this case, this flaw is represented by a "Great Curse", placed upon them by the defeated Primordials. This Great Curse manifests itself in a variety of ways and causes the "heroes" of the setting to be flawed and thus more interesting. In the game's history the Solars grew decadent and corrupt in their great power. After centuries of plotting and waiting, the Solars were slaughtered in a massive insurrection by the Terrestrial and Sidereal Exalted known as the Usurpation.
Each Exalted possesses a "spark" of divinity (sometimes called their "Exaltation") which leaves to exalt a new mortal when the Exalted passes from life. The Terrestrial Exalted (also known as the Dragon-Blooded) are an exception to this, as they do not possess an independent and unique spark. Rather, their Exaltation is passed down through their blood to their descendants. The spark is separate from the magical energy in the game, known as Essence, but it is what allows Exalted to utilize Essence to accomplish miraculous feats. After the Usurpation, the majority of the exaltations of the Solar Exalted were locked away in the Jade Prison, and a periodic event known as the Wyld Hunt was organized by agents of the Sidereals and Terrestrials to drive the Lunar Exalted from the civilised lands of Creation and prevent them from releasing the exaltations of their ancient companions. During the intervening age, the Terrestrial Exalted became the rulers of the world, ruling in a system not unlike the Shogun
ate of classical and feudal Japan. After the Great Contagion (a plague engineered by the Neverborn to swell the population of the underworld and weaken Creation) and the Balorian Crusade (a war with the Fair Folk, manifestations of the Unshaped Chaos trapped in Creation, similar in many ways to the faeries
of mythology.) wrought devastation across Creation, a strong leader of the Dragon-Blooded, the Scarlet Empress, emerged and forged the Scarlet Empire. Five years prior to the present of the Exalted setting, the Scarlet Empress disappeared, casting the Scarlet Empire to the brink of civil war. Not coincidentally, the Solar exaltations held in the Jade Prison have been released by agents of the Yozis, and with no recent Wyld Hunts due to the calamities, new Solar Exalted are being born into Creation, their numbers slowly growing. Thus, the backdrop to the setting sees the newly-arisen Solar Exalted (among various other heroes and villains) struggling to survive their enemies in this time of tumult long enough to make their mark upon the fate of Creation, for good or for ill.
The flat world
of Creation is the primary setting of Exalted. Creation has two continents, the Blessed Isle and the unnamed super-continent which covers the northern, eastern and southern edges of Creation, populated by many nations and tribes, with the settled regions along the inner coast of this super-continent being known collectively as the threshold. The Blessed Isle is located in the center of Creation. The Realm, a loose term for the disparate remnants of the Scarlet Empire, rule the Blessed Isle and its proximate archipelago directly, and indirectly rules numerous tributary states known as satrapies along the threshold. The frigid North is divided by the White Sea. The heavily forested East is the most densely populated region of Creation other than the Blessed Isle. The Scavenger Lands, formally named the Confederation of Rivers, is an organization of allied nations within the East. The South is a hot, arid region. The West consists largely of the Great Western Ocean and various major and minor island nations. Creation has five Elemental Poles, the five powerful elementally
charged hubs of Creation's dragon line
network. The Elemental Pole of Earth, the least dangerous of the five, is located at the top of the Imperial Mountain in the centre of the Blessed Isle, and the Elemental Poles of Air, Wood, Fire and Water are located at the far northern, eastern, southern and western edges of Creation respectively. Beyond the Elemental Poles of Creation is the multidimensional, infinite ocean of Pure Chaos from which Creation was forged as an island of stability and comprehensibility. The "shore" in which Creation and the Unshaped Chaos overlap is known as the Wyld, and is roughly divided into the Bordermarches, a region in which Creation becomes increasingly magical and queer; the Middlemarches, in which the world becomes progressively more illogical, paradoxical, and otherwise deranged; and the Deep Wyld, where reality begins to fundamentally disintegrate, subliming into the unfathomable vacuum beyond it - it is a place where ordinary mortals generally lose their sanity if they survive from moment to moment. The cosmology of Exalted also includes the Underworld, the celestial city of Yu-Shan, the demon realm of Malfeas, the machine world of Autochthonia, and Elsewhere.
. There are five castes (similar in nature to the Portuguese "caste") of Solar Exalted: Dawn (the warriors and generals), Zenith (the priest-kings of the Unconquered Sun), Twilight (the scholars and sorcerers), Night (the spies and assassins) and Eclipse (the ambassadors, diplomats, and negotiators).
In the era that the game is set, known as the Second Age of Man, the Solar Exalted are returning to the world in numbers for the first time in thousands of years, and their actions and choices have the potential to shape the fate of nations due to the nature and potency of their birthright. The Solar Exalted are the most powerful of the Exalted and during the First Age of Man, they were the rulers of the world. Their achievements were a beacon to humanity, yet as their accomplishments grew so did their hubris and detachment from the mortals they ruled over. This was furthered by the insanity of the Great Curse, leading the Solars to commit countless atrocities of an unspecified nature. Because of these actions, the Terrestrial Exalted who served them were convinced by the Sidereal Exalted to murder the Solars at the close of the First Age. In order to prevent mass reincarnations, nearly all Solar essences were systematically captured and imprisoned with the assistance of the Sidereal Exalted. However, those that were not imprisoned continued to reincarnate again and again through the ages. Each time a Solar re-emerged into the world by reincarnating in a mortal, they were hunted down and killed by the armies of the Terrestrial Exalted, who used their greater numbers and experience to overcome the newly-Exalted person in a crusade known as the Wyld Hunt.
Considered to be anathema
by the mortal world of the Second Age, the Solars are regarded as monstrous demons and few remember their former greatness. This is due to a prolonged and widespread campaign of propaganda orchestrated by the Terrestrials, via a now firmly established religion known as the Immaculate Order.
Various sourcebooks for Exalted state that Solars lack the specialized abilities of the other Exalted: the shapeshifting magic of the Lunars, the raw entropic and destructive force of the Abyssals, the elemental manipulation of the Terrestrial Exalted, or the Fate-manipulation of the Sidereals. The nature of their charms tends to express itself instead through human excellence taken to superhuman extremes, and as such their raw prowess in most skills easily exceeds any of the others. Their three greatest advantages are their large Essence pools that give them more raw power to work with, their powerful, efficient, straightforward charms, and their ability to use the highest of all forms of sorcery, the Adamant Circle – also called the Solar Circle due to the Solars alone being able to access that circle of sorcery.
The source materials, primarily the first-edition sourcebook Exalted: The Abyssals, present the Deathlords as corrupted remnants of fallen First Age Solars who are easily among the most powerful beings in the Underworld of Exalted. The Deathlords have varied goals, but most strive not to conquer or corrupt Creation but rather to wipe it and everything else out of existence, although conquest and corruption are among their strategies in this regard.
In the present of Exalted, the Neverborn sow their revenge from beyond the grave through their Deathlord servants. The named agents of the Deathlords in the world of the living are the Abyssal Exalted, also known as Deathknights; these antagonists are dark reflections of the Solar Exalted and are presented as being their equal in power. Deathknights are described as finding themselves bound to their dark fate; holding onto the trappings of life inevitably spells disaster for those who rebel. Within the last five years of the game's fictional history, they and their Deathlord masters have begun to corrupt Creation with the power of the Underworld. They field vast undead armies, bolstered by ancient knowledge and powerful necromancy. Several sourcebooks present the Abyssals and the Deathlords as having a tentative foothold in Creation, likely representing its gravest threat.
Abyssals cannot draw Essence from Creation as other Exalts do and can only replenish their Essence in the Underworld or with powerful artifacts. The easiest way for an Abyssal to restore Essence away from the Underworld is by feeding on the living. Willing Solar Exalted can be converted to Abyssal Exalted with a powerful necromantic spell. Abyssal Exalted are exceptionally powerful in the Necromantic circle of sorcery, which represents the arcane knowledge of death and the Void, knowledge which was originally brought into Creation by a coterie of First Age Solars who stole it by plundering the crypt-worlds of the Neverborn beneath the Underworld.
Within the game's history, they were very tightly bound to the First Age Solars; each Lunar Exaltation is bound to a singular corresponding Solar one in such a way that that Lunar instantly feels a connection to the Lawgiver, though how they act upon this bond depends on the inclinations of the Exalts involved. While many stood and died beside their Solar mates in the Usurpation, those that were not killed along with their companions fled to the edges of Creation.
At the borders of the order of Creation and the chaotic turbulence of the Wyld, their natures were changed over a great many years. Lunars follow at best a loose tribal hierarchy and ritually tattoo each other to protect themselves from the warping effects of the Wyld. This further serves to mark them as different from the rest of humanity, as the tattoos are often visible over much of the Lunar's body. In addition to their self-inflicted distinguishing marks, each Lunar has a "Tell" that manifests as an animal-like characteristic that is visible to some degree or another in their human forms, further setting them apart from mortals. Lunar castes are not predetermined and inflexible, but rather are associations with phases of the moon chosen by individuals before their ritual tattooing brings them fully into Lunar society under these associations.
Lunars often shun civilization, or rather, they shun forms of civilization characterised by Dragon-Blooded oppression and exploitation, preferring society with humans and spirits far beyond the borders of the satrapies; some of these Stewards lead or guide and sometimes breed tribes of anthropomorphic animals known as Beastmen and teach them self-sufficiency. Others go into deep seclusion in their territories to absorb themselves in primitive, hand-to-mouth freedoms and commune with the small, simple gods of the natural environment. Finally, some even revel in the unaccountable warping effects of the Wyld and, forgoing the characteristic silvered tattoos, become increasingly unstable until ending up as inhuman beings known as "chimera
" with no unifying form, akin to both Fair Folk and Creation-born.
Second edition materials detailed the Lunar Exalted's subversive influence on Creation's societies and revealed the Thousand Streams River Project, a complicated system of social engineering designed to create self-sufficient human societies that do not require Exalted leadership to function. Several major societies within the game were declared the results of centuries of subtle, behind-the-scenes guidance, with varying degrees of success.
With the return of the Solar Exalted, the uncertainty of the imperial rule of the Dragon-Blooded, the encroaching influence of the Wyld and its Fair Folk manifestations, and the new threat of the Deathlords, the Lunar Exalted face a Creation that has changed as much as they have – though this is entirely at the discretion of the Storyteller (see Storytelling System
).
They were the viziers, prophets and cunning advisers of the First Age. Toward the end of the First Age, a prophecy came to them that seemed to offer three options: attempt an uncertain reform of their maddening kings, sit back and watch Creation be destroyed, or destroy the Solar Exalted. The arrogant and prideful Sidereals, possibly under the effects of the Great Curse laid upon them by the Neverborn, elected the path that offered a guaranteed future for Creation, if one less marvelous than the current age. As such, they orchestrated the end of the First Age, known as the Great Usurpation. It was with their behind-the-scenes guidance that the Dragon-Blooded were able to completely wipe out the Solar Exalted and effectively direct the Wyld Hunt to the predicted Exaltation of new Solars. Since their prophecy, the Sidereal Exalted have split into two factions: The Bronze Faction of the Sidereal Exalted supported and orchestrated the purge of the Solar Exalted from Creation, and continues to do so with the Wyld Hunt of the Realm; and the Gold Faction, which supported the Solars and has had little in the way of power and influence at the end of the First Age.
Because of a partially botched attempt at some astrological subterfuge involving the constellation of the Mask, Sidereals slip from the minds of those who meet them, mortal and Exalt alike, which can be beneficial to Sidereal characters or harmful, depending on their intended goals as player characters and non-player characters. Some events prior to the "present" setting of Exalted, such as a devastating plague known as the Great Contagion which eluded their predictions, have jarred their faith in their precognitive abilities. Meanwhile, the loss of the Scarlet Empress, their secret ally at the top of the Scarlet Dynasty, has greatly weakened their influence.
With the emergence of the Deathlords (who, as the authors describe them, are inscrutable to their power of prediction), the return of the Solars, and a growing rift between the Bronze Faction and the Gold Faction, who are now gathering their power and directing it into an organization known as the Cult of the Illuminated, the Sidereal Exalted are uncertain of their future.
The majority of the Dragon-Blooded in Creation make up the ruling class of the Realm, currently the most powerful empire in Creation, although the Old Realm ruled over by the Solars was far more advanced and successful than the current Realm ruled over by the Dragon-Blooded. The state-sanctioned faith known as the Immaculate Order paints the Solar and Lunar Exalted as dangerous anathema who will bring ruin to the world if allowed to exist, thus encompassing the propaganda against Celestial Exalts. Because of this, the Realm organizes the Wyld Hunt, which actively seeks out newly Exalted Celestials (Solars and Lunars, although they also hunt Abyssals and fair folk as well) and overwhelms them before they can master their new powers. This practice, which had effectively kept the Solars from rising to power again since the end of the First Age, has faltered in the Exalted timeline because of the recent disappearance of the Scarlet Empress – the absolute monarch of the Realm – and the stability and leadership that she was able to bring to the Dragon-Blooded. The power struggle by the great Dragon-Blooded houses to fill the resulting power vacuum has destabilized the Scarlet Empire and allowed the Solar Exalted to escape the purges of the Wyld Hunt and rise in Creation once more.
The greatest advantages of the Dragon-Blooded are the considerable resources granted to them by their noble status and their ability to work cooperatively with each other to create greater effects with their Essence. There are five elemental aspects to the Dragon-Blooded: Air (the Azure Children of Mela), Earth (the Ivory Children of Pasiap), Fire (the Scarlet Offspring of Hesiesh), Water (the Ebon Offspring of Daana'd) and Wood (the Verdant Children of Sextes Jylis). The ruling Dragon-Blooded of the Realm are made up of the eleven Great Houses. Most houses were founded by and named after one of the Scarlet Empress's Exalted offspring, though at least two are descended from the Empress' late husbands, and three unspecified houses are descended from adopted children of the Empress. Of the 13 former Great Houses, only two, Jerah and Manosque, have been named. The prominent Dragon-Blooded families of the rival city-state of Lookshy, across the Inner Sea, are known as Gentes. There are five major or great Gentes: Amilar (Air), Karal (Fire), Maheka (Earth), Teresu (Water) and Yushoto (Wood), as well as approximately a dozen minor Gentes.
The Green Sun Princes' disadvantage is they are few in number; only 50 infernal essences are controlled by the Yozis, and they do not, as of yet, have the ability to corrupt further Solar Essences as the Deathlords can. On the other hand, the Infernals have the full resources of the demon realm at their disposal, along with numerous Yozi cults which already exist in creation. The Infernals are closely tied to their Yozi masters, and experience Urge, psychological motivations towards missions set by their patrons. Unlike Abyssals, Infernals rarely regret their state, and instead revel in their mission to overthrow the upstart gods and return creation to its original rulers. It is implied, however, that due to the inherently poor treatment by the Yozis (being unable to fully comprehend things outside of their domain and thus with little respect for anything else) and obvious insanity, the vast majority will grow dissatisfied and go rogue, using their link to Primordial power to mutate into new Titans themselves, not bound by the same shortness of vision they possess.
Behemoths
Dragon Kings
Fair Folk
God-Blooded
Mountain Folk
Shinma
The influence of the shinma is relative rather than absolute, and areas of the Wyld which are beyond the influence of various named shinma have been mentioned, as have the existences of alien shinma who define categories that have no influence on Creation.
Spirits
" or "Quintessence
". Within the game, the mystical force "Essence" is always capitalized to distinguish from other uses of the word.
Jade : is the most common material, and is associated with the most common, least powerful of the Exalted, the Terrestrial Exalted. There are six different colors of jade, five of which correspond to one of the Elemental Dragons. Blue jade resonates with Air, white with Earth, black with Water, green with Wood, and red with Fire. The sixth, yellow jade, is something of a mystery, in that it should not exist and only comes about through alchemical mistakes. Jade weapons are unnaturally fast, and jade armor doesn't tire the wearer.
Starmetal : is the rarest of the magical materials, forged from meteors, the husks of godlings cast out of Yu-Shan, the Heavenly City. Like its wielders, the Sidereal Exalted, Starmetal re-weaves fate, causing weapons to strike especially lethal blows and armor to turn aside all but the mightiest attacks.
Moonsilver : is considered by the Lunar Exalted to be a gift from their patron, Luna. It must be harvested by moonlight, using no crafted tools, forged at night and cooled only with water that has never seen the sun. Swords made of Moonsilver are more accurate, bows shoot farther and armor does not impede the wearer's mobility. Like the protean Lunars, Moonsilver can shift into new forms easily.
Soulsteel : is made from human souls and the substance of the Labyrinth of the Underworld. It is jet black, and agonized faces of the souls it contains can be seen moving and screaming in the metal. Unsurprisingly, this material is used almost exclusively by the Abyssal Exalted. Soulsteel weapons inflict heavy damage on living beings and frequently drain small quantities of Essence as well.
Orichalcum : is used primarily by the Solar Exalted. Orichalcum is rarely found in pure deposits; usually, it is created out of gold that has been heated by lava and sunlight reflected from mirrors of occult design. Orichalcum weapons excel at no one thing; instead of adding a large bonus to speed, damage or defense, they add a small bonus to all.
First Edition Exalted hints at a sixth magical material, but it is not presented in full until the Second Edition release of Dreams of the First Age.
Adamant : a super-solid crystal that is refined down to the sharpest substance known. It is largely present within the body of the Primordial Autochthon, but was also known in Creation during the First Age. This material is used primarily by the Alchemical Exalted, though the Exalted of the First Age occasionally made items out of the material.
's Tales from the Flat Earth
, Michael Moorcock
's Hawkmoon
, Lord Dunsany's Gods of Pegana
and Yoshiaki Kawajiri
's Ninja Scroll
. Other influences include Glen Cook
's Black Company
; Sean Stewart
's Resurrection Man, The Night Watch and Galveston; Homer
's Odyssey
and Wu Cheng'en
's Journey to the West
.
and a rules system similar to the Storytelling System
to arbitrate the action, and, as with many other RPGs, requires little beyond the rulebooks themselves, dice, pencil, and paper. The ten-sided die storyteller system is one where the storyteller (or game master) is the person setting up a story and creating the adventure. The players create their characters using a pre-assigned number of points (as opposed to games like Dungeons and Dragons where an element of randomness can be introduced into character creation) and begin to interact with the story that the storyteller presents them with, much like a "Choose Your Own Adventure
" book, although the possible actions are limited only to the imagination of the players and the discretion of the storyteller. When a challenge presents itself to the characters, they roll a number of dice determined by the statistics of their character with a difficulty assigned by the storyteller. If they gain the required number of successes (7 or higher on any given die, 10's usually counting as double), they succeed in their efforts. If they do not gain the required number of successes, they fail. The storyteller describes the nature of the success or failure and the game and story continue on. Since the stories are player-created (by the storyteller, of course), there is no one way to "win" the game, except to achieve the goals set out in each individual story.
The rules system used in Exalted uses the attributes from an earlier version of the World of Darkness
system. These are Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Charisma, Manipulation, Appearance, Intelligence, Wits and Perception. There are many differences in abilities (Exalted's counterpart to the Storytelling system's skills), in line with the difference in setting. For example, while the standard Storytelling system uses the skills Academics, Firearms, and Politics, the Exalted system uses the skills Lore, Archery, and Bureaucracy. For these and other reasons, the two systems are not directly compatible without adaptations. White Wolf's Scion
game uses the same attributes, but not the same skills / abilities, as Exalted. Time within combat is divided into units called ticks, most actions in combat have speed values, which indicate the number of ticks which must pass before the character's next turn, if multiple characters take turns on the same tick, their actions are considered to take place simultaneously.
The Exalted version of the rules were derived from the trilogy of white wolf games Aeon(Trinity), Aberrant, and Adventure where the idea of a fixed target number of 7 or higher was first introduced. It has since been carried on into Scion. Thus there are two distinct but similar versions of the system derived from the original storyteller system. The rules underwent numerous changes with the introduction of Exalted 2nd Edition. Changes include the removal of the Brawl and Endurance abilities (which were merged into Martial Arts and Resistance respectively), the addition of the Integrity and War abilities and the addition of mass combat and social combat systems and clearer, more detailed combo rules.
The Storytelling System itself has been applied both to tabletop and video gaming systems, and has been a subject of note to gaming enthusiasts such as Chris Crawford
, who wrote a book entitled Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling which details many elements similar to the Storytelling System in use in Exalted.
, but exists in its own product line, called the Age of Sorrows. The game has an excellent sales record, on par with the company's flagship title, Vampire: The Masquerade
, the second edition core rulebook achieving a sales ranking at #23,558 on Amazon.com with a 4.5-star mean user review rating based on 13 user reviews as of January 2009. Exalted, being White Wolf's second largest franchise, has helped White Wolf Publishing to grow and maintain an average 26% market between 1991 and 2003. As of November 11, 2006, White Wolf Publishing had averaged a 22% market share since 1991, with the Exalted line maintaining second place behind the New World of Darkness line, and RPG.net also confirms White Wolf Publishing as one of the biggest trends in the roleplaying industry since the 1990s, which can partially be attributed to the success of the Exalted line.
The First Edition published material initially designed the Age of Sorrows as the pre-history of the old World of Darkness — however, this has not been dropped in the second edition. It should be noted that White Wolf has still continually inserted names and themes familiar to players of their previous World of Darkness line into the material. However, the Developer has commented that the connections are tenuous, allowing players to be free to treat it as a prehistory or as its own world as it may suit their individual game. The similarities between Exalted and the new edition of the World of Darkness are even weaker. Exalted Second Edition seems to imply that its story is the prehistory of our own world.
For players that are interested in the prehistory idea, some oWoD supplements supported the prehistory. The Hunter Apocrypha gave a vision of the past that said that Hunters gained their power from the broken shards of the souls of great heroes of a lost age. which seems to suggest that hunters carry broken shards of Solar Essences. While the Kindred of the East supplement gave a structure of the Wheel of Ages (mirrored in Exalted first edition books as the Ages of Man) that seemed to accommodate the integration of Exalted, oWoD. Exalted being the first and second age, oWoD being the fifth age. Some players have incorporated the nWoD into this scheme, having it occur somewhere after the 6th Age.
players to exchange their copy of their Edition 3.5 Player's Handbook for a copy of the Exalted Second Edition Core Rulebook. The promotion was called "Graduate your Game" and has received mixed reviews from fans of both games. The success of this promotion has yet to be revealed.
In March 2009, White Wolf Publishing, Inc. authorized the Exalted Wiki Contribution Contest, where users could come and edit the Official Exalted Wiki, contributing information in a month-long contest to win one of seven copies of an unannounced book signed by Exalted developer John Chambers
and Exalted art director Brian Glass. The contest is not run by White Wolf employees, but rather, fans and freelance writers for the Exalted line.
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
published by White Wolf Publishing
White Wolf, Inc.
White Wolf Publishing is an American gaming and book publisher. The company was founded in 1991 as a merger between Lion Rampant and White Wolf Magazine, and was initially led by Mark Rein·Hagen of the former and Steve and Stewart Wieck of the latter. Since White Wolf Publishing, Inc. merged with...
. The game is classified as high fantasy
High fantasy
High fantasy or epic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy that is set in invented or parallel worlds. High fantasy was brought to fruition through the work of authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, whose major fantasy works were published in the 1950s...
, but may be more accurately described as "mythic fantasy", as the developer specifically avoided drawing on J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
, but rather turned to a mixture of world mythologies for inspiration. The game is currently in its second edition, and with revised and expanded second edition supplementary materials being released. First Edition is no longer in development, but was originally created by Robert Hatch, Justin Achilli and Stephan Wieck. The original core rulebook was published in July 2001.
Setting
The basic premise of the game is that the player characterPlayer character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
s are chosen by a higher power and imbued with the powers of a demigod
Demigod
The term "demigod" , meaning "half-god", is commonly used to describe mythological figures whose one parent was a god and whose other parent was human; as such, demigods are human-god hybrids...
(thus, "exalted", or "raised high"). There are numerous varieties of Exalted, though the core game is based around the Solar Exalted, with the Core Rulebook covering the Solars and their abilities and skills. Other varieties of Exalted are given rules in additional sourcebooks.
According to the core sourcebooks and the supplementary materials, the history of the setting begins with "the time before anything", where there were the Primordials: vast, unfathomably multifarious eternals similar to the Protogenoi
Protogenoi
In Greek mythology the Prôtogenoi are a genealogy of primordial Greek gods, the name literally means "first born" or "primeval" and are a group of deities born in the beginning of the universe....
of Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
or the Outer Gods of H.P. Lovecraft's works, even going so far as to use similar epithets to the latter. The Primordials brought the Unshaped Chaos that was at the time, and formed it into the Creation – a flat world dominated by five elemental forces located in poles in the utter north, south, east, west, and centre of the world. The elements: Air (north), Fire (south), Water (west), Wood (east) and Earth (the Center). The Primordials created all life, and created the gods, numberless immortal spirits resembling a hybrid of the Titans
Titan (mythology)
In Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age....
of Greek mythology and the Kami
Kami
is the Japanese word for the spirits, natural forces, or essence in the Shinto faith. Although the word is sometimes translated as "god" or "deity", some Shinto scholars argue that such a translation can cause a misunderstanding of the term...
of Shinto
Shinto
or Shintoism, also kami-no-michi, is the indigenous spirituality of Japan and the Japanese people. It is a set of practices, to be carried out diligently, to establish a connection between present day Japan and its ancient past. Shinto practices were first recorded and codified in the written...
, to govern all that they had made. Foremost amongst the gods were the Celestial Incarnae, or Celestines; seven deities representing the sun, moon, and major planets who were charged with the rule of Creation while the Primordials abdicated to play the mysterious Games of Divinity, the details of which have not been elaborated upon beyond their sublimity and addictiveness. These Celestial Incarnae are the chief deities involved in exalting mortals.
Peace reigned for millennia, but in time, the gods grew to despise the Primordials. The Primordials, particularly the Dragon's Shadow; Adrian, the River of All Torments; and the Unnamed Empyreal Tyrant-King, were ruthless and hazardous rulers, whose all-consuming, incorrigible egos wrought immense suffering across the world they had made. The breaks from the Games of Divinity that brought them to Creation left nothing but chaos for the mortals and gods who toiled thanklessly to sustain the reality they had shaped. The gods desired to fight to free Creation from Primordial rule and claim the Games for their own, but they could not. The Primordials had writ a Great Gaeas, preventing their divine servants from raising arms against their makers.
In order to strike at their creators, the Celestial Incarnae selected mortal men and women to be their Chosen, The gods exalted these mortals, giving them amazing power that is a reflection of (but independent of) their divine patron. Armed with terrible weapons by Autochthon, a Primordial who was tasked with repairing the deleterious modifications made to Creation by his siblings, while the goddess Luna convinced her Primordial lover Gaia, the Spirit of Creation, not to interfere with the war. After a cataclysmic struggle in which time and space were rocked to their foundations the exalted finally triumphed over the Primordials slaying many their number (a feat that the authors of existence had thought impossible, they had invented the concept of death, but never meant for it to apply to them.) and the imprisoning all but two of the survivors. The imprisoned primordials were primordials no longer, for upon giving their surrender oaths the exalted tore them apart and built a prison for their defeated foes from their own bodies. The primordials became twisted shadows of their former glory and the yozis were born, the rulers and geography of Malfeas, the demon city.
Upon electing themselves rulers of all from Heaven, the Celestines retreated to the heavenly city of Yu-Shan to oversee from on high and play in the Games of Divinity, leaving the Exalted to rule Creation as a reward for their services. The slain Primordials traveled to the Underworld, their place for the gradual annihilation and recycling of Creation, to become the Neverborn, quiescent monsters whose presence there disjoints the ordained cycle of life, reincarnation, and death.
Common to all of White Wolf's games, the primary character archetype, the Exalted, suffer from a character flaw. In this case, this flaw is represented by a "Great Curse", placed upon them by the defeated Primordials. This Great Curse manifests itself in a variety of ways and causes the "heroes" of the setting to be flawed and thus more interesting. In the game's history the Solars grew decadent and corrupt in their great power. After centuries of plotting and waiting, the Solars were slaughtered in a massive insurrection by the Terrestrial and Sidereal Exalted known as the Usurpation.
Each Exalted possesses a "spark" of divinity (sometimes called their "Exaltation") which leaves to exalt a new mortal when the Exalted passes from life. The Terrestrial Exalted (also known as the Dragon-Blooded) are an exception to this, as they do not possess an independent and unique spark. Rather, their Exaltation is passed down through their blood to their descendants. The spark is separate from the magical energy in the game, known as Essence, but it is what allows Exalted to utilize Essence to accomplish miraculous feats. After the Usurpation, the majority of the exaltations of the Solar Exalted were locked away in the Jade Prison, and a periodic event known as the Wyld Hunt was organized by agents of the Sidereals and Terrestrials to drive the Lunar Exalted from the civilised lands of Creation and prevent them from releasing the exaltations of their ancient companions. During the intervening age, the Terrestrial Exalted became the rulers of the world, ruling in a system not unlike the Shogun
Shogun
A was one of the hereditary military dictators of Japan from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns, or their shikken regents , were the de facto rulers of Japan though they were nominally appointed by the emperor...
ate of classical and feudal Japan. After the Great Contagion (a plague engineered by the Neverborn to swell the population of the underworld and weaken Creation) and the Balorian Crusade (a war with the Fair Folk, manifestations of the Unshaped Chaos trapped in Creation, similar in many ways to the faeries
Fairy
A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural.Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term...
of mythology.) wrought devastation across Creation, a strong leader of the Dragon-Blooded, the Scarlet Empress, emerged and forged the Scarlet Empire. Five years prior to the present of the Exalted setting, the Scarlet Empress disappeared, casting the Scarlet Empire to the brink of civil war. Not coincidentally, the Solar exaltations held in the Jade Prison have been released by agents of the Yozis, and with no recent Wyld Hunts due to the calamities, new Solar Exalted are being born into Creation, their numbers slowly growing. Thus, the backdrop to the setting sees the newly-arisen Solar Exalted (among various other heroes and villains) struggling to survive their enemies in this time of tumult long enough to make their mark upon the fate of Creation, for good or for ill.
The flat world
Flat Earth
The Flat Earth model is a belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Most ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period ...
of Creation is the primary setting of Exalted. Creation has two continents, the Blessed Isle and the unnamed super-continent which covers the northern, eastern and southern edges of Creation, populated by many nations and tribes, with the settled regions along the inner coast of this super-continent being known collectively as the threshold. The Blessed Isle is located in the center of Creation. The Realm, a loose term for the disparate remnants of the Scarlet Empire, rule the Blessed Isle and its proximate archipelago directly, and indirectly rules numerous tributary states known as satrapies along the threshold. The frigid North is divided by the White Sea. The heavily forested East is the most densely populated region of Creation other than the Blessed Isle. The Scavenger Lands, formally named the Confederation of Rivers, is an organization of allied nations within the East. The South is a hot, arid region. The West consists largely of the Great Western Ocean and various major and minor island nations. Creation has five Elemental Poles, the five powerful elementally
Classical element
Many philosophies and worldviews have a set of classical elements believed to reflect the simplest essential parts and principles of which anything consists or upon which the constitution and fundamental powers of anything are based. Most frequently, classical elements refer to ancient beliefs...
charged hubs of Creation's dragon line
Ley line
Ley lines are alleged alignments of a number of places of geographical and historical interest, such as ancient monuments and megaliths, natural ridge-tops and water-fords...
network. The Elemental Pole of Earth, the least dangerous of the five, is located at the top of the Imperial Mountain in the centre of the Blessed Isle, and the Elemental Poles of Air, Wood, Fire and Water are located at the far northern, eastern, southern and western edges of Creation respectively. Beyond the Elemental Poles of Creation is the multidimensional, infinite ocean of Pure Chaos from which Creation was forged as an island of stability and comprehensibility. The "shore" in which Creation and the Unshaped Chaos overlap is known as the Wyld, and is roughly divided into the Bordermarches, a region in which Creation becomes increasingly magical and queer; the Middlemarches, in which the world becomes progressively more illogical, paradoxical, and otherwise deranged; and the Deep Wyld, where reality begins to fundamentally disintegrate, subliming into the unfathomable vacuum beyond it - it is a place where ordinary mortals generally lose their sanity if they survive from moment to moment. The cosmology of Exalted also includes the Underworld, the celestial city of Yu-Shan, the demon realm of Malfeas, the machine world of Autochthonia, and Elsewhere.
Types of Exalts
At the core of the setting, there are several different types of Exaltation, which largely determine both background and point of view for the various protagonists and antagonists of the game. Each different type of Exalted will often have certain predispositions toward or against other Exalt types, and may be viewed differently by the various mortals of Creation; for instance, either as monsters or demigods. The Exalted of Creation can be divided into two categories: Terrestrial Exalted and Celestial Exalted. Celestial Exalted, being the chosen of the Celestial Incarnae, are significantly more powerful than Terrestrial Exalted, and can live for millennia, but their numbers are limited by a fixed number of Exaltations passing from mortal life to mortal life at any given time. Terrestrial Exalted are the chosen of the Elemental Dragons, aspects of the primordial Gaia, who govern the elemental underpinnings of Creation. While less powerful, Terrestrial Exalted, or Dragon-Blooded, can pass on their Exaltation to their children, much like one would pass on other genetic features. The Abyssal and Alchemical Exalted technically fall outside of the two categories, as do the Green Sun Princes, though their power level is comparable to that of Celestial Exalted. A brief synopsis of each type is given here, organized by relative power and significance within the game.Solar Exalted (Chosen of the Unconquered Sun, Lawgivers)
The default protagonists of Exalted and the champions of the chief of the gods, a being known as the Unconquered SunSol Invictus
Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the later Roman empire. In 274 Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Scholars disagree whether the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient Latin cult of Sol, a revival of the cult of Elagabalus or completely new...
. There are five castes (similar in nature to the Portuguese "caste") of Solar Exalted: Dawn (the warriors and generals), Zenith (the priest-kings of the Unconquered Sun), Twilight (the scholars and sorcerers), Night (the spies and assassins) and Eclipse (the ambassadors, diplomats, and negotiators).
In the era that the game is set, known as the Second Age of Man, the Solar Exalted are returning to the world in numbers for the first time in thousands of years, and their actions and choices have the potential to shape the fate of nations due to the nature and potency of their birthright. The Solar Exalted are the most powerful of the Exalted and during the First Age of Man, they were the rulers of the world. Their achievements were a beacon to humanity, yet as their accomplishments grew so did their hubris and detachment from the mortals they ruled over. This was furthered by the insanity of the Great Curse, leading the Solars to commit countless atrocities of an unspecified nature. Because of these actions, the Terrestrial Exalted who served them were convinced by the Sidereal Exalted to murder the Solars at the close of the First Age. In order to prevent mass reincarnations, nearly all Solar essences were systematically captured and imprisoned with the assistance of the Sidereal Exalted. However, those that were not imprisoned continued to reincarnate again and again through the ages. Each time a Solar re-emerged into the world by reincarnating in a mortal, they were hunted down and killed by the armies of the Terrestrial Exalted, who used their greater numbers and experience to overcome the newly-Exalted person in a crusade known as the Wyld Hunt.
Considered to be anathema
Anathema
Anathema originally meant something lifted up as an offering to the gods; it later evolved to mean:...
by the mortal world of the Second Age, the Solars are regarded as monstrous demons and few remember their former greatness. This is due to a prolonged and widespread campaign of propaganda orchestrated by the Terrestrials, via a now firmly established religion known as the Immaculate Order.
Various sourcebooks for Exalted state that Solars lack the specialized abilities of the other Exalted: the shapeshifting magic of the Lunars, the raw entropic and destructive force of the Abyssals, the elemental manipulation of the Terrestrial Exalted, or the Fate-manipulation of the Sidereals. The nature of their charms tends to express itself instead through human excellence taken to superhuman extremes, and as such their raw prowess in most skills easily exceeds any of the others. Their three greatest advantages are their large Essence pools that give them more raw power to work with, their powerful, efficient, straightforward charms, and their ability to use the highest of all forms of sorcery, the Adamant Circle – also called the Solar Circle due to the Solars alone being able to access that circle of sorcery.
Abyssal Exalted (Chosen of the Void, Deathknights)
Twisted souls that are loyal servants of the Deathlords, powerful spirits of long-dead Exalts, who in turn serve the Neverborn, the dead husks of what were once the ancient Primordials slain by the Exalted before the First Age. The Abyssal castes are a dark reflection of their Solar counterparts; Dusk (soldiers, generals, and martial champions), Midnight (priests and leaders), Daybreak (scholars and artisans), Day (assassins and spies), and Moonshadow (bureaucrats, diplomats, and couriers).The source materials, primarily the first-edition sourcebook Exalted: The Abyssals, present the Deathlords as corrupted remnants of fallen First Age Solars who are easily among the most powerful beings in the Underworld of Exalted. The Deathlords have varied goals, but most strive not to conquer or corrupt Creation but rather to wipe it and everything else out of existence, although conquest and corruption are among their strategies in this regard.
In the present of Exalted, the Neverborn sow their revenge from beyond the grave through their Deathlord servants. The named agents of the Deathlords in the world of the living are the Abyssal Exalted, also known as Deathknights; these antagonists are dark reflections of the Solar Exalted and are presented as being their equal in power. Deathknights are described as finding themselves bound to their dark fate; holding onto the trappings of life inevitably spells disaster for those who rebel. Within the last five years of the game's fictional history, they and their Deathlord masters have begun to corrupt Creation with the power of the Underworld. They field vast undead armies, bolstered by ancient knowledge and powerful necromancy. Several sourcebooks present the Abyssals and the Deathlords as having a tentative foothold in Creation, likely representing its gravest threat.
Abyssals cannot draw Essence from Creation as other Exalts do and can only replenish their Essence in the Underworld or with powerful artifacts. The easiest way for an Abyssal to restore Essence away from the Underworld is by feeding on the living. Willing Solar Exalted can be converted to Abyssal Exalted with a powerful necromantic spell. Abyssal Exalted are exceptionally powerful in the Necromantic circle of sorcery, which represents the arcane knowledge of death and the Void, knowledge which was originally brought into Creation by a coterie of First Age Solars who stole it by plundering the crypt-worlds of the Neverborn beneath the Underworld.
Lunar Exalted (Chosen of Luna, Stewards)
Presented as most anarchistic and chaotic of the Exalted. In the sourcebooks, they are often referred to as cunning shapeshifters, skilled fighters, and capable generals. Their history and characteristics are described in the first-edition book Exalted: The Lunars and the second-edition book The Manual of Exalted Power: Lunars.Within the game's history, they were very tightly bound to the First Age Solars; each Lunar Exaltation is bound to a singular corresponding Solar one in such a way that that Lunar instantly feels a connection to the Lawgiver, though how they act upon this bond depends on the inclinations of the Exalts involved. While many stood and died beside their Solar mates in the Usurpation, those that were not killed along with their companions fled to the edges of Creation.
At the borders of the order of Creation and the chaotic turbulence of the Wyld, their natures were changed over a great many years. Lunars follow at best a loose tribal hierarchy and ritually tattoo each other to protect themselves from the warping effects of the Wyld. This further serves to mark them as different from the rest of humanity, as the tattoos are often visible over much of the Lunar's body. In addition to their self-inflicted distinguishing marks, each Lunar has a "Tell" that manifests as an animal-like characteristic that is visible to some degree or another in their human forms, further setting them apart from mortals. Lunar castes are not predetermined and inflexible, but rather are associations with phases of the moon chosen by individuals before their ritual tattooing brings them fully into Lunar society under these associations.
Lunars often shun civilization, or rather, they shun forms of civilization characterised by Dragon-Blooded oppression and exploitation, preferring society with humans and spirits far beyond the borders of the satrapies; some of these Stewards lead or guide and sometimes breed tribes of anthropomorphic animals known as Beastmen and teach them self-sufficiency. Others go into deep seclusion in their territories to absorb themselves in primitive, hand-to-mouth freedoms and commune with the small, simple gods of the natural environment. Finally, some even revel in the unaccountable warping effects of the Wyld and, forgoing the characteristic silvered tattoos, become increasingly unstable until ending up as inhuman beings known as "chimera
Chimera (mythology)
The Chimera or Chimaera was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing female creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that ended in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her...
" with no unifying form, akin to both Fair Folk and Creation-born.
Second edition materials detailed the Lunar Exalted's subversive influence on Creation's societies and revealed the Thousand Streams River Project, a complicated system of social engineering designed to create self-sufficient human societies that do not require Exalted leadership to function. Several major societies within the game were declared the results of centuries of subtle, behind-the-scenes guidance, with varying degrees of success.
With the return of the Solar Exalted, the uncertainty of the imperial rule of the Dragon-Blooded, the encroaching influence of the Wyld and its Fair Folk manifestations, and the new threat of the Deathlords, the Lunar Exalted face a Creation that has changed as much as they have – though this is entirely at the discretion of the Storyteller (see Storytelling System
Storytelling System
The Storytelling System, formerly Storyteller System, is a role-playing game system created by White Wolf, Inc. in 1991 that premiered in Vampire: The Masquerade, a part of the World of Darkness series.-Storyteller System:...
).
Sidereal Exalted (Chosen of the Five Maidens, Viziers)
These Celestial Exalted are the least numerous of all the Exalted types (with the exception of the newly created Infernals), yet are described as major players in the fate of Creation. Sidereals, in addition to their unparalleled mastery of martial arts, evidenced by their access to the highest forms of martial-arts magical abilities (known as Sidereal martial arts), excel at foreseeing and manipulating fate. Within the Exalted universe, they are often presented as celestial bureaucrats who often work in the Bureau of Fate of the Celestial City of Yu-Shan, the home of the gods, directing events in the mortal world from behind the scenes.They were the viziers, prophets and cunning advisers of the First Age. Toward the end of the First Age, a prophecy came to them that seemed to offer three options: attempt an uncertain reform of their maddening kings, sit back and watch Creation be destroyed, or destroy the Solar Exalted. The arrogant and prideful Sidereals, possibly under the effects of the Great Curse laid upon them by the Neverborn, elected the path that offered a guaranteed future for Creation, if one less marvelous than the current age. As such, they orchestrated the end of the First Age, known as the Great Usurpation. It was with their behind-the-scenes guidance that the Dragon-Blooded were able to completely wipe out the Solar Exalted and effectively direct the Wyld Hunt to the predicted Exaltation of new Solars. Since their prophecy, the Sidereal Exalted have split into two factions: The Bronze Faction of the Sidereal Exalted supported and orchestrated the purge of the Solar Exalted from Creation, and continues to do so with the Wyld Hunt of the Realm; and the Gold Faction, which supported the Solars and has had little in the way of power and influence at the end of the First Age.
Because of a partially botched attempt at some astrological subterfuge involving the constellation of the Mask, Sidereals slip from the minds of those who meet them, mortal and Exalt alike, which can be beneficial to Sidereal characters or harmful, depending on their intended goals as player characters and non-player characters. Some events prior to the "present" setting of Exalted, such as a devastating plague known as the Great Contagion which eluded their predictions, have jarred their faith in their precognitive abilities. Meanwhile, the loss of the Scarlet Empress, their secret ally at the top of the Scarlet Dynasty, has greatly weakened their influence.
With the emergence of the Deathlords (who, as the authors describe them, are inscrutable to their power of prediction), the return of the Solars, and a growing rift between the Bronze Faction and the Gold Faction, who are now gathering their power and directing it into an organization known as the Cult of the Illuminated, the Sidereal Exalted are uncertain of their future.
Terrestrial Exalted (Chosen of the Elemental Dragons, Dragon-Blooded)
In the history of Exalted, they were the elite infantry and servants to the rest of the Exalted in the First Age. They are less powerful than other types of Exalted, but most of their strength lies in their inheritance – rather than being chosen by a god, the Dragon-Blooded have the potential to pass their Exaltation on to their children; although most Dragon-Blooded are easily able to trace their heritage back through generations, some Dragon-Blooded—called the "Lost Eggs"--Exalt into families that have no Dragon-Blooded in their recent genealogy. The Dragon-Blooded are not limited by a set amount of "Exalted essences" like Celestial Exalted. Due to their overwhelming numbers in comparison with the Celestial Exalted (Terrestrial Exalted numbering in the millions as compared to the hundreds of Celestial Exalted), they were able to usurp the Solar Exalted at the height of their power with the help and guidance of the Sidereal Exalted, thus ending the First Age.The majority of the Dragon-Blooded in Creation make up the ruling class of the Realm, currently the most powerful empire in Creation, although the Old Realm ruled over by the Solars was far more advanced and successful than the current Realm ruled over by the Dragon-Blooded. The state-sanctioned faith known as the Immaculate Order paints the Solar and Lunar Exalted as dangerous anathema who will bring ruin to the world if allowed to exist, thus encompassing the propaganda against Celestial Exalts. Because of this, the Realm organizes the Wyld Hunt, which actively seeks out newly Exalted Celestials (Solars and Lunars, although they also hunt Abyssals and fair folk as well) and overwhelms them before they can master their new powers. This practice, which had effectively kept the Solars from rising to power again since the end of the First Age, has faltered in the Exalted timeline because of the recent disappearance of the Scarlet Empress – the absolute monarch of the Realm – and the stability and leadership that she was able to bring to the Dragon-Blooded. The power struggle by the great Dragon-Blooded houses to fill the resulting power vacuum has destabilized the Scarlet Empire and allowed the Solar Exalted to escape the purges of the Wyld Hunt and rise in Creation once more.
The greatest advantages of the Dragon-Blooded are the considerable resources granted to them by their noble status and their ability to work cooperatively with each other to create greater effects with their Essence. There are five elemental aspects to the Dragon-Blooded: Air (the Azure Children of Mela), Earth (the Ivory Children of Pasiap), Fire (the Scarlet Offspring of Hesiesh), Water (the Ebon Offspring of Daana'd) and Wood (the Verdant Children of Sextes Jylis). The ruling Dragon-Blooded of the Realm are made up of the eleven Great Houses. Most houses were founded by and named after one of the Scarlet Empress's Exalted offspring, though at least two are descended from the Empress' late husbands, and three unspecified houses are descended from adopted children of the Empress. Of the 13 former Great Houses, only two, Jerah and Manosque, have been named. The prominent Dragon-Blooded families of the rival city-state of Lookshy, across the Inner Sea, are known as Gentes. There are five major or great Gentes: Amilar (Air), Karal (Fire), Maheka (Earth), Teresu (Water) and Yushoto (Wood), as well as approximately a dozen minor Gentes.
Alchemical Exalted (Chosen of Autochthon, Champions)
Android creations made from clay and the Five Magical Materials, built in the world of Autochthonia. They were introduced in the supplement "Time of Tumult". They are the only type of playable characters besides the Dragon Kings that were designed after the core rulebook was released, and are occasionally referenced in subsequent materials. Alchemicals serve the Great Maker Autochthon, one of only two primordials that was not imprisoned or killed in the Primordial War, and are infused with the souls of dead Autochthonian heroes. Within the context of the game, they serve as protectors of the inhabitants of a parallel world made up of the body of Autochthon himself, and enforce the will of the Tripartite, the theocratic government of this world. They divide themselves into castes according to which material was mainly used in their construction: there are five canon castes, one for each of the Five Magical Materials, as well as the optional Adamant caste. Autochthon designed them before the other four original types of Exalted, but they were not constructed until after the Primordials were overthrown and Autochthon retreated from Creation. Instead of wielding Essence directly and using their Charms in a "magical" fashion like other Exalted do, the Alchemicals have Charms "installed" like peripheral parts and fuel these machine implants with Essence from their own bodies. Unlike the Celestial Exalted, there is no hard cap on the number of Alchemicals, the main limiting factor on their numbers being the immense resource investment required for their construction. As Alchemical Exalted raise their Permanent Essence, they increase in size, eventually joining with Autochthon and growing into cities. The Alchemicals are not subject to the Great Curse, as they did not fight in the Primordial War. In gameplay, in place of curse driven insanity, they have a Clarity track which measures their distance from humanity. Those Alchemicals who have been infected with Autocthon's illness have a Dissonance track in place of a Clarity track, with Dissonance measuring their madness, corruption, and drive to violate boundaries. Willing non-Alchemical Exalted can become "Akuma" of Autochthon, gaining the ability to have Alchemical charms installed and gaining a Clarity track. A brief tour of the world of Autochthonia can be found on the game's website.Infernal Exalted (Chosen of the Yozis, Akuma and the Green Sun Princes)
They currently have less published material covering their nature, back-story and abilities than other Exalts. There are two types of Infernal Exalted, the Akuma and the Green Sun Princes. Akuma are Exalted of another type who have given themselves over to the cause of the Yozis and have been remade according to their masters' desires. They retain access to their native charm set and gain the ability to learn and use their patron Yozi's Infernal charms. The Green Sun Princes are made with the fifty Essences of Solar Exalts which the Yozis took in payment from the Neverborn and altered to emulate themselves in exchange for teaching the Neverborn to corrupt Solar Essences to create the Abyssals. The Green Sun Princes were created by a cadre of five of the Yozis; Malfeas, She Who Lives In Her Name, Cecylene, Adorjan, and the Ebon Dragon. Each of these Yozis is responsible for the creation of one caste of Green Sun Princes and the charms associated with that caste, Malfeas created the Slayers, Cecylene created the Malefactors, She Who Lives in Her Name created the Defilers, Adorjan created the Scourges and the Ebon Dragon created the Fiends. Green Sun Princes of any caste can learn the charms of all five castes, as well as the charms of any other Yozis who have opened up access to their charms to the Green Sun Princes; in the default setting, Kimbery is the only other Yozi who has done so. The Yozis have tasked the Green Sun Princes with transforming Creation into a mirror of Malfeas, which they believe will break their bonds and reverse their disfiguring imprisonment. They call this effort the Reclamation.The Green Sun Princes' disadvantage is they are few in number; only 50 infernal essences are controlled by the Yozis, and they do not, as of yet, have the ability to corrupt further Solar Essences as the Deathlords can. On the other hand, the Infernals have the full resources of the demon realm at their disposal, along with numerous Yozi cults which already exist in creation. The Infernals are closely tied to their Yozi masters, and experience Urge, psychological motivations towards missions set by their patrons. Unlike Abyssals, Infernals rarely regret their state, and instead revel in their mission to overthrow the upstart gods and return creation to its original rulers. It is implied, however, that due to the inherently poor treatment by the Yozis (being unable to fully comprehend things outside of their domain and thus with little respect for anything else) and obvious insanity, the vast majority will grow dissatisfied and go rogue, using their link to Primordial power to mutate into new Titans themselves, not bound by the same shortness of vision they possess.
Other magical beings
Alongside the various types of Exalts found in Creation, there are also other magical creatures that use the same Essence that Exalts use to power their magical effects. The following are the most prominent types of magical beings.Behemoths
- Behemoths are unique, immortal monsters. There are two broad categories of behemoths: Primordial Behemoths, created by the Primordials, and Wyld Behemoths, created by the Fair Folk. Wyld Behemoths are classified according to power; in ascending order, the three types are fey beasts, daikaijuKaijuis a Japanese word that means "strange beast," but often translated in English as "monster". Specifically, it is used to refer to a genre of tokusatsu entertainment....
and Deep Wyld horrors.
Dragon Kings
- Like the Fair Folk, the Dragon Kings are not Exalted; they are supernatural creatures offered as a player character type. The Dragon Kings are large dinosaur-like beings of great power. Dragon Kings are sworn in allegiance to the Unconquered Sun, their creator. According to the fictional history of Exalted, before the time of the Exalted, the Dragon Kings ruled Creation and the mortals who dwelt there, but the majority of their perpetually-reincarnating souls were annihilated during the war against the Primordials, putting an end to their ascendance over Creation. The Unconquered Sun used them as powerful servants to his chosen whom they served faithfully, honoring their Exalted brethren. After the First Age ended in war and disease, what remained of their civilization collapsed, and most Dragon Kings today never outgrow the feral 'stalker' mindset they are born into. They still exist in the Second Age, though the once great Dragon Kings remain hidden in the farthest corners of Creation. The majority of the remaining Dragon Kings are in Rathess, an ancient home filled with a variety of powerful artifacts made by the Dragon Kings in the glory days of the First Age. The developers describe four types of Dragon Kings, each living in a quadrant of Creation; the graceful flying Pterok (North), the nimble and lithe Raptok (East), the powerful and loyal Anklok (South), and the clever amphibious Mosok (West). Rules for playing Dragon Kings are presented in the Exalted Player's Guide in 1st edition and the Scroll of the Fallen Races in 2nd edition.
Fair Folk
- Like the Dragon Kings, they are an alternative player character type to the Exalted. They know themselves by their own word, Raksha; however the superstitious in Creation, rightly fearing that to name them is to invoke them, call them the Fair Folk with the hope of flattering and placating them. Unlike the Creation-born, who have a fixed, definite shape and form within the pattern of created things, Fair Folk are entities composed of Essence unadulterated with form, and thus they are without much constancy. They are natives of the Wyld, which they call Rakshastan – the place that exists between Creation and the Unshaped Chaos. Like the Wyld environment they inhabit, Fair Folk are partially and provisionally confined and defined by their proximity to the structure of Creation, temporarily taking on aspects of the created world by interacting with it. They are inhuman and beautiful beguiling monsters that subsist on elements of human subjectivity, devouring dreams, imbibing hopes and fears, and assuming narrative personalities stolen piecemeal from the Creation-born.
- In one sense, they are the "kissing cousins" of the Primordials, their Essential Chaos having been pushed back when the Primordials formed Creation in the midst of it. They prey upon the interiority of mortals and do a brisk slave trade with The Guild, a powerful economic organization in Creation. The Raksha are divided into castes: Diplomats, who favor the Staff Grace and the virtue of Conviction; Entertainers, who favor the Cup Grace and the virtue of Compassion; Warriors, who favor the Sword Grace and the virtue of Valor; and Workers, who favor the Ring Grace and the virtue of Temperance. Noble Raksha have mastered greater internal complexity and differentiation, favoring two Graces and associated virtues. There is also a fifth Grace, the Heart Grace, which is associated with identity and the trait of Willpower. Graces are differing outlets for the use of Essence in the Wyld and Creation, allowing Fair Folk to stabilize and interact by associating with structures of Creation in the form of the Heavenly Virtues of Yu-Shan, primitive personality traits shared in some form by all Creation-born mortals and many spirits. The most powerful kin of the Fair Folk are the Unshaped. These entities were never trapped in the structural orbit of Creation, but are truly native to the pure Chaos beyond the Wyld. Unlike the Raksha, the Unshaped lack the means to stabilize themselves by assimilating the personhood of mortals and as such are incapable of existing in Creation for any great duration. Each Unshaped is actually a symbiotic complex of many Fair Folk consisting of a "guiding intelligence" and "subsidiary intelligences" with no true internal organisation, leading some mortal savants to misinformedly characterise them as "deep Wyld storms". Rules for playing Fair Folk are presented in Exalted: The Fair Folk in 1st edition, 2nd edition rules are included in Graceful Wicked Masques: The Fair Folk, released in early 2009.
God-Blooded
- Refers to, as a collective whole, offspring of a mortal or animal and a magical being, or the mortal offspring of two magical beings, in which case they take after the more powerful of the two. The resulting offspring bears traces of its mystical parentage. According to the authors, they stand somewhere between divinity and mortality, less than Exalted, but more than human. Those with awakened Essence can purchase the same types of Charms as their supernatural parent, though their power is limited by a low Permanent Essence trait and a small Essence pool.
- There are several subtypes of God-Blooded: God-Blooded are the children of gods, Elemental-Blooded are the children of elementals, Demon-Blooded are the offspring of demons, Ghost-Blooded are the children of ghosts using powerful Charms to help them reproduce with mortals, and Half-Caste are the children of powerful Exalts (although exceedingly rare). Solar, Abyssal, Infernal, Lunar, and Sidereal Half-Castes are known as Golden Children, Shadewalkers, Grandchosen of the Yozis, Moon-Born and Star-Blessed respectively. 1st edition also included Dragon-Blooded Half-Castes known as the Dragon-Touched but these have been removed from the canon setting as of 2nd edition. The Fae-Blooded are the children of a union between the Raksha and mortals. The Mountain Folk can also produce God-Blooded offspring, but there is no specific term for them. Rules for playing God-Blooded characters are presented in the Exalted Player's Guide in 1st edition, and Scroll of Heroes in 2nd edition.
Mountain Folk
- Also known as the Jadeborn, a long-lived subterranean race distantly related to the Fair Folk. These Jadeborn are creatures of the Great Maker, Autochthon: when Creation was initially wrought from Pure Chaos by the Primordials, all those Unshaped Raksha whose Essence was incorporated into the created world became calcified; frozen into static, unchangeing shapes, most of them fixed into the very minerality of the earth itself. Sensing that these other, native intelligences of Chaos had been snuffed out in the Creation of inanimate elements, Autochthon took posthumous pity on them, and, salvaging whatever it could discern of their prior selves, resurrected them – still formed of the earthen materials they had calcified into, but alive, and with at least a glimmering memory of the intelligent entities they had once been.
- The Mountain Folk are divided along two lines, Caste and Enlightenment. The three Jadeborn Castes are the Artisans, Warriors, and Workers. The vast majority of the Mountain Folk are Unenlightened – limited in intelligence, creativity, and supernatural power. A small minority, including the entire Artisan Caste, are Enlightened, with much greater creativity as well as both mundane and supernatural potential, and all of these Enlightened are Essence-wielders. Mountain Folk society is ruled by the Artisan Caste, who make up the nobility, with Unenlightened Warriors and Workers making up the commoners and Enlightened Warriors and Workers occupying an intermediate position. Rules for playing the Mountain Folk are presented in 1st edition's Exalted: The Fair Folk and 2nd edition's Scroll of the Fallen Races.
Shinma
- The shinma define major categories and significations both within and beyond the Wyld. Strange abstractions, the shinma provide boundaries and define structuralities within both Creation and across the infinite Wyld by embodying oppositions. The shinma themselves are quite impossible for a Creation-born mortal to comprehend and are generally viewed by mortal savants as metaphysical axioms, though the Raksha apparently consider them to be interesting characters of some sort.
- Several shinma have been named and detailed, as follows:
-
- Advaita Iraivan, shinma of separation. Advaita Iraivan is first mentioned in 1st edition's Exalted: The Fair Folk, in which it is established as an aspect of Nirguna, and then it is established to be the shinma of separation in 2nd edition's Graceful Wicked Masques. It is posited to be the origin or structuring presence of the other shinma, or vice versa, and the Raksha refer to the location of Advaita Iraivan's presence as Time Not, admitting no distinctions.
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- Dharma, shinma of "corrosion, ignorance, and desire". From the IndiaIndiaIndia , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n word DharmaDharmaDharma means Law or Natural Law and is a concept of central importance in Indian philosophy and religion. In the context of Hinduism, it refers to one's personal obligations, calling and duties, and a Hindu's dharma is affected by the person's age, caste, class, occupation, and gender...
, this shinma is pure, wise, and all-knowing: the opposite of what it defines.
- Dharma, shinma of "corrosion, ignorance, and desire". From the India
-
- Nirakara, shinma of shape. Nirakara is formless, and is also the gateway all beings must pass through to cross between Creation and the Wyld. A Raksha passes through Nirakara when she assumes shape in Creation and enters it, while a mortal passes through Nirakara when he enters the Wyld and undergoes destabilizing mutations.
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- Nirguna is the name of the shinma of existence. From the SanskritSanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
word Nirguna, meaning roughly "without form / traits". Much like how other shinma define concepts by embodying their opposites, Nirguna defines existence by not existing. Moreover, as the origin of existence, it is the only thing which does not exist, while everything does exist within the Unshaped Chaos.
- Nirguna is the name of the shinma of existence. From the Sanskrit
-
- Nirupadhika, shinma of space and locations. Nirupadhika cannot be found anywhere, defining location, and exists as a singularity, defining space.
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- Nirvikalpa, shinma of communication. From the SanskritSanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
word NirvikalpaNirvikalpaNirvikalpa is a Sanskrit adjective with the general sense of "not admitting an alternative", formed by applying the contra-existential prepositional prefix to the term .-Usage:...
, meaning "not admitting an alternative". Nirvikalpa cannot communicate with others, nor with itself. It cannot even observe others nor be observed by them, preventing the most basic forms of communication, thereby defining the concept.
- Nirvikalpa, shinma of communication. From the Sanskrit
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- Nirvishesha, shinma of identity. Nirvishesha has no identity, despite a given name. Those who remind Nirvishesha of its existence by speaking its given name, or those of the aspects it defines invite its wrath.
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- Nishkriya, shinma of conflict. Nishkriya possesses many weapons with which it could fight. It is by not using these weapons and being perfectly, imperturbably at peace that Nishkriya defines the concept of conflict. The aspects of Nishkriya, however, are extremely lethal and violent. One such aspect, "Ishiika, the grass-cutter scythe", was a particularly deadly participant in the Balorian Crusade.
The influence of the shinma is relative rather than absolute, and areas of the Wyld which are beyond the influence of various named shinma have been mentioned, as have the existences of alien shinma who define categories that have no influence on Creation.
Spirits
- Spirits are divided into four broad categories: demons, elementals, ghosts, and gods. With the exception of elementals, spirits are naturally immaterial, generally require Charms to materialize in Creation, and will reform when killed unless some supernatural effect prevents them from doing so. Rules for playing ghosts in 1st edition are presented in Exalted: The Abyssals, and rules for 2nd edition are presented in The Books of Sorcery, Vol. V: The Roll of Glorious Divinity II: Ghosts & Demons. Rules for playing elementals and gods are presented in The Books of Sorcery, Vol. IV: The Roll of Glorious Divinity I: Gods & Elementals.
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- Demons, Yozis, Primordials and Devas
- The Yozis are exiled, imprisoned and twisted Primordials, each primordial can have one or more bodies, known as Jouten. For each Yozi, there are at least a dozen Third Circle demons including the Fetich, each third circle demon rivals the most powerful gods and elementals in power and embodies and defines an aspect of the Yozi, which will change of the demon is permanently slain, with more dramatic changes including a new name and identity resulting from the death of a Fetich. First Circle demons are the descendants of greater demons rather than aspects of them, generally divided into various demonic species, with individuality and uniqueness quite rare among them. Due to the terms of the Yozis' surrender, all demons can be summoned and bound through sorcery, and the Unconquered Sun and the Maiden of Endings can summon Yozis.
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- Devas are free primordials' counterpart to demons, each primordial's devas has a specific name. Gaia's devas are known as kami, five of her third circle kami, the Five Elemental Dragons, have been detailed. Autochthon's devas are known as exmachina, Autochthon has nine third circle exmachina, the eight Divine Ministers and Core. In 1st edition's Exalted: The Autochthonian's, Autochthon's second circle devas are referred to as Revered Subroutines. According to 2nd edition's Manual of Exalted Power: The Alchemicals, subroutine spirits are Autochthon's manufactured counterpart to 1st and 2nd circle demons, and are divided into three tiers based on power, importance and autonomy: Alpha, Beta and Gamma in ascending order, and Autochthon has made his Divine Ministers incapable of spawning new exmachina, 2nd edition material is unclear about the fate of pre-existing 2nd circle exmachina. Unlike true demons, these beings cannot be summoned through sorcery. The terms Deva, Exmachina and Kami were established in Voice of the Magnus, published online in the Ink Monkies blog on June 5th, 2010.
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- Elementals
- Elementals maintain Creation, and with a few exceptions, embody one of the five elements: air, earth, fire, water or wood. Elementals are naturally material, requiring charms to dematerialize, and with a few exceptions, cannot reform when slain. Unlike other spirits, their growth is largely unrestricted. The most powerful elementals are the Lesser and Greater Elemental Dragons. Elementals are generally outranked by gods of similar power. Elementals can be summoned through Terrestrial Circle Sorcery, however, unlike demons, powerful elementals often have designated proxies who can be sent to respond to the summoning in their stead.
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- The elementals of Autochthonia embody one of the machine world's elements: crystal, metal, oil, lightning or steam, and cannot be summoned through sorcery.
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- Ghosts
- The most common type of ghosts, referred to as ghosts or the dead, are the hunHun and poHun and po are types of souls in Chinese philosophy and religion. Within this ancient soul dualism tradition, every living human has both a hun spiritual, ethereal, and yang soul that leaves the body after death and a po corporeal, substantive, and yin soul that remains with the corpse...
or higher souls of mortals who have refused to pass into Lethe and reincarnation due to their attachment to their mortal lives. These ghosts are much weaker than Exalted, and they can only respire Essence in the Underworld and Shadowlands. Hungry ghosts generally come into existence due to betrayal, vengeance or a traumatic death. Initially, a hungry ghost includes both the higher soul and the poHun and poHun and po are types of souls in Chinese philosophy and religion. Within this ancient soul dualism tradition, every living human has both a hun spiritual, ethereal, and yang soul that leaves the body after death and a po corporeal, substantive, and yin soul that remains with the corpse...
, or lower soul, but the hun soon moves on, leaving the hungry ghost largely mindless. Unlike other ghosts, hungry ghosts are naturally material in Creation at night. Nephwracks are ghosts who have been corrupted by the Neverborn. Unlike uncorrupted ghosts, they are capable of using necromancy. The Deathlords are thirteen ghosts of powerful Solar Exalted who have been empowered by the Neverborn, and although they are not technically Exalted, they have access to Abyssal Charms. Spectres, also known as plasmics, are bizarre creatures spawned by the nightmares of the Neverborn. The category of Hekatonkhire includes the ghosts of demons, devas and Primordial behemoths, as well as the manifested nightmares of the Neverborn. The Neverborn are the ghosts of slain Primordials. Immensely powerful, they are difficult to rouse from their slumber, and their power seems largely constrained to the Labyrinth. Only mundane ghosts and Hekatonkhire can be summoned through necromancy, and only mundane ghosts can be summoned through sorcery.
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- Gods
- Gods represent objects, locations and concepts, but they are separate from them. In order of least powerful and influential to most, there are least gods, minor gods, gods, major gods and Celestial Incarnae. Examples of least gods include gods of a single pebble, whereas major gods include gods of concepts such as wealth or war. Most gods are members of the Celestial Order, which is stratified into two divisions: the Celestial Court, composed of gods of concepts, and the Terrestrial Bureaucracy, made up of the gods of physical objects and locations.
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- The Celestial Court is ruled by the seven Celestial Incarnae, and is divided into the Bureaus of Destiny, Heaven, Humanity, Nature and Seasons, with the other four bureaus reporting to the Bureau of Heaven. The Terrestrial Bureaucracy is nominally ruled by the Five Elemental Dragons, and is divided into various spirit courts. Technically, all members of the Celestial Court outrank all members of the Terrestrial Bureaucracy. In practice, Terrestrial courts are largely independent.
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- Outside of the Celestial Order, there are also the machine spirits of Autochthonia, unemployed gods whose domains have been usurped or destroyed, rogue gods who have abandoned their duties, and forbidden gods who have been exiled due to madness, an abhorrent nature or because they sided with the Primordials. Gods can generally only significantly increase their power by getting promoted or expanding their purview.
Mortals and Beasts
Crafted Races- During the First Age, the Solar deliberative began a series of experiments on human volunteers with the aim of creating specialised subspecies of humanity. With the aid of magic and selective breeding they succeeded in creating several new mortal races with unique talents and abilities. In order to ensure complicity, these Crafted Races were given special mental conditioning to ensure absolute loyalty to the Solars and their Realm. Many of the crafted races were classified as blessed races and given special status and privileges, however some of the other crafted races, known informally as the slave races, had low status and limited rights. The Usurpation and the Great Contagion decimated their numbers and now they survive in small isolated pockets. The Crafted Folk that survived include the winged Airfolk in the North, the savage and cannibalistic Dunefolk in the south, the subterranean Earthfolk who have assimilated into Mountain Folk society, the Amphibious Seafolk in the West and the slave race of Treefolk in the far East. Among others, they also created a race of Minikin, miniature people with the ability to use Essence so that they could work on and repair the advanced Essence-machinery of the age, but they merged with their relatives, the Djala people, since the end of the First Age and are no longer distinguishable as a race. Members of the Crafted Races are mortal and are therefore capable of Exalting into one of the Celestial Exalted types. Rules for creating a Mortal or Exalted member of a Crafted Race are presented in the 2nd edition book, Scroll of Heroes.
Essence
Essence is the mystical force which the Exalted and gods manipulate to gain their supernatural powers. It is similar to the philosophical terms "EssenceEssence
In philosophy, essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it loses its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident: a property that the object or substance has contingently, without...
" or "Quintessence
Aether (classical element)
According to ancient and medieval science aether , also spelled æther or ether, is the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere.-Mythological origins:...
". Within the game, the mystical force "Essence" is always capitalized to distinguish from other uses of the word.
Five Magical Materials
The Five Magical Materials are used to forge artifacts and weapons. Each material is associated with a type of Exalted, as well as one of the castes of Alchemical Exalted, who are partially constructed from that material. These materials are all easily enchanted, and each one resonates with a particular type of Exalted. This resonance makes any item that is both constructed from one of the magical materials and attuned to an Exalt's anima preternaturally deft and sure in that Exalt's hands. It also gives the Exalt access to the powers of any hearthstone mounted on the item.Jade : is the most common material, and is associated with the most common, least powerful of the Exalted, the Terrestrial Exalted. There are six different colors of jade, five of which correspond to one of the Elemental Dragons. Blue jade resonates with Air, white with Earth, black with Water, green with Wood, and red with Fire. The sixth, yellow jade, is something of a mystery, in that it should not exist and only comes about through alchemical mistakes. Jade weapons are unnaturally fast, and jade armor doesn't tire the wearer.
Starmetal : is the rarest of the magical materials, forged from meteors, the husks of godlings cast out of Yu-Shan, the Heavenly City. Like its wielders, the Sidereal Exalted, Starmetal re-weaves fate, causing weapons to strike especially lethal blows and armor to turn aside all but the mightiest attacks.
Moonsilver : is considered by the Lunar Exalted to be a gift from their patron, Luna. It must be harvested by moonlight, using no crafted tools, forged at night and cooled only with water that has never seen the sun. Swords made of Moonsilver are more accurate, bows shoot farther and armor does not impede the wearer's mobility. Like the protean Lunars, Moonsilver can shift into new forms easily.
Soulsteel : is made from human souls and the substance of the Labyrinth of the Underworld. It is jet black, and agonized faces of the souls it contains can be seen moving and screaming in the metal. Unsurprisingly, this material is used almost exclusively by the Abyssal Exalted. Soulsteel weapons inflict heavy damage on living beings and frequently drain small quantities of Essence as well.
Orichalcum : is used primarily by the Solar Exalted. Orichalcum is rarely found in pure deposits; usually, it is created out of gold that has been heated by lava and sunlight reflected from mirrors of occult design. Orichalcum weapons excel at no one thing; instead of adding a large bonus to speed, damage or defense, they add a small bonus to all.
First Edition Exalted hints at a sixth magical material, but it is not presented in full until the Second Edition release of Dreams of the First Age.
Adamant : a super-solid crystal that is refined down to the sharpest substance known. It is largely present within the body of the Primordial Autochthon, but was also known in Creation during the First Age. This material is used primarily by the Alchemical Exalted, though the Exalted of the First Age occasionally made items out of the material.
Influences
The setting is strongly influenced by Tanith LeeTanith Lee
Tanith Lee is a British writer of science fiction, horror and fantasy. She is the author of over 70 novels and 250 short stories, a children's picture book and many poems. She also wrote two episodes of BBC science fiction series Blake's 7...
's Tales from the Flat Earth
Tales from the Flat Earth
Tales From The Flat Earth is a fantasy novel series by Tanith Lee.Novels*Night's Master *Death's Master *Delusion's Master...
, Michael Moorcock
Michael Moorcock
Michael John Moorcock is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published a number of literary novels....
's Hawkmoon
Hawkmoon
Dorian Hawkmoon, Duke of Köln is one of the fictional characters created by Michael Moorcock in his series of the Eternal Champion books.-Overview:Dorian Hawkmoon is one of the less "problematic" characters Moorcock ever created a series around...
, Lord Dunsany's Gods of Pegana
The Gods of Pegana
The Gods of Pegāna is the first book by Anglo-Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany, published on a commission basis in 1905. It is considered a major influence on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin...
and Yoshiaki Kawajiri
Yoshiaki Kawajiri
is a critically acclaimed writer and director of Japanese animation. He is the creator of titles such as Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.-Career:...
's Ninja Scroll
Ninja Scroll
is a 1993 Japanese animated action thriller film set in feudal Japan, written and directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri who was best known for his previous thriller Wicked City . The character designs were done by Yutaka Minowa. The movie is in homage to the Ninpōchō series, ninja novels by Futaro Yamada...
. Other influences include Glen Cook
Glen Cook
Glen Cook is a contemporary American science fiction and fantasy author, best known for his fantasy series, The Black Company. Cook currently resides in St. Louis, Missouri.-Biography:...
's Black Company
The Black Company
The Black Company is a series of fantasy novels by author Glen Cook. The series combines elements of epic fantasy and dark fantasy as it follows an elite mercenary unit, The Black Company, through roughly forty years of its approximately four hundred year history.- The Books of the North:#The...
; Sean Stewart
Sean Stewart
Sean Stewart is a U.S.-Canadian science fiction and fantasy author.Born in Lubbock, Texas, Sean Stewart moved to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 1968...
's Resurrection Man, The Night Watch and Galveston; Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
and Wu Cheng'en
Wu Cheng'en
Wu Cheng'en , courtesy name Ruzhong , pen name "Sheyang Hermit," was a Chinese novelist and poet of the Ming Dynasty, best known for being the attributed author of one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, Journey to the West.-Biography:Wu was born in Lianshui, in Jiangsu...
's Journey to the West
Journey to the West
Journey to the West is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. It was written by Wu Cheng'en in the 16th century. In English-speaking countries, the tale is also often known simply as Monkey. This was one title used for a popular, abridged translation by Arthur Waley...
.
System
The game uses ten-sided diceDice
A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...
and a rules system similar to the Storytelling System
Storytelling System
The Storytelling System, formerly Storyteller System, is a role-playing game system created by White Wolf, Inc. in 1991 that premiered in Vampire: The Masquerade, a part of the World of Darkness series.-Storyteller System:...
to arbitrate the action, and, as with many other RPGs, requires little beyond the rulebooks themselves, dice, pencil, and paper. The ten-sided die storyteller system is one where the storyteller (or game master) is the person setting up a story and creating the adventure. The players create their characters using a pre-assigned number of points (as opposed to games like Dungeons and Dragons where an element of randomness can be introduced into character creation) and begin to interact with the story that the storyteller presents them with, much like a "Choose Your Own Adventure
Choose Your Own Adventure
Choose Your Own Adventure is a series of children's gamebooks where each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions and the plot's outcome. The series was based on a...
" book, although the possible actions are limited only to the imagination of the players and the discretion of the storyteller. When a challenge presents itself to the characters, they roll a number of dice determined by the statistics of their character with a difficulty assigned by the storyteller. If they gain the required number of successes (7 or higher on any given die, 10's usually counting as double), they succeed in their efforts. If they do not gain the required number of successes, they fail. The storyteller describes the nature of the success or failure and the game and story continue on. Since the stories are player-created (by the storyteller, of course), there is no one way to "win" the game, except to achieve the goals set out in each individual story.
The rules system used in Exalted uses the attributes from an earlier version of the World of Darkness
World of Darkness
"World of Darkness" is the name given to three related but distinct fictional universes created as settings for supernatural horror themed role-playing games. It is also the name of roleplaying games in the second and third settings...
system. These are Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Charisma, Manipulation, Appearance, Intelligence, Wits and Perception. There are many differences in abilities (Exalted's counterpart to the Storytelling system's skills), in line with the difference in setting. For example, while the standard Storytelling system uses the skills Academics, Firearms, and Politics, the Exalted system uses the skills Lore, Archery, and Bureaucracy. For these and other reasons, the two systems are not directly compatible without adaptations. White Wolf's Scion
Scion (role-playing game)
Scion is a series of role-playing games published by White Wolf, Inc. The first core rule book, Scion: Hero. was released on April 13, 2007. The second volume, Scion: Demigod, was released on September 12, 2007, and the third, Scion: God, was released on January 23, 2008. The Scion Companion...
game uses the same attributes, but not the same skills / abilities, as Exalted. Time within combat is divided into units called ticks, most actions in combat have speed values, which indicate the number of ticks which must pass before the character's next turn, if multiple characters take turns on the same tick, their actions are considered to take place simultaneously.
The Exalted version of the rules were derived from the trilogy of white wolf games Aeon(Trinity), Aberrant, and Adventure where the idea of a fixed target number of 7 or higher was first introduced. It has since been carried on into Scion. Thus there are two distinct but similar versions of the system derived from the original storyteller system. The rules underwent numerous changes with the introduction of Exalted 2nd Edition. Changes include the removal of the Brawl and Endurance abilities (which were merged into Martial Arts and Resistance respectively), the addition of the Integrity and War abilities and the addition of mass combat and social combat systems and clearer, more detailed combo rules.
The Storytelling System itself has been applied both to tabletop and video gaming systems, and has been a subject of note to gaming enthusiasts such as Chris Crawford
Chris Crawford (game designer)
Christopher Crawford is a computer game designer and writer noted for creating a number of important games in the 1980s, founding The Journal of Computer Game Design, and organizing the Computer Game Developers' Conference.- Biography :...
, who wrote a book entitled Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling which details many elements similar to the Storytelling System in use in Exalted.
Stunting
Innovative to World of Darkness systems is the concept of stunting, whereby a player will describe their action in detail in order to receive a bonus to the number of dice they roll (determined by the Storyteller) and recovering a number of motes of Essence or points of Willpower back in accordance with the level of their stunt. This encourages players to become more active participants in the story by rewarding them for taking a more active role in the description of action.History
Exalted has mechanical and thematic similarities to White Wolf's previous game series, the old World of DarknessWorld of Darkness
"World of Darkness" is the name given to three related but distinct fictional universes created as settings for supernatural horror themed role-playing games. It is also the name of roleplaying games in the second and third settings...
, but exists in its own product line, called the Age of Sorrows. The game has an excellent sales record, on par with the company's flagship title, Vampire: The Masquerade
Vampire: The Masquerade
Vampire: The Masquerade is a role-playing game. Created by Mark Rein·Hagen, it was the first of White Wolf Game Studio's World of Darkness role-playing games, based on the Storyteller System and centered around vampires in a modern gothic-punk world....
, the second edition core rulebook achieving a sales ranking at #23,558 on Amazon.com with a 4.5-star mean user review rating based on 13 user reviews as of January 2009. Exalted, being White Wolf's second largest franchise, has helped White Wolf Publishing to grow and maintain an average 26% market between 1991 and 2003. As of November 11, 2006, White Wolf Publishing had averaged a 22% market share since 1991, with the Exalted line maintaining second place behind the New World of Darkness line, and RPG.net also confirms White Wolf Publishing as one of the biggest trends in the roleplaying industry since the 1990s, which can partially be attributed to the success of the Exalted line.
The First Edition published material initially designed the Age of Sorrows as the pre-history of the old World of Darkness — however, this has not been dropped in the second edition. It should be noted that White Wolf has still continually inserted names and themes familiar to players of their previous World of Darkness line into the material. However, the Developer has commented that the connections are tenuous, allowing players to be free to treat it as a prehistory or as its own world as it may suit their individual game. The similarities between Exalted and the new edition of the World of Darkness are even weaker. Exalted Second Edition seems to imply that its story is the prehistory of our own world.
For players that are interested in the prehistory idea, some oWoD supplements supported the prehistory. The Hunter Apocrypha gave a vision of the past that said that Hunters gained their power from the broken shards of the souls of great heroes of a lost age. which seems to suggest that hunters carry broken shards of Solar Essences. While the Kindred of the East supplement gave a structure of the Wheel of Ages (mirrored in Exalted first edition books as the Ages of Man) that seemed to accommodate the integration of Exalted, oWoD. Exalted being the first and second age, oWoD being the fifth age. Some players have incorporated the nWoD into this scheme, having it occur somewhere after the 6th Age.
Promotions
In March 2008, White Wolf Publishing, Inc. unveiled a promotion that would allow 2,500 Dungeons & DragonsDungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. . The game has been published by Wizards of the Coast since 1997...
players to exchange their copy of their Edition 3.5 Player's Handbook for a copy of the Exalted Second Edition Core Rulebook. The promotion was called "Graduate your Game" and has received mixed reviews from fans of both games. The success of this promotion has yet to be revealed.
In March 2009, White Wolf Publishing, Inc. authorized the Exalted Wiki Contribution Contest, where users could come and edit the Official Exalted Wiki, contributing information in a month-long contest to win one of seven copies of an unannounced book signed by Exalted developer John Chambers
John Chambers
John Chambers may refer to:* John Chambers , British landscape, seascape and portrait painter* John Chambers , last Abbot of Peterborough Abbey and, after the Dissolution, the first Bishop of Peterborough* John B...
and Exalted art director Brian Glass. The contest is not run by White Wolf employees, but rather, fans and freelance writers for the Exalted line.
See also
- Storytelling SystemStorytelling SystemThe Storytelling System, formerly Storyteller System, is a role-playing game system created by White Wolf, Inc. in 1991 that premiered in Vampire: The Masquerade, a part of the World of Darkness series.-Storyteller System:...
. - White-Wolf's World of DarknessWorld of Darkness"World of Darkness" is the name given to three related but distinct fictional universes created as settings for supernatural horror themed role-playing games. It is also the name of roleplaying games in the second and third settings...
. - White Wolf, Inc.White Wolf, Inc.White Wolf Publishing is an American gaming and book publisher. The company was founded in 1991 as a merger between Lion Rampant and White Wolf Magazine, and was initially led by Mark Rein·Hagen of the former and Steve and Stewart Wieck of the latter. Since White Wolf Publishing, Inc. merged with...