In the game, you (generally) play an Exalt, one of the chosen of the Incarnae (or one of the other options⊠Iâll explore those later). Generally speaking, you are a human granted awesome power as a result of your deeds or will.
This is one of the important parts of Exalted. You donât Exalt randomly. Your character EARNED his Exaltation, and while each type of Exalt earns theirs differently, the fact remains that your character stood out in some way, went above and beyond even as a mortal, and somehow attracted the attention of the Exaltation itself.
Another important facet of Exaltation is that the Exaltation chooses the host. There is a god of Exaltation (Lytek, heâs awesome), and both he and the relevant Incarna can guide and influence the Exaltation as it shoots invisibly through Creation seeking a host, but in the end, the Exaltation makes the choice. The Exalted are not beholden to their creators or controlled by them in any way.
Exalted revolves heavily around what has been dubbed âprotagonism,â the idea that your characters are, in fact, the protagonists of the story and their choices are important. While there are things that can limit or even remove that choice, they are rare, and your character usually has ways, whether through magic or narration, to avoid those circumstances. In the end, like the Exaltation, nothing shackles your character mentally.
Nothing, that is, except the Great Curse. Like all White Wolf games, there is a type of morality mechanic, though Exaltedâs is less heavy-handed. Every character has what is known as a Virtue Flaw: a condition that puts mental stress on the character and pushes the Great Curse ever closer to expressing its unique madness. When the character encounters this condition, he gains Limit, which, when it reaches 10, explodes in a torrent of cathartic madness in an event known as Limit Break.
There are other things that inflict Limit, but mostly itâs just gained through the Virtue Flaw. And this is the only thing that cannot be resisted by Charms. In fact, itâs usually inflicted by the player onto the character when itâs fun. Itâs a heroic flaw, like Herculesâ temper, that leads to interesting situations.
Characters in Exalted are all âheroicâ in the Greek sense. They are larger-than-life, capable of truly amazing actions, and always, always the focus of the stories around them. However, they donât have to be what we would call âgood.â Some of them are serial killers, some are noble warriors, thieves, assassins, whores, paladins, priests, sorcerers⊠anything and everything, so long as the character is impressive and willing to use the power they have been granted. The one thing Exalted characters prohibit is a passive nature. In the following post I'm going to try to explain more in detail each of the exalted types and the different cast within these types.
Some quick facts about the exaltation itself
The shard of exaltation is a fragment of a god's own divine essence, sheered from themselves in order to raise up an ordinary mortal into a champion of the gods. Though the exalted will feel a natural affinity for the god their shard came from, they are under no compulsion to obey that gods decree. This was intentional, to prevent the primordial's from simply ordering the gods to end their own uprising.
In the world of creation, humans have two components to their souls. The hun soul, or higher soul, which maintains their capability for logic and reason and the po sou, or lower soul, which governs emotion and instincts. When a shard of exaltation find itself a new host it grafts it self onto the soul and becomes a third component that greatly enhances and regulates the flow of essence through it's host body.
Sometimes though, the exaltation carries with it fragments of it's previous host. This is more the case for celestial exalts than Terrestrials (whose potential to exalt is instead passed down through their lineage). When these shards pass from a the dying body of a previous wielder and into a new one it will sometimes carry with it some of the memories and pieces of personality of those that came before. The new host will experience these memories from time to time as dreams in their sleep, or as brief visions when they encounter something their previous incarnation had also witnessed or been involved in.
The process of exalting, sometimes known as the second breath, generally occurs during a dramatic point of the exalt's life. While this can vary between exalted types it usually comes in either a moment of intense stress or intense focus, particularly when they are attempting something significant. For Solars, this tends to be when they attempt the impossible. For lunars, this is usually when they are in a struggle for survival. Sidereals are said to be fated to exalt from the day they are born. The process for dragon blooded is poorly understood but generally is considered a natural part of their life circle. And for Abyssals, their Deathlord makes them the offer of eternal life in exchange for servitude at the moment they sit on the precipice of death.
In each case the outcome remains the same. The young exalt is invigorated with a sudden burst of power, unlocking their essence and allowing them to overcome whatever challenge was laid before them at the time of their exaltation.
While the number of terrestrial exalted is in constant flux, the number celestial exalted (that is, the solars, lunars, sidereals, and abyssals) is fixed, as the Celestial only made a specific number at the start of the primordial war that have been continually reincarnating since. In total there are 300 Lunars, 150 solars, 100 sidereals, and 100 abyssals. Originally there were 300 solar shards of exaltation, but a third of their number was corrupted into the abyssals when the deathlords pillaged the jade prison. As for the number of terrestrial shards that empower the dragon blooded, the Realm touts that it has 10,000 dragon blooded that make up it's great houses and savants estimate another two to three thousand wandering the thresholds.
Of the remaining 50 solar shards though, there is a mystery. They do not pass through the wheel of reincarnation to empower new host. Nor have they been accounted for among those solar's or abyssals that roam creation's soil. Few know where they have gone or who has taken them but their absence leaves many to worry.