Shataina/NoExalted

A Setting with No Exalted

Okay, so you're probably thinking I'm crazy. This being "Exalted", it is sort of ridiculous to purposely remove the Exalted themselves. However, although I do love "Exalted" to distraction, I've found myself with a hankering to run or play in at least one game which doesn't have any actual Exalted in it. This probably arises from my love for Tanith Lee's work in the field of genre fantasy, especially the Flat Earth series (described as the "greatest literary influence" on "Exalted"), whose feel in and around "Exalted" as a game just enough to be tantalizingly similar, but not quite enough to satisfy me. After considering why this is so, I suspect that the Exalted themselves are way too flashy, blatant, and straightforward to satisfy the mystical, subtle, sideways sort of feel that pours from the pages of her fantasy books.

This is not a kung fu setting I am thinking of. This is not a big fireball setting, either. I'm thinking more of a setting which is filled with mysterious and silent unidentified ruins, quiet and reclusive spirits who don't scheme so much as simply embody their domains, demons which are more -- well -- themselves than simply the blatant evil antagonists that certain White Wolf writers appear determined to make them, sorcery more along the lines of thaumaturgy (an intuitive and pieced-together understanding of the occult rather than big flashy spells let off in battle) ... etc.

• back to Shataina.
• back to AlternateSettings.

The Problem

So obviously the problem is that I'm trying to adapt a setting that was made for Exalted into a setting with nothing but scattered God-Blooded and their ilk, which are weak and subtle enough to satisfy me. I like Malfeas; it can stay. I don't know about Yu-Shan, which is very ... ordered and rigorous; I'd prefer something less cut-and-dried, if you know what I mean. Furthermore, Yu-Shan automatically makes spirits into scheming bureaucrats, and I'm trying to avoid that. Clearly, the Realm presents a huge problem in and of itself, and the First Age might need a little bit of tinkering.

Mostly this page is up so people can poke holes in this idea. I would prefer not to be playing the game and suddenly realize that I've completely failed to address a gigantic hole (e.g. "So what's the deal with the Realm?" or "If the Exalted don't exist, how did X major important thing happen?"). If you can think of anything that needs to explicitly be addressed so as to avoid me blushing and stuttering later, I invite you to comment. Ideas on how to deal with stuff are especially welcome. Really, I feel as if this is too easy, and I'm missing something huge, so I'm hoping for nitpicking that'll help me work out this setting more completely.

Thus I have subcategories:

What to do with the Realm?

• Attempt to eliminate it entirely, possibly eliminating the country lines of the entire world in the process?
• Keep it as it is, but replace the Dragon-Blooded with a dynasty of God-Blooded or spirit rulers or something?
• Other?

What to do with Yu-Shan?

• Eliminate it and simply have spirits wander the world being themselves?

What to do with the Celestial Exalted?

This is the easiest. Solars officially don't exist, neither do Sidereals, and Lunars have a niche which is very easily adapted simply to tribal shamans and spirits. I don't see why just flat-out eliminating them should present any difficulty.

What to do with such things as warstriders, Alchemical Exalted, etc?

These have never particularly appealed to me. Alchemical Exalted and warstriders, along with most hardcore mass-produced magical equipment (Dragon Armours, etc) are things I would prefer to see reduced to either extreme rarities, or eliminated entirely. Fortunately, Alchemical Exalted are already so superfluous that they're easily struck out. I want to avoid a feeling of mass-produced common equipment in this alternate world -- I would prefer for artifacts to be unique, not turned out en masse from magical factories as daiklaves appear to be. So poof, they are.

What to do with history?

This seems easy enough also. Just say that nothing is known about the First Age and there are some ruins. Maybe the Exalted have even become extinct, who knows.

What to do with Fair Folk and Deathlords?

I think that the Fair Folk are okay for this setting, although I think I'll make them a little more vulnerable to banality and suchlike -- as in, they just can't exist effectively in Creation for very long, or they just don't like it -- in order to avoid explaining why they haven't overrun the place. As for the Deathlords, if I completely eliminate them that doesn't seem to do too much either, although there is the question of where the Great Contagion came from; I'm still toying with whether or not to keep it at all.

---

Comments

Great idea! :)

And now some suggestions:

Leave history largely intact, except that the Deathlords never came into being (either none of the betrayed Solar's po souls accepted the bargains, or they were just never offered). The Dragon-blooded Shogunate existed as normal written, too - but the Great Contagion was just a Wyld-spawned disease, something horribly effective. The Empress-to-be makes it into the Imperial Manse and activates the defences, but they were never meant for any Terrestrial Exalt, no matter how well-favoured, to even be able to use and, for her impertinence, a massive magical backlash kills every single Dragon-blood even as the Fair Folk are driven back.

The Lunar Exalted simply fare somewhat worse in their battles against the Wyld both immediately after the Usurpation and in the centuries after, and those few that remain are either in a millennia-long hibernation (Leviathan), lost in their animal selves (Lilith) or completely insane and chimerical - the Silver Pact never gets a chance to get going since the number of extant Lunars is never able to rise about a few dozen at most.

The Sidereal Exalted fare just as poorly. Affronted by their plan to murder his Chosen the Unconquered Sun pulls away from the Games of Divinity for long enough to coerce the Maidens and Lytek into not releasing the Sidereal soul sparks after the death of their current host. Currently he holds just over half of them, and every Sidereal death lessens the Five-score Brotherhood terribly - the Sidereals themselves have been unable to determine what has happened to their Exaltations, merely that they have stopped. It has now been almost a thousand years since a Sidereal last stepped into Creation, and they remain holed up in the Manses in Yu-Shan engaged in petty faction politics.

With this set-up the Solars don't get released (no Deathlords to crack the Jade Prison), the Sidereals and Lunars have faded to irrelevance, and the Dragon-bloods are all long gone. - Moxiane

Nice! I definitely like it. I think maybe I'll adapt it slightly because I really want to make sure that there are no Exalted left at all, none, anywhere, ever. They're dead, Bill. Bill ... they're dead.

I think ... maybe the Lunars were trapped in the Jade Prison along with the Solars. All gone. And the Jade Prison isn't someplace easy like the bottom of the ocean, it's ... I don't know, flung into the heart of the purest Wyld or something. Mwa. Mwa ha.

I like the idea of the Unconquered Sun thing, only I think He also annihilated the Sidereals themselves in a fit of pique. :) Which serves as a handy explanation for the Dragon-Blooded, too, should I want an alternate. Turns out they don't need that little apologetic note in "Creatures of the Wyld" anymore -- the mice did go after the Realm, and won.

Thanks for the advice ... I may end up taking more of it if I repent of my desire to rid the Exalted from Creation. heh.

~ Shataina

Pardon the rude placement of this comment before the others that came first, but I didn't know where else to put it. Anyway, I think that if you want to go with this Exalted extinction idea, you might want to do something else with the Sidereals. Sure, the US could just blink them out of existence, but I think it'd be a little richer if, instead, their attempt to hide themselves from fate backfired (almost definitely with the US's help), and instead of merely acquiring an Arcane Fate, they managed to run themselves out of existence. Now, they're like Goratrix (to borrow a Vampire reference), trapped forever on the other side of the mirror. -EJGRgunner

That's an great idea! And it fits in so well with their hubris, too. Great. Thanks!

~ Shataina

You know, you might get closer to the effect you want if you remove the Exalted retroactively, so that they never existed in the setting at all. Maybe, instead of imbuing Exalted, the gods created the elementals to oppose the Primordials, or used mortal ghosts (and Deathlords!) as their armies? Or maybe the Primordials never thought to bind the gods with oaths at all, and the gods made war against the Primordials personally. Hey, maybe there never was any Primordial War at all, and the Yozis and Malfeans have simply always been there. There's a lot you can do with the setting with a little elbow grease and the willingness to change things at the root rather than pruning the branches. :) - Quendalon

Heh. I guess I didn't get it across here, but that was actually what my original idea was. The whole the-Exalted-are-extinct thing occurred to me while I was writing this out.
I'm trying to change as little as possible, is the thing, and I feel as though deleting the Exalted from the setting entirely would be a bit much. Also, I like the (entirely too underplayed, in my opinion) theme of the game which deals with fallen glory and shattered empires, and I think that would be emphasized more if the Exalted had existed and fallen completely, not just a little ways.
I dunno, though. As I said, really what I'm aiming for is to change as little as possible. Do you think that it would actually be easier to adapt the setting if I said they never existed?
Thanks.
~ Shataina

Actually, I think that you can make the changes quite small if you transition things cleanly enough. The advantage is that you no longer have to consider the whys and wheres and hows of the extinction of the Exalted. You can simply fill their roles with other things.

Hell, maybe you could conflate the Primordial War with the Usurpation? The Yozis / Anathema ruled the world until they were betrayed by their servants, the Gods / Sidereals, at the end of the First Age. The Yozis / Anathema were locked away in Malfeas / the Jade Prison, the Gods / Sidereals squirreled themselves away in Yu-Shan, and the maintenance of Creation fell to the God-Blooded / Terrestrials of the Realm.

Whenever you see the word "Exalted", just change it to something appropriate by context (demon/god/elemental/etc). Presto! All fixed up! - Quendalon

You make a good point. re: the prongs of the argument, see below.
~ Shataina

What if only one batch of Celestial Exalted were ever made? So when a Solar, Lunar or Sidereal died, the essence just returned to Luna, Sol Invictus or one of the Maidens instead of exalting someone else. As for the Dragon-Blooded, their bloodlines either diluted into nothingness from breeding with normal humans, or they ended up insane, deformed and eventually sterile from heavy inbreeding. The Usurption was the overthrow of the insane remnants of the DBs by the god-blooded, who established the Shogunate and the Empire. The Realm would work if it was ruled by a god-blooded dynasty, and the Scarlet Empress would just be a god-blooded sorceress who used thaumaturgy, hearthstones, alchemical potions and demonic pacts to extend her life. The true Alchemicals stopped being made when Autochthon fell into his slumber, and all of them became cities ages ago, while the things created by the Sodalities are more like immortal, artificial god-blooded. The Deathlords are still the ghosts of first-age Solars, but they don't have any special powers because if it, they just have high essence, high-level arcanoi and some powerful artifacts. The Abyssals are easily replaced with Nemissaries and Ghost-Blooded, since they filled that role before the Abyssals existed. - GordonMichael

That's an idea! They assumed they would be reincarnated with all their godly power, but weren't, and now they're gone. Possibly they stopped being reincarnated because the gods became disenchanted with them, turned away, and disengaged from the world and went into seclusion where they could obsess over their domains in peace.
~ Shataina

Hmmm. That gets me to thinking. What if the Exalted were intended to be one-shot things? Sol Invictus, Luna, and the Maidens all got together, figured out just how many super-soldiers they needed, and sent them to fight the Primordial War. Once they won, the Celestines gave their kids some cool-down time, let them hang around and enjoy Creation for a year or two. Then: "Come on Ricky, time for your divine re-integration." If you want the gods to be benevloent, then they did it out of love for their new children. If you want them to be more pragmatic, they did it so no one could ever threaten their dominion over everything.
In this case, I see the Celestials as half-god / half-human, rather than mostly-human with a shard of divinity shoved into their soul somewhere. Like giant, golden, bodhisatva toddlers who are powerful enough to beat the original creators of the universe while numbering less than a thousand. Y'know. Mythic. Maybe records still exist, hinting that the gods at one point sent great heroes to fight some cthonic evil, or maybe they don't. In this scenario, the Exalted would have only existed for the duration of the Primordial War, so they wouldn't have had much of an effect on the history of the world. Everything that has happened since was orchestrated by spirits, god-bloods, and mortal heroes.
Regarding the theme of "fallen glory": maybe the Exalted, during their short tenure in existence, bestowed some of their semi-divine knowledge on the populace. That would explain the First Age. But, since all the magitech was designed by intelligences twice as close to divinity as a normal mortal, no one was able to maintain them. Or they forgot how to maintain them. Which would then explain the ruins everywhere and general ignorance of super-magic. -OhJames

Thanks. I do like the solution of the gods taking back their bits (aka children) once they were done, and you've summed it up well, although I'll probably say that the gods let them stick around for slightly longer. Maybe not, though. I also really like EJGRgunner's idea of the Sidereals having run themselves out of existence, though ... then again, I guess it's kind of irrelevant in terms of its effect on the setting, since either way they effectively don't exist (although there might be interesting possibilities for their attempts to reenter reality in the first case, but then again I don't want them coming back into the setting, ever). Anyway, yeah, thanks.
~ Shataina

You might want to think about Sidereals a bit more. They might add more than they take away if you start chopping at them. No martial arts. Heck, no charms (except maybe the odd prophetic one). Break up their unity and split them into several groups with little to do with each other. Forget about Yu Shan. Leave them nothing but astrology, and cut their influence down to one city at a time. You could have the secret masters of local politics meeting in abandoned warehouses at night, deciding which of the local king's sons to put on the throne. Don't be afraid to water down what you don't like at full strength.
Anyway, I don't think you need to stray far from what you have here. My thoughts: Solars existed, but spectacularly killed themseles off at the end of the First Age. Of the few records which survive, none mention Sidereals (who were advisors, not kings, after all). Dragon-blooded never existed; the Yozis were defeated by Solars and armies of elementals. The Deathlords are near-starting Abyssals and you see them as often as you do the current ones. The Realm will work with dynasties of God-blooded (taking it out completely would change politics too completely. I don't know what Lookshy should be. - Webb

Thanks for the suggestion, but I hate Sidereals. :) Admittedly I mostly hate them because I consider them stupidly powerful, but there are a lot of other mechanical things I dislike too, such as the broken Mask thing. I think it would probably be easier just to get rid of them entirely, especially since I'm not attached enough to want to keep them anyway.

If I were to make the Realm into a dynasty (or group of dynasties) of God-Blooded, how would you suggest that I treat the Empress? Also, do you think I could just blatantly shift the Dynasty to an entirely mortal thing (not making them God-Blooded at all)?

Lookshy! Good point. Darn. I guess they could just be God-Blooded too ... but that's putting an awful lot of God-Blooded in the setting. Something to think about.

Thanks,

~ Shataina

Suggestion: Taking another look at what you're after, you may be better off making the Realm and Lookshy almost completely mortal, with just a few God-Blooded at the very top.

The only problem I can think of is the Immaculate Order. Right now, they exist as a tool of the Sidereals, hunting Solars and telling everyone that DBs are higher beings. You could recast them as priests of whatever god leads those few God-blooded, who study martial arts to beat up other gods who try to muscle in on Realm territory.

But then, you wanted gods who weren't schemers, either. I'm not sure what to do with the Order.

- Webb

If the Exalted are extinct and the gods don't care, there's no real reason for the Order to exist. <grin> They could be the dead religion of the past glorious empire, which scholars sometimes look at in pure curiosity. Or something. Martial Arts are the lost secrets of their ancient religion, and there are whispers of great mages and God-Blooded who have gained a trace of their power through long study, but none can match the dead masters, etc.

~ Shataina

Suggestion: What about combining Yu-Shan and the Realm? Put Yu Shan in Creation. The gods rule there, but they do so shakily... and vast areas of their once-great city-continent are abandoned and in ruins, often inhabited by rogue gods. Yu-Shan is the Heaven that anyone with a boat can reach, only to be disappointed when they arrive. Yes, the central portions (and some outlying estates) are magnificient, but they are dwarfed by the vast areas of desolation that surround them. The Immaculate Order becomes the police force of the gods - they hunt down rogue gods who are shirking their duties (which is part of the reason Yu-Shan is in such disarray) or consorting improperly with humans.
- Szilard

Mmmm. Interesting, but the Immaculate Order is gone. Although I suppose it could exist with just mortals and God-Blooded ... but they would never be able to discipline the gods.

The gods as I'm picturing them here are less faction-politicky and more themselves. I hate what White Wolf has done to the gods -- they have made them all into the same entity: political, manipulative creatures, and then they tell us gods can't be any other way. This seems to me to be kind of opposing to what I imagine spirits to be, which is embodiments of their concepts. anyway ... I think I'll cut myself off before I start to rant, but I guess what I'm saying is I don't really want the gods to just be, well, powerful people who live in houses and rule an area, you know? There's no real reason for an immortal being who's immune to damage and everything else to bother with ruling anything, especially if they don't really care about power (and in my world, they've actually learned something from their infinite lifespans, viz., there's very little point to power -- after all, look what happened to the Exalted). I'm sort of trying to cut out the political angle, which I should have made clearer above. Sure, spirits should be sort of like people, but people who have (as one of my friends put it) a derangement relating to their domain. They're crazy about it, obsessive about it -- they embody it. There's no reason for them to shirk their duties; their duties are their domain, and all they care about is their domain. Sort of ... Buddha-like figures, who understand that the world is the way it is and all they can do is enjoy their domain while it lasts. Fatalistic, even. Hmm. I don't think I'm getting this across very well.

Your vision of Yu-Shan could be adapted to, say, the Realm, though -- I like it, it's desolate and fits with the theme I'm picturing, and I think it would work, I'd just prefer to have the gods be something else. Hmm ... maybe there could be a few exceptionally weak Dragon-Blooded left, ignoring the evidence that their kingdom has fallen ....

~ Shataina

A question: will the PCs ever learn of the existence of the (now-extinct) Exalted?

If yes, then the Exalted are still, in a fundamental sense, a part of the setting. They loom large in a subjective manner. They are the Mighty Heroes of Ages Past, and they're casting their shadow over the characters and the setting. Which is good if that's the effect you're going for, but I think you can make a lot more hay out of a world where their legend isn't hovering in the background.

If no, then who cares? If the PCs will never even hear a whisper of the legends of the Exalted, then what reason is there to have the Exalted ever have existed? - Quendalon

Well, yes. As you noted, that would kind of be the point. If the Exalted used to exist, I think the setting might take on a more Dying Earth feel -- not so much that the characters of the game would be cowering in their shadows (the way God-Blooded do in the normal "Exalted" setting :P), but they'd have the whole pride-goeth-before-a-fall-the-gods-first-build-up-those-whom-they-wish-to-destroy etc theme hovering around, difficult to ignore.

"Make a lot more hay"? I've heard the phrase, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean with it here.

~ Shataina

(adding a line to keep things readable, feel free to take it out.)

I think the broad idea is: Make Creation more stable. Its not on the verge of coming apart at its seems. The Spirits do their jobs. The Demons are locked, unhappy but mostly accepting in their prison. The DB scheme conquest, but that's what powerful people do. They'll ultimatly get drunk and party themselves into oblivion. There's still plenty of cool stuff to do - there's plenty of cool stuff in RL, and its stable. (at least, compared to Exalted.)

I guess that's all very vague -MeiRen

I don't mean to be rude, but what's your point?
~ Shataina

if I may add an idea. What if the exalted aren´t extinct but more or less locked away. For example they could have pissed of their Bosses (sun, moon...) so much through total incompetence (and nearly getting creation destroyed is quiet incompetent) that they took them all away to Yu-Shan. They administer the heavens (so Yu-Shan is more orderly) and can only get to creation to do a mission and that´s only happening when really necessary (or not at all). So you can still have things of incredible Power around but nobody is able to use them (old dusty warstriders standing in old ruins can make a o-my-god-i-am-so-small feeling), history could still be near the same, the realm could be a kingdom where severall houses compete for Power and the dangers of the world are the same but less drastic becouse a) the exalted and gods are doing their job and b) no stupid powercrazed exalted/gods mess around with creation (summon demons use necromancy/sorcery...) just an idea - Ranta

Seems like you could approach this from the standpoint not of "exalted are extinct" but "exalted never existed in the first place". Suppose instead that everything has to do with either spirits, demons or the wyld. For example, suppose that there was not god-revolt. Instead, a war erupts between Primordials. While they are somewhere fighting, many of their god servants gain freedom of action and start doing what they want in Creation while their masters are distracted. Some Primordials die. Some are so wounded that only one (or so) or their souls remains, "demoting" the being from "primordial" to "powerful god" (note that this is actually a fate worse than death for a primordial). Perhaps some of the free gods have to fight this lost soul in Creation. Out of this battle comes a leader (the soul, a god, god-blooded, fair folk, whatever) who forges the first age, uniting humanity for the first time. For whatever reason, the first age is overthrown. If run by a god, perhaps a set of mortals builds a huge cult that takes power away from from the god by redirecting essence flow to the cult. Or, maybe the first age ends when the primordials complete their war and realize the gods have been naughty, giving them a smack down and leaving the mortal bits of the first age in chaos. They place limits on what spirits can do in creation. Then the contaigion comes, maybe caused by the nephracks that run the underworld, or as a last act of a vengeful spirit. The fair folk invasion follows. Mortals put up a struggle, turning iron crafting into an art that rivals the first age, but can't stop the tide. (Maybe they get a stay of execution by manipulating armies of the dead into fighting fair folk or vice versa.) A woman breaks into a ruin in the middle of creation and figures out how to run creation engines left behind by the first age (maybe with demonic inspiration). She turns the fair folk away, and forges an empire. This is easy in the chaos. Rather than forged on Dragon-Blood, the new empire prospers the way all good empires do: with money. At first, the empire rules because it is the only real organization, but soon enough it has locked up so much of the economy that none can rival it, though many try. Most of these are dealt with by the first age weapons, but then the empress dies, taking many secret's of their use with her. Their defensive aspects remain, but armies can no longer be incinerated from afar. By then, most of the serious opposition to the empire has been destroyed, and the fringe begins fighting over the scraps. In recent centuries, to combat a slow decline, the empire took to expanding its borders militarily. Recently, the young emperor is killed (some say assassinated) while on one of these campaigns, leaving only his five-year old daughter to succeed him. Up until now, the imperial line has been managed flawlessly, but now a series of assassinations have the empire on the brink of civil war. Or something. -- Wordman