MonstrancesAndShards
Every Exalted player who has ever had any contact with Abyssal Exalted has ever wondered, can they be redeemed?
An Abyssal Exalted portraits the fallen hero, a former Solar Exalted who, for some reason or another, turned away from the light and forsake his divine conception, becoming the antithesis of what he should be. Redemption is, at first, not a possibility for him.
However, that is a lie. Solar shards were created by the gods with the help of Autochthon, the machine god. Therefore, they are the only ones who are able to permanently alter the shards, no one else. Redemption of Abyssal shards is a possibility, and a source of concern to deathlords.
But, first things first.
The Monstrance of Celestial Portion
The Monstrance is a cage that deathlords use to corrupt Solar Essences, converting them into Abyssal ones. It is made of bleached bones and black jade, with eldritch runes and wards carefully etched into . These runes make sure the cage is immune to both Emerald and Sapphire circle sorcery. They are in nature offensive to the core of every solar, their power being so great and evil that the mere sight of a monstrance disturbs a solar in a way no other artifact in Creation is able to.
Corrupting Solar Shards
Deathlords use torment in these cages to break the will of a solar exalted, luring him into giving away his name to the void.
Once the solar has accepted the pact, he leaves the monstrance and reenters it, this time willingly. The deathlord then invokes the Dimming of the Light spell (Ab:229), which extracts a portion of the shard, linking it to the monstrance, and filling the space left by that portion with the deathlord's own dark essence. While inside the monstrance, the solar gives up every power he has and, lastly, his name. Giving up his name concretizes the extraction of portion of the shard, linking it to the monstrance (the name is forever lost, although). The deathlord then infuses the solar with his own dark essence, filling the empty left by the portion of the shard which was linked to the cage.
In nature, Abyssal shards are mostly identical to Solar shards - the difference is a small part of it that has been replaced by the deathlord's own essence.
Recovering Abyssal Shards
There are two ways for an Abyssal shard to become one again and retake its original Solar form. The first one is quite troublesome, since it requires the Abyssal to wish for redemption willingly, discover the path to redemption by himself and get an advocate to intercede for him with the Unconquered Sun himself.
The other way to do it involves a more direct approach - though it's pretty dangerous, too.
Basically speaking, un-tainting an Abyssal essence requires the lost portion of the shard to be taken off from the monstrance and reintegrated into the original shard. For that to be done, direct access to both shard and monstrance is required. This is the dangerous part of the process: both abyssal and his monstrance need to be taken from the deathlord, which is unlikely to give them willingly. The Abyssal shard, then, must be cleaned and stripped off the dark essence of the deathlord. The portion in the monstrance then must be liberated and reforged into the shard, turning it back into a Solar one. However, the life of the Abyssal is lost during the process, and his higher soul reenters the natural cycle. Upon reincarnation, the reborn Solar shard is granted a new name and the process is complete.
I'm still working on the details of the recovery process. Since this is part of a campaign I'm running, sooner or later I'll work it out. As soon as I get something more concrete, I'll update this.
