PlayersGuideCoverArt
Since people periodically ask about them on the Exalted forums, I figured it would be nice to have a quick and easy reference for the characters on the cover of the Player's Guide. "I" in this case am Everyl, but I'm just starting the page; anyone can feel free to finish it if they have access to extra info from the people who originally described these characters.
In case it needs to be said, this is a wiki page. If you are one of the players whose characters wound up on the cover of the Player's Guide, or if you know one of them personally, feel free to add more information to the appropriate bio page. More information is always better - what's happened to the character since the Player's Guide was released, character sheets, whatever. :-)
- back to the PlayersGuide.
- back to Books.
Who are these characters, anyway?
The eleven characters depicted on the inside and outside covers of the Exalted Player's Guide are the results of a contest White Wolf ran back when the book was still in development. They invited fans to write up brief (VERY brief) descriptions of their characters and send them in to White Wolf for judging. After they slogged through the untold masses of e-mail this generated, they narrowed it down to 11 finalists, which the fans then got to vote on. All 11 finalists were drawn by professional artists from UDON, an art company that White Wolf regularly uses for Exalted art. Heysha Black Asp, the winner, wound up on the front cover. The guy who got second place is on the back, and all 11 are on the inside covers, though without color. Several characters are also visible in the background of the outside cover.
The characters are not "signature characters," and none of them have shown up in any Exalted fiction to date. They have no more canonical presence in the setting than any character you've ever generated, though they're probably better-known among the fans.
Most of the characters will have their own sub-pages here, if more info can be dug up from their creators. So far, I don't have many, though at least one wikizen was kind enough to post piles of info on her character elsewhere already.
The Final Results
(This text is copy-pasted from:
http://www.vampirethemasquerade.com/ExaltedWeb/ExaltedContest10292003.html
There's a tad bit more info there. Also, if I'm breaking any laws or anything by copying the content over to here for ease of reference, feel free to take the page down.)
The contest concluded with more than three thousand final fan votes being counted Monday, December 1st. The winner is:
Heysha Black Asp who scored approximately 20% of the vote with 608 votes.
The other members of the top five are:
Shado (387) 13%
Shataina (362) 12%
Prophet of Crimson and Steel (349) 11%
Shadow (329) 11%
Check out all eleven of those who made it to the voting stage, including the lucky winners.
Name: Shado
Exalt: Solar
Caste: Night
Shado, the young Night-Caste lore-hunter. His long straight hair is white, as its color has been stolen. Smile rarely accompanies his scrutinizing dark-eyed gaze. The wide round Chinese hat is behind his head more often than on it. Black coat embroidered with silver thread fits tightly over his orichalcum breastplate, and it widens below the waist. Armed with his black-coated sleek short powerbow, Shado travels on his favorite cloud Cyril.
Name: Rhazahd Va'deen - The Maelstrom of Blades
Exalt Type: Lunar
Caste: Full Moon
Totem: Spider
Rhazahd is a lean, dusky southlander. Black eyebrows and drooping moustaches decorate the bald man’s lean face. About his bare chest we wears a harness of straps encircling his body and crossing his shoulders, joined in front by a circular ring over his heart which frames a spider tattoo. His harness bears eight blades in back, arranged in a circle. Spidery tattoos of the old tongue cover his arms, extolling the names of worthy foes.
Name: Shataina
Exalt: Solar
Caste: Zenith
Sunlight falls first upon Shataina's hair, shining like burnished copper. The Sun has streaked it bronze and scarlet, flushed gold her once-alabaster skin. Wide, oblique eyes flash palest green from a classic, patrician face. Flame-colored gossamer robes hang in shimmering tatters upon her slender, long-limbed frame, over black jade chain. One graceful hand holds her gossamer longsword: impossibly fine, ivory hilt carved with blossoms, it glows silver-gray, with an edge no Creation-forged blade could keep.
Name: Prophet of Crimson and Steel
Type: Abyssal Exalted
Caste: Midnight
Prophet is a tall, thin man. His gray-white skin is fallen in on his bones. He wears wide black robes akin to those used in Japanese Nô-Theatre. The robes are decorated with images of the dead. Only his corpselike head and hands are visible from under the robes. On his head rests a black hat without a brim. Prophet's wears two soulsteel chains. The faces of Prophet's victims can be seen moaning on the chains.
Name: Tepet Kenjarek
Exalt: Dragon-Blooded
Aspect: Water
Winglord in the Imperial Legions. Black Jade reinforced plate inlaid with elaborate runes, fighting gauntlet on right hand, black jade reaver daiklave (long, curving blade punctuated by shark tooth-like protrusions) in left hand, and a long black cloak flapping in the wind behind him. Blue-black hair cut in a short military style. His face sports a goatee and a look of determination.
Name: Hentoshi Salume
Exalt: Dragon Blooded
Caste: Wood
Old, short, wiry, Asian monk
Bald except for long, white, braid in back
Turquoise eyes, thick eyebrows, not uni-brow
Skin appears as light colored bark, split by emerald veins
Forest Green, Gi top & Hakama pants
Gold necklace (artifact) hangs on neck with a Wood Hearthstone hanging down to chest
Jade band (artifact) wrapped around lower part of left bicep
Carries a long, Jade staff with a large, sharpened, gold coin at the top.
Name: Shadow
Exalt: Solar
Caste: Zenith
Shadow is a Solar Exalted of the Zenith Caste. Harking from the Western Islands and Blessed Isle, she has golden skin, long flowing purple-black hair, and flashing green eyes, a powerful, intelligent gray wolf by her side. A bard by trade, she carries her magical demonhide lyre strapped to her back. She wears an ornate golden necklace set with a mesmerizing Hearthstone. At her hips, she carries her Heavenly Thunder Leaves, disguised as dancing fans.
Name: Crumbling Pillar
Exalt: Abyssal
Caste: Dusk Caste
Anima: Murder of Ravens flitting about anima
Age: early 30’s, Tall, hair/fingernails black, eyes: black/white irises. Handsomish face, horridly burned, loosely mummified (bandaged) upper-torso and legs. Huge 3-toed feet, walks on balls of feet, creating a hunched posture. Wears a Brown poncho-like wrap around neck and shoulders. Left arm is a “white” soulsteel artifact, 1.5x as long as other arm, club-like fore-arm with a woman’s face on back of huge hand.
Blood Chains whipping from cuts on face made with clawed artifact hand.
Name: Maric, the Fangs of Stygia
Exalt: Abyssal
Caste: Daybreak
Appearance: Tall and lithe with braided black hair. White skin patterned with blue lines like marble, and crimson eyes.
Equipment of note: Soulsteel super heavy plate without a helmet, similar in design to gothic full plate with the neck guard, it has short fins on the back that vent essence, giving the appearance of ethereal green wings.
Grim scythe, a soulsteel naginata version of a daiklave .
Name: Heysha Black Asp
Exalt: Lunar
Caste: Changing-Moon
Heysha Black Asp is a Changing-Moon Lunar from the Far East. She’s tall, slender and graceful, with dark skin, waist-long straight ebony hair and mischievous emerald-green eyes in a lovely face. She has ritual silver tattoos on her arms, back and thighs and snake-like scales on her hips (that’s her Tell). She usually dresses in jewelry only (Egypt-India style jewelry), or in loose skirts and adorned bra. Her weapon is a pair of moonsilver sais.
Name: Ombato Hammer Horn
Exalt: Lunar
Caste: Full Moon
Ombato is a massively muscular black skinned rhino-man in his war form. His dark skin is covered in glowing broad thorn and vine-like tattoos, and his head is adorned with two silver horns. He wears Moonsilver plated mail designed to emulate the fold of his rhino hide. He wields a massive Moonsilver Gore Maul. When enraged, or attempting to scare enemies, great gouts of flame erupt from nostrils and mouth.
Contest Rules as Previously Posted
[Note that we have chosen 11 people for the voting stage, though.]
Want to see your character on the cover of the Exalted Players Guide illustrated by the gang at UDON? Now you can! All we need from you is a write-up of your character from your Exalted chronicle.
Now, before you go all crazy and give us pages of in-depth stories about your character, please note that each submission must be 75 WORDS OR LESS IN LENGTH. Any entries running longer will be automatically deleted. Obviously, with the set word count, try to keep the write-up limited to the character’s physical description. Please don’t just tell us that your character is “moody.” Instead, describe to us what it is about the character’s physical appearance that makes her moodiness obvious to the viewer.
We’ll also need to know what type of Exalt your character is (i.e., Solar, Lunar, Abyssal, Dragon-Blooded, Sidereal — or even heroic mortal or Dragon King), what particular caste she belongs to (if applicable), what Artifacts she bears — y’know, the Exalted basics. Please limit your submission to the five “official” Exalt types, Dragon Kings and heroic mortals — your Infernal or Alchemical Exalt may be a great character, but we don’t want to mislead people into thinking this book has lots of information on those types of Exalted just because one of them is on the cover.
Once we’ve compiled the entries and the White Wolf staff has picked the top 10 character write-ups, we’ll post them on the website so all the fans can vote. The top five characters will be illustrated by UDON for the cover of the Players Guide. The best of these five, as voted on by you, the fans, will get to be the main character on the front of the book.
Comments
Okay, thanks to Qahavar of the White Wolf forums for pointing me to the official contest results. And special thanks to Shataina for being kind enough to have posted huge piles of information about her submission already - and even putting it someplace I could find easily - saving me the trouble of begging for it. Also, I know that some of the other people who submitted those characters are still around and capable of filling us in with a little more info about their characters. Any such help in filling this out would be appreciated. -Everyl
Have you tried some of the really massive forum sites, e.g. rpg.net? I'll bet a lot of the submitters hang out around there. I also seem to recall hearing that Heysha's player moderates a Brazilian forum, but that was during one of the voting scandals so it could be untrustworthy information. :P And, of course, you're welcome :grin:. I already had piles of fanfiction especially on Shataina before the contest, so it was easy to be all magnaminous with it. ;)
~ Shataina
- Hm. Asking around at other forums would probably be productive, yes... but I, personally, only frequent the White Wolf forums. Maybe I'll take some time to roam around and create new accounts elsewhere, but I probably won't get to that soon. I just don't have time for it at the moment. But anyone's welcome to ask around if they frequent forums besides the White Wolf ones. -Everyl
