Exalted and the World of Darkness, a Transformative Mash-Up Campaign

[PingosHusband]

No Transformers.  There were giant robots and nanotech androids and an illusory army and the most headache inducing fight I've ever run.  But the adventure worked out, so the PCs are in the process of destabilizing the Technocracy which will over the course of time destabilize the entire world.  Out of this I can make an arbitrary number of adventures. 

 

But there will be fewer robots in disguise, so while the opportunities for over the top gratuitous conflict with massive SFX will increase, they will not resemble Michael Bay movies, nor will there be merchandising tie in products.

 

<The Syndicate Begs to Differ>

Exalted Brand Shampoo:  Revive your Essence.

 

Blue Fate Perfume: Bring your own joy.

 

Lunar Lingerie:  Eclipse your Solar Mate.

</The Syndicate Begs to Differ>

[Grayfax]

Is there any more in-depth reading that can be found for this?  Or a podcast? 

 

What?!? We knoooowwww someone in your family knows how to do podcasts!  It's a natural fit!

Edited June 28, 2017 by Grayfax
More after Pingo's Like

[Pingo]

4 hours ago, Grayfax said:

Is there any more in-depth reading that can be found for this?  Or a podcast? 

 

What?!? We knoooowwww someone in your family knows how to do podcasts!  It's a natural fit!

 

She's busy. 

 

Althought she did point out this funny, relatable, accurate summation of the backstory of the Exalted world of Creation  (warning, some cuss words) which Tumblr user thetyger wrote, and read it to us out loud in her inimitable way.

 

Actually, I'm going to paste in here in case the internet vanishes it some time. Now I finally get to see what the language filter does.

 

Quote

What is Exalted?

 

Exalted is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game, like Dungeons and Dragons. Except instead of playing an elf or something you play a Super Saiyan. And instead of going into dungeons you surf down a volcano while riding a dinosaur. And the dinosaur may or may not be your significant other. And they’re riding an even larger dinosaur. Which pees heroine. These are all legitimate things in this game.

 

Exalted’s Crazy-broccoli Backstory

 

In the beginning there was chaos. Then Satan and a bunch of his buddies thought it would be pretty cool if there wasn’t some chaos. So they did that, and thus Creation (with a big fancy capital C) and all life was theirs’ to dick around with. But after a while Satan and his buddies got tired of having to actually run reality and pick up after themselves. So they made the gods and spirits of the world to run Creation for them. And this actually worked out pretty OK for Satan and his buddies for a bit. They even made Heaven where they could sit around all day getting baked and playing video games.

 

But the gods got tired of this broccoli real quick. Satan kept barging into Creation, messing up everything, vomiting all over the floor, and telling them how Night Rider was like, totally the best band in the world, man. So the gods wanted to revolt. Only they couldn’t, because Satan had written it into the gods that they couldn’t touch him. Kind of one of those proximity shock-collar deals, only with gods. So the gods looked and found a loop-hole; they couldn’t attack Satan and all his buddies, but regular people could.

 

So each of the gods picked regular, mortal folks to get a bunch of superpowers. The gods and their respective champions were Superman and his league of superheroes, Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo and her legion of furries, the five Sailor Scouts and the Jedi, and the Planeteers who went with Power Rangers. By their powers combined, they were the Exalted.

 

So the Exalted fought against Satan and all his buddies. Satan made kaiju, the Exalted made mecha. Satan made demons, the Exalted made spells to bind them. In the mean time, reality broke apart. Eventually, the Exalted won, and Satan was pulled inside-out of his broccoli by Superman, and then all Satan’s buddies were stuffed inside him and it was called Hell. Then Superman threw Satan away. But before Satan was kicked to the curb, he declared that all of Superman’s superheroes would eventually go crazy and things would be as bad as before. Superman didn’t really care and went to Heaven.

 

Time passed. The Exalted ruled the world. The superheroes were the kings, the furries were the queens, the Jedi were the councilors, and the Power Rangers were the soldiers. Creation got pretty cool. They had hover cars and internet and laserdiscs. But then things started to go downhill again. Superman got hooked on crack, Ryoko started to go insane, the Planeteers peaced out near all together, and the Sailor Scouts got drowned in dimensional paperwork. So there was really no one around to help when the superheroes became megalomaniacal broccolis.

 

It was a pretty sweet deal when the superheroes were in charge for a while. But then they started getting corrupt and debauched. And nobody could really stop them because they were broccoliing superheroes. And the Jedi got worried that maybe if they didn’t stop the superheroes, the world would be doomed. So the Jedi convinced the Power Rangers to get all the superheroes and furries in the same place. Then they killed them, captured their souls so they couldn’t reincarnate, and the Power Rangers took over the world while the Jedi stayed in the shadows.

 

Everything looked like it was gonna’ go back to normal for a while. Maybe not as great as when the superheroes and furries ran things, but still pretty cool. Except then the Cthulhu Elves came. Yeah, see, back at the beginning of time, in the chaos, Satan and his buddies weren’t alone. There was an entire dimension of weird, shapeless, nameless chaos things just hanging around. And they liked being chaos things, and they liked living in the chaos. So when Satan made some not-chaos, that kind of pissed them off. And now that Satan and the gods and the superheroes and furries were gone, they figured now would be a good time to get rid of reality.

 

So the Cthulhu Elves, which are kind of like a mix between David Bowie and Neil Gaiman’s nightmares, brought their army of Everything That Has Ever Been Hallucinated with them to destroy the world. Luckily, the Power Rangers and the Jedi, who are now also Assassins, were able to stop them from completely wrecking up Creation. But a lot of reality is kind of up for grabs right now and there are mutants and werewolves and every now and then a section of reality swings between Lisa Frank stickers and Guillermo del Toro concept art and it’s just a mess. And then the zombie plague kicked in.

 

So, in the war between Satan and the Exalted, some of Satan’s buddies died. They were gonna’ get cast into the eternal void, but then their corpses/ghosts got scared of being wiped from reality forever and ever. So the zombie Satans huddled up together and became the Grim Reaper, and then they made the underworld, and started filling it up with the souls of the dead. To top it all off, the Grim Reapers somehow got their hands on the souls of some old superheroes, so now they could make Lich Kings. Which they did, and the Lich Kings led armies of the undead across Creation destroying pretty much everything and making zombies. So it looks like everything is screwed.

 

But luckily, there is a solution; you’ve come back! Somehow the souls of the superheroes are coming back to Creation, and they’re here to save the day again. Except now the Jedi-Assassins and the Power Rangers have convinced everyone that you’re a demon. And the furries are starting to turn into big tentacle monsters. And some of the Power Rangers have turned into Sauron. And the head Power Ranger, President of All the World, has gone missing. And Unicron is bringing an army of Transformers to reality for some reason. And Satan is making his own team of anti-superheroes, and he is pissed at you personally. 

 

But that’s okay. And do you know why? Because you’re an Exalted. You were picked specifically for being awesome. By the time you’re done, they won’t know what hit ‘em. You’ve got this broccoli.

 

Posted 1 year ago

 

[Grayfax]

The filter is interesting there.  Especially mixed with what are words in valid usage that aren't replacement words... and the missed one(s)...

[redambrosia]

That is hilarious and amazing. They must have been really high when they came up with that. 

[Pingo]

As the game started, it was the World of Darkness, more or less, and suddenly within the space of a few days a handful of people Exalted for unknown reasons. (We found out shortly after that that the world's Essence level is increasing, but irregularly, in waves like resonance or harmonics.  For the first time in millennia it is high enough to sustain Exaltations.  We are not sure why it is increasing like this, but we suspect it may have something to do with Gaia trying to make her way back into Creation.).

 

Each of the original PCs got walloped by their Exaltation in different ways. The GM and the players together had a lot of fun working these out.

 

Dr. Isaiah Maxwell may have been first.  Formerly a Son of Ether (a vaguely steampunk school of mages) and psychotherapist in Scotland working to help would-be reformed vampires and werewolves (One of the more notable incidents in his pre-Exaltation life was being kidnapped by the Technocracy for forcible conversion, only to be rescued by a combined force of vampires and werewolves.  This does not happen.  Like, seriously, ever. Vampires and werewolves normally hate each other in the WoD.), he was on lunch break in his courtyard when the sun grew brighter and brighter and he Exalted as a Solar, Twilight caste (the scholars, sorcerers, and craftsmen of the Solar Exalts).

 

People rarely Exalt in their sleep, but there is little choice when one is a vampire and the Exaltation is Solar. Rokhsana was a Persian vampire (clan Brujah) and more than eight hundred years old when she was stunned awake at exactly noon by the sun shining in her Hong Kong sanctum and an infinitely weary voice saying "Unconquered" into her ear, followed by a rush of peculiar new memories and the awareness that her heart and lungs were working again. She is a Solar, Zenith caste (the priests and kings of the Solar Exalts). So far she is the only Zenith caste which kind of makes her Pope of Everything and In Charge of the Good of Everyone's Souls. She self-represses a lot.

 

Lee Ha-Neul is the youngest, a teenaged girl in a large South Korean all-girl pop group. She is the only PC who did not already know about the World of Darkness. In the middle of performing in a dance routine she Exalted as a Sidereal, Chosen of Serenity (i.e. Venus). A glowing blue symbol of Venus appeared on her forehead and a giant blue phoenix effect erupted above her. Viewers assumed it was part of the show. She has proved invaluable in helping people find each other (You may have noticed the new Exalts are scattered all over the world).

 

Samson Howe is a werecat from the United States. He is fairly close-mouthed about himself. We don't know the circumstances of his Exaltation, but he is now a Lunar Exalt of the Half Moon caste. (To those familiar with Exalted, the combined Changing Moon caste has been re-split into its original three castes. Half Moon is the caste of observers and tacticians.)

 

Tears of Azure stepped out of the vat a week after the Exaltations started, as that was how long it took to grow the Alchemical Exalt, Adamant caste (the ninjas of the Alchemical world). This one emerged in the Swiss Alps, site of a secret remnant Autochthonian city, Unwavering Gleaner and Distributor (who is a municipal Adamant caste Alchemical and so the sixth original Exalt - Alchemicals when they get big enough become cities).

 

The GM also had fun working out the Exaltations of the second wave, which came a couple of years game time after the initial one (the time scale is expected to be long in this game).  More on those later because some of them were pretty cool.

 

 

 

Edited June 30, 2017 by Pingo

[Pingo]

One of the tricky  roleplaying challenges in this game is when players know things the characters don't, or in some cases can't.

 

For example, in Exalted there is this thing called the Great Curse.  At the end of the Primordial War (very early in the world's history) the Exalted slew a bunch of the Primordials who had created the world.  As they died the Primordials cursed all Exaltations, that they would grow more corrupt and cruel and proud and treacherous over time.

 

A couple of gods know about the curse, but they never bothered to tell anyone*. So every Exalt starts out all heroic and all, but as each grows older (and the Exalted can live for thousands of years) he or she becomes a supreme jerk.

 

This basically led to everything awful that happened in Creation after that.

 

And no one knows about it (except those two gods* and the Primordials, both alive and dead). Everyone just thinks it's natural somehow, when Exalts get old they get cranky, or in some cases megalomaniacally genocidal. Whatever.

 

And they all seem to have a blind spot about it.  It's as though the characters can't even think about it, or they get distracted by the universe whenever they get close.

 

There are two interesting exceptions.

 

When the evil Primordials (the dead ones are called the Neverborn and the live-but-imprisoned ones are the Yozi) stole some Solar Exaltations to make their own corrupted Abyssals and Infernals, they removed the Great Curse from those Exalts.

 

This means that people with ex-Abyssal or ex-Infernal Solar Exaltations are not subject to the Great Curse, although nobody knows this.

 

The other exception is that Alchemicals never were subject to the Great Curse.  

 

So most of the Exalted will be subject to this curse, having special rules and rolls for weird behavior resulting from it. But a few won't and they may well start wondering what the heck is going on.

 

And all the players know this but have to play their characters not even suspecting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*this is a piece of canon the GM tells me he decided to throw out because it is so unbelievably stupid

 

 

 

 

Edited June 30, 2017 by Pingo
Minor spelling correction

[Pingo]

Another infodump of Exalted game background, because it is relevant to how Creation ceased to be Creation and also to several PC backgrounds in their last lives. This is all basically canon so far.

 

The reason the Primordials created the world is that in the roiling chaos before the world they discovered really cool games they could play called the Games of Divinity which were apparently really fun.

 

In fact, they were addictive*.

 

So the Primordials made the world to be a place where the Games of Divinity could be stabilized so the Primordials could play them securely as much as they wanted.

 

Not even kidding.

 

Anyhow, Creation was a joint project of a whole lot of Primordials, but only two of the Primordials were not especially interested in playing the game. These were Gaia, the earth herself, and Autochthon, the architect of Creation.

 

(By a funny coincidence these are also the only two non-evil Primordials.)

 

But Creation needed maintenance to keep it going.  The Primordials did not want to take time away from the Games to do it. So they created the gods to take care of running things and keeping Creation stable. The gods were subject to the Primordials and unable to act directly against them.

 

Yeah, the gods were created as cosmic janitors.

 

(Well, mostly.  Luna, the moon, was created to be a love interest for Gaia to convince her to stick around.)

 

But the gods wanted to play the Games of Creation too -- the Games were so addictive anyone seeing them yearned to play -- and the Primordials wouldn't let them.

 

And, well, that's why the gods rebelled.  So they could be free from the control of the Primordials and be free to play the Games of Divinity whenever they wanted.

 

I mean yeah, freedom and all that, sure.  But having access to the Games of Divinity was a major motivation.

 

Interestingly, when the gods prevailed in the Primordial War they made darn sure no mortal or Exalted ever was allowed to get anywhere near or even see the Games of Divinity.

 

And then the gods set it up so the Exalted had the job of cosmic janitors while the gods got to play.

 

When the Great Curse kicked in and the Exalted started acting crazy, the Incarnae (the seven major gods - the Sun, the Moon, and the Five Maidens) acted like it was a deliberate moral failure on the part of the Exalted.  They retreated more and more to the gaming table and let the world fall to disaster after disaster.

 

Meanwhile, the defeated evil Primordials (which was all of them except Gaia and Autochthon) were stirring up more trouble.

 

The dead Primordials for reasons unknown had not entered the Void of oblivion at the bottom of Creation when they were killed but were stuck just inside Creation stewing in their resentment. They became the Neverborn and were entombed at the bottom of Creation, just over the Void.  Their undead existence created the Underworld and made ghosts possible; before that when people died their souls always entered Lethe and re-entered the cycle of reincarnation; after that people's spirits could become erroneously entangled in desires called "fetters" which would make them ghosts and remove them from the reincarnating cycle of souls. 

 

The Primordials who had surrendered were entombed in the body of their leader, Malfeas, and became known as the Yozi. Malfeas is basically Hell and Lucifer rolled into one and the Yozi are princes of Hell, under severe limits as to what they can do. All Primordials have multiple souls, from powerful to mooks, who walk around like separate beings, and the least souls of the Yozi are the demons and devils of Hell.

 

At some point a team of high-powered Exalted cracked the tombs of the Neverborn and created necromancy, but in the process the evil influences of the Neverborn, especially their madness-inducing whispers, started leaking out of the cracks and into the rest of Creation.

 

The Neverborn reckoned that they were ghosts (if really big and powerful ghosts) and that their fetters were Creation itself, so they decided that they should destroy all of Creation so that they could enter the Void and cease to exist.

 

The Yozi wished somehow to break free and regain control of Creation and get their hands again on those sweet, sweet Games.

 

Both groups tried various strategies. The Neverborn had some success recruiting powerful ghosts of old, murdered Solars - who, subject to the Great Curse, had become really terrible people by the time they died.  As ghosts these were no longer Exalted (the dead don't Exalt), but they still had the memories, the personalities, and the magical powers of the Exalted they had been. Thirteen of these agreed to become "Deathlords," powerful dead sorcerers and necromancers working under the Neverborn to undo Creation. 

 

When the agents of the Primordials cracked open the prison of the Solar Exaltations and stole them (at which, luckily for the game setting, half escaped to become newborn Solar Exalts), the Neverborn put theirs, now called Abyssals, under the control of their Deathlords. The Yozis controlled theirs, the Infernal Exaltations, directly. 

 

It should be pointed out that Autochthon had designed the Exaltation process very carefully. The gods have no say in who receives the Exaltations; otherwise the Primordials could simply have commanded the gods to do what they wanted. The Exaltation descends on a suitable mortal with sufficient motivation to be able to do heroic acts, but it cannot be influenced or directed to a particular person.

 

But the defeated Primordials did not have access to that system. They had to decide by hand who to give their corrupted Exaltations to.

 

At first glance that may sound like a sweeter deal.

 

But as you may have noticed, wise decision-making is not a characteristic of the defeated Primordials.

 

The Yozis, at least, had a fairly plausible system. There were occasionally people who were just on the cusp of receiving an Exaltation but who chickened out at the last moment and lost out on the chance.  The Yozis scooped these up and tempted them with Infernal Exaltations and cushy mansions in the swankier parts of Hell. For a given value of well, the Yozis treated the Infernals pretty well. As a result they got highly motivated competent people almost good enough for an uncorrupted Exaltation for their Infernals.

 

The Neverborn ... eh, they had to be their own personnel recruiters, relying on recommendations from ghosts, resumes, lists and who knows what else. The Neverborn despised and mistrusted things of Creation and didn't necessarily know what they needed in the way of minions. The Deathlords had some discretion to choose who got Abyssal Exaltations, but they, as bitter ghosts of dead cursed Solars willing to work with dead Primordials who wanted to destroy Creation, might be considered to be a bit wobbly in the good judgement area themselves. The Neverborn didn't really trust the Deathlords and meddled in their affairs a lot, including their underlings. As a result the Abyssal Exaltations, while competent, tended to be a rather more ragtag lot, and pretty unhappy on the whole.

 

Not too surprisingly, this is not only relevant to how the old world of Creation got destroyed, it also plays a part in several character backgrounds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*In-game canon is that the Primordials were not addicted to the Games of Divinity, but this does not fit with their actions, their attitudes, the extremity of their actions regarding them, or the fact that they created the entire world just to have a place to play them.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 1, 2017 by Pingo

[GreyLurker]

I've seen a nice description of the whole Neverborn situation somewhere.  Kind of goes like this.

 

The original system the Primordals created had mortal souls getting reincarnated right away after they died.  Mortal Prayers are what feed the gods so they had to keep them cycling, so you get born, you live, you die your soul goes into the Well of Souls and gets popped back out nice and clean ready to be reborn.  When the First Primordials died they kind of made a mess of it.  As something that was never supposed to die in the first place they can't fit through the reincarnation system they basically clogged the drain that souls go through, and created the Underworld (the Underworld is basically dirty bath water pooling up from a clogged drain pipe, and the Neverborn are the giant hair clog in the pipes.).   The only way they can get unstuck is if the entirity of creation gets destroyed at which point the Neverborn get sweet sweet oblivion of non-existance.

 

This kind of puts them at odds with the Yozi since the Yozi actually want creation to still exist.

 

Well of Souls brings up Autochthon and the Alchemicals.

After the Primordeals got imprissoned Autochthon saw things going a bit pear shapped and said "screw you guys, I'm taking my people and getting out" Turns himself into a planet, puts all his worshippers on it and goes into another dimension.  Just one tiny problem.  Mortal souls go to the Well of Souls when they die and get reborn in creation.  In order to keep his followers from all vanishing and ending up back in creation Autochthon  creates the Soul Gems.  Everybody gets one implanted in their forehead.  When you die they pluck it out and put it in a new vat grown baby.  If you died being really really awesome they put the soul gem on a robot body and you get to be an Alchemical Exalted.

 

Which is fun cause when the Alchemicals invaided creation they find people's souls just kind of flopping about willy nilly going who knows where when people die.  Which is one of the first tings they want to fix.   Waste not, Want not, you know?

Edited July 5, 2017 by GreyLurker

[PingosHusband]

1 hour ago, GreyLurker said:

I've seen a nice description of the whole Neverborn situation somewhere.  Kind of goes like this.

 

The original system the Primordals created had mortal souls getting reincarnated right away after they died.  Mortal Prayers are what feed the gods so they had to keep them cycling, so you get born, you live, you die your soul goes into the Well of Souls and gets popped back out nice and clean ready to be reborn.  When the First Primordials died they kind of made a mess of it.  As something that was never supposed to die in the first place they can't fit through the reincarnation system they basically clogged the drain that souls go through, and created the Underworld (the Underworld is basically dirty bath water pooling up from a clogged drain pipe, and the Neverborn are the giant hair clog in the pipes.).   The only way they can get unstuck is if the entirity of creation gets destroyed at which point the Neverborn get sweet sweet oblivion of non-existance.

 

This kind of puts them at odds with the Yozi since the Yozi actually want creation to still exist.

 

Well of Souls brings up Autochthon and the Alchemicals.

After the Primordeals got imprissoned Autochthon saw things going a bit pear shapped and said "screw you guys, I'm taking my people and getting out" Turns himself into a planet, puts all his worshippers on it and goes into another dimension.  Just one tiny problem.  Mortal souls go to the Well of Souls when they die and get reborn in creation.  In order to keep his followers from all vanishing and ending up back in creation Autochthon  creates the Soul Gems.  Everybody gets one implanted in their forehead.  When you die they pluck it out and put it in a new vat grown baby.  If you died being really really awesome they put the soul gem on a robot body and you get to be an Alchemical Exalted.

 

Which is fun cause when the Alchemicals invaided creation they find people's souls just kind of flopping about willy nilly going who knows where when people die.  Which is one of the first tings they want to fix.   Waste not, Want not, you know?

 

That's a pretty good description.   The PC Alchemical in my game had exactly that attitude in his last life.  So his job in the Locust Crusade (the Alchemical Invasion) was to gather up people to act as new souls.  His initial idea was to carry a batch of babies back to AutoChthonia, because they're small and portable.  Unfortunately, he discovered that in Creation, babies aren't raised together in community creches.  Rather they're in individual households.  So he had to give up that idea and concentrate on other things.

 

I've been having fun playing around with variations on the soul system, putting things together that White Wolf left lying around in places.

Side note:  One of the annoying things in all White Wolf games is that things are usually only explained in one place, and you often need to read multiple books to put together the necessary information.  This isn't so bad at the moment because one can buy used book cheap on Amazon, but at the time it would have been unbelievably frustrating.

 

So, here are a few things found in different sources.

 

1.  There are six castes of Alchemical Exalted.  The Alchemicals are the prototypes for Exaltation.  AutoChthon designed them but did not actually build any in the Primordeal War.  Orichalcum Caste is the prototype for Solars.  Moonsilver is for Lunars.  Jade is for Terrestrials.  Starmetal is for Sidereals.  But there are two more types that have no corresponding Exaltations: Soulsteel and Adamant. 

 

2.  They say several times that at the end of the Primordeal War, the Primordeal called She Who Lives In Her Name (she's the principle of Hierarchy) destroyed swathes of Creation in a fit of pique.  Even those who lived through this cannot remember what existed before that she destroyed.  They suggest that she might have wiped out some Incarnae and types of Exalted.

 

3.  In the Infernals Book (and only in that book).  It is explicitly stated that Malfeas (the Demon King) killed two Incarnae and that the Exalted who were Chosen of those Incarnae went made and killed each other.

 

This lead me to consider the possibility that those Incarnae and their Exalted correspond to the Soulsteel and Adamant Castes.  The Soulsteel caste equivalent might well have had something to do with what happens to Souls between lives.  The Adamant Caste equivalent might have something to do with the mysterious Convention on Oversight which oversees the Sidereals.  Then again maybe not.

 

I'm not going to say what I've decided about this until it shows up in game. 

[GreyLurker]

have you seen some of the stuff 3E Exalted came up with.  All kinds of strange new ideas.  Lesser Gods now can make their own Exalts with help from the higher ups.  So Joey God of Basket Weaving can create his personal Exalted Champion of Baskets. 

 

Plus we get some Frankenstein Exalts

[PingosHusband]

1 hour ago, GreyLurker said:

have you seen some of the stuff 3E Exalted came up with.  All kinds of strange new ideas.  Lesser Gods now can make their own Exalts with help from the higher ups.  So Joey God of Basket Weaving can create his personal Exalted Champion of Baskets. 

 

Plus we get some Frankenstein Exalts

I haven't looked over 3E, but I've read some of the discussions of it and some of the wiki entries.  They seem to be trying to open the game up a bit for a wider range of play types.  It sounds interesting, but it doesn't fit with what I'm trying to do with this game.  I'll probably look into it eventually.

[PingosHusband]

One of the things that's unusual about this game is how NPC heavy it is.  Usually, my games have a small number of locally important NPCs, who the PCs interact with as necessary for the furtherance of their lives and goals.  There will also be another small number of NPCs doing their own things that will lead to later adventures (especially if the PCs don't interfere).

 

But Exalted is different.  Each Exalt is capable of affecting the world in large and serious ways, and the PCs interact with them a lot more because of that.  Also, it's not uncommon for an adventure to require one or more NPC Exalted with specialized knowledge or skills to accompany the PCs.  Furthermore, each of these NPC Exalted has their own Motivations (the heroic impulse that made them worthy of Exaltation in the first place) and Intimacies (those people, things, and social groups that they have positive or negative attachments to).  And none of them will just sit on their hands and wait for things to happen. They exist to fix and/or change the world and by The Incarnae, they're going to do that.

 

As a result,  I have a lot more NPC actions and interactions going on, even without yet having more than one NPC Exalted bad guy.  Just having 20ish (for now, more are coming in as adventures happen) more or less good guys each with their own interests and agendas is pretty complicated.  I'm stretching my GMing in ways I hadn't done for a long time (voices, for example, are getting a work out).

 

A standard game of Exalted has, in theory, 700 Celestial Exalted, but long distance travel is rare in standard Exalted so there are usually only a small number relevant to any area. 

 

Running in modern day, however, means that any NPC can quickly get involved in any adventure, and anybody's actions can have consequences that affect the entire world.

[Pingo]

There are twenty-ish Exalted in the game world now, thanks to the second wave of Exaltations which came a couple of years after the initial 5 PCs Exalted.

 

The second wave isn't quite over, because apparently some Exaltations happen only in battle under particular circumstances.  We have had some fun ones with that.

 

When the second wave of Exaltations came the GM told us, over the course of the summer of 2020 (it was a single game session) what we found out.

 

Here are a few:

 

The first the party was made aware of the new wave of Exaltations was in mid-June at nearly 2 AM local Hong Kong time when an alert went up at the building of PC Zenith Solar Exalt Rokhsana. Her IT and security person, a Hawaiian virtual adept (sort of an internet mage) named Kealani Kapule had set up a security system to detect incursions by Lasombra (a sadistic darkness-wielding vampire clan), and some approaching inky blackness looked just like their special effects.

 

There wasn't time to call in the rest of the party, but Rokhsana manifested her solar armor and sword and stood vigil in the building lobby.  A sinister cloud of inky blackness rolled into the space. The point of a golden arrow emerged from it aimed at her heart.

 

Then the cloud dissipated and a woman with a solar Night caste mark was revealed holding a glowing solar bow and arrow. She had a group of Assamites (an assassin vampire clan) with her, which she told to leave, and she lowered the bow.

 

She was Hakiran, who, like Rokhsana, had been a vampire who exalted as a former Abyssal and reverted to human.

 

When Hakiran Exalted she had a vision of the Unconquered Sun showing her Rokhsana and saying "Seek," which to an assassin could mean only one thing.

 

To the Assamites her darkness powers seemed strange, but not unfitting, and they thought that the idea of taking out Rokhsana, the heretic former vampire who had massacred the first party of Assamites sent against her when she impudently became human, was an excellent one.

 

So Hakiran and a party of Assamite assassins had set out with her new darkness and obscuring abilities and a solar bow she had remembered stashing in Elsewhere.

 

But when she saw Rokhsana's caste mark Hakiran remembered what she was and what Exaltation was and where her loyalties lay. She dismissed her former comrades and started talking.

 

Hakiran's last life was as the (canonical) Shoat of the Mire, an Abyssal child working for the dreaded and possibly most dangerous Deathlord the Dowager of the Irreverent Vulgate in Unrent Veils (called the Dowager for short). Even other Abyssals felt sorry for the Shoat of the Mire.

 

Hakiran's bow was one that had belonged to one of her earlier exaltations in Creation. She had found it in her own tomb and hidden it in Elsewhere to keep it away from the eyes of the Dowager, then retrieved it in this life.

 

Rokhsana, as a former Abyssal and former vampire herself, was well placed to help Hakiran with her transition.

 

And then Rokhsana's IT person, Kealani, came downstairs with a Sidereal caste mark of Saturn, the Maiden of Endings and a thoughtful expression. Her last life in Creation had been White Heaven Prayer, a relatively innocuous Sidereal whose job had been ending social organizations and trends and killing fashions.

 

She said, "I want a raise."

[Pingo]

This is the figure we're using for Hakiran.  She was a rush job.