Exalted / Tropes Q to Z

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Tropes A to H here.

Tropes I to P here.

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• Ragnarök Proofing: Justified, since a lot of First Age technology is self-maintaining. The comparative fragility of modern technology is also justified; the Primordials were the only ones capable of making or obtaining the materials and enchantments that made Ragnarök Proofing possible, so anything made after the Usurpation tends to require periodic maintenance and repairs to remain in working order. Also justified in-universe by the presence of the Raksha, and the fact that the Solars broke the universe once back in the day.
• Rain of Something Unusual: In the 1st Edition, there's a Sidereal Charm that turns the arrows they shoot into... well, anything. Examples given include grain, fire, and snow. Of course, since mortal minds are incapable of noticing or remembering Sidereals, they can't understand what caused this "rain".
• Raptor Attack: Claw striders are scaly, featherless raptors as tall as a man and with curved toe-claws capable of slashing open the throat of a horse with one swing. They are ferocious pack hunters, and can bring down prey as large as elephants and tyrant lizards by running them into exhaustion before ganging up on them.
• Reality Warper:
  • In 2nd Edition the high-Essence Solar charms (especially the Charm cascade descending from Wyld-Shaping Technique) allow you to rewrite the rules of reality on a fundamental level. This is thought to be one of the reasons the Sidereals decided to wipe them out — would you want power-mad egotistical god-kings rewriting the laws of physics on a whim?
    • Wyld-Shaping Technique isn't so much warping as it is making.
  • Yozi Charms in 2nd Edition do this all the time, especially at high Essence. Given that they were the ones who warped reality into existence from Pure Chaos in the first place, this is not surprising.
  • The Wyld is rather short on "reality," except for whatever the Fair Folk create to screw each other over in "shaping combat."
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Chejop Kejak attempted to do this to the Gold Faction in 2nd Edition, giving them the tough job of dealing with Essence users. This comes back to bite him since it makes it much easier for the Gold Faction to hide and train Solars.
• Recycled IN SPACE!: The whole point of Shards of the Exalted Dream. Specific twists on Exalted include:
  • One where they lost the war and are now on the run inside Autochthon, which crosses Exalted with Battlestar Galactica (1978)
  • A more general sci-fi space opera version, which crosses Exalted with Star Wars
  • A "modern" version of Exalted that draws on The World of Darkness.
  • A version of Exalted that adapts its themes and mechanics as if it were a Fighting Game.
• Redemption Equals Death: Infernals in 2nd Edition, unlike said Edition's Abyssals, can't be redeemed while they still live. Akuma have it even worse, since cleansing the taint requires multiple reincarnations without consorting with demons again (and they get that impulse by virtue of their taint). The flipside for the Infernals is that their powers are far less inherently destructive than the Abyssals'; once they've slipped the Yozis' leash, they can pretty much do what they want.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: As Autochthonia is built within the planet-sized mass of machinery that makes up the world-body of the mechanical Primordial Autochthon, organic goods of any sort are very rare there — their only sources are certain nutrient-filled tubes and the rats and roaches that settled it alongside people. Autochthonians consequently don't have the luxury of being picky about their choices in food, drink or clothing. Most people live on processed nutrient gruel, luxury goods on the black market include rat-fur gloves and cheese made from human milk, and capybara-sized domesticated rats provide the bulk of the world's meat, milk and pelts.
• Refuge in Audacity: Very much a part of the Exalted mindset. See Rule of Cool.
• Refusal of the Call: Many of the Green Sun Princes in 2nd Edition were given their Exaltation after failing to commit the heroic act that might have allowed them to become Solars. The rest Jumped at the Call and couldn't pull through because no Solar Exaltation was available at the time.
• Reincarnation Romance: Some Solar and Lunar Exalts had their Exaltations bound to each other back in the depths of time. Thus, those Lunars are strangely drawn to specific returning Solars. It doesn't have to manifest as love, but it's a common trope for a reason.
  • Deconstructed in that many elder Lunars are either A. not looking forward to being the second after about a millennium-and-a-half of being big and bad, or B. have been twisted by the great curse, and there's no telling how they'll feel about the Solars. This doesn't even bring up the Chimera in 2nd Edition...
  • Subverted in the fact that this link wasn't undone for the corrupted Abyssal and Infernal Exalted.
  • Subverted by the Hungry Widow society in 2nd Edition, a tiny group of Lunar Exalted, have created a knack to help resist the Solars (who they believe will enslave the Lunar Exalted), which if the Lunar selects their mate as the target of a sacred hunt, and then is able to drink their mate's heart blood, will increase the Lunar's Essence by one for a year and a day.
  • 2nd Edition errata states that protecting their bonded Lunar does not gain an Abyssal Resonance, creating a strong candidate for a Love Redeems plot.
  • Return of the Scarlet Empress mentions that at least one Infernal drops the Reclamation like a ton of hot bricks after meeting their Lunar mate. (This is accompanied by a picture of Sulumor snogging Strength-of-Many.)
  • Partially averted in 3rd Edition — since there are more Lunars than Solars and their variants, there are a number of Lunars who simply don't have a bond.
• Retcon: Far, far too many. Some good, some bad, and never shall the fans agree on which are good and which are bad. A few:
  • The Sun being a battleship that is separate from the Unconquered Sun.
  • The Locust Crusade / War.
• Ret-Gone:
  • The Sidereal Exalted, who were almost totally erased from the memory of Creation. This also happens to any of their Resplendent Destiny they have that wear out: people just forget the person that that false identity represented.
  • Everything destroyed in the Three Spheres Cataclysm in 2nd Edition. That would be 90% of Creation, by most estimates.
  • Prince Laashe after Luna struck him with the Falcastra of Zatesh.
• Ridiculously Difficult Route: The Sidereal Ride charm called "Yellow Path" reveals a path the Sidereal and their allies can take which will get them to the location they need to go, as long as there is a path there one can take to get there on time. But what if there isn't a path? Don't worry, the Yellow Path will still reveal the way... if you're comfortable with the Storyteller filling said path with untold numbers of dangers and emotional turmoil.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction: Every Exalt with Craft charms has a charm that can drastically reduce the time scale of construction projects, completing in minutes or hours what might take days or weeks. Projects that might take years could be completed in scenes, assuming of course that the Exalt has the proper materials ready.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Alchemicals start out like this. As they grow in power, they turn into Humongous Mecha, and, finally, Genius Loci.
• Riding into the Sunset: One Solar Ride charm, Hero Rides Away, lets you regenerate Willpower and Essence for doing this.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In 2nd Edition Return of the Scarlet Empress, if the Unconquered Sun dies, his last act is to send each and every Solar on one of these. Every Solar in Creation immediately gains a dot of Essence, learns 10 Charms of their choice, regains all of their willpower, virtues and motes, and gains an intimacy of vengeance towards the Ebon Dragon. The Ebon Dragon doesn't anticipate this. Every other Incarnae has something like this: Luna gives out Knacks in addition to Charms, and the Maidens can hand out the same things the Sun does... in addition to unlocking the most badass Sidereal charms in existence and handing them to anybody they want. These charms are destructive enough that they were NEVER allowed to be used, not even during the Usurpation.
• Roc Birds: Rocs are condor-like birds with wingspans in excess of sixty feet. They do not seem to grow old — none have ever died of old age — and breed very rarely. A number roost on the floating island of Mount Metagalapa, whose people sometimes ride them. Rocs are very proud, however, and only rarely consent to take a rider.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: The Solar Exalted as kings of Creation under the Celestial Incarnae in 2nd Edition, or the Exalted in general in 3rd Edition, during the First Age. At least, that's how it was supposed to go. The Scarlet Empress also counts, and the Solar Queen of Ondor Shambal right before the Usurpation.
• Rule of Cool: Is implemented by the rules. Describing awesome actions, called stunts, is rewarded by bonus dice. Succeeding at these awesome actions also gets you Essence (in 2nd Edition) or Willpower, which allows you to do more cool things, which gets you more Essence and Willpower, which...
  
  Justified and/or lampshaded when one of the later supplements for 2nd Edition revealed an in-world reason for this: the Pattern Spiders that maintain the Loom of Fate (gods of the laws of physics, essentially) like things that are awesome, and facilitate them... It sort of helps that none of them have had a break since their birth and seeing what Exalted do to the Loom is the closest thing they get to entertainment.

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• Sand Worm: Ghostfishers are a peculiar variant of this native to the Underworld. For the most part, they're fairly typical examples — giant worms with gaping, fang-lined maws that lurk beneath the ground and prey on people passing above. Their two unusual traits are that they feed almost entirely on ghosts and that they hunt by means of a lure dangling from their forehead; a hunting ghostfisher hides just underground and shapes its lure to resemble a pitiable ghost in some kind of difficulty. When other shades stop by to help, the worm bursts from the ground to attack.
• Sanity Has Advantages: All of the Power Born of Madness effects in the game have serious mechanical drawbacks, frequently forcing the player to take actions that are clearly not a good idea.
• Sarcastic Confession: The Sidereal charm Avoiding the Truth Technique forces anyone who hears you to rationalize what you are saying as a lie.
• Satanic Archetype: The Yozi, whose name literally translates into demon kings. They're Eldritch Abominations who built the universe and were overthrown by the gods and humans they had created (there's a strong titan theme with them). They now sit imprisoned in the Bloody Bowels of Hell, tormenting infinite hapless demons, and trying to lure mortals and Exalted into Faustian deals for morally dubious goals. They aren't necessarily pure evil, but they're bad news, very alien, and generally not fond of humanity. For example, the Ebon Dragon is the cosmic embodiment of opposition and darkness, among other things. She Who Lives In Her Name wants to get rid of free will, for the greater good.
• Savage Wolves: Great-terrors are immense lupine beasts (although some breeds resemble hyenas more) feared throughout the North for their ferocity and power. They're immense, twice as tall as a man and sixteen feet long, and are the fiercest and most dangerous hunters in the Northern wilderness; while the mostly prey on mammoths and other megafauna, they're not averse to human flesh and will often raid towns and villages during hard winters.
• Scary Scorpions: Gunstar Autocthonia from 2nd Edition Shard of Exalted Dreams has Ishiika, the Cosmic Scorpion, a massive space-borne terror in the shape of a whirling nebula of teeth, clicking mandibles and pincers capable of shattering worlds, surmounted by a tail the length of solar systems. It is the most powerful and feared of all the alien monsters the Gunstar has encountered.
• Scavenger World: The Scavenger Lands, with all lost bits of incomprehensible, barely-salvageable First Age Lost Technology, ruins, and jury-rigged salvaged artifacts. During the Shogunate, just after the Usurpation, much of Creation experienced this trope to various degrees.
• Schizo Tech: Creation can generally be looked at as having a "pre-steel" level of technology. Except for the flame-guns. And the clockworks. And that's not even getting into the Magitek. 3rd Edition has cut down severely on the Steampunk and Science Fantasy elements of the core setting. However, Autochthonia still presumably exists somewhere, so this trope is still present.
• Science Is Wrong: Averted. While the laws of physics tend to be... flexible in this setting, in 2nd Edition magic runs in a predictable, measurable way and there's nothing stopping you from combining them.
• Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale: Earlier editions included such things as trade wars between cities thousands of miles apart. 3rd Edition is written to avoid this, but also brings in the island nation of Wu-Jian, a multi-island slum-city the size of the Hawaiian archipelago with a population density on par with the Kowloon Walled city. That would be a population of over 208 billion people. In a mostly Bronze Age world.
• Scorpion People:
  • Tinsianas are demons resembling humans with the claws, feet and tails of scorpions. They're profoundly sadistic and often hired as soldiers, guards and thugs, eschew weapons in favor of their claws, stingers and paralyzing venom, and are greatly feared throughout the Southern deserts.
  • Lodestar is a creation of the First Age Solars resembling a humanoid with crushing pincers instead of hands and a scorpion's body instead of legs. It was created to be a wilderness guide; its many legs give it a very stable stance when climbing across ice or steep slopes, while its tail is packed with sensory organs and, when raised up, serves as a living sensory array to scan its surroundings — and also shoot beams of burning energy.
• Screw Destiny:
  • All Exalted have the power to do this to an extent, though it's most obvious with the Solars, and any great use of Essence can screw up the Loom of Destiny as fate gets rapidly rewritten.
  • There are also some creatures that are simply outside of fate and have no destiny at all; they screw destiny just by existing. In particular this applies to anything that dwells primarily outside of Creation, such as in Malfeas, the Underworld, Autochthonia and most especially the Wyld. Beings from these places have to spend some time in Creation in order to become subject to the Loom of Fate, and even then may slip the bonds of destiny simply by exiting Creation again.
  • Green Sun Princes are outside of fate, and have a Winds of Destiny, Change! ability to boot.
  • Fluffwise, the Sidereal Fateful Excellency is also a form of Winds of Destiny, Change!.
  • The Five Maidens are female, and at least Venus takes lovers. Thus leading to her nickname, The "Maiden" of Serenity.
  • Getimians are people who got screwed by destiny, because their life and destiny was planned but never enacted, cut before inclusion in the Loom of Fate, until they got Exalted and brought into existence. As originally planned, their ability to screw with fate would have been particularly pronounced since they were literal living Looms of Fate, with their bones made of webbing and their spines infested by their personal colony of Pattern Spiders; while the literal part's been walked back a bit, they're still basically living Looms with their own Pattern Spiders.
• Screw You, Elves!: The Jadeborn of the Time of Glory were tall, inhumanly beautiful craftsmen of superior skill who existed long before humanity and lived forever unless slain. During the Primordial War, they armed the Exalted who fought the Primordials. After the War, the Exalted turned on them and forced their Great Maker Autochthon to bind and diminish them in lieu of slaughtering them en masse. He's still kind of bitter over that.
• Sealed Badass in a Can: The around three hundred Solar Exaltations in the Jade Prison have been uncanned. Maybe half have been corrupted by the enemies of Creation, but the rest are free, active, and ready to pound said enemies of Creation into dust. (Quite possibly along with Creation itself.)
• Sealed Cast in a Multipack: When the Yozis and Neverborn broke open the Jade Prison to steal the trapped Solar Exaltations, they only managed to take about half of them. The other half immediately flew to Heaven and soon began Exalting the first new Solar Exalted in hundreds of years. Whether this is a good thing for Creation is a matter of debate, but the Solars are the default player characters. Of course, the about-half that were stolen were warped into new kinds of Exalted, becoming a second sealed cast from the same multipack.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Many, many examples.
  • The foremost are the Yozis, who, after their defeat at the hands of the Exalted prior to the First Age, were sealed in a cage comprised of the inverted, imploded body of their still-living king.
  • The Yozis are rivaled by their deceased "siblings" the Neverborn, whose bodies fell into/created the Underworld and became vast space-warping cathedrals buried next to the Abyss, doomed to endless agony and insane slumber until Creation itself dies. The main reason they haven't already destroyed the universe is because they're mainly sleeping or flailing about in mindless agony.
  • Could also apply to the Solar Exalted after the Great Curse drove them mad and they were sealed away by the Sidereal Exalted.
• Sea Monster:
  • The armored terror (that's the actual in-universe name) is a thirty-foot-long carnivorous fish covered in armor-like scales and provided with a beaklike pair of fangs easily capable of severing limbs. It normally hunts fish in shallow water, but it's perfectly happy to go after boats and people. Physically, it sounds a lot like an oversized Dunkleosteus.
  • Benthic knifetooths are serpentine sharks up to twenty feet long. They are aggressive predators and will attack almost any prey they come across, and the mere sight of one swimming near the surface is enough to drive sailors into a terrified panic.
• Sea Serpents: Sea serpents live in the far Western oceans of Creation. They can reach upwards of fifty feet in length and have extremely venomous bites, and typically attack through a combination of constriction and venom. They often attack ships; with larger ones they simply attempt to pluck sailors from their decks, but smaller ones are crushed to splinters in their coils so that the serpent can collect the sailors from the water at its leisure.
• See the Invisible: The first Step of the Dragon Kings' Celestial Air Path, Piercing the Celestial Veil, allows them to see and hear immaterial beings as though they were material.
• Self-Duplication: Lunar swarm charms can accomplish this, from creating illusory copies with Cunning Anglerfish Decoy to fully autonomous clones using Ant-and-Starfish Trick, to becoming an outright army with Locust-and-Starling Legion. Outside of that, there's Moon-in-Well Emanation, which lets a Lunar pull out their reflection and turn it into a spirit. Solars can also achieve literal one-man-army status using Faster Than Self Technique.
• Semi-Divine:
  • The Exalted are mortals that are blessed as the divine champions of the most powerful gods and god-like beings in the setting by means of having an Exaltation, a piece of divine power, merge with their souls. As a consequence, they tend to have abilities that far exceed those of the "normal" gods and spirits, which is most obviously seen in the Solars and their derivatives (although, it should be noted, the average god in Exalted is not generally anywhere near as powerful as the title might make you think).
  • God-Bloods are the children of mortals and supernatural beings. Most are the offspring of gods and elementals, hence the name, but they can also be the progeny of demons, The Fair Folk, ghosts and the Exalted themselves. They are nowhere near as powerful as the Exalted (although ones sired by very powerful entities might get close) but they still get perks such as a few extra decades of lifespan, better health and resistance to sickness and poison, and the somtimes the ability to channel Essence. Beyond that, their specific powers and even their appearance can vary wildly based on their parents'. This process, notably, is not strictly limited to humans, and God-Blooded animals can and do exist — there's nothing really stopping an animal god from mating with its chosen species, or an elemental spirit or inhuman demon from fertilizing whichever meatbag strikes its fancy.
• Send in the Clones: A series of Adorjan Charms in 2nd Edition introduced in The Broken-Winged Crane allow Infernals to create an army of clones. High-Essense Infernals can even use their clones as instantaneous Body Backup Drives in case of unforeseen death.
• Serial Escalation: The heart and soul of the game. If you're not aiming for this every session, you're not playing it right. Special mention could go to what the Charms detailed in the two part 2nd Edition "Dawn Solution" allow you to do, the second part especially. Lift a non-Euclidean continent-sized Eldritch Abomination above your head and shake it like a rag doll! Create landscape-destroying spatial anomalies with your fists! Throw a guy so Goddamned hard that he breaks through the sky, crash-lands in Hell, and spends the next five days immobile as time catches up to him! The best part of this one being that it can apparently counter a written social attack.
• Servant Race:
  • First Age Solars created quite a few of these in 2nd Edition, using advanced genetic engineering to create human breeds suited for a variety of specific purposes — aquatic settlers and soldiers, carnivorous cattle-herders, subterranean miners, gladiators, sex slaves, and so on. Some were better-treated than others, with corresponding variance in loyalty now that the Solars are returning and the now-free races are once again coming into contact with their former masters.
  • Yu-Shan also contains multitudes of gods whose only purpose is to engage in menial paperwork, message carrying, and serve in the households of greater gods.
• Ship Tease: Isidoros and Szoreny. One is a forest made of mirrors, the other is a black hole shaped like a giant boar.
• Shoot the Dog: The Bronze Faction sees their actions in the Usurpation to be exactly this. Both canon and fandom go back and forth on whether this was the right thing to do.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Kidale's story in the prequel comic ends in his death, and the circle that was forming shatters. The nameless Eclipse youth featured in chapter comics in the 2nd Edition Core and Sidereals book, while quite possibly a deliberate allusion to Yushuv, the protagonist of the 1st Edition novels, doesn't have a background consistent with Yushuv's at all.
• Shout-Out: Lots. 1st Edition especially has a lot to the Old World of Darkness games, and there are shout-outs to pop culture and mythology all over.
  • For example, the first place Desus was mentioned by name was in a myth where he treacherously blinded a one-eyed Behemoth.
  • The chapter 7 comic in the 2nd Edition Core book features an Abyssal talking to a skull who he calls Estragon. Subsequentally, he meets someone called Pozzo with his pet 'Lucky'.
  • One of the comics in the West has a pair of Immaculate Monks trying to right a wrong, but being unable to due to an apathetic local population. One counsels the other, "forget about it - it's just the Neck."
  • Each of the original five Exalted types is conceptually related to one Old World of Darkness game: Solars to Hunter: The Reckoning, Dragon-Blooded to Kindred of the East, Lunars to Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Sidereals to Mage: The Ascension, and Abyssals to Vampire: The Masquerade.
  • Even outside the above five correspondences, there are many game terms borrowed from the Old World of Darkness games. For example, 2e's Green Sun Prince Castes share the names of the Demon Houses, save for the Devils and Devourers.
  • Malfeas is the home of the Werewolf Big Bad. The Exalted version bears more resemblance to Kindred of the East's Yomi, however.
  • The Scarlet Empress/Queen/Phoenix and the Ebon Dragon are prominent in Kindred of the East, and, according to some subtle references in Demon: The Fallen and Hunter: The Reckoning, they were the Hunter Messengers.
  • The Deathlords and the Neverborn are both prominent in Wraith: The Oblivion, though (typically) working on opposite sides of the divide there.
  • The Mokolé in Werewolf remember the dinosaurs as the Dragon Kings.
  • One of the Mage Technocracy's favorite places (particularly for Iteration X) is Autochthonia, and Revised in particular teased it might be the same as the one in Exalted.
  • In the optional metaplot of Return of the Scarlet Empress, the Ebon Dragon creates an enormous infernal artifact. The name of this artifact: the Black Spiral.
  • In 1st Edition, the Neverborn were referred to as Malfeans (another term for them from Wraith: The Oblivion). This confused people, because you had dead Primordials called MALFEANS who dwelt in the Underworld and imprisoned (but still very alive) Primordials called Yozis who dwelt in MALFEAS. They dropped the Malfean term in 2nd Edition to avoid that confusion.
  • A few NWOD-specific references have slipped in, too. For instance, the mortal creators of the Alchemicals are known as demiurges (the name for those mortals who create Prometheans), and according to Word of God, the Liminal Exalted are inspired by Promethean.invoked
    • Not to mention that Geist, the NWOD successor to Wraith, features the Underworld heavily, and even talks about the Deathlords' iron rule over the world of the dead, and how the Sin-Eaters have no real chance to defeat such beings save in a battle of wits. On the other hand, there's no proof these are the same Deathlords, just that a similar concept is in play.
    • Liminals also have a Dark Mother, like the Beasts of Beast: The Primordial.
  • Elegant Nova of Progression is an example of an Alchemical name in the 2e Alchemicals book. Bender Bending Rodriguez gets mentioned in the index.
  • Another Alchemical shout-out is in the name of one of the nations. "We have always been at war with Estasia."
  • The index to Graceful Wicked Masques holds a number of sneaky references. For instance, "Bear-killer" (an actual title) is followed by "Pedobear-killer" (and instead of a page number, it says "4chan").
  • The introductory comic for Graceful Wicked Masques features a Fair Folk cataphract named "Lan-Shoki Hana" with a mortal squire named "San-Xiao." If that doesn't ring any bells, Don Quixote's real name is "Alonso Quijano" and his squire is, of course, "Sancho."
  • Gorol is one letter away from being the Big Bad in the Wraith: The Oblivion endgame book (Gorool).
  • Sacheverell is a Yozi that they keep asleep so as not to bind fate to his visions; the Red King is kept asleep in Alice in Wonderland to keep the world from falling apart. Oh, and his previous incarnation was The Lidless Eye That Sees. Imagine a Visine commercial from Hell.
  • Warstriders are Guymelefs in all but name. The show itself is even mentioned in the 1st Edition sourcebook The Outcaste.
  • In 2nd Edition the First Age developer of Primordial Principle Emulation made it to tap into Kimbery's (a giant poisonous acid ocean) charmset because she couldn't learn/make new charms for her new body: a "cephalopod horror," Glories of the Most High tells us. The name of that Solar Queen? K'tula.
  • The Ebon Dragon's driving Urge, as revealed in Return of the Scarlet Empress, is to turn the world into one where his evil is law.
  • The section from Return of the Scarlet Empress about confronting the Ebon Dragon in direct combat is entitled Attacking the Darkness (from Dead Alewives).
  • After destroying the Omphalos in Return of the Scarlet Empress, The Ebon Dragon has to create an N/A artifact to keep Creation from falling apart into the Wyld. The artifact in question is called The Black Spiral.
  • Many other scenarios of Return of the Scarlet Empress are grouped with thematic names; the Metagalpa section has its acts titled after WWII films, and the South has a running theme of James Bond films.
  • One of the possible campaign styles in Infernals was titled "Grand Theft Yeddim."
  • The 2nd Edition Martial Arts supplement Scroll of the Monk contains a chain daiklave, and the spread-the-water knife's illustration is not even trying to pretend it isn't a bat'leth.
  • In one of the adventure supplements you have a mayor named Carriker Thurfas. Thurfas is the name of a place in the Scarred Lands (another White Wolf product), which was developed by Joe Carriker.
  • In that same adventure there's a subtle nod to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
  • Shards of the Exalted Dream goes on to describe a green sun with the mass of two universes.
  • The Second Circle demon Sigereth is known as the Player of Games.
  • The cover of 2nd Edition Scroll of Exalts is a fairly explicit reference◊ to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook.
  • The story going along the Dragon-Blooded's Athletics Charm set is about a free-running man running from an Evil Vizier and looking for a princess, armed with a dagger that can absorb Essence and fighting a cursed wraith that dissolves into sand. Prince of Persia much? For added bonus, the protagonist is named Shahraman, the same as The Prince's father.
• Showy Invincible Hero: Are you kidding? It's the entire point of the game.
• A Simple Plan: The Great Curse of the Sidereals. There's a reason the Usurpation went so epically off the rails...
• Single-Stroke Battle: Single Point Shining Into The Void, a 3rd Edition Martial Art, is based entirely off this trope. Solar Thrown also rewards alpha striking to really shine.
• Slave Liberation: The Deshan satrapies in the North are populated almost entirely by slaves tasked with producing a steady stream of food for the Realm and kept docile by drugs. As the drugs don't always quite succeed in dulling the slaves' minds, sometimes due to deliberate sabotage, the satrapies are frequently rocked by slave uprisings varying from brief riots to country-wide revolts. As the slaves know they have few chances of winning, they often focus simply on causing as much damage as they can and on torturing and killing every overseer and noble that they can. The revolts are typically put down swiftly, brutally and completely by the satrapies' militia, but with the Empress' disappearance and the Realm's growing weakness and internal strife they're becoming more common and more difficult to quell with every year.
• Sliding Scale of Turn Realism: Action by Action, blended with Second by Second in 2nd Edition. Each action takes a certain number of "ticks," which are a system term for "seconds" (except when they're not).
• Small Name, Big Ego: Excessively Righteous Blossom, Moonsilver Caste Alchemical Exalt. Fancies himself a brilliant general and orator, with no need for improvement. No one else agrees.
• Snake People:
  • Snakemen are the most common type of beastman in the Southern deserts, and are also widespread in the jungles of the Southeast and one of the most likely type of beastman to adapt to urban life. They generally resemble humans with snake scales, heads, and tails; some possess snake trunks instead of legs, and some tribes have venomous bites. A region in the south of An-Teng, the Domain of the Serpents Who Walk Like Men, is ruled by snakemen who have become more human than snake over the ages and now chiefly resemble tall humans with slit pupils, claws and scales along their cheeks and arms.
  • The mutants who live in the ruined city of Liriel-Anneth have the scaled hides and the eyes of the golden serpents with whom they share their home.
• SNK Boss: The Deathlords in 2nd Edition, who come equipped with every published Solar and Abyssal Charm, all ghostly Arcanoi, all three Circles of both Sorcery and Necromancy, special powers of their own, can bend certain rules of the setting, and who, in the off chance you can find and use the ONE Secret Weakness that can actually destroy them (which may just be a lie spread by the Deathlords), will be resurrected one year later by the Neverborn anyway...
• Solid Gold Poop: The Beasts of Resplendent Liquids (although "liquid pharmaceutical piss" would be more accurate).
• Soul Fragment: The Celestial Exaltations.
• Soul Jar: Quite a few of them floating around.
  • The Monstrance of Celestial Portion is a variant on the concept. If a Deathknight is killed, his Exaltation — the part that makes him an Exalt — returns to the Monstrance, from which it can be transferred to a new mortal host chosen by the Deathknight's master. Without the Monstrance, the shard would wander freely and choose its new host itself. Destroying the Monstrance won't kill the deathknight, but instead free him from his master's control in 2nd Edition, or just free their Exaltation from their control; the trick is that not all of them know this, and may believe it would kill them.
  • The fetich souls of Primordials also serve as a form of this. The fetich embodies the identity of the Primordial; should it be killed, the Primordial will undergo a major redefinition, which may wind up creating an entity who is entirely different (for all intents and purposes killing the original). Fetich death was feared by the Primordials as the only way of "killing" them (even though another being with certain of their traits will result) until the Solars came along and developed powers that could actually kill them (which, incidentally, had nothing to do with their fetiches).
  • In the 1st Edition of Exalted, there is also a Solar Circle spell which uses a complicated ritual to allow a powerful Exalted sorcerer to store his soul in an artifact.
  • The Heart Grace of a Shaped Raksh is somewhere between a Soul Jar and a Heart Drive. Like many things about them, it's a bit hard to tell the difference.
  • The Soulgems that are attached to the forehead of every mortal and Exalt in Autochthonia are a variant that capture the soul upon death, so they can be recycled in a new body. For an Alchemical Exalted to be successfully created, a soulgem containing a heroic soul is needed.
• Sourcebook: In one key example, while the corebook makes the presumptions that players of the game will want to play the recently-returned Solar Exalted, various Splatbooks provide rules for playing the other Exalted — Lunars, Dragon-Blooded, Sidereals, Abyssals, Infernals, Alchemicals. Fair Folk also have a book in 1st and 2nd Editions, and the non-human races collectively get Scroll of Fallen Races in 2nd Edition.
• Space Is Magic:
  • In Gunstar Autocthonia of 2nd Edition's Shards of Exalted Dreams, the center of existence is the Spiral, a great coil of stars and worlds where the Primordials built their kingdoms. Beneath it is the city of Black Non, a metaphysical black hole where existence ends. Outside its edges is an infinite void of space, scattered through with drifts of asteroids, lonely worlds flung from the spiral or never shaped by the Primordials at all, shimmering Wyld nebulae where the laws of reality break down an existence becomes malleable, terrible alien horrors, and the Gunstar itself, the world-body of a Primordial turned into a spaceship and endlessly fleeing the lords of the Spiral.
  • Heaven's Reach Shard is for the most part a classic Space Opera, but retains supernatural elements such as the spiritual power of Essence, the black matter intelligences of the Shrieking Hordes that lurk in places where reality breaks down and in the chaotic fringes of intergalactic space, and the negative sub-universe of Terminus where the Tomb-Stars lie.
• Special Snowflake Syndrome: Encouraged, since there's so many diverse things in Creation that insanely weird concepts are encouraged (and nothing's supposed to be stronger than Exalted Charms). However, the Merits and Flaws designed for accommodating weird, individual abilities are widely considered to be terrible.
• Spell Levels: The game has Sorcery and Necromancy spells divided into three levels each. Generally, the higher the spell's level (or Circle), the more time it takes to cast it and the more motes and willpower it requires, as well as the more powerful the spell is. The main exceptions are the countermagic and banishment spells in 2nd Edition, which are quick and relatively inexpensive for their circle.
• Spell My Name with a "The": The 2nd Edition Infernals guidebook has a sidebar explaining that the Ebon Dragon isn't a Creature of Darkness, he's The Creature of Darkness.
• The Starscream: The Heresy keyword from the 2nd Edition Broken-Winged Crane is the result of the Yozis swallowing the Villain Ball again and not noticing that Green Sun Princes can design Charms for themselves, not just new Yozi Charms. As a result, each one is basically a variation on "Sir? Kiss my ass, Sir!"
• Stating the Simple Solution: The 2E guidebook to Autochthonia describes a huge social movement that was sparked off by one guy asking, "What if we talked to God about our problems?" Mind that Autochthonia is an ironclad theocracy dependent on a physical, provably real god...and its people were still gobsmacked by the very idea of asking that god for what they wanted.
• Steampunk: The reason Autochthonia exists.
• Strongly Worded Letter: Yeah, they can kill people in this game.
• Stupid Sacrifice: In the 2nd Edition's First Age, the first Akuma Gorol poisoned the Lawgiver who killed him. The Lawgiver's mate was unable to heal her, but Gorol told him that the poison could only be cured by the lifeblood of one's true love. He opened his own wrists to save her... and she later awoke, explicitly healed not by her Lunar mate's blood, but by her own power.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: Some mental influence charms can create sexual desire in defiance of the victim's established preferences.
• Super-Empowering: Some gods have the ability to improve the abilities of others. The Exalted can loan Essence for mortals, too, granting them lesser (but still awesome) abilities. And then of course there's Exaltation itself, though what handles that exactly (other than the paperwork) differs between editions; 2e places it on the Exaltation itself, running on its own 'programming', while 3e places it on the entity doing the choosing.
• Super Meter: 3rd Edition's combat system was lifted from Dissidia's. You have 2 types of attack: Withering and Decisive. Withering decreases your enemies' Initiative and increases your own, while decisive does actual health damage based on how big your Initiative is.
• Superior Species: It would not be unusual for a Raksha noble to hand a Dragon-Blooded or a newly-exalted Celestial their ass. In fact, their superiority is enforced by game mechanics: every other character (including Exalted) starts with a minimum of one dot in each Attribute, before character creation begins. Raksha nobles, however, start with a minimum of three dots in each Attribute, so even in their worst area of physical, mental, or social ability, they will be better than average for a human. Plus, they receive enough dots during character creation that they will begin play with multiple Attribute ratings of six dots or more, which is both superhuman and better than even Exalted can start with. And just to rub it in, they have a special Charm, Imposition of Law, which allows them to become so expert at any one skill that they receive an automatic success on every roll with it (which only fails to apply when they go up against another being with Charms or attempt to do something that is actually physically impossible). The Fair Folk are better than you, Puny Humans. It's the rules.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: So very, very much. Everybody is kung-fu fighting. Supernatural Martial Arts is even the technical game term.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Dragon-Blooded Exaltation is an inherited trait passed from parent to child. It ends up being close to case 4 or 5, depending on chance. (Case 5s having a severe tendency towards becoming their families' Unfavorites, especially in Dynastic families.)
• Superpower Lottery: Most forms of Exaltation are, themselves, a matter of winning the superpower lottery, but even within that there are clear scales of power between different types of Exalted.
• Superpower Meltdown: This is what happens whenever a Dragon-Blooded tries to learn and use Sidereal Martial Arts. More specifically, the first time they try to activate such a charm, they explode in a conflagration of elemental Essence.
• Super-Speed: Solars can run fast, Infernals can run really fast (in 2nd Edition an Essence 10, Dexterity 10 Scourge with ten purchases of Wind-Born Stride has a base dashing speed of about 360 kph without using any other Charms), and provided a Lunar is chasing one of the above, he or she can run exactly fast enough to catch them.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: There is no White Veil Society, and, if there was, it would not be a powerful secret society spread across Creation. Furthermore, if such a society did exist (and it's ludicrous to think it might), it certainly would not teach a martial art that allowed practitioners to do battle and even deliver killing blows without even the victim noticing. This hypothetical martial art is not written up in 2nd Edition's Scroll of the Monk, and that nonexistent writeup does not deny, in suspiciously specific terms, the exact details of this entirely fictional society or its nonexistent style.
• Swamps Are Evil:
  • The Yozi Metagaos. His entire body is a swamp, and he's fond of snacking on anything that enters him. And when we say anything, we mean anything — he eats mortals, demons, time, space, identity, himself... if you manage to survive a trip through him, you'll probably wish you hadn't, because you'll be infected with numerous diseases that will turn you into an outgrowth of Metagaos.
  • Mother Bog is a behemoth in the shape of an immense, mobile swamp dedicated to growing, whether in knowledge, power or sheer area. She moves throughout the riverlands of the East, demanding sacrifices as she goes, and is greatly feared.
  • Three of Creation's major shadowlands — areas where the Underworld overlaps onto mundane existence — are based around swamps, the largest of them (and one of the biggest in the world) being the Bayou of Endless Regret, a tremendous stretch of mangrove swamps, stagnant pools and quicksand infested with starving alligators and seemingly endless swarms of biting insects and haunted by wandering ghosts. It's also home to plants that produce some of the most potent toxins in existence, which can kill even ghosts, and the river Cocytus empties into it and keeps it choked with silt. It used to be a much nicer place during the First Age, when it was a prime example of a fertile, flourishing wetland and filled with flowers, medicinal herbs and swampland villages, but the Great Contagion killed everything that lived there and left it into its current state.
• Sword Sparks: There is a Dragon-Blooded charm that makes good use of these.

T

• Take That Us: Black Mirror Shintai, an Ebon Dragon Charm in the 2nd Edition Infernals hardback, mocks the infamously poorly-balanced Sidereal Martial Art Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style, calling it the closest any mortal has ever come to duplicating the Ebon Dragon's "principle of antagonistic cheating."
• Taking You with Me: Perhaps the ultimate Dangerous Forbidden Technique ever in 2nd Edition, Rune Of Singular Hate makes the target roll a ten sided dice for every single point on their character sheet, and they have a 60% chance of losing each one; However, the caster loses one dot from every category: Abilities, Attributes, Willpower, Essence, and Virtues. All of this is irreversible, and it Only Works Once.
• Talking Animal: Wyld mutation, First Age genetic engineering programs and breeding experiments by gods and Lunars have created numerous breeds of talking, sapient animals. They're generally quite rare, but in the nation of Halta they're common and treated as full citizens.
• Technicolor Eyes: Sidereals, upon Exalting, gain these in colors matching their Caste's Maiden (gold, blue, red, green, or purple). Their pupils also become flecked with little starpoints in the same color.
• Terror-dactyl: Downplayed by sky titans. Their artwork shows them as fairly realistic azhdarchid pterosaurs, but they otherwise share the trope's propensity for preying on human-sized, land-bound victims that they divebomb like meteors and pull into the heavens to toy with before swallowing whole.
• That Man Is Dead: A job requirement for Abyssal Exalted. They have to throw their original name and whatever was left of their destiny into the Void, and their overlords will punish them for answering to their old name.
• That's No Moon: The sun and moon of the 2nd Edition setting are, in fact, eons-old artifacts attuned to the Unconquered Sun and Luna, respectively: the Dirigible Engine Daystar and the Silver Chair of Night. In 3rd Edition, that's changed; the sun and moon are the sun and moon, nothing else.
• There Are No Therapists: And a lot of the anti-mind control charms can also be used as anti-therapy charms.
• The Time of Myths: In 1st Edition and somewhat in 2nd Edition, Exalted was explicitly taking place in the Time of Myths in relation to the World of Darkness also made by Onyx Path. In 3rd Edition, this has been toned down a bit, with the First Age being relegated to this mythical time instead. Instead of having a set timeline, the First Age now is talked about in muddy and imprecise time periods, which are used to approximate the age of a given Artifact compared to the modern day.
• There Can Be Only One: As mentioned above, Luna and hundreds of other potential moon deities had to fight it out to the death and consume each others' power to actually become real.
• Thunderbird: Thunderbirds are air elementals resembling immense raptorial birds who create wind with the beating of their wings and coax lightning out of clouds, and who can take on human shape. They're passionate beings who thrive in both love and battle, and share other air elementals' hatred for spirits of water. Notable thunderbirds include Chief Storms-as-He-Walks, the most influential thunderbird chieftain within Creation, and Zutaka, the Daimyo of Blizzards within Heaven's Bureau of Seasons.
• Threads of Fate: The Loom of Fate spins out the destinies of everything in Creation, protecting causality and linear time. Its operations differ between editions:
  • First and second edition have it that by touching someone's thread in the Loom, one can view and even alter their destiny. However, outside forces like the Wyld and the Underworld don't show up on the Loom at all, and Essence-wielding entities can directly manipulate the Loom to alter their destinies.
  • Third edition leaves direct thread manipulation mainly to the pattern spiders. The presence and actions of outside forces can be divined, but not who or what they are, or what they look like. Essence-wielders are a massive headache for the Bureau of Destiny because it's so difficult trying to keep them on track in order to fulfill a destiny, and supernatural polities aren't much better.
• Threatening Shark: Benthic knifeooths are sharks up to twenty feet long and with slender, serpentine bodies. They get their name from their wickedly serrated teeth, which snag in the flesh of their prey — which translates to almost anything smaller than themselves — to prevent it from escaping. Luckily, they live in the very deep ocean and far from human settlement. Less luckily, there are plenty of things in Creation, ranging from idle curiosity on the shark's part to a sea god in a bad mood, that can drive one towards the shallows and into contact with humans.
• Timey-Wimey Ball: No longer possible, but during the original war between the Primordials and Exalted time travel and temporal weapons were used so heavily that nobody has any idea how long the war actually lasted and any attempt to try to trace out its actual path is doomed to failure.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: Many, especially concerning demon-summoning and necromancy, but the one that takes the cake in this setting is known as The Broken Winged Crane. It's so evil, it hasn't actually been written yet; the evil from its writing actually went backwards in time and created many imperfect copies throughout the time stream. Some want to destroy the copies to stop the original from being written; others fear doing this, in case the destruction of those tomes accidentally causes the original to be written.
  
  Return of the Scarlet Empress reveals that in the module the Scarlet Empress wrote the original, and in so doing created a portal directly into the Ebon Dragon's infernal prison. Now she's the Queen of Hell, and she's here to help with the Yozi Reclamation with the full resources of the Realm and all of her descendants. As a matter of fact, this function was foreshadowed. Even the imperfect copies had the power to pull the unwary through them and into the hell dimension of Malfeas.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • 2e's Yozis. Not only do they choose their Infernal servants from failures and cowards, they actually punish them for resisting the Mind Control powers of their enemies, because they want them to follow orders no matter what. And how do they make the Infernals atone for their mistakes? By putting their enemies in Death Traps, playing Criminal Mind Games, and giving Just Between You and Me speeches. No wonder the chances of the Yozis actually winning are rated as slim to none by Word of God itself.invoked
    • To top it off, they're on at least some level trusting the Ebon Dragon to handle the Reclamation. Yes, they're trusting a being composed entirely of treachery and vice — but, then again, the Ebon Dragon controls the Scarlet Empress and without her there is no Reclamation. Not much choice in the matter. In Return of the Scarlet Empress, he betrays them completely and utterly, dooming them for all time.
    • 3e's Yozis avoid this by selecting Infernal candidates who've suffered oppression and injustice, then setting them loose on Creation without thought of a Reclamation. Their vulnerability is if the Infernals ever see them as oppressors... which is unlikely for the time being, given they treat the Infernals well.
  • Autochthon's idea to trap himself in an infinite void without the resources his sickly body needs to survive is... interesting. He had plenty of non-idiotic reasons to leave, but why oh why didn't he go somewhere comparatively hospitable, such as the Wyld? And what he did afterwards... Let's just say there's a reason ghosts are kept around after he eats the po soul for fuel, but the Divine Ministers quarantine them because they don't know what a ghost is.
• Total Eclipse of the Plot: The return of the Solar Exalted was marked by the first solar eclipse in 1500 years.
• Touch of Death: Some Charms allow you to literally punch someone's soul(s) off.
• Touch the Intangible: The second Step of the Dragon Kings' Celestial Air Path, Touch the Celestial Form, allows them to physically touch and interact with immaterial beings as though they were material.
• Transforming Mecha: The Scarlet Empress Voidfighter and its derivatives in Shards of the Exalted Dream are fighters that convert into warstriders, taking about eight seconds to do so. So far only one non-Solar has managed to pilot one.
• Transhuman:
  • All Exalted are transhuman to some extent, far exceeding human limits of lifespan, Essence, magical ability, resilience, and strength. But Alchemicals and Infernals are especially made of this trope, since they gradually turn into cities and half-Primordials, respectively.
  • Queen K'Tula, a 2nd Edition First Age Solar, turned herself so thoroughly into a tentacled squid-monster that several of her charms stopped working on account of her not being human enough to use them. So she invented a way to steal Yozi charms instead.
  • Chimera in 2nd Edition, of course, lose most of their humanity to the Wyld along with their shape.
  • God-blooded and Demon-blooded Half-Human Hybrids can leave their humanity behind and become spirits.
  • Some ghost clans view undeath very much in terms of transhumanism, and teach their living descendants to view life only as an apprenticeship for eternal undeath. Some Abyssal Exalted have a similar attitude.
• Treants:
  • Forest walkers are relatively minor gods resembling large humanoid trees. They watch over woodlands and wildernesses, ruling over the spirits ad creatures of the wild and protecting them from harm. Like most of Creation's gods, however, they're far from incorruptible; some like to make bets with mortals wager the rights to harvest their forests against their own freedom to seed human-cleared fields with trees, while others have been lured from their charges with promises of worship and fine new temples. They don't get along with wood elementals, though — they predate them by quite some time, and don't appreciate them muscling in on their authority.
  • Kings of the wood are powerful wood elementals resembling, again, humanoid trees. They rule over and protect forests and spirit courts of wood, but do so extremely harshly and tolerate dissent from their subjects as little as they tolerate mortal loggers.
• Treetop Town:
  • The peoples of the Eastern forests often live in villages built upon massive trees. The Haltans, native to the immense redwood forests of the Northeast, are the most notable example, and live in cities built on platforms held among the trees' branches. The trees are large enough to hold multiple such platforms — some cities can be six layers deep — and an extensive system of raised bridges connects all settlements. Haltans can go their whole lives without touching the ground, which is good — their treaties with The Fair Folk give the latter free run of the ground but forbid them from hunting amidst the trees. Halta is also home to several beastmen and talking animals, most based on arboreal creatures such as monkeys and giant spiders or flying ones such as owls, hawks and bats.
  • Orak-Tau, a city within the Labyrinth in the Underworld, is a bizarre inversion. Rather than being built among tree branches, it's built within and hanging from a massive tangle of roots hanging from the ceiling of an immense cavern. Fittingly, it can be accessed by climbing into certain tree hollows in the East and heading down, among other methods.
  • Mount Kahikatea, an ancient city of the First Age, was a particularly unusual example. It was built on top of a three-mile-high kahikatea trees, which grew on top of and around one another to form a literal mountain of interlocked, living boughs. The city itself consisted of grand wooden palaces and buildings built on top of this collective canopy, alongside a maze of tunnels and chambers snaking among the branches, roots and trunks of the forest.
• Troperrific: The whole idea is that there isn't just one cosmic force about to destroy Creation, there's a whole bunch of cosmic (and not-so-cosmic) forces that are all about to destroy Creation. Between declining empires of elemental supermen, zombie hordes, vengeful elder ghosts, countless deranged spirits, dead primal gods, imprisoned demon-Titans, Cthulhu elves, Satanic pirates, necrophagic dinosaur-men, miscellaneous ancient artifact-slash-WMDs, international mercantile conspiracies, curse-addled reality ninjas, Conan-wannabe werewolves, assorted Godzilla-knockoffs, well-meaning but terminally misguided anime heroes, mutants up the wazoo, and the Machine God and his Aztec Cyborgs, Creation is about ten seconds away from getting gang-banged to death by every epic-fantasy cliche in the book all at once.
• Turned Against Their Masters: A recurring theme.
  • The Gods rebelled against the Primordials so they could rule over Creation benevolently. Then the Dragon-Blooded and Sidereals bumped off the Solars and chased off the Lunars...
  • It doesn't even stop in Elsewhere, with Gremlin Syndrome among the products of Autochthon. This is because Autochthon started out sick, and this sickness manifests itself as his body's systems going rogue.
  • Heretical charms in 2nd Edition eventually let a Green Sun Prince do this very dramatically to the Yozis. They don't see it coming.
• Turtle Island:
  • The Grand Amanuta, a behemoth that lives in the Western oceans, is an island-sized, turtle-like beast that typically floats just at the waterline, its shell emerging from the water while its tentacles and birdlike head remain hidden beneath the waves. Over time, dirt has come to cover its back and a tropical forest has taken root in it, causing it to resemble a small ovoid island slowly drifting through the sea.
  • Living islands are immense creatures that drift through the seas of the Western Wyld. In their natural environment, they're protean shapeshifters that can mold their bodies to possess any feature or ability they need. They don't usually last long in Creation, whose stricter natural laws typically cause them to calcify and stabilize into mundane islands, but some manage to survive by shaping themselves into things like huge turtles or hermit crabs, with permanent limbs and other organs tucked away beneath their now-stable shell.
• A Twinkle in the Sky:
  • Averted horribly by the Infernal Exalted, who can punch you over the horizon... but you're coming back down the hard way. And of course they can modify it so the victim impacts with a nuclear explosion that leaves the area irradiated and nightmare-inducing...
  • There is one Third Circle Demon named Orabilis, the End of All Wisdom who hurls people that have learned too much into the sky of Hell, where they spend a thousand years dying. They serve as the stars of Malfeas.

U

• Ultimate Blacksmith:
  • A rare female example, the Second Circle Demon Alveua, Keeper of the Forge of Night, is summoned by mortals to take them back to hell, where Alveua lays them on her anvil and hammers them into whatever they wished of her - a coin, a sword, a flask, etc., and then returns them to Creation. Less scrupulous invokers can offer her a sacrifice for the same result, as long as the sacrifice goes willingly and is not under mind control, unless...
  • The Third Circle Demon Ligier, the Green Sun, is one of the greatest smiths in existence, able to craft extraordinary wonders. However, his work requires priceless sacrifices, such as children's blood, the tears of a king, or the essence of treachery, lest hidden flaws enter the final product. He's able to forge things using his hands and his heat alone, though he prefers the aesthetics of his anvil.
  • Solars may also become Ultimate Blacksmiths through the Craft tree. High level ones can build a warship or raise walls around a city in a single day.
• Ultimate Universe: The 3rd Edition involves a substantial setting rewrite, dropping most of the 2nd Edition material, redrawing the map to make the Directions less homogenous, and adding new types of Exalt.
• Undead Abomination: In the Divine Conflict between the Gods and the Primordials who created them, a few Primordials were slain despite lacking the metaphysical capacity to die. Their death throes broke through Creation and created The Underworld, where they became the Neverborn: Tortured Monsters writhing in eternal pain and madness, and in 2nd Edition trying to plunge Creation into the Void so they can finally properly die.
• Unholy Ground: The Shadowlands, areas where normal Creation and The Underworld overlap and the dead can walk freely. They're often created by vast death in an area or through some vile Necromancy.
• Unholy Nuke: There are a few of these to contrast with the more enlightened ones:
  • The Solar Circle Sorcery spell Total Annihilation isn't automatically unholy, given who wields it... but it's still the equivalent of a fantasy nuke, and relies on calling on a portion of the energy of Ligier, Hell's Green Sun.
    • Any Green Sun Prince who has the Sorcerous Enlightenment of Malfeas Charm boosts damage of any spell that inflicts damage as a primary effect by 50%.
  • Mouth of the Void, a Void Circle Necromancy spell in 2nd Edition that does hideous amounts of damage to all creatures over a large area. Given its level, it can only be learned by Abyssals, who usually aren't on the side of goodness and light. Usually.
  • Soulbreaker Orbs, devices that can shatter the souls of everyone within a mile of the explosion, tainting the very Essence of Creation by doing so.
• Unicorn: Unicorns resemble pure white horses with cloven hooves, lion tails, featureless glowing blue eyes, and spiraling horns made out of opal. They're intelligent and capable of speech, and are supernaturally beautiful and entrancing to look upon. They're creatures of the Wyld, and are most often found guarding places of great beauty in the Middlemarches, but can survive outside of it and are sometimes found roaming Creation. They occasionally consent to take Fair Folk, Exalted or heroic mortals as allies, but sicken and die if kept captive against their will.
• Unstoppable Rage: Part of the Great Curse. When an Exalt acts against their character, or marshals their willpower against unnatural mental influence in 2nd Edition, they accrue Limit. When they reach a breaking point, they undergo a Limit Break and act either towards or against their guiding virtue in a fashion that makes "extreme" look mild. It's not necessarily unstoppable rage either. Sometimes it's Unstoppable tears, Unstoppable Protectiveness, or almost any other trait turned up to eleven.
• Useless Superpowers:
  • The 3rd edition Charm Tome-Rearing Gesture requires Essence 3, a maxed out 5 in both Lore and Linguistics (virtually all Solar charms require only one ability), several prerequisite Charms, and that the character journey to (or already be in) the bordermarches of the Wyld. Its effect? It instantly conjures a copy of a book the character has already written in its entirety in their head using another Charm - something they can already do by hand (in just a day using a Charm like Whirling Brush Method). The general consensus in the player base is that the Charm was added as a joke. Writer Stephen Lea Sheppard remarked of it: "The sort of thing that John finds compelling as a power fantasy Charm may be shaped by the fact that John is a writer."
  • Also in 3rd edition, Cup Boils Over allows a Solar to instantly kill any "characters who have unintelligibly abstruse Intimacies or no Intimacies at all." From a player perspective, aside from other PCs, this means it can only work on NPCs that are not only completely one-dimensional, but that the storyteller agrees are one-dimensional and has decided to use anyway. If used against a PC, it requires that the storyteller agree that the character is similarly one-dimensional or incomprehensible, and for some reason has not worked with the player to correct this.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Lots of characters believe this. Most notable in the 2nd Edition's Second Age is the Bishop of the Chalcedony Thurible, who wants to end all pain by ending all life. (Or at least that's what he preaches.)

V

• Valkyries: Walkuren are a darker take on this concept. They're undead beings who rise from battlefields, and resemble monstrous syntheses of warrior and carrion bird, clad in armor like that worn by the soldiers who died where they arose. Some resemble harpy-like, winged warriors, while others are gaunt figures who ride black-feathered hippogriffs. They're predators of the dead, snatching ghosts away into the sky to carry off to their lairs to devour. They will consume any ghost in a pinch, but their favorite prey are the shades of great warriors — and if ghosts are scarce, they have few compunctions about slaying living warriors to make fresh shades.
• Vengeful Ghost: In the setting, human beings have two souls. The Hun or "upper soul" governs intellect, morality, consciousness and higher thinking, while the Po or "lower soul" is concerned with a person's passions, instincts, and animalistic urges and drives. After death, the Hun departs to either reincarnation or the underworld, while the Po remains behind to watch over the body. If a deceased person was not buried or was buried improperly, the Po will manifest as a ravenous, predatory Hungry Ghost, resting in its body by day and going out by night to cause chaos and attack the living until it is pacified by being given a proper funeral. It is also possible for a Hungry Ghost to be created by a violent or painful death, and necromancers often torture victims to death to purposefully create ghosts to use and control.
• Voice of the Legion: In 2nd Edition She Who Lives In Her Name has a charm that permanently changes an Infernal's voice to be like this. It allows the Infernal to hold multiple simultaneous conversations and is a prerequisite for a sonic attack power.

W

• Wacky Marriage Proposal: Meta example. One of the writers used the dedication page of Shards of the Exalted Dream to propose to his girlfriend. She accepted.
• Walking Ossuary: Spine chains are created by Deathknights fusing the legless torsos of many human skeletons together by shoving the head of each into the next one's ribcage. They crawl around like giant centipedes on their hands, and wield numerous weapons with their front "segments".
• Walking Wasteland: Abyssal Exalted can cause this without even trying in 2nd Edition (and if they're renegades, without particularly wanting to do so either). Infernals can acquire charms that do something similar, only with green radioactivity instead of death-Essence.
• Wandering Culture: The Delzahn are a majority-nomadic group of tribes (while there are some who live in permanent cities, the relations between them and the nomadic tribes are poor). They're Born in the Saddle, with a test of horsemanship being the Rite of Passage for male Delzahn, though they don't exclusively ride horses- camels and large emus are also popular mounts.
• Warrior Monk: Immaculate Monks. Primarily Eastern-styled with a little bit of Western here and there. Their fighting arts can also burn you alive, make you drown in your own blood, or just vaporize your soul, just to name a few tricks.
• Watch the World Die: A few scenarios in the line, where the Exalted might lose to the looming threats to Creation, detail (excruciatingly) how everything ends.
  • In 2nd Edition Return of the Scarlet Empress, the conclusion of the Reclamation semi-metaplot, the PCs might choose to retreat from the final battle with the Ebon Dragon. The result is a universe where psychopathic hatred forms the core of physical reality, free will exists only to be broken and things exist so that they can suffer. The PCs, being god-kings, might survive and gather enough strength to survive or even fight back. Still, the scenery around them is hopelessly bleak.
  • One possible implication of Autochthon's return to Creation is that the Great Contagion infects the inhabitants of Autochthonia, accelerating Autochthon's sickness and killing him. A milder conclusion includes him becoming an undead Omnicidal Maniac. One other includes the First and Forsaken Lion — a millennia-old, ghost-god warmonger — consuming weakened Autochthon and becoming the Onceborn. At least the Neverborn seeks to kill all things so that they come to eternal rest; the Onceborn kills billions at a time because it's fun. Again, the PCs could stop him, but tough luck.
• Wave-Motion Gun:
  • In 2nd Edition the Godspear of the Five-Metal Shrike is specifically statted out as doing infinite damage on a direct hit. Also, the main weapon of the First Age's Titan-class aerial citadels — of which, interestingly, the Shrike was designed to be a far more resource-efficient version, in terms of getting that level of firepower.
  • While not precisely a wave motion gun, the Realm Defense Grid/Sword of Creation is capable of the same degree of long-range super-destruction.
  • Above them both stands the 2nd Edition's Daystar's Apollyon Cannon, which fires "an unstoppable concussive bolt of solar Essence which can span a hundred thousand miles in an instant." It was used to push a rival Primordial's mock Creation back into the deep Wyld. In case you're not familiar with what that means: this is a weapon powerful enough to knock a world equivalent in size to a large rocky planet clear through to another dimension.
  • And there's the Eye of Autochthon. It does... well, something. Nobody's entirely sure what though, because people come to "mysterious" bad ends whenever they try to use it or even find it. It is known to have created the Glittering Desert, however — a region in the far South hundreds of miles long and tens of miles wide in which everything (and everyone) that wasn't a gas has been transmuted into finely shaped quartz.
• Weirdness Censor: Several Sidereal Charms have them built in. For example, a Charm that allows a Sidereal to relocate an entire village by physically dragging it around causes the inhabitants to think nothing of the sudden change in their geography.
• Weird Sun:
  • In 2nd Edition Creation's sun is a giant flying battle fortress built to defend the world from the endless hordes of chaos, with enough weaponry to destroy the entire world in an instant. Also, it can turn into a giant robot. And knows martial arts.
  • The sun of Hell is the demon-king's soul, and a demon in its own right. Also, it's radioactive, and its light is blocked by objects only because the demon in question is noble enough to allow this.
• Weird Weather:
  • In 1st Edition, there's a Sidereal Charm that turns the arrows they shoot into... well, anything. Examples given include grain, fire, and snow. Of course, since mortal minds are incapable of noticing or remembering Sidereals, they can't understand what caused this "rain".
  • In the demon realm of Malfeas, the weather is as bizarre, and often horribly dangerous, as everything else in Hell. Some of this occurs as part of "natural" weather events, while powerful entities often cause outlandish weather of their own.
    • The acid sea of Kimbery possesses its own equivalent of the water cycle, where caustic vapors rise into the sky, condense into clouds, and precipitate as deadly acid rain before flowing back to Kimbery once more.
    • When in Creation, the passage of the demon Zsofika is heralded by storms and rain. In the Demon City of Malfeas, she's followed by rains of blood, hails of basalt, snow of brass and stranger things.
    • The Yozi known as Hegra, the Typhoon of Nightmares, rains mortal dreams condensed into physical form, such as cold sweat from night terrors, erotic cloudbursts and blizzards of whimsical fancy. Anyone touched by this rain experiences the original dreamer's emotions as if they were theirs.
    • Occasionally, parts of Malfeas will be showered by rains of stone and rubble. This is the first sign that the Yozi is about to smash two of his layers together, as the aerial bridges that connect his sections shatter and fall, and that the demons of that area have better run for their lives before the layer above theirs comes crashing down.
    • Even absent all these factors, rains of blood, gall, pellets of metal, bone or glass, gelatinous blobs, and even small animals are all commonplace in Malfeas. These are generally harmless, if bizarre or disgusting.
• Wham Episode: 2nd Edition module Return of the Scarlet Empress.
• The Wild Hunt:
  • Actually inverted with the Wyld (sic) Hunt. That consists of a force of men, led by Dragon-Blooded and sometimes Sidereals to hunt down and kill Celestial Exalts and other dangerous magical entities. Once upon a time, its original purpose was to hunt the Fair Folk. Played straight (or as straight as they wish it to be) with the Fair Folk, especially in the South.
• Winged Humanoid:
  • The people of the air resemble slender humans with large feathered wings. The extreme improbability and impracticality of humanoids developing wings is justified by the fact that the titular Exalted created them with the secret arts and Lost Technology of the First Age, basically just to see if they could, and they require artificial wombs and specialized diets to survive. Bird-based beastmen also tend to sport wings, either as additional limbs or as modified arms.
  • Wyld mutants can also develop functional wings; in this case it's justified because, well... it's the Wyld, although by the time you rack up enough Wyld mutations to develop functional wings, you rarely fit the "humanoid" part of Winged Humanoid anymore...
  • One of the Twisted from the Carnival supplement is a young woman with huge bat wings.
• Winged Unicorn: While most unicorns are of the regular variety, their nature as creatures of the Wyld makes them highly variable and some possess immense white wings.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: A number of Charms do this to some extent: Black Mirror Revelation, Power From Darkness, Primordial Principle Emulation, several Yozi charms... and perhaps most frighteningly, the 2nd Edition Solars' age cap-breaker Charm, Glory to the Most High. Of course, they are completely unaware of the "great insanity" part of this trope.
• Wolf Man: Wolfmen are a common type of beastman in the forests and mountains of the frozen North. They're savage and aggressive raiders, and feared and hated by their neighbors. Like their animals of origin, they're highly social and tend to live in larger tribes, and larger confederations and alliances thereof, than other beastman types.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Shoat of the Mire in 2nd Edition. The Dowager of the Irreverent Vulgate in Unrent Veils operates the Mound of Forsaken Seeds. The "seeds" are children who grow up learning Deathlord dogma, living mostly underground and surrounded by black metal... almost everything, really. And the metal moans occasionally. You see, it holds the souls of the children's parents, who were often murdered and soulforged in front of them. And the souls of their predecessors, and so on back for millennia. When the Dowager chooses a girl to become the current Shoat of the Mire — and the Shoat is always a girl — she's outfitted with armour and weapons of the same material, possibly incorporating her murdered playmates' souls. Oh, and she's going to be a preteen for decades or centuries, assuming she lives that long.
• Words Can Break My Bones: Several Charms let you kill someone by talking to them.
• The Worf Effect: The 2nd Edition Compass of Terrestrial Directions: The North suggests using the Bull Of The North for this. The 2nd Edition Return of the Scarlet Empress module recommends having the agents of the Reclamation worf Chejop Kejak, followed by most of the Sidereals.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Influence from intense elemental concentrations frequently causes mutations in the people of Creation, the most common of which is unusual hair colors. As such, people from the archipelagoes of the West often have blue, indigo, or purple hair, people in the forests of the East commonly have green hair, people from the deserts of the South have literally red hair, and people from the frozen north often have white or light grey hair. In addition to these colors, which often become as common and established as mundane browns, blondes, blacks and gingers, more unusual shades are also known among people exposed to the mutative energies of the Wyld.
• The Worm That Walks:
  • Wyld mutants with the "Hive" abomination. One rank in "hive" and they have a beehive or snake nest or similar somewhere on their bodies. Two ranks in "Hive" and the nest expands to include the rest of them, turning them into a hollow skin moved about by swarming creatures — whether the original being is still alive at this point is a highly dubious matter.
  • Scarab guardians, minor deities who serve as guardians of places that gods or powerful Exalts want never to be disturbed, manifest as swarms of black beetles that share a single mind. These beetles can come together to form a humanoid body, which the scarab guardian usually does when it needs to threaten people or warn them away from its charge.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Black Claw Style, a Martial Art based around the 'truth' that innocence is a lie.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: In 3rd Edition, the Solar known as the Bull of the North has been grievously wounded in his campaign against the Realm, suffering a weeping wound that refuses to heal with any method of sorcery or medicine yet applied to it. He is dying, but slowly, and needs to find a solution fast before his Icewalker empire crumbles.
• Wretched Hive: Wu-Jian is Hive City that serves as a major Realm port in the Western oceans. The majority of its bulk is a mountain of poorly planned, ramshackle architecture where teeming masses live like sardines, criminal gangs openly rule entire city blocks, and gladiatorial arenas, brothels and gambling dens crowd the narrow streets. The topmost layer of swaying apartments is considerably calmer, at least insofar as it's where the crime bosses like to live and they prefer their immediate neighborhoods quiet, while the bottommost levels are a barely inhabited urban wasteland choked with stagnant seawater, sewage and flotsam and home chiefly to bands of scavengers, desperate criminals, and Exalted and Fair Folk hiding from the Realm. The Dragon-Blooded, who make a point of living outside the city, chiefly ignore the mess as long as it avoids interfering with the docks and warehouses.
• Writers Cannot Do Math:
  • A common problem whenever House V'neef is used as a part of some backstory. V'neef herself is only around sixty years old, which is extremely young for a Dynast and astonishingly young for the head of a House. It is very common for writers to treat her House as much older and larger than it is , a mistake probably fueled by the fact that V'neef's elder siblings and their Houses are centuries old, and by confusing a high percentage of Exaltation with a high number of individual Exalts. (Only one of V'neef's kids hasn't Exalted, a child who's too young for it anyway. Impressive, sure, but the entirety of the House is still smaller than mere cadet branches of other Houses, so that's not actually very many Dragon-blooded.)
  • Wu-Jian is essentially Kowloon Walled City by way of Booty Bay and covers an archipelago the size of the Hawaiian Islands. To cover its supposed area at its purported population density, the area would need a population of over two hundred billion people, and no hint as to where food and water come from or go to.

Y

• You All Meet in an Inn: Since this is a Tabletop Game, it happens. Some of the locations of the setting build this right in, such as Nexus, where for some reason there is a strange law that no one can eat alone after dark, so taverns and tea shops seat strangers right next to each other.
• You Can't Fight Fate:
  • Played with: The Loom of Fate can influence a lot of entities, especially mortals but including most Exalts. That said, all creatures who can channel Essence tend to direct Fate to adapt to them to some degree as well, and the corrupted Solar Exaltations (Infernal and Abyssal) don't even bother with it at all.
  • Played straighter with 2nd Edition's Samsara, the pattern of the world that shall yet be. To the best of anyone's knowledge, it applies to everyone, including the Eldritch Abominations locked outside the world. Samsara is much less well known than Fate, however, and those entities whom we have seen who directly perceive it not only become aware of their future, but become compelled to fulfill it. Word of God is that other entities are not necessarily compelled to fulfill the future that the Maidens see, so much as thus far it's been pretty accurate.invoked
  • If Sacheverell, one of the imprisoned Eldritch Abominations, ever wakes up from his eons-long coma, his visions of the future will impose an extreme form of this on everyone in every world, irrevocably, inescapably, forever. It would be game over for free will, heroic potential, and playable characters. As such, pretty much everyone who knows about this wants to keep him asleep, and one major demon's entire job is to prevent anyone from waking him. It isn't clear whether his visions would be Samsara or something else entirely, but nobody wants to find out.
• You Have Failed Me:
  • What can happen when a 2nd Edition Infernal's Torment gets too high.
  • Also, originally in 2nd Edition if an Abyssal's Deathlord master had their "Monstrance of Celestial Portion" (soul cage), they could kill an offending Abyssal instantly. The rulebook suggests having the Deathlord treat any minor rebellion as part of their Gambit Roulette, to give them a little slack. This was later retconned, because having an automatic kill-switch pointed at your head at all times isn't particularly cool.
• Yowies and Bunyips and Drop Bears, Oh My: Bunyips appear as hulking, herbivorous marsupials native to grasslands in the East and in the Western islands. They depart from their mythological origins rather starkly, with the mythical aquatic predator becoming a terrestrial grazer.

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