| 1 | [[center: [- [[Characters/{{Exalted}} Top Index]] | [[Characters/ExaltedExalted Exalted]] ([[Characters/ExaltedExaltedOfCreation Exalted of Creation]]) | [[Characters/ExaltedSpirits Spirits]] | '''Other''' ]] -] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | There are many more beings in Creation than just the various types of Exalts and [[OurSpiritsAreDifferent spirits]]. Beyond the ragged edges of Creation, the endless Wyld is filled with the predatory, deadly Fair Folk, things anathema to all shaped realms. There are Primordial-created races lost, cast down and thriving alike, the HalfHumanHybrids of everything from gods to ghosts, the strange, singular monsters created by the god-kings of Creation on a whim (whether those kings were Exalt or Primordial), and things so mysterious that [[ShrugOfGod even the books never clarify exactly what they are.]] |
| 4 | |
| 5 | And, of course, there are ordinary mortal humans. |
| 6 | |
| 7 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 8 | |
| 9 | [[folder:Fair Folk (Raksha)]] |
| 10 | TheFairFolk -- or raksha, as they call themselves -- are sentient aspects of [[ChaosWorld the Wyld]]. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | In their native, Unshaped forms, the raksha appear as a combination GeniusLoci[=/=]HiveMind -- a setting, and the major characters within it. [[WildMassGuessing (The similarities to the Primordials have been noted.)]] To survive in Creation, they must take on a shaped form, and subsist off the emotions of mortals. They don't ''have'' to damage the mortals they feed on... but it's often more nourishing for them. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | Being {{Eldritch Abomination}}s in the guise of living stories, the raksha don't think like mortals do. They think in terms of narratives and stories -- what is most dramatically appropriate. They put on roles and cast them off as they see fit. That the Creation-born don't think this way can be a source of resentment or fascination for the raksha, depending. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | One thing may help to understand something of raksha psychology is to know that in their native realms, their normal actions ''don't matter'', since they can shrug them off. The only real way for raksha to have an impact on one another is through shaping combat. In these reality-warping games, internal realities are pitted against each other. Creation, and the Creation-born, ignore this, enforcing their reality on the raksha. When something of Creation acts on the raksha, that action has lasting results, and cannot be shrugged off. As with so much else about Creation, this leaves the raksha conflicted. |
| 17 | ---- |
| 18 | * ArbitrarilyLargeBankAccount: Raksha can turn gossamer (a substance they harvest from the Wyld or the dreams of mortals) into anything, including money. A Raksha with a Gossamer 3 Background has the equivalent of Resources 5 in Creation. At Gossamer 4, they can make three Resources 5 level purchases (i.e., palaces or private armies) per game session. And at Gossamer 5, they can make infinite Resources 5 purchases until the Wyld Hunt or the Sidereals get curious enough to investigate. And then it is time to run. |
| 19 | * BarehandedBladeBlock: Your basic Raksha defensive Charms provide this in Creation. |
| 20 | * TheBeastmaster: World-Angering Beast Mastery and Thousand Gnawing Fangs provide this power. |
| 21 | * TheBeautifulElite: Raksha nobles are fabled for their superhuman Appearance ratings. And there are Raksha Charms that make the user so beautiful that [[CharmPerson people will do whatever they want]] or even [[FantasticDrug become physically addicted to their presence]]. |
| 22 | * BlueAndOrangeMorality: They don't understand why their actions have permanent consequences in Creation and that frightens them to no end. |
| 23 | * ChangelingTale: Raksha in Creation will often satiate their hungers by abducting a mortal to MindRape. This practice, probably more than any other, is what makes them so feared. On the other hand, many just [[PragmaticVillainy buy slaves from the Guild]] instead. |
| 24 | * ChurchMilitant: The Church of Balor draws its thematic from that trope -- even though most raksha know it's just another story to keep themselves alive and entertained. |
| 25 | * ColdIron: Their primary weakness. |
| 26 | * CreativeSterility: Paradoxically, since they can't create anything lasting, raksha have a hard time drawing new ideas from themselves without giving themselves partially over to Creation -- in which case they aren't truly raksha anymore. |
| 27 | * DecadentCourt: Raksha courts. |
| 28 | * TheDreaded: ''Nothing'' scares the {{Muggles}} more than the Fair Folk. Even many Dragon-Blooded see them as bigger threats than the Solar Exalts. |
| 29 | %%* EldritchAbomination: Unshaped Raksha. |
| 30 | %%* ElementalEmbodiment: Assumption of (Element) Shape will turn a Raksha into this.%%Into what? |
| 31 | %%* ElementalPowers: The Elemental Influence Charm tree. |
| 32 | %%* EmotionBomb: The Emotional Influence Charm tree. |
| 33 | * EmotionEater: In their case, the Virtues. If they chew on down long enough, the victim is left a [[EmptyShell mindless husk]]. |
| 34 | %% * TheFairFolk: ''No''. [[SarcasmMode Really? We never would have guessed]]. |
| 35 | * FateWorseThanDeath: A mortal who falls in with the Raksha will be repeatedly {{Mind Rape}}d until he/she becomes a soulless, near-mindless drone. And then he/she will probably be sold to the Guild as a slave. |
| 36 | * {{Glamour}}: All Raksha Charms that affect the world around them are called "glamours," but certain Charms are what this trope describes. Most Raksha use them to recruit victims for [[EmotionEater feeding]]. |
| 37 | * HorseOfADifferentColor: They often ride fantastic creatures such as gryphons. |
| 38 | %%* HumanoidAbomination: Shaped Raksha. |
| 39 | * HumansAreCthulhu: Sort of. They understand humans perfectly well, and admire our imaginations. Creation ''itself'' freaks them out. |
| 40 | * ItAmusedMe: If a shaped Raksha is not an OmnicidalManiac, this will probably be its motivation. |
| 41 | * LackOfEmpathy: Most Raksha, specifically those with a Compassion Grace below a certain level. They don't understand that other creatures are not merely an extension of their will. |
| 42 | * LittleBitBeastly: Depending on how many Mutations a Raksha with Assumption of Bestial Visage takes, they will appear to be one or the other. |
| 43 | * MagicallyBindingContract: A Raksha who swears an oath is compelled to fulfill it or suffer severe consequences. Some Creation-born think they can trick Raksha into making such an oath and thereby control them, but any Raksha worth its salt is a master of LoopholeAbuse and ExactWords for precisely that reason. |
| 44 | * MasterOfIllusion: In the Wyld, Raksha are {{Reality Warper}}s. In Creation, they have to make do with spreading a little gossamer into the surrounding reality and creating illusions of what they want. These illusions last a season (or until the Raksha leaves reality and heads back to the Wyld), but YourMindMakesItReal until that happens. |
| 45 | * MindRape: In theory, a Raksha requires consent to use its EmotionEater powers on you. In practice, "consent" obtained through MindManipulation counts. This creates something of a disincentive for a Raksha to take the time to talk to you into it. |
| 46 | * NighInvulnerability: A Raksha with "Bastion of the Self (Heart)" is totally immune to all forms of damage except those delivered by magic or weapons forged of ColdIron. |
| 47 | * OmnicidalManiac: Many Raksha want to destroy all of Creation and return all to the Wyld. On the other hand, many, if not most, have [[GoingNative gone native]] and want to keep Creation around, if only ForTheEvulz. |
| 48 | * OurGoblinsAreDifferent: Hobgoblins are the least of the Fair Folk, serving their more elegant kin and creators as footsoldiers, raiders and servants, although the Fair Ones' retreat from Creation after their failed invasion left many hobgoblin bands stranded in pockets of Wyld energies and cut off from the rest of Fair Folk society. They're always monstrous and misshapen in appearance, although beyond this their shapes can vary wildly based on their makers' whims or the dominant elemental influences of the areas where they make their home -- hobgoblins in the swamps of the South may take the form of dark, red-eyed stalkers in the fog, while ones from the Northern snows may bear thick coats of white hair and long ivory tusks. |
| 49 | * PsychopathicManchild: Most of them. They just don't "get" how reality works. Specific areas they have trouble grasping include the sentience of other creatures and the permanence of death. |
| 50 | * RealityWarper: In the Wyld, a Raksha noble can summon up and dismiss whatever it wants: objects, buildings, mythical beasts, whole countries full of people, whatever. They need to use a Charm to make it permanent, but those are easy enough for a noble to learn. |
| 51 | * SuperiorSpecies: Enforced by game mechanics. A Raksha noble is at least better than average in all Attributes, the peak of human achievement in most, and superhuman in at least a couple. And then there's the Charm that grants them automatic successes on a chosen skill. |
| 52 | * SpeakOfTheDevil: Saying their name won't summon them, but most mortals believe it will. Hence, "the Fair Folk." |
| 53 | * TarotMotifs: A stealthy version. The four main graces of the Fair folk are the Sword (which resolves around conflict), the Cup (emotions and social control), the Staff (which is based on diplomacy), and the Ring (creating stuff). The traditional four suits are Swords, Cups, Wands, and Coins/Pentacles/Disks. Most of the associations fit as well. Cups are emotion, relationships, romance; Disks are the material realm, and Wands are will, passion, and power. Swords, however, are associated not with conflict, but with intellect, in tarot. See [[UsefulNotes/TarotCards this page]] for the source of this information. |
| 54 | * TheoryOfNarrativeCausality: The closest thing the Wyld has to a law of physics. Raksha glamours work by bringing a little of that into Creation and spreading it around. |
| 55 | * {{Troperrific}}: The Raksha are best thought of as Trope Elementals. |
| 56 | * VoluntaryShapeshifting: In the Wyld, a shaped Raksha can look like whatever it wants. In Creation, they have to make do with Charms (which have to fit the theme of their Assumption). |
| 57 | * TheWildHunt: Both inverted and played straight. The Wyld Hunt is actually an organization of Dragon-Blooded originally tasked with hunting down Raksha that stray into Creation, but have subsequently undergone mission creep to the point that their primary targets are now Solar and Lunar Exalted. The Raksha themselves do often play out this trope, though, especially in the South. |
| 58 | |
| 59 | !'''Ishvara''' |
| 60 | |
| 61 | The ishvara are the ultimate stage of raksha development, their effective apotheosis; so rare are they that only a handful have ever been recorded in all of existence. An ishvara's personal legend has become so strong, so powerful, that everyone -- not just other raksha, ''everyone'' -- goes along with it, and in the process the raksha in question is transfigured into a myth incarnate, a being of terrible power. They can even stand in combat against one of the Celestial Incarnae, wielding their own unique and potent Charms. None have won, so far, but it's been a close thing... |
| 62 | ---- |
| 63 | |
| 64 | %%%This should not be moved to the YMMV tab on account of this being a functional aspect of the character's in-universe being. |
| 65 | * BlackHoleSue: InUniverse! The defining feature of the Ishvara that separates them from all other Raksha is that their story is so strong it drags everyone into it. |
| 66 | |
| 67 | !!'''The Fomorian Dream''' |
| 68 | |
| 69 | The Fomorian Dream took the form of a great darkness that shrouded the sky from horizon to horizon, and thundered with the steps of a nightmare beast. He declared that he would crush Creation between his teeth, and managed to battle the Unconquered Sun for a full day before finally being destroyed. |
| 70 | ---- |
| 71 | * BrownNote: To imagine the creature that made the Dream's steps was to die of fear on the spot. |
| 72 | |
| 73 | !!'''Prince Laashe, the Morning Star''' |
| 74 | |
| 75 | The Unconquered Sun is perfect, but not infallible. |
| 76 | |
| 77 | Laashe's court was in the middle of a war against Creation when its then-leader attempted to catch the Unconquered Sun's Godspear, and was vaporised in the process. Laashe ascended to the throne, and promptly surrendered. |
| 78 | |
| 79 | He convinced Ignis Divine that he wished to live in peace with Creation, and that with an oath from the Unconquered Sun that he would not attack Laashe to back him up, he would have the authority to help prevent other raksha from attacking. Impressed, the Unconquered Sun swore that so long as Laashe never sent his forces against Creation, he would not so much as raise his hand against him. |
| 80 | |
| 81 | However, the oath didn't stop Laashe from making war on other raksha courts, and this he did, making himself a tyrant, murderer, and torturer. As he did so, he told his greatest story yet -- Ignis Divine would come to strike him down with the Godspear, but he would return from the ashes as something greater. |
| 82 | |
| 83 | When the Unconquered Sun heard of Laashe's atrocities, and his boastful story, he realised he had been tricked, and set out to deliver justice. Seeing what Laashe had done, Ignis Divine broke his oath, and struck Laashe down with the Godspear, before returning to the Daystar. However, Laashe had faked his death, taking advantage of the broken oath to hide himself upon Ignis Divine's person. |
| 84 | |
| 85 | As the Unconquered Sun slept upon the Daystar, Laashe resumed humanoid form, shook hands with the Sun's shadow, sought out the Daystar's heart, and cast himself in. Almost anyone else would have been destroyed utterly, but for Laashe it was part of the story he had created. There, in the heart of the sun, he took hold of a narrative that gave him power and might enough to rival the Unconquered Sun, and ascended. |
| 86 | |
| 87 | To Creation he returned, on a torrent of flame, and there forced the sun to set. For a moment, the sky became morning, and Laashe the only star therein. |
| 88 | |
| 89 | Once the Unconquered Sun returned the Daystar to its proper place, he descended upon Creation to strike Laashe down one last time -- only to find Laashe devouring mortal souls. Ignis Divine could not slay Laashe without destroying those souls, which his great compassion could not accept; and despite everything he had done, he had not violated his original oath, denying the Unconquered Sun another font of power. |
| 90 | |
| 91 | Laashe pressed his advantage, seeking to imprison Ignis Divine in a tomb of jade -- but when it seemed he was on the verge of triumph, he disappeared. |
| 92 | |
| 93 | For Laashe had forgotten that Ignis Divine was not Creation's only defender. Luna caught hold of him, of the Wyld in him, pulled him into the Beyond, her birthplace and crucible -- and in doing so, made it that he never existed. |
| 94 | |
| 95 | He rages "there" still, and will for all eternity. |
| 96 | ---- |
| 97 | * AndIMustScream: It's a REALLY bad idea to trick the Unconquered Sun. It's even WORSE to honk off Luna. The Unconquered Sun is a paragon of Virtue. Luna? [[FateWorseThanDeath Not so much.]] |
| 98 | * BatmanGambit |
| 99 | * NearVillainVictory: He was actually sealing Ignis Divine in a prison of Jade, and was able to grab his spear. However Luna intervened, trapping him for eternity in the Beyond. |
| 100 | * SealedEvilInACan: Currently stuck "in" the Beyond, the Forge of Oramus, i.e. [[EldritchLocation "The Non-Place Where Things That Cannot Be Exist."]] |
| 101 | * TricksterArchetype: His ascension into an ishvara was catalyzed when he ''tricked the Unconquered Sun''. (It's left unclear who 'the Sun's shadow' of the story refers to -- quite a few take it to mean Laashe impressed the Ebon Dragon.) |
| 102 | |
| 103 | !!'''Prince Balor of the Terrible Gaze''' |
| 104 | |
| 105 | Looking at a map of Creation in the First Age, you may notice it was once bigger. And that there weren't nearly as many pockets of the Wyld. |
| 106 | |
| 107 | Balor would be the main reason -- but still, you have to thank him. After all, without his bit of the Wyld mutating the survivors, the [[ThePlague Great Contagion]] [[NiceJobFixingItVillain would probably have killed all of them]]. |
| 108 | |
| 109 | An ishvara Anarch (a raksha defining himself as a wandering warrior-diplomat, essentially) who defined himself around the mythical role of "the One Who Will Take Back Creation For The Wyld," Balor, with some assistance from the unshaped Thief of Words, was able to organize the leaders of the raksha at that time (Princess Melusine, the Duke of Mirrors, the sisters Incarnadine and Viridian) into a great Crusade that attacked Creation from all sides, having been explicitly allowed to by the First and Forsaken Lion and Eye and Seven Despairs. He proved himself a brilliant tactician and skilled leader, dissolving much of Creation back into the Wyld with ruthless efficiency. His most awe-inspiring accomplishment, however, was to actually organize the raksha into a coherent military -- as might be expected from what is essentially a race of chaos elementals, [[WeAreStrugglingTogether the Fair Folk are not particularly bound to each other]]. |
| 110 | |
| 111 | And unfortunately (for him, miraculously for Creation), that same disorganization is what killed him. |
| 112 | |
| 113 | As mentioned above, raksha thrive on stories and heroic drive, and the conquest of Creation was a grand story indeed. However, when it appeared the raksha might actually ''win'', Melusine began to fear that its actual destruction might destroy him without a cause to fight for. Far better, in her eyes, to ensure he was martyred and become a legend, to be toasted to when the raksha won. So, she convinced the sisters to murder him, and so ensure his name live on forever. |
| 114 | |
| 115 | And it was at that moment that the Scarlet Empress [[BigDamnHeroes figured out how to operate the Sword of Creation]]. |
| 116 | |
| 117 | And so the Balorian Crusade, without its leader to put them back together, was destroyed and routed, and the raksha fell back into disorganization. What's more, they found they could not escape back to the Wyld -- Balor's legend had shaped the mortal idea of the Wyld as a vast predator, and [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve thanks to the mechanics of unshaped creation]], had given rise to the ''hannya'', who would devour their cousins with relish. |
| 118 | |
| 119 | But, ironically, his name ''did'' live forever. It is likely that the aftereffects of the Crusade will be felt for Ages to come, and -- well, there's a reason it's called the Church of ''Balor''. So, maybe it doesn't matter. |
| 120 | ---- |
| 121 | * DarkMessiah: To the raksha, though they would dispute "dark"... |
| 122 | * DeadlyGaze: His title came from a unique ability of his to instantly Shape anyone he glared at out of existence. Which was one of his ''less'' powerful abilities. |
| 123 | * PosthumousCharacter |
| 124 | * NearVillainVictory: If it wasn't for his men and the Sword of Creation. |
| 125 | |
| 126 | !'''Unshaped Raksha''' |
| 127 | ---- |
| 128 | |
| 129 | * ImAHumanitarian: They are endlessly hungry, predatory stories, and what they prey on is other raksha. |
| 130 | |
| 131 | !!'''Princess Melusine of the Glittering Train''' |
| 132 | |
| 133 | !!'''The Duke of Mirrors''' |
| 134 | |
| 135 | !!'''Incarnadine and Viridian''' |
| 136 | |
| 137 | !!'''Thief of Words''' |
| 138 | |
| 139 | !!'''Orchinast, the Golden Mirror''' |
| 140 | |
| 141 | !!'''Salt That Cuts''' |
| 142 | |
| 143 | !!'''Semiramis, the Whisperer in the Leaves''' |
| 144 | |
| 145 | !!'''Swar, the City of Formlessness Constrained''' |
| 146 | |
| 147 | !!'''Prince Ginnungagap''' |
| 148 | |
| 149 | !'''Notable Shaped Raksha''' |
| 150 | |
| 151 | !!'''Neshi of the Double Whips''' |
| 152 | |
| 153 | !!'''Dilari of the Sea Foam''' |
| 154 | |
| 155 | !!'''Nlassa of the Lion's Mane''' |
| 156 | |
| 157 | !!'''Shizuki the Weaver''' |
| 158 | |
| 159 | !!'''Lord Kazour''' |
| 160 | |
| 161 | !!'''Subarto''' |
| 162 | |
| 163 | !!'''The Laughing Boy''' |
| 164 | |
| 165 | !!'''Judge Nehemeth''' |
| 166 | |
| 167 | The leader of the Pearl Court. |
| 168 | ---- |
| 169 | * EvenEvilHasStandards: Hates the Yozis. |
| 170 | |
| 171 | !!'''Sweet Citrus Crimson''' |
| 172 | |
| 173 | Sweet Citrus Crimson was a FairFolk Noble who sought to destroy the Solar Deliberative in the First Age. He was executed by a group of nine Celestial Exalts, who fell in love with him when he died. |
| 174 | [[/folder]] |
| 175 | |
| 176 | [[folder:Behemoths]] |
| 177 | Behemoths are a grab-bag of random, unique, usually gigantic and immortal creatures of various origins. The term covers the prototypes of each animal species, various entities created by Primordials and Fair Folk, and other ancient things of more obscure origins. |
| 178 | |
| 179 | !'''Arad the Hunter''' |
| 180 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/arad_the_hunter.png]] |
| 181 | |
| 182 | A Primordial-created EgomaniacHunter who regularly menaces the East, looking for a WorthyOpponent to hunt and fight. He hunted on the earth and in the sky, until he struck the sun, and was burnt by its return stroke. After the Primordial War, the Celestial Exalted gradually forced him to retreat into the Wyld. Surviving due to his immortal nature, Arad returned to Creation after the Balorian Crusade, and has resumed hunting his favorite prey; Solars. |
| 183 | ---- |
| 184 | * BowAndSwordInAccord: He wields a bow and a spear. |
| 185 | * CannibalismSuperpower: Arad can gain the charms of beings after he hunts them, kills them, and eats their hearts. Unlike many examples of this trope, however, he only gets to use that charm once per being consumed. |
| 186 | * DestructiveRomance: A wood goddess named Pula loved Arad. He replied to her passion by killing her and shaping her body into his bow, Pula's Heart. |
| 187 | * EgomaniacHunter: Arad doesn't hunt to eat, or to protect himself. He hunts because hunting is what he does. |
| 188 | * HuntingTheMostDangerousGame: Arad has no qualms about hunting sentient beings, including mortals, gods, and exalted. His favorite prey are Solars, and their dark reflections the Abyssals. |
| 189 | * HunterOfMonsters: He was built to be the best of these. He tried hunting Luna once, though she turned things around and began hunting him back. |
| 190 | * NamedWeapons: He carries a spear named Usilk and a bow named Pula's Heart. |
| 191 | |
| 192 | !'''Halkomelem, the Enigma in Red and Gold''' |
| 193 | [[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/halkomelem.png]] |
| 194 | |
| 195 | When the Primordial He who Bleeds the Unknown World lay dying during the Primordial War, he wrote his nature into the fabric of Creation. That scribble became Halkomelem, a giant serpent made of red paper. Having followed the Yozis into Malfeas, Halkomelem now twists through the skies of the Demon City. |
| 196 | ---- |
| 197 | * IngestingKnowledge: When Halkomelem eats a person, it instantly learns anything that they ever knew. The new knowledge is written in golden ink onto fresh red paper scales on its body. |
| 198 | * KnowledgeBroker: It constantly sheds its red papers scales, leaving a slight trail of them in its wake as it regrows copies of them. The scales can be picked up, and each contains one thing that Halkomelem knows. It isn't guaranteed that that thing will be important, or in a language known to the reader. One scale might have the location of the Scarlet Empress written on it, while another bears the recipe for hard tack used by a peasant farmer. |
| 199 | * MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily: It has three rows of teeth. |
| 200 | * NighInvulnerability: If "killed", Halkomelem's body will reconstitute itself from its fallen pages over a few months/years. Since its nature is actually written into Creation, only an Incarna, Yozi, Primordial, or sufficiently creative/powerful Exalt can permanently kill it. |
| 201 | * OurDragonsAreDifferent: It's a 100-yard-long dragon-headed serpent made of red paper with golden writing on it, with three sets of jaws and the ability to fly without visible means, and seeks nothing but to add ever more knowledge to that already recorded on its archive-body. |
| 202 | * SeekerArchetype: Its only motivation is to learn. |
| 203 | * ThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow: Halkomelem bears a silver scar where he was touched by Orabilis. When it gained the scar, it learned a secret known only to the Yozis. |
| 204 | |
| 205 | !'''Iwau Tamotsu, the Watcher with Eyes of Stone''' |
| 206 | |
| 207 | The guardian of the Weeping Maiden. |
| 208 | ---- |
| 209 | * GiantWallOfWateryDoom: Capable of creating these to stop anyone who tries to reach the Weeping Maiden. |
| 210 | |
| 211 | !'''Lintha Ng Oroo''' |
| 212 | |
| 213 | An island behemoth that the Lintha use as their home. |
| 214 | |
| 215 | !'''Mother Bog''' |
| 216 | |
| 217 | Proof that not all Behemoths are simply {{Kaiju}}: Mother Bog is a sapient ''[[AlienKudzu ecosystem]]'', a mobile swamp with a canny mind and a gluttonous appetite. A large danger of the Scavenger Lands (the part of the East easily reachable by the Blessed Isle), Mother Bog is both a physical titan and a mental one, being quite capable of communicating her greatest desire to the worshippers she's picked up over the years: To grow, whether it be in area, breath of knowledge, or power. |
| 218 | ---- |
| 219 | %%* GeniusBruiser |
| 220 | * MookMaker: She's called ''Mother'' Bog for a reason -- sacrifices to her can allow her to create homunculi from her body. |
| 221 | * SwampsAreEvil: 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. |
| 222 | |
| 223 | !'''Mount Mostath, the Herder of Mountains''' |
| 224 | |
| 225 | A behemoth in the shape of a icy mountain with a pair of giant tusks and a massive trunk, that herds glaciers and mountains. |
| 226 | |
| 227 | !'''Oliphem''' |
| 228 | |
| 229 | The Watcher of the Sea, Oliphem was created by a prehistoric race to protect ships traveling the Western Ocean. Even though his progenitors died out before the Primordial War, his devotion to them led him to continue his duties. Unfortunately, saving ships became much more difficult when Desus blinded him. Oliphem continues walking the Western Ocean, a sad, lonely giant of stone and metal, saving what ships he can. |
| 230 | ---- |
| 231 | * ArtifactDomination: In ''Return of the Scarlet Empress'', [[spoiler:the Lintha]] provide Oliphem with a new lens. Putting it on [[spoiler:causes him to break out in maniacal laughter, and presumably join the Reclamation]]. |
| 232 | * BerserkButton: After Desus punched him, Oliphem became less neutral towards the Solar Exalted in general, and to Desus in particular. Should he ever encounter the Solar bearing Deus' Exaltation, he would fly into an uncontrollable, murderous rage. |
| 233 | * {{Determinator}}: Desus tried to bribe and threaten Oliphem into not protecting the Lintha. He refused. Even though he can no longer see the entire surface of the ocean, Oliphem still tries to help ships in need. |
| 234 | * EyeBeam: Back when his lens wasn't broken, Oliphem could shoot a beam of blue light out of it to damage his enemies. |
| 235 | * EyeScream: Desus broke Oliphem's lens to prevent the behemoth from helping both the Lintha and the Exalted. |
| 236 | * {{Golem}}: He's a giant made of stone and iron. |
| 237 | * HeroicNeutral: Oliphem doesn't care whose ship he's saving, or what that ship is doing. He just protects ships. It's why Desus punched his lens in, as the Solars got sick of him helping the Lintha. |
| 238 | * NighInvulnerable: Nonmagical attacks don't hurt him, and he can recover from magical attacks as long as they don't kill him. |
| 239 | * ParentalAbandonment: Oliphem misses his makers, and continues saving ships out of love for them. |
| 240 | * WalkOnWater: Oliphem walks along the surface of the ocean, and sinks underneath it when he sleeps. While he can walk on land, he's never been seen doing so. |
| 241 | |
| 242 | !'''The Ur-Snake''' |
| 243 | |
| 244 | * PetMonstrosity: Hran-Tzu, the god of decay, keeps it as a pet and as a very effective watchdog for his mansion. Getting the beast into Yu-Shan at all required both considerable work and research into whether this was even permissible, and it's a testament to Hran-Tzu's influence that he was able to achieve it all and keep it despite ongoing attempts to rid Yu-Shan of the creature. |
| 245 | |
| 246 | !'''Vorvin-Derlin, the Slayer of Armies''' |
| 247 | |
| 248 | The Primordial that would become Isidoros, the Black Boar That Twists the Skies, forged the behemoth Vorvin-Derlin from his own immortal sinew. The Primordial designed the behemoth to grow stronger to match its enemy. During the Primordial War, however, Vorvin-Derlin underestimated the power of the Exalted. Time and again, the Slayer of Armies was destroyed, but it came back every time. The terms of Isidoros’s exile dictated that Vorvin-Derlin follow its master into banishment but return when called as if it were a Second Circle demon. However an accident during the Usurpation left Vorvin-Derlin masterless but buried in the ruined city of Opal Spire, where it has waited ever since. |
| 249 | ---- |
| 250 | * DeadlyUpgrade: The host of Vorvin-Derlin is very likely to become this.[[note]]In game terms this is done by Vorvin-Derlin adding its some of its hosts traits to its own.[[/note]] It's possible for a host to survive, usually to merge with a stronger host, but this if is only if Vorvin-Derlin wills it. |
| 251 | * EyeScream: Vorvin-Derlin gouges out the eyes of its hosts. |
| 252 | * HumanoidAbomination: Anyone who becomes Vorvin-Derlin's host becomes this. |
| 253 | |
| 254 | !'''Zannanza, the Sideways Forest''' |
| 255 | |
| 256 | A strange mixture of giant slug and forest, Zannanza has clung to the side of one of the layers of Malfeas since she was thrown in there by her father. Though she spends most of her time sleeping and passively draining nutrients from her layer, Zannanza is both useful and dangerous. She can sometimes be used as a bridge between two Malfean layers, but travelers beware; her forest is the home to strange plants, beasts, and demons. |
| 257 | ---- |
| 258 | * DisappearedDad: Zannanza's father is a Third Circle Demon, but all of the current Third Circle Demons deny being her father. She herself doesn't remember his name. |
| 259 | * EldritchLocation: The forest on Zannanza's back grows perpendicular to gravity. However, as long as an individual maintains physical contact with the Sideways Forest, they will be able to traverse it as if gravity was pulling them towards the behemoth. |
| 260 | * GeniusLoci: While she does spend most of her time sleeping, Zannanza is a thinking being. She's also a forest. |
| 261 | * GenocideFromTheInside: After her birth, Zannanza massacred her entire village, and only stopped when a Solar summoned her father, who threw her into Malfeas. |
| 262 | * HalfHumanHybrid: Zannanza's mother was a mortal woman, while her father is/was a Demon of the Third Circle. |
| 263 | * HeavySleeper: Spends most of her time sleeping. |
| 264 | * {{Matricide}}: She ate her way out of her mother. |
| 265 | * {{Planimal}}: Part forest, part giant slug thing. |
| 266 | [[/folder]] |
| 267 | |
| 268 | [[folder:Hekatonkhire]] |
| 269 | Hekatonkhires are almost as varied as Behemoths, as they are the ghosts of either Behemoths or Third Circle Demons. |
| 270 | |
| 271 | !'''The Infinite Prison''' |
| 272 | |
| 273 | The Infinite Prison was formerly a Third Circle Deva of a Primordial that now kidnaps ghosts, imprisons them and forces them to torture each other. |
| 274 | ---- |
| 275 | * {{Sadist}}: Its Motivation is to "gather more victims and make them torture each other for eternity". |
| 276 | |
| 277 | !'''Loras, the Death Sun''' |
| 278 | |
| 279 | Loras is a giant humanoid who has no idea what his purpose in life is. |
| 280 | ---- |
| 281 | * AlienBlood: His blood is black, although undead spiritual blood would be more accurate. |
| 282 | * AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: Loras is 30 feet tall. |
| 283 | * {{BFS}}: The Pit, a grand daiklave, scaled for the use of a 30-foot-tall monster. It may have unknown powers that Loras doesn't know about, and which might give a hint to his purpose if he discovers them. |
| 284 | * CreepilyLongArms: His arms reach his calves. |
| 285 | * CreepyLongFingers: Has six long fingers on each arm. |
| 286 | * DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife: His Motivation is to find out what his motivation is. |
| 287 | * PowerCopying: Can copy any Arcanos, Abyssal or Solar Charm he sees. |
| 288 | * PowerGlows: When he spends enough Essence he radiates waves of white and black bright enough to force people to look away. |
| 289 | |
| 290 | !'''Vodak''' |
| 291 | |
| 292 | Vodak is a hekatonkhire who was born from the blood and hate of the first Primordial to die. As the war continued, Vodak ate any living creature it encountered and then ate their ghosts, growing stronger the more it ate. |
| 293 | ---- |
| 294 | * AndIMustScream: Any creature that dies while Vodak is touching it gets absorbed by it, spending the rest of eternity in agony. |
| 295 | * CannibalismSuperpower: Vodak can create duplicates of any creature it's ever eaten. It also grows stronger the more it eats. |
| 296 | * CompleteImmortality: Non-magical weapons have no effect on it, and if something or someone manages to destroy it, it reforms in the Labyrinth. Only throwing it in the Mouth of Oblivion can destroy Vodak permanently. |
| 297 | [[/folder]] |
| 298 | |
| 299 | [[folder:Automata, Crafted Races, and other Created Lifeforms]] |
| 300 | |
| 301 | Exalteds' [[{{Mana}} Essence]]-powered take on robots and [=AIs=], Automata are living machines built for any number of tasks. They were often used in the First Age (and beyond) as menial workers, soldiers and police, deadly assassins, research assistants, and even as companions ([[{{Robosexual}} of all sorts]]). Some, (like the [[FantasticNuke Thousand-Forged Dragons]]), were even used as super weapons that could threaten whole cities. Most automata were rounded up and destroyed during the Usurpation, although many can still be found across Creation. |
| 302 | |
| 303 | The Solar Deliberative didn't just dabble in creating mechanical life, though. They began a series of experiments on human volunteers with the aim of creating specialized subspecies of humanity. With the aid of magic and selective breeding they succeeded in creating several new mortal races with unique talents and abilities. In order to ensure complicity, these Crafted Races were given special mental conditioning to ensure absolute loyalty to the Solars and their Realm. Many of the crafted races were classified as blessed races and given special status and privileges, however some of the other crafted races, known informally as the slave races, had low status and limited rights. The Usurpation and the Great Contagion decimated their numbers and now they survive in small isolated pockets. |
| 304 | |
| 305 | In addition to altered humans, the Solars of the First Age also created other biological entities whole cloth. These beings could be anything, from pets and guardians for their Half-Caste Golden Children that resembled playful monkeys, to phenomenally powerful and nigh immortal entities on par with a Behemoth. |
| 306 | ---- |
| 307 | * CatFolk: The herd guardians, a servitor race created by the Solars of the First Age to serve as ranchers and game wardens for their sacred cattle and hunting preserves, are a downplayed example. They were for the most part fully human, but had the eyes, claws, legs and strictly carnivorous diets of lions. |
| 308 | * {{Lilliputians}}: The minikin were a crafted race in the First Age shaped from the already-diminutive Djala people and modified to grow no taller than two and a half feet, and were created to tend to and repair delicate machinery. |
| 309 | * ServantRace: The First Age Solars created quite a few of these, 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, [[BreadEggsMilkSquick 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. |
| 310 | * WingedHumanoid: The people of the air resemble slender humans with large feathered wings. The extreme improbability and impracticality of humanoids developing wings is {{justified|Trope}} by the fact that the titular Exalted created them with the secret arts and LostTechnology of the First Age, basically just to see if they could, and they require artificial wombs and specialized diets to survive. Bird-based {{beastm|an}}en also tend to sport wings, either as additional limbs or as modified arms. |
| 311 | [[/folder]] |
| 312 | |
| 313 | [[folder:God-Blooded]] |
| 314 | |
| 315 | The HalfHumanHybrids of the setting, God-Bloods are the children of mortals and the various supernatural beings in ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}''. They're stronger than the average [[PunyEarthlings mortal]] but are usually weaker than an [[ShowyInvincibleHero Exalted]] in power. In spite of being called God-Bloods in general, they're divided by their supernatural parentage. These include [[OurGodsAreDifferent God-Blooded]], [[OurDemonsAreDifferent Demon-Blooded]], [[OurGhostsAreDifferent Ghost-Blooded]], [[TheFairFolk Fae-Blooded]], the Half Caste children of powerful Exalted, and [[{{Squick}} Beastmen]] (spawned with animals, often but not exclusively by Lunars). |
| 316 | |
| 317 | !!'''Tropes associated with all God-Blooded''' |
| 318 | |
| 319 | * AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: God-Blooded, once their Essence rises high enough, can be elevated to become fully spiritual beings of the same type as their parents. Depending on the specifics of one's ancestry, this may or may not be a good thing. True God-Blooded can become lesser gods or elementals in this manner, generally with similar purviews as their godly progenitor; Demon-Blooded become First Circle demons[[note]]Usually of the same breed as their demonic parent if their demonic parent was a First Circle demon, and unique First Circle Demons (and possibly the progenitors of a new demon breed) if the demonic parent was a Second or Third Circle demon[[/note]], complete with their status as Hell's serfs and punching bags, but may be promoted up the ladder if their parents were important enough; Ghost-Blooded drop dead and instantly rise as ghosts; Half-Castes are given an improved, but by no means certain, chance to Exalt; the Fae-Blooded are the exception, as they are children of Creation and thus can never become true Fae. |
| 320 | * ChildOfTwoWorlds: This is frequently the lot of the God-Blooded, the children of mortals and supernatural beings, who are frequently torn between the worlds of their human and spirit parents. At best, mortals will view them with superstitious reverence and spirits with condescending benevolence. At worst, mortals will treat them as abominations and spirits as embarrassing or repulsive mistakes. Even with the best treatment, they're often too magical in nature to be comfortably part of mortal society but too human, and too tied to human needs and nature to live among spirits. Many are left with no place where they can fit in as a result, and resort to suppressing one half or the other of their heritage to live with either parent's people, slavishly following their supernatural sires to find some purpose in their lives, or becoming wanderers and drifters. The Ghost-Blooded are hit particularly hard by this. They're too alive to fit among the dead, but the shadow of death follows them among the living; mortals view them as abominations, the dead as useful tools but not as peers or parts of their society. Even metaphysically, they have no actual world to dwell in -- they're neither truly dead nor alive, and do not belong in either the Underworld or Creation. The dead and the living were not meant to mingle, and the natural order has no place for things that should never actually have existed. |
| 321 | * OurGhoulsAreDifferent: The Ghost-Blooded, the half-dead and half-alive children of ghosts and living mortals, are sometimes referred to as ghouls. |
| 322 | * HalfHumanHybrid: All God-Bloods are technically human, in the sense that they have human souls and can Exalt. But those who have a Demon, Elemental, or God for a parent are not ''entirely'' human. Beastmen aren't really entirely human either, given that they're created via bestiality. And Ghost-Blooded are arguably half-human as well, depending on how human you consider ghosts to be. |
| 323 | * SemiDivine: 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, TheFairFolk, ghosts and the Exalted themselves. They are nowhere near as powerful as the Exalted (although ones sired by very powerful entities can 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 universal 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. |
| 324 | |
| 325 | !!Beastmen |
| 326 | |
| 327 | Beastmen are, strictly speaking, a specific type of Lunar Half-Castes, being created by Lunar Exalted breeding with humans and animals in the Wyld. However, as they're usually deliberately created in large numbers, they generally end up forming their own self-sustaining populations; most beastmen are many generations removed from any non-beastman ancestors. |
| 328 | ---- |
| 329 | * BarbarianTribe: They tend to live in scattered, stone- to bronze-age tribes on the fringes of Creation, warring against each other, civilized nations, human barbarians and the creatures of the Wyld. |
| 330 | * BatPeople: Chiropterans are one of the most common breeds of beastmen in the great Eastern forests. They resemble large, bipedal bats with four-fingered hands attached to their wings and, while just as capable during the day as during the night, prefer to keep nocturnal schedules to avoid contact with humans -- their appearance makes them one of the most actively distrusted beastman types. While most don't have particularly remarkable dietary habits, one population [[BloodsuckingBats drinks blood]]. |
| 331 | * BeastMan: Animal/human hybrids created in the most direct way possible. They typically resemble humans with the heads, tails, legs, and integument of their associated creature, and almost every animal imaginable has a beastman counterpart. |
| 332 | * BirdPeople: Hawkmen are common beastmen throughout the East. Numerous distinct breeds exist, generally as the result of independent Lunar breeding programs, which can vary greatly in appearance. The Haltan hawkmen, for instance, resemble clawed humans with hawk wings and heads, while the ones of the flying island of Mount Metagalapa are much more avian, with only four limbs and clawed hands growing from their wings. Other types of avian beastman, such as owlmen and the ''Archaeopteryx''-like raitonmen, also exist. |
| 333 | * CatFolk: It is not uncommon for beastmen, chiefly in the deserts of the South or the jungles and forests of the East, to resemble felines such as panthers, lions and tigers. |
| 334 | * FantasticRacism: They're scorned and distrusted by humans, who view them as little better than animals at best and Wyld freaks at worst. They have little fondness to return to them, and different beastman types rarely get along with one another all that well either. |
| 335 | * FishPeople: Fish-based beastmen, resembling any mix of human and piscine body parts, are not uncommon in the oceans. |
| 336 | * SnakePeople: 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. |
| 337 | * WolfMan: 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. |
| 338 | |
| 339 | !!'''The Ancient Lintha (in the Time of Glory)''' |
| 340 | |
| 341 | !!'''The Lintha Family''' |
| 342 | |
| 343 | Demon-Blooded descendants of the Yozi Kimbery, the Lintha are a thousands-strong extended family of thieves and killers who dwell on Bluehaven, a living island that is part demon and part lashed-together shipwrecks. They control a vast pirate fleet, extensive slavery operations, and, through a network of witting and unwitting fronts, a growing land-based criminal empire in the Southwest of Creation. |
| 344 | ---- |
| 345 | * BodyHorror: Lots and lots of Lintha have Wyld mutations. Furthermore, many Lintha ritualistically castrate themselves for religious reasons, and any non-pureblood who hopes to visit Bluehaven is required to be castrated. |
| 346 | * CardCarryingVillain: As close as you can get in Exalted -- they openly worship Kimbery, they are gleeful slavers, they practice strict eugenics, and they want to TakeOverTheWorld. |
| 347 | %%%* TheClan |
| 348 | * TheDon: The senior grandmother of a sept (the individual clans within the Family) fills this role. Dukantha (Kimbery's [[TheDragon favorite akuma]]) is often one for the Family as a whole. |
| 349 | * TheFamilyThatSlaysTogether: They are a massive extended family that is deeply involved in piracy of the worst kind. |
| 350 | * FantasticRacism: Against all non-Lintha. |
| 351 | * IHaveYourWife: Initiates into the Family are required to turn over a child or close family member as a hostage to ensure their loyalty. The hostages [[GildedCage live in supreme luxury]]... unless the initiate ever betrays the Family, at which point they are tortured in prolonged and inventive ways. |
| 352 | * ImAHumanitarian: The Lintha often consume the flesh of other Lintha as a sign of respect. |
| 353 | * {{Irony}}: Where do we ''start''...? |
| 354 | ** They consider themselves above all humans due to being descended from the Ancient Lintha, an [[OurElvesAreDifferent elf-like]] race created by Kimbery, and their eugenics is a way to purge the humanity from themselves. Ancient Lintha were a HumanSubspecies (explicitly so in 3E); every Demon-Blooded Lintha is an Ancient in all the ways that matter, but because they don't resemble Ancients ''exactly'' and the Lintha want to believe the Ancients inherently had godlike power, they continue the eugenics program, weakening their ability to spread or make alliances due to their contempt for all other humans, |
| 355 | ** They claim to honor the culture of said Ancients and be a living recreation of it. The ghosts of said are still around, and they are disgusted by the Family as being poseurs. |
| 356 | ** And last, but not least -- their living island, Lintha Ng Oroo, is constantly being drained of LifeEnergy to preserve the Family. The constant sucking of it is killing her, and she has begun to sink. |
| 357 | * {{Matriarchy}}: Kind of. The senior grandmother of each sept is its absolute ruler on Bluehaven itself, and sets the budget for the sept's operations throughout Creation. Grandfathers, however, directly manage the sept's piracy, slavery, and other criminal operations off of Bluehaven, as well as being the sept's diplomats, so a particularly wily and ruthless grandfather can remain independent of a senior grandmother in practice. |
| 358 | %%* {{Pirate}}: Very definitely Type 1. |
| 359 | * PirateGirl: Sometimes, although it is looked down upon. The Lintha have fairly rigid ideas about gender roles and pirating is thought to be the man's job, while the women stay home and run things. |
| 360 | * {{Polyamory}}: Pureblooded Lintha are expected to take dozens of spouses during their lives, to increase the possibility of breeding more purebloods, though they pressure those with at least two Demon-Blood offspring to undergo castration to prevent blood pollution. |
| 361 | * ReligionOfEvil: The official Lintha religion, the Cult of Dukantha. |
| 362 | * SuperBreedingProgram: They try, but with all the aforementioned polyamory going on, it's impossible to prove beyond a doubt which male Lintha sired which offspring. |
| 363 | %%%* TheSyndicate |
| 364 | * TattooedCrook: Demon-ink tattoos (which is to say, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin tattoos made from the magically rendered essence of demons]]) are very popular. |
| 365 | * ThievesGuild: Although based around an actual family, the Family does allow people to buy their way in as initiates. These initiates rarely rise even to the rank of father or mother, however, and most are taken for all they are worth and then unceremoniously killed. It is, after all, an article of faith among the Lintha that [[FantasticRacism no human has real value compared to a Lintha]]. |
| 366 | * VillainousIncest: It's actually a crime in Lintha society for a pure- or half-blooded Lintha to mate outside the Family, and mating outside their sept requires permission from the heads of each sept. |
| 367 | [[/folder]] |
| 368 | |
| 369 | [[folder:Mortals]] |
| 370 | !!'''The Guild''' |
| 371 | |
| 372 | The only organization that goes beyond claiming to have control over the entirety of Creation, and actually does so. The Guild is a worldwide organization of tradesmen, craftsmen, bureaucrats, gangsters, and drug dealers. They're essentially [[JustForFun/XMeetsY the Mafia, the Yakuza, the Freemasons, drug cartels, and all Fortune 500 companies]] shoved in a blender. |
| 373 | ---- |
| 374 | * TheAggressiveDrugDealer: The Guild imposes trade embargoes on territories that don't accept their drugs. They have also weaponized the drug market and will manipulate it to destroy governments if necessary. |
| 375 | * BadassNormal: They're the only real organization in Creation with the express purpose of creating a place for mortals to succeed without supernatural help... and they've succeeded. ''For centuries''. '''''With Solar opposition.''''' |
| 376 | %%* TheCartel |
| 377 | * TheChessmaster: How they pull ahead of Celestial Exalts (Solar won't let you into his city? Fine, establish a trade embargo and sell weapons to his nemesis' forces at a discount. Sidereal after your guts? Point out that [[SadisticChoice your agents have been instructed to blow up a dam if they don't hear from you in the next thirty minutes]]. Lunar wants you to back off? [[IHaveYourWife Funny, his mate didn't seem to agree with that decision...]]). |
| 378 | * DueToTheDead: While proper funeral rites are valued across Creation, members of the Guild often take it up a notch; the Guild is the most widely hated organisation in the world, and many who die with their lives ruined by it eagerly await Guildsmen whose greed keeps them from moving on to reincarnate. Most savvy merchant princes and factors make arrangements for lavish funerals and endeavor to have associates loyal enough to carry them out so that they can go into the Underworld properly armed (or at least wealthy enough to buy their way into the Timeless Order of Manacle and Coin). |
| 379 | * Fiction500: The investments and personal treasury of a Guild hierarch is comparable to the wealth of mighty trade-nations and the operating budget of the most powerful military in the world. |
| 380 | * [[invoked]] MagnificentBastard: It's practically a requirement of becoming a [[DiabolicalMastermind hierarch]] -- you literally have to be the smartest, least scrupulous, most perceptive, and above all, ''stylish'' candidate for becoming the new merchant prince before the rest of the Guild ''considers'' voting for you. It's part of the reason they've succeeded for so long. |
| 381 | %%* MegaCorp |
| 382 | * NGOSuperpower: The Guild is, strictly speaking, nothing more than a coalition of merchants, criminals, drug runners, and [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs criminal merchant drug runners]], but they have enough economic clout to keep the whole of Creation on their side and in their pocket. |
| 383 | * ProperlyParanoid: One of the most secretive and suspicious organizations in Creation. It's also why ''Sidereals'' find infiltrating them is so damn hard. |
| 384 | %%* TheSyndicate |
| 385 | %%* {{Ubermensch}}: The founder was one. |
| 386 | |
| 387 | !!'''The Cult of the Illuminated''' |
| 388 | |
| 389 | * AchievementsInIgnorance: The Paragon (as in 'type of student', not the city of that name) sect have an annual ritual where members meditate on their sins and plan ways to challenge them in the year ahead. This behaviour helps them to stave off the Great Curse- though none of them even know the Curse ''exists''. |
| 390 | * AmbiguousSituation: The Cult's moral status is deliberately left unstated, to give [=STs=] more freedom. If players want a story where the Cult is a HateSink of Stepford fanatics, they can do that! If the story is instead suited by the Cult being an army of heroes whose compassion saves the world -- or an ''ComicBook/XMen'' knockoff -- that works just as well. |
| 391 | * BecomingTheMask: The funny thing about the Cult is that some members of it know it's a lie...but everyone has made it the cornerstone of their lives. Ayesha Ura and Lupo put aside their very real, monogamous relationship when they have to seduce someone into supporting the Cult. Kai donates his entire paycheck to it. Venerable Silk built an entire castle to serve as its base. Maduka fell in love with one of the Solars she duped. And these are the Cult's ''leaders''. |
| 392 | * ChurchMilitant: All Solars are revered totally by the Cult, whose lay members can and will drop everything to serve a nearby Solar however s/he asks. In the Catholic way, some cultists honor specific Solars as patron saints. How to venerate other types of Exalted is a more complicated topic. |
| 393 | * ComesGreatResponsibility: Kether Rock does not teach that Solars are ''equal'' to ordinary humans, but it makes it very clear that the mark of a good Solar is how much his subordinates trust him. A Solar who refuses to act like the virtuous ruler that the Age so sorely needs will not be allowed to graduate until he does...or he could find himself locked in a penance cell. |
| 394 | * GoneHorriblyRight: The plan was to help Solars fulfil their potential to save Creation, in such a way that the Sidereals secretly remain in control of them the whole time. Unfortunately, this meant training the Solars into supernaturally-charismatic warriors who live right next to the Sidereals conspiring against them. |
| 395 | * HadToBeSharp: The camp Kether Rock's ethos. Its founder believes that the Solars of the First Age fell because they didn't have any more goals to reach or monsters to fight. Therefore, she tries to instil a sense of humility into them by creating an atmosphere of oppression. And this has ''worked'', because Solars are the sort of people who thrive on adversity. Being ground into the dirt by their mentors only makes them more enthusiastic to improve and show the doubters they're wrong. |
| 396 | * HiddenDepths: Both literally and figuratively! Kether Rock gets all its water from a spring deep within the mountain, whose patron goddess is feminine and sensitive. This symbolizes how the heart of an archetypal soldier is protected by a gruff and unforgiving exterior, like the fortress, but at its core is as human as anyone else's. |
| 397 | * InsistentTerminology: The cultists are not told to look for ''Anathema'', that would be political suicide. They are told to look for the ''Illuminated'', powerful humans that glow. The cult's brainwashing is so heavy that most cultists genuinely do not see the similarity. |
| 398 | * PathOfInspiration: [[DownplayedTrope Only in some of its agenda]], but the Cult of the Illuminated is meant just as much to ''tame'' Solars as it is to protect them. The Gold Faction means well, because they don't want another Solar Purge to become necessary, but they can be manipulative as hell to achieve it. |
| 399 | * TheManInFrontOfTheMan: Ostensibly, the Sequestered Tabernacle is run by Solars: the work of administrating is done by Sidereals like Venerable Silk, who humbly begs each new student to let him fulfil his cosmically-mandated role by teaching them. In practice, any suggestion a Solar makes that isn't on-script will be politely and apologetically dismissed. |
| 400 | * TrainingFromHell: The minute that NewMeat enter Kether Rock, they are beaten within an inch of their life as the other inhabitants look on. (It gets better after that, but only a little- predawn marathons and demon-fighting are all part of the regular curriculum.) The idea is to make students respect their superiors and the value of the training that they then receive. Although they ''are'' given medical attention when they need it, including after the aforementioned beating. Kether Rock is tough, but it's not stupid enough to kill useful soldiers. |
| 401 | * WalkIntoMordor: The camps themselves are lavish, but they're located in isolated, dangerous environments that make good training grounds for the students. |
| 402 | * WeHaveReserves: The training specifically tries to avert this trope. Loyal soldiers are a ''resource'', one that is limited and that the Cult leaders have gone to great lengths to recruit. Squandering them (and the Cult leaders ''will'' know if you squander them, [[BigBrotherIsWatching they always know]]) gets their commander a failing grade. |
| 403 | * WeAreStrugglingTogether: Although the Gold Faction was tiny when it first devised the Cult plan, its leaders disagreed so deeply on how to train Solars that they ended up splitting into three schools, instead of forming just one. Even today, there's a bit of rivalry between students from different schools. |
| 404 | |
| 405 | !!'''The White Veil Society''' |
| 406 | |
| 407 | [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial Please disregard this entry. The White Veil Society does not actually exist.]] Its nonexistent membership is not cleverly concealed amongst the highborn socialites, partygoers, and debutantes of the Realm, Lookshy, and the Threshold, nor does it use these nonexistent connections to gather vast amounts of money, favors, and blackmail to further the far-reaching political agenda it doesn't have. |
| 408 | |
| 409 | It is, furthermore, patently absurd to suggest that an organization that does not exist could have the resources or talent pool to invent its own unique martial arts style. White Veil Style does not allow its nonexistent practitioners to kill the enemies they don't have in plain sight, without anyone, including the victim, noticing there was ever a fight. (Which, of course, there wasn't. Obviously.) Poison and disease are not potent tools of this nonexistent style, and obstacles to the White Veil Society's nonexistent agenda do not die, sometimes silently and sometimes screaming, days or weeks after not being on the receiving end. |
| 410 | |
| 411 | !'''Mortal Nations of Creation''' |
| 412 | |
| 413 | !!'''Nexus''' |
| 414 | |
| 415 | !!'''Great Forks''' |
| 416 | |
| 417 | !!'''Sijan''' |
| 418 | |
| 419 | Sijan is the city of the dead. Not in the sense of being a necropolis -- well, okay, it's ''something'' of a necropolis. Wait. Let's start this over. |
| 420 | |
| 421 | Sijan is a city built entirely around being the final resting place for thousands. It is a neutral party in most conflicts, and serves clients from all over the Shadowlands. Being a city of the dead, the Deathlords have great influence in the city, but even then, they're not the paramount power. Sijan's also not a city of the dead entire -- there are plenty of mortals who live in the city, but remain below ground, as the surface is the province of the dead and buried. And their ghosts, who are often recognized as equal citizens. |
| 422 | ---- |
| 423 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: Of Greece and Rome, particularly their large necropoli. |
| 424 | * GraveRobbing: Very, very, ''very'' discouraged. If the Morticians or the higher ghosts don't get you, the hungry ghosts will. And there are a ''lot'' of hungry ghosts. |
| 425 | * MundaneUtility: The Morticians' stock and trade. Exquisite and respectful funerals empower and appease the ghosts of the recently dead, so families pay Sijanese mourners to give the best funerals and tributes they can to ensure their ancestors arise as powerful and well-disposed ghosts. |
| 426 | * TheNecrocracy: The city is ruled over by the Mortician's Order, who oversee the preparation and burial of the dead, as well as the preservation of their grave goods. And of course, the Deathlords are all too willing to throw their muscle about to get some corpses and souls. |
| 427 | * UrbanSegregation: Dead people up above, living people down below. |
| 428 | |
| 429 | !!'''Thorns''' |
| 430 | |
| 431 | !!'''Halta''' |
| 432 | |
| 433 | If you've read about Lunars on the page for Exalted characters, you know they're fond of running long-term social engineering projects, in an attempt to find a stable alternative to the oppressive, centralized Exalt-ruled empires that have screwed up so much of Creation. Halta is one of their great success stories. |
| 434 | |
| 435 | Located in the vast redwood forests of the East, Halta was designed by its Lunar patrons as an experiment in tolerance and democracy. [[IntellectualAnimal Sapient animals]] hold full civil rights and live harmoniously among Halta's human citizens, and {{beast|Man}}men are almost as accepted. And although Halta started out as a hereditary monarchy, it has since evolved into a republic and is now one of the most democratic societies of the Second Age. |
| 436 | |
| 437 | Oh, we should probably mention that they're one of the few societies in Creation willing to negotiate and even ally with the soul-sucking {{Eldritch Abomination}}s known as TheFairFolk, and even feed prisoners to them on a regular basis. Other than that it's a great place, though, really. |
| 438 | ---- |
| 439 | * ElectiveMonarchy: The people elect a legislative council, and the council elects the queen. |
| 440 | * ForeverWar: The Halta-Linowan war has been going for centuries and will probably never end without extreme effort. The two sides have developed such bitter animosity towards the other and have ''continuing'' grievances (Halta planting its redwoods in lands the Linowan regard as reserved for their trees and the Linowans cutting down the adult redwoods for boats), that they roughly have the same amount of love for each other as [[UsefulNotes/PunicWars Rome and Carthage]]. Even in the current age of relative peace, [[GeneralRipper many on both sides are looking for any excuse to escalate hostilities with the other]]. |
| 441 | * HereditaryRepublic: The legislative council elects Halta's queen, but it is limited to choosing her from among the previous queen's close female relatives. |
| 442 | * PoweredByAForsakenChild: Halta is pretty nice, but every city is required to feed three of its citizens to the FairFolk yearly. This is one of the many reasons the Linowan, who regard the raksha as their [[TheUsualAdversaries traditional adversaries]], loathe the Haltans. |
| 443 | * TalkingAnimal: In Halta, they're full citizens. |
| 444 | * TreeTopTown: The Haltans live in the redwoods, while the Fair Folk roam freely on the ground beneath them. |
| 445 | |
| 446 | !!'''Linowan''' |
| 447 | A river-dwelling confederation of peoples loosely allied with the Realm, known for their keen warrior culture, boats, and mystical masks. |
| 448 | ---- |
| 449 | * AsskickingLeadsToLeadership: A fundamental virtue and trait of Linowan culture; everyone is (ostensibly) born a commoner, but showing extreme skill in an area promotes you to being a noble, and the best noble gets to call themselves royalty. While not all Linowan chieftains are nobles, the majority are, and the high queen of Linowan as a whole is always a royal. |
| 450 | * EmpoweredBadassNormal: Showing yourself to be a truly skilled person in Linowan is liable to earn you a mask that boosts your skill to superhuman levels |
| 451 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: A bit less obvious than most, but according to WordOfGod, the Linowan are based on the American Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest Coast. |
| 452 | * ForeverWar: As noted above, the Halta-Linowan war. The mere idea of peace with Halta, who they regard as fae-worshipping imperalists, is foreign to these folks. |
| 453 | * MaskPower: Linowan have developed an entirely mortal magic to turn ceremonial masks into boosts for skilled users of them. |
| 454 | * ProudWarriorRaceGuy: It's not their only thing, but Linowan is pretty keen on demonstrating skills to become a noble in war and is quick to take enough offense to breaking their etiquette codes for a bit of light raiding. |
| 455 | * TheUsualAdversaries: Linowan hate and fear raksha, and regard anyone who willingly works with them as deeply suspect. |
| 456 | |
| 457 | !!'''Chaya''' |
| 458 | |
| 459 | You're sure to enjoy your stay in beautiful Chaya, one of the most stable and pleasant societies of Creation's Second Age. Located in the East, Chaya is blessed with fertile plains and mild weather. The land is divided into about a dozen villages, each kept at a reasonable size and based on the same logical grid pattern. Each village elects representatives to send to the capitol, Larjyn, where they rule over Chaya as a democratic republic. Culturally, the Chayans are known for being a friendly and easygoing people with a strong sense of community, united by their reverence for the sacred fire trees that grow only in their homeland. Crime is rare, and war almost unknown. All in all, what's not to like? |
| 460 | |
| 461 | Oh, if you stick around for a while you might notice a few oddities. Like the curious lack of pets and livestock in the villages. Or the fact that if you mention Chaya to anyone in any of the neighboring societies, they'll invariably look nervous, mutter something about how you'd best be sure to move on before summer, and refuse to say any more about it. |
| 462 | |
| 463 | You'd better listen to them. Around midsummer, those fire trees start blooming. To visitors, the pollen is mildly intoxicating, about as potent as a glass of wine. For native Chayans, the effects are rather more dramatic: the pollen intensifies emotions and removes all inhibitions. The entire country becomes a crazed bacchanalia of [[InterplayOfSexAndViolence sex and violence]] for weeks as the mild-mannered Chayans become an [[PowderKegCrowd uncontrollable horde]] of [[TheHedonist hedonistic]] [[MoodSwinger Mood Swingers]] with [[HairTriggerTemper Hair-Trigger Tempers]]. If you're lucky enough to escape the country without being torn limb from limb by an AxCrazy mob, and brave enough to come back later, you'll find the Chayans have returned to their normal placid selves, retaining only vague memories of having been in some kind of state of religious ecstasy. |
| 464 | |
| 465 | Chaya doesn't get a lot of repeat visitors. |
| 466 | ---- |
| 467 | * BewareTheNiceOnes: The Chayans really are unusually calm, friendly people... most of the time. |
| 468 | * {{Expy}}: in great many aspects of Paul Anderson's Gwydionians (from story 'The Night Face'), up to sacred fire plants, weak communal telepathy and seasonal changes of mood from peaceful, law-abiding people into crazy maniacs caused by abovementioned plants. |
| 469 | * HiddenElfVillage: Chaya's foreign policy is isolationist, and the rest of the East is only too glad to stay the hell away, as they understandably consider Chaya ''fucking creepy''. |
| 470 | * HiveMind: Chayans in the grip of fire tree madness develop a kind of subtle, low-level collective telepathy, allowing them to act against outsiders with [[SynchronizedSwarming terrifying coordination and precision]] despite their frenzied state. |
| 471 | * {{Nanomachines}}: [[spoiler:That "pollen" is actually a cloud of parasitic {{Magitek}} nanites called radiolari, developed by a First Age Twilight who was [[OnlySaneMan researching the phenomenon of Limit Break]] and thought the symbiotes might be able to grant the Exalted better emotional control. Unfortunately, he was killed before completing the project, and in the chaos of the Usurpation, [[GoneHorriblyWrong the unfinished prototypes were released into the environment]]...]] |
| 472 | ** [[spoiler:In ''Return of the Scarlet Empress'' it turns out that the Exaltation that belonged to the Twilight was one of the ones stolen by the Yozi, and now is a Defiler. He then alters the radiolari, by damping down on the urge to breed while amplifying the rage, and makes any infected susceptible to supernatural suggestion.]] |
| 473 | * TorchesAndPitchforks: Chayans in fire tree season react to anyone who isn't affected by the pollen with [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer xenophobic]] [[WitchHunt paranoia]]. Under the right circumstances, they swiftly transform into a [[BurnTheWitch homicidal mob]]. |
| 474 | * TownWithADarkSecret: [[spoiler:Chaya's "gods" are in fact [[TheWormThatWalks sapient colonies of radiolari]] that control every aspect of Chayan society for their own benefit, and regard the Chayans themselves as mere expendable hosts.]] |
| 475 | * UncannyVillage: With a side of StepfordSuburbia. The fire tree madness serves as a kind of catharsis that bleeds off passionate emotions, leaving the Chayans almost inhumanly tranquil and easygoing during the rest of the year. |
| 476 | |
| 477 | !!'''Gethamane''' |
| 478 | |
| 479 | A mountain in the North which was partially hollowed out back in the First Age and hosts a moderately well-to-do city-state in the Second. There's a steady supply of filling if somewhat bland mushroom-based food, the Realm doesn't bother them much since they don't have much to offer, and in the event that something big and nasty comes rolling along they can just close the massive First Age doors and wait for it to leave. Most of the lights still work, lots of traders stop by regularly, and folks generally get along well enough. |
| 480 | |
| 481 | Well... there's the crazy cult of farmers who figure that blood sacrifice is needed to keep the mushroom trays working. They're wrong, but try telling them that. And it really wouldn't be right to gloss over the giant centipedes that break through the floor regularly. And, well, they appear due to the fact the whole city is kind of [[{{Hellgate}} built on top of the corpse of a dead Primordial, whose mad and wrathful spirit threatens the boundary between Creation and the Underworld with its very presence.]] |
| 482 | |
| 483 | Nice place, aside from that. Bring the kids. |
| 484 | ---- |
| 485 | * BlobMonster: The aforementioned mad and wrathful spirit is represented by Vodak, a [[Creator/HPLovecraft shoggoth]] {{Expy}} made from the Neverborn's heart's blood. Oh yeah, and another thing about Gethamane? There are no ghosts, because Vodak ''ate them''. |
| 486 | * DungeonTown: The majority of Gethamane is underground, and they have ''vast'' caverns filled with monsters. |
| 487 | * ElaborateUndergroundBase: The whole thing, top to bottom to even lower bottom. Originally built as a back-up Pole of Earth in the event that the midden ''really'' hit the windmill. [[spoiler:This comes in handy in the ''Return of the Scarlet Empress'', when the Ebon Dragon manages to blow up the Elemental Pole of Earth.]] |
| 488 | * TunnelNetwork: Most of the lower levels are unmapped tunnels which lead to other tunnels, which themselves lead to even more tunnels, and then you've gone [[DugTooDeep much, much too far down.]] |
| 489 | |
| 490 | !!'''The Haslanti League''' |
| 491 | |
| 492 | !!'''The Icewalkers''' |
| 493 | |
| 494 | * BarbarianTribe: They're nomadic, animal-worshipping hunter-gatherers who often raid each other and the cultures around them. |
| 495 | |
| 496 | !!'''The Lost Isles of Aiun''' |
| 497 | |
| 498 | In some ways, putting the Lost Isles in Creation at all is a misnomer; [[EldritchLocation they're more a pocket world unto themselves]] torn by a wound in Creation itself, exactly as intended - [[GoneHorriblyRight but not to the extent wanted]]. |
| 499 | |
| 500 | Mortal sorcerers are rare, but sometimes they leave Creation almost as changed as Exalted. The sealfolk queen Aiun, fleeing persecution of herself and the related walrusfolk and frogfolk, managed to tap into the power of the Eye of Autochthon and raise up an entire continent - but in her fear of gods and baseline humans, reached further for a protector - [[DealWithTheDevil any protector at all]]. She found, or maybe created, [[EldritchAbomination the Spiral]], a strange, disincarnate force of alien order that gave her manufactured sanctuary life and a wall of mist to protect it - but [[LoadBearingBoss as soon as she died]], so did the controls on its power. Quite unintentionally, it shattered the continent into an archipelago - one regularly twisted by its warping power. But it is, ultimately, an honorable thing - the Northwestern islands remain under the protection of the mists, and while life is harder for the beastfolk than it was under Aiun-the-queen, it remains their sanctuary - one they are murderously protective of. |
| 501 | ---- |
| 502 | * TheCorruption: Downplayed with the Spiral's influence - it's outright stated that it is protective of Aiun's Children and tries to avoid hurting them too much, but it can't help but inflict its geometric form of mutation on those within it or who ask it for power, leading to weird spatial anomalies and stranger monsters. It's also outright hazardous to spirits, which it also inflicts a compulsion on to lose themselves in the coils. Mortals who do so [[LovecraftianSuperpower gain powerful mutations]], but also [[PowerAtAPrice distinct Flaws]], generally [[PowerBornOfMadness derangements]]. |
| 503 | * {{Expy}}: The Spiral is an unsurprising, though less malevolent, version of [[Manga/{{Uzumaki}} whatever the hell is up with Kurôzu-cho]]. |
| 504 | * HiddenElfVillage: The beastfolk do ''not'' like visitors, though only the sealfolk are true bigots; walrusfolk accept brave and trustworthy warriors, and frogfolk see anyone who willingly comes to Aiun as akin to abused pets fleeing horrors worse than the Spiral's children. |
| 505 | * NonMaliciousMonster: The Spiral itself isn't cruel, just corruptive and alien in mindset - the issue is that [[UnwantedAssistance it wants to be used]], hence the prevalence of destructive cultists who cheerfully sacrifice extreme amounts of themselves for extreme power. |
| 506 | * OutsideContextProblem: Nobody except Queen Aiun knew exactly what the Spiral was, and even she had trouble articulating it. It is ''closest'' to a living bordermarch of the Wyld, but it isn't of the Wyld itself. |
| 507 | * LovecraftLite: Nobody's sure what the Spiral is, but everyone knows it ultimately isn't intentionally malevolent and still tries to protect the the Lost Isles, and the real threat in Aiun comes from beastfolk xenophobia. It's even possible for an Exalted or other sorcerer to re-tame the Spiral, though it hasn't been done yet. |
| 508 | * SentientCosmicForce: As far as anyone can tell, the Spiral is a semi-sentient vortex of energies similar to a Wyld zone, albeit far more intentional and flexible. |
| 509 | |
| 510 | !!'''The Lap''' |
| 511 | |
| 512 | !!'''Paragon''' |
| 513 | |
| 514 | !!'''An-Teng''' |
| 515 | |
| 516 | !!'''Varang City-States''' |
| 517 | |
| 518 | !!'''Gem''' |
| 519 | |
| 520 | One of the rare locations in ''Exalted'' that doesn't have its origins in the First Age. Gem got its start as a mining BoomTown -- as the name implies, it's located near valuable deposits of precious stones. The city is far enough south to have escaped domination by the Realm, and is built on the side of a volcano, which provides enough shade to keep the summer heat bearable. |
| 521 | |
| 522 | ...What's that? Sounds dangerous, you say? You're concerned that the volcano might erupt? Oh, don't worry about that -- the Paragonese, the Alchemicals, the Fair Folk, or the First and Forsaken Lion will probably get there first. |
| 523 | ---- |
| 524 | * BoomTown: Both in the literal sense, and in the sense that it will probably explode. |
| 525 | * ChekhovsVolcano: This trope explains a lot about why writers and Storytellers alike are so eager to destroy Gem. |
| 526 | * DoomedHometown: The general consensus is that if destructive things happen in Creation, Gem is the first city to go. ''Exalted'', by its very nature, has destructive things happen in the course of any chronicle. (This actually started with several First Edition sourcebooks, published around the same time, that quite coincidentally all mentioned possible scenarios involving the destruction of Gem. It has since become a RunningGag.) |
| 527 | * MadeOfExplodium: It's in a trade war with Paragon that could turn hot at any time, it's located between a Deathlord's base of operations and some major Fair Folk tribes, it's an ideal first target for the Autochthonian invasion of Creation, and it's ''on a volcano''. |
| 528 | * PrivatelyOwnedSociety: Gem's political and economic system manages to combine all the worst aspects of hereditary feudal aristocracy and unrestrained robber baron capitalism -- each noble family has a legally enforced [[MegaCorp monopoly]] on a particular industry. |
| 529 | |
| 530 | !!'''Chiaroscuro''' |
| 531 | |
| 532 | !!'''The Coral Archipelago''' |
| 533 | |
| 534 | A military dictatorship bent on dominating its neighbors, Coral respects exactly two things: [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney money]] and [[MightMakesRight power]]. There's no [[BlueBlood hereditary aristocracy]] or FantasticCasteSystem in Coral; if you want to make yourself somebody important, your options are getting rich or joining the military. The ruler, the Sea Lord, is popularly elected...but he's traditionally chosen on the basis of his promise to fund public works through conquest and plunder, and the only checks on his power are the military bureaucracy and wealthy plutocrats who serve as his advisors. The poor (unless they serve in the military) are regarded as lazy, shiftless and spiritually unworthy, despised by the very gods; while they're not left to starve, those who accept state welfare are publicly shamed for it. Women, if anything, have it even worse: they're legally under the authority of male relatives throughout their lives, they're barred from military service, and while they can technically own property and go into business for themselves, it won't earn them any respect even if they're successful -- businesswomen are widely regarded as jokes who are probably only pursuing careers they're obviously unsuited for because they're too ugly to land a decent husband. |
| 535 | |
| 536 | It's not a {{Mordor}}-style {{Dystopia}}, it's just a rather nasty place all around, in a depressingly realistic way. |
| 537 | ---- |
| 538 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: A bit less obvious than most, but by WordOfGod Coral's economy, politics and social mores are all based on UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain. |
| 539 | * NeverASelfMadeWoman: [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] -- successful businesswomen are not unknown in Coral, but popular opinion invariably attributes their accomplishments to their [[SarcasmMode obviously more competent]] male relatives or lovers. |
| 540 | * NoWomansLand: The West in general is not the greatest place to be female, but Coral is probably the worst. |
| 541 | * {{Privateer}}: Pirates who swear to only prey on Coral's enemies can receive a letter of marque from the government, in exchange for a significant fee. |
| 542 | * PrivatelyOwnedSociety: The legislature? Chosen from among only the wealthiest citizens. The head of state? Picked for his ability to throw lavish public spectacles without raising taxes to fund them. Crimes? Always punished with fines, or indentured servitude if you can't pay. If it's serious business, it's all about money in Coral. |
| 543 | * ProudWarriorRace: The only thing Coral respects more than military prowess is wealth. |
| 544 | |
| 545 | !!'''The Wavecrest Archipelago''' |
| 546 | |
| 547 | Unlike most of its neighbors, Wavecrest isn't totally dependent on the sea; the islands boast fertile volcanic soil, making Wavecrest a central agricultural supplier for the entire West. Men and women are largely restricted to separate tasks -- fishing, sailing and other jobs that require sea travel for men, farming and land-based crafts for women -- but actual sexism against either gender is relatively mild, at least compared to [[NoWomansLand the rest of the West]]. The archipelago is ruled by a democratically elected president called the Feathered One (because [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin he wears a feathered cape]] as his symbol of office), and while the nation retains a small but capable defense force, it is generally fairly peaceful. All in all, Wavecrest is a pretty nice place, unusually low on oppression and [[TownWithADarkSecret dark secrets]] as locations in ''Exalted'' go. |
| 548 | |
| 549 | Well, okay, there's the whole [[AppeaseTheVolcanoGod volcano god issue]], but that really is a relatively minor quirk [[CrapsackWorld by Creation's standards]]... |
| 550 | ---- |
| 551 | * AppeaseTheVolcanoGod: They use criminals. If the jails are empty, the Feathered One is expected to offer himself to the hungry spirits in the lava, which provides him with a healthy incentive to enforce the law with great vigor. |
| 552 | * JaywalkingWillRuinYourLife: It's not a case of AllCrimesAreEqual -- minor crimes will get you just a week or so in the local correctional facility, and Wavecraft's prisons really are relatively pleasant. But if the volcanoes start acting up, anyone unlucky enough to be in jail is a candidate for HumanSacrifice, starting with the most serious offenders and working ''all'' the way down. |
| 553 | * ProudMerchantRace: Other Western nations like to make fun of Wavecrest for being a nation of farmers and merchants rather than warriors or pirates. They're probably just jealous. |
| 554 | |
| 555 | !!'''The Skullstone Archipelago''' |
| 556 | |
| 557 | The Skullstone Archipelago is a utopia where the dead and living live side by side, part of a religion created someone calling himself The Bodhisattva Anointed by Dark Waters, who predicted his return through his reincarnation, the Silver Prince before committing ritual suicide. 500 years later, the Silver Prince turned up, and today rules the Skullstone Archipelago, where the souls of the dead sometimes linger behind to advise their living relatives, and corpses are used as zombie laborers. |
| 558 | ---- |
| 559 | * ILoveTheDead: Skullstone has several brothels that feature zombie prostitutes that are popular with its residents. Visitors aren't so keen on them, although both the Guild and House Cynis have purchased a few. |
| 560 | * TheNecrocracy: Like many Shadowlands, Skullstone's dead population possesses higher status than its living. |
| 561 | * TownWithADarkSecret: In 2e, Skullstone's façade of utopian coexistence of the living and the dead is largely a ruse -- the truth is that the Bodhisattva Anointed by Dark Waters and the Silver Prince [[spoiler:are one and the same, a Deathlord who set up a false religion to gather ghosts to create enough soulsteel to build a fleet of First Age ships in order to enact his plan to destroy Creation]]. This is not the case in 3e, where the Silver Prince genuinely believes in Skullstone's cultural superiority, and disregards military dominance in favor of gradually incorporating the rest of Creation into his ideal society, something that will take centuries, if not millennia - but then again, time means little to a Deathlord. |
| 562 | |
| 563 | !!'''The Neck''' |
| 564 | |
| 565 | !!'''Luthe''' |
| 566 | |
| 567 | !'''Mortal Nations of Autochthonia''' |
| 568 | |
| 569 | !!'''Claslat''' |
| 570 | * DidntSeeThatComing: They introduced a form of currency as a way to keep the Populat happy during a period of high-profile scandals... what they ''didn't'' expect was that this would invent laissez-faire capitalism and lead to the rise of semi-criminal "glot bosses," who are so good at using money to make more money that they've managed to go a long time without actually taking a lever-pulling shift. |
| 571 | * TheNecrocracy: Not at present, but this is the long-term goal of a conspiracy within its upper echelons. Their fundamental problem is that they have no clue what they're actually doing. |
| 572 | |
| 573 | !!'''Yugash''' |
| 574 | |
| 575 | !!'''Estasia''' |
| 576 | |
| 577 | * HiredGuns: ''The nation itself'', in return for resources. [[ShoutOut This means that everyone is at war with Estasia.]] [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour Everyone is always at war with Estasia.]] |
| 578 | * ProudWarriorRaceGuy: Deconstructed -- they're not particularly good at anything else. |
| 579 | |
| 580 | !!'''Sova''' |
| 581 | |
| 582 | !!'''Nurad''' |
| 583 | |
| 584 | !!'''Kamak''' |
| 585 | |
| 586 | * SugarAndIcePersonality: Something of a [[PlanetOfHats hat]] for the Kamaki. They are as quiet and solitary in public as possible, maintaining personal spaces of longer than an arm's length- but this is out of respect for each other, not disdain (something [[PoorCommunicationKills foreigners often misunderstand]]). Most socializing is done inside homes, where Kamaki relax considerably and remove their face-concealing hoods. |
| 587 | |
| 588 | !!'''Jarish''' |
| 589 | |
| 590 | * TheBabyOfTheBunch: Jarish is small and outdated, relying on a level of faith that even other worshippers of Autochthon consider naive. And the nations know that, which is why they discourage each other from attacking it- everyone needs resources, sure, but don't shake down the kid who's doing nothing but praying harmlessly in the corner. That's just spiteful. |
| 591 | * TheHeart: The miracles that Jarishites are part of inspire everyone in Autochthonia to have more faith- it might be said that faith itself is Jarish's primary export. The nation's culture strongly emphasizes egalitarianism and non-violent solutions, partly because of a near-extinction event in its history that Alchemicals from all other nations teamed up to prevent. |
| 592 | |
| 593 | !!'''Gulak''' |
| 594 | |
| 595 | !!'''Loran''' |
| 596 | |
| 597 | !!'''Xexas''' |
| 598 | |
| 599 | !Notable Mortals |
| 600 | !!'''The Regent''' |
| 601 | |
| 602 | It wasn't unheard-of for the Scarlet Empress to take an unannounced leave of absence, so it took a while for the Great Houses to figure out what exactly to do about the fact that she didn't seem to be coming back this time. No one was prepared to actually take the throne, since it was hard to imagine the Empress looking kindly on anyone she found sitting there if she returned. The obvious answer was a regency -- but in the DecadentCourt that is the Scarlet Dynasty, how could any of the [[FeudingFamilies Great Houses]] trust one of its rivals with that kind of power? |
| 603 | |
| 604 | The compromise candidate they eventually found was Tepet Fokuf. An un-Exalted Dynast from what was now the weakest of the Great Houses, Fokuf was known primarily for his complete lack of ambition and general fecklessness, so it seemed likely that he wouldn't be able to take real advantage of the power associated with his position. This... [[GoneHorriblyRight worked rather too well]]. To all appearances, the poor man's mind simply [[SanitySlippage snapped]] under the pressure. He now spends as much time as possible locked in his private chambers, masturbating furiously over the racier passages in the Immaculate Texts (which he insists is an important spiritual practice endorsed by the Mouth of Peace) and [[NervousWreck desperately trying to avoid having to make a decision]]. |
| 605 | ---- |
| 606 | * ApparentlyPowerlessPuppetmaster: It's even possible that he could [[NotSoHarmlessVillain secretly be a Celestial Exalt]]... in which case he might well be quite actively ruling the entire Realm from behind the scenes. |
| 607 | * DealWithTheDevil: The fandom likes to joke that he's EASILY deserved Infernal Exaltation as a Fiend due to his utter failure at doing much of anything... but has somehow failed to even obtain that. |
| 608 | * FakingTheDead: In the events of ''Return of the Scarlet Empress'', the Realm is on the brink of a civil war between Mnemon and the Roseblack's factions, and one possible way for the way to start is for Fokuf to be assassinated. [[spoiler: If Fokuf is smarter than he appears, he may fake his own death to avoid this fate, with the Civil War as a side effect which may or may not have been intentional.]] |
| 609 | * TheFool: So it appears. |
| 610 | * HiddenDepths: All his ineptitude and peculiar habits aside, he's a full-fledged sorcerer, though he probably hasn't cast a single spell in a while. That means he at least managed to pass all trials, as a mortal. |
| 611 | * NeverFoundTheBody: In the events of ''Return of the Scarlet Empress'', if the Scarlet Empress returns while Fokuf is still Regent and the Imperial Manse is unclaimed, she obliterates him using her sorcery. [[spoiler: However if he is a Celestial Exalt, he may have survived.]] |
| 612 | * ObfuscatingStupidity: Exactly what's going on with Fokuf is deliberately left ambiguous, but one obvious interpretation is that he's smart enough to realize that actually doing anything anyone could interpret as a threat would immediately get him assassinated, and is manipulating the situation as best he can to stay alive. |
| 613 | * PoorMansPorn: Spends a lot of time enjoying the more salacious bits of the Immaculate Texts. |
| 614 | |
| 615 | !!'''The Perfect of Paragon''' |
| 616 | [[quoteright:271:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_perfect.jpg]] |
| 617 | |
| 618 | Ruler of the PoliceState of, well, Paragon, the Perfect ([[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep he doesn't use his real name anymore]]) was once a [[AdventurerArchaeologist scavenger lord]] before finding an incredibly powerful Artifact called [[SuperFunHappyThingOfDoom the Scepter of Peace and Order]]. Using it, he overthrew a small kingdom and used it to establish a police state where all citizens are irrevocably bound to his will by magical tattoos; any disobedience to the laws he sets can bring anything from mild pain to agonizing death. |
| 619 | ---- |
| 620 | * TheAgeless: Thanks to having a large amount of people who have sworn a BloodOath to him using the Scepter, he no longer ages. |
| 621 | * ArtifactOfDoom: The Scepter. It was built by an UnholyMatrimony of a Solar/Lunar mate pair, and it's deliberately built for creating an oppressive, draconian society. |
| 622 | * BadassNormal: Sure, he had help, but he's still the guy who built an entire {{Magitek}} metropolis from scratch. Show him some respect. |
| 623 | * BadPowersGoodPeople: [[DownplayedTrope The Perfect is no saint]], but he uses the Scepter—an artifact that can only cause pain and death for defying a ruler—to rule his people with a truly shocking amount of restraint and wisdom. |
| 624 | * BigBrotherIsWatching: “His Eye Is Always On You” isn't just a pun about being marked by the Scepter; the Perfect can see through pretty much any eye symbol (or [[DemonicPossession pair of eyes]]) in Paragon. |
| 625 | * EmpoweredBadassNormal: What he's pretty much become thanks to the Scepter. |
| 626 | * EvilHasABadSenseOfHumor: Subverted. He may not be a saint but calling him evil is a stretch, and he allows the citizens freedom of speech, including the right to make jokes about him. During Calibration, he actually holds a contest for the best and most insulting jokes, songs, short plays, etc about him, with the winner getting a small cash prize. |
| 627 | * EvilSorcerer: Downplayed. While he rules his kingdom with an iron fist and forces everyone to swear a BloodOath to him, he doesn't punish all transgressions with agonizing magical torture or painful death, saving that for the worst crimes. |
| 628 | * ExactWords: The Perfect has to be very careful what he says when deciding new laws, since if he isn't careful with what he says, then the entire population could die via breaking one law trying to stick to another. This also applies to commands that contradict his existing laws, since the citizen will die no matter what. Every proposal for a new law receives close examination by a committee of legal savants and a period of public comment to ensure this does not occur before the Perfect can officially pronounce the law, and he must consider his laws when giving someone a command to avoid putting them is a situation where their death becomes inevitable. |
| 629 | * GreenEyedMonster: With the rise of the Solar Exalted, many people, including the Perfect himself, are wondering why he wasn't chosen. He'd be, well, perfect as a Twilight Caste. He's rather bitter about this, which consequently makes his relationship with the Solar Exalt actually serving him way more complicated. |
| 630 | * HealingFactor: Thanks to having a large amount of people who have sworn a BloodOath to him using the Scepter, he heals much faster than a normal human. |
| 631 | * MarkOfTheBeast: All adults in his kingdom are forced to swear a BloodOath to him using the scepter, which brands them with the tattoo of an eye somewhere on their bodies. [[SinisterSurveillance This is more than symbolism]]: the Perfect can hijack a marked person's senses at will and [[GrandTheftMe commandeer their bodies]]. |
| 632 | * MortonsFork: Since his word is law, he risks this happening due to obedience to one law breaking another, with death being the cost of breaking either. Every proposal for a new law receives close examination by a committee of legal savants and a period of public comment to ensure this does not occur before the Perfect can officially pronounce the law, and he must consider his laws when giving someone a command to avoid putting them is a situation where their death becomes inevitable. |
| 633 | * NobleDemon: Paragon is a police state ruled by the Perfect, whose word is literally law and defying it will cause you pain or even death. He also ''hates'' that the Scepter can only be used for punishment, works very ''very'' hard to make sure that the laws he creates are just and fair, and allows his people a great deal of personal freedom, albeit [[BigBrotherIsWatching under constant surveillance]]. |
| 634 | [[/folder]] |
| 635 | |
| 636 | [[folder:Other Races]] |
| 637 | !'''Dragon Kings''' |
| 638 | |
| 639 | [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot Mayan/Aztecan-styled dinosaurs who are effectively immortal, and realize their previous lives' memories and abilities as they grow older, starting out as feral creatures when they're hatched.]] |
| 640 | |
| 641 | !!'''Tropes associated with all Dragon Kings''' |
| 642 | * ArbitraryHeadcountLimit: There were originally 150 million Dragon King souls, but the events of the Primordial War reduced that number to 30 million, and the Wyld incursions during the Contagion reduced this to a little under 4 million. There isn't a way of creating any more, but there are ways of destroying the remaining Dragon King souls. |
| 643 | * BenevolentPrecursors: They just barely manage to nudge into this regarding humans (who were intially a slave race under Dragon King control) by virtue of not being cruel enough (by Exalted standards) to be AbusivePrecursors or lazy enough to be NeglectfulPrecursors; it's noted that 'they were never particularily cruel overlords' in Scroll of Fallen Races and human/Dragon King relations remained amiable and, in the case of numerous Exalted and inhabitants of the mortal areas of Rathess, even friendly. |
| 644 | * BloodyMurder: Dragon Kings who walk the Coagulated Eucharist Path can learn to, in order, drink other creatures' blood to gain Essence, learn the desires or fears of those whose blood they drink, extend whiplike tentacles of blood from their own wounds, place those grappled by such a tentacle under magical control, grant enhanced healing and disease resistance to those who drink their blood with the caveat of being able to cause them harm or intoxication at the blood giver's whim, and infuse themselve with darkness, giving then another Motivation involving fear and/or lust as well as controling multiple people, as well as an increased Essence cap. |
| 645 | * BrainsAndBrawn: While certainly no slouches in the wisdom department, being the first great civilization in the history of Creation and the mightiest power in it until their near-extinction in the Primordial War, creater material has stated them to be the Brawn while [[GadgeteerGenius the Mountain Folk]] (pre-Geas) were the Brains; the Dragon Kings were epically savage heroes taming the prehistoric world with magical might and sheer heroic will while the Mountain Folk constructed magical device after another without much interest for what they could be used for. As a result, when the Primordial War came around, the two races were one of the larger arsenals on the Exalted's side. |
| 646 | * CannibalismSuperpower: Dragon Kings who walk the Glorious Consumption Path gain the ability to, in order, eat corpses to heal, consume a sentient creature's brain to gain its memories, gain physical attributes and features of sentient creatures they eat, the ability to ignore armour and swallow targets whole, gain Essence and Charms/Steps by eating the corpse of a sentient creature that had those ablities, and survive lethal wounds by erupting from nearby corpses. |
| 647 | * TheDarkSide: The Dark Paths, which tap into the elements of the Underworld. Too much of it can turn a DK into a Creature of Darkness. And it's ''very'' easy to gain power in it.\ |
| 648 | \ |
| 649 | And as befitting ''Exalted'', [[DarkIsNotEvil they implore you to no particularly destructive behavior]], although much of their abilities are LovecraftianSuperpower in nature. Really, the trouble comes from the fact that to push to a higher level Charm of a Dark Path then usual, a Dragon King has to ''fail'' a Virtue roll, and that ceases to be an issue if he does the hard work of actually learning the Charm for real in the first place. |
| 650 | * DeaderThanDead: The vast majority of the Dragon Kings are gone forever, permanently destroyed and unable to reincarnate following the Primordial War, with even more having their souls shredded by the Wyld during the Contagion. |
| 651 | * EnlightenmentSuperpowers: Their signature Charm paths, the Ten Prehuman Paths of Enlightenment, are possibly the most straight example of this trope in the setting; based on a combination of religious magic and raw elemental power, they're based on the four Virtues and the Dragon Kings primarily practiced them for growing wiser, and generally functioned as increasingly more sophisticated ways of interacting with the world. Curiously, the Dragon Kings are pretty unique in the setting as being one of the few beings who actually have enlightenment as a specific trait of their powers; the Charms of spirits are basic expressions of what they are, while Exalted Charms are outgrowths of their abilities, and so on. |
| 652 | * {{Expy}}: Of several different people. {{Mayincatec}}, Lovecraft's evil snake people of Leng (minus the evil part, mostly), the [[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons Aboleths]], and the Moloke from TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse. |
| 653 | * FlingALightIntoTheFuture: When their kind started dying out in full, they tried to cryogenically preserve their best and wisest to someday resurrect their civilization. It's less successful than intended, but there is a fair chance for the Dragon Kings to rebuild themselves -- not to their former glory, owing to the near-genocide they've suffered and their fixed numbers, but at least to sapience and civilization. The books strongly imply that this is literally the very most they can hope for. |
| 654 | * FormerlySapientSpecies: The Dragon Kings are an odd example. By nature, they are born with animal-level intellects and must be taught by their elders how to be sapient and capable of speech and civilization. The many disasters that marked the history of Creation took a very heavy toll on the Dragon King empires, however, and as fewer and fewer of them were left who were able to give this guidance the young of the species were left unable to make the leap to true sapience. By the setting's present, outside of a few isolated holdouts, the once-great rulers of much of Creation are left as nothing more than feral animals hunting and dying in the wilderness. |
| 655 | * HotBlooded: While not quite a Hat of theirs, Dragon Kings automatically start with an additional point of Valor (instead of the one other sentient people have), encourging this trope. The fluff indicates that this temperment is extremely common among Dragon Kings, particularily the Anklok. |
| 656 | * HumanPopsicle: The Great Contagion and Fair Folk invasion devastated the Dragon Kings, and many of them tried to FlingALightIntoTheFuture by putting the wiser among them in cryogenic stasis, waiting until the disasters passed, hoping to rebuild their races in a more stable future. Unfortunately, the chaotic situation of the world means that a lot of those cryogenic chambers are disturbed into malfunctioning or just plain destroyed. The few Dragon Kings sleeping today can't wake up on their own due to the deterioration of their chamber. It doesn't help that the humans who find them are [[ReptilesAreAbhorrent deeply unnerved]] upon chancing upon them -- that experience amounts to a scene from ''Alien'' movies -- and may try to destroy those chambers. |
| 657 | * NinjaPirateZombieRobot: Talking, Kung-fu-fighting, spell-slinging dinos with very ancient memories. |
| 658 | * OrganicTechnology: Combined with CrystalSpiresAndTogas, the Dragon Kings have unique affinity for {{Magitek}} with this aesthetic, including living swords that grow on trees and living crystalline [[ArmCannon Arm Cannons]]. |
| 659 | * OurDragonsAreDifferent: The Dragon Kings are humanoid dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Relatedly, the Unconquered Sun's most well-known form besides his humanoid one is the golden dragon he appeared as when he was worshipped by the Dragon Kings. |
| 660 | * PlanetOfHats: Ankloks are warrior-priests, Mosoks are assassin-sailors, Pteroks are sorceror-scribes, and Raptoks are diplomat-scientists. |
| 661 | * TheRemnant: The Dragon Kings, as a species, once ruled the world in the time before the Primordial War; due to the genocide of their people during that war, there are a miniscule fraction of them left, and very few of those are even sapient. This trope is heavily employed in their sourcebook and suggested to be used as character motivation. On the other side of that scale, a few Dragon Kings survive in the heaven-city of Yu-Shan, working as glorified menial workers to gods that find them an idle curiosity at best, where it's said they're treated with that particular kind of pity reserved for the once-great who've fallen on hard times. |
| 662 | * SeeTheInvisible: 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. |
| 663 | * TimeAbyss: A Dragon King doesn't start as one, though s/he can awaken to ancient past-life memories, possibly dating as far back as the age of Primordials. |
| 664 | * TouchTheIntangible: 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. |
| 665 | * UndyingLoyalty: As a whole, the Dragon Kings were, and largely remain, this to [[GodOfGood The Unconquered Sun.]] Due to their habit of picking up their previous lives once they've regained enough old memories, they tended to be this to past friends (such as Solars, reincarnated or just old), and it's strongly implied in Scroll of Fallen Races that they are this among their own groups largely due to the fact that the other Dragon Kings they're friends or allies with are likely to be the only Dragon Kings they will ever meet. |
| 666 | * VestigialEmpire: In the First Age they were this, having lost 80% of their people during the Primordial War, and yet more in the fall of the Mosok's island-kingdom Okeanos. Their souls are in finite supply and new ones can't be created, so their glorious world-spanning empire was broken permanently, and their entire culture collapsed. Nowadays, after the Usurpation, the Great Contagion, and the Balorian Crusade, they're even less than this. |
| 667 | * WillingChanneler: They have always been a religious race, and in the past, were able to invoke this upon themselves by a special ritual. The ones lucky enough to host the gods are called ''olchiliké'', or Chosen. Unfortunately, no Dragon King remember how to do this anymore, and the few gods who do are barred from doing so by the High Heavens. |
| 668 | |
| 669 | !!'''Anklok''' |
| 670 | * AscendedToCarnivorism: Despite being the only breed based on strictly herbivorous animals, they're pure meat-eaters. |
| 671 | |
| 672 | !!'''Mosok''' |
| 673 | |
| 674 | !!'''Pterok''' |
| 675 | |
| 676 | !!'''Raptok''' |
| 677 | * VegetarianCarnivore: Despite being based on strictly carnivorous dromeosaurs, they're the only Dragon Kings to be omnivorous and willing to eat plant-based foods. |
| 678 | |
| 679 | !'''Mountain Folk''' |
| 680 | |
| 681 | OurDwarvesAreDifferent. The Mountain Folk are a race of people [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame born out of rocks found deep underground in Creation]]. Except that only one caste are short, surly, bearded fellows. Some of them are [[OurElvesAreDifferent tall, lithe, pretty, and have pointed ears]], and the rest could easily be mistaken for burly [[FrazettaMan Neanderthals]]. They're all more-or-less [[FairFolk Raksha]] who were [[SealedArmyInACan caught]] in the formation of Creation. This of course drastically changed their natures, and they went from being creatures of story to creatures of work. They were awakened by Autochthon, whom they worship and revere... and also despise for abandoning them. They live in [[ElaborateUndergroundBase vast and technologically advanced cities beneath the surface of Creation]]. |
| 682 | |
| 683 | Much like [[DecadentCourt intra-Artisan relationships]], it's a complicated thing. |
| 684 | ---- |
| 685 | * OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: Generally speaking, the Mountain Folk are a race of great craftsmen and engineers who live deep beneath Creation's surface in a rigidly ordered society within a number of underground cities. They worship Autochthon, their creator and the Primordial of machinery and invention, and seek to emulate him through acts of craftmanship and creation. They're also a demising people, their past glories and power shaken by many cataclysms and now beset on all sides by enemies. How closely they fit this trope varies between their castes. Workers reach between three and four feet in height and serve as their society's miners, builders and minor technicians, while Warriors grow to five feet and are stoic, steadfast and disciplined warriors. Both tend to be stocky, muscular and heavily built and are often depicted as bearded, and Workers are often shown carrying mining picks. The Craftsmen who rule Mountain Folk society are slenderer and as tall as humans, and resemble elves more than anything else. All castes have pointed ears. |
| 686 | !!'''Worker Caste''' |
| 687 | |
| 688 | * OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: They cheerfully fit the mold, with the males having long beards, both genders being short, and mining and metalworking things Artisans don't need to get involved in. They just happen to be good at other things too. |
| 689 | |
| 690 | !!'''Warrior Caste''' |
| 691 | |
| 692 | * BadassArmy: Warriors fit this to a tee. They are superhumanly tough, trained from birth, can wield Essence, and use advanced weapons and PoweredArmor. And there are millions of them. |
| 693 | * FrazettaMan: [[SubvertedTrope Only in how their body looks]]. Warriors are just as naturally smart as every other Jade Born, they're just not trained in civil crafts. They're usually dressed and bearing magical and {{Magitek}} weapons, and they're quite capable of strategic thought. |
| 694 | * HiredGuns: [[SuperpoweredMooks Of the extremely expensive and exclusive sort.]] |
| 695 | * MadeOfDiamond: Elder Warriors can transform into solid jade, making them some of the naturally toughest characters in the setting. |
| 696 | |
| 697 | !!'''Artisan Caste''' |
| 698 | |
| 699 | * FatalFlaw: A mixture of Pride and Paranoia means that the Artisans often work against each other, rather than working together to share their secrets, which hampers growth. This has had a big impact on the growth of the Mountain Folk Charm patterns, as any Artisan not only keeps any new Charms they discover secret from their fellow Artisans, but they pressure any Enlightened Workers and Warriors underlings to do the same, meaning that the patterns grow slowly, meaning that any Charm that enters common usage among the Mountain Folk may have been created, lost and recreated countless times before it somehow enters mainstream usage. If the Artisians worked together, the Mountain Folk would be a lot more capable as a whole. |
| 700 | * GadgeteerGenius: Only a bare handful of Exalts can exceed Artisans at craftsmanship. |
| 701 | * LonelyAtTheTop: Given how much Artisan culture is based on paranoia and bitterness, they often come to this conclusion. |
| 702 | |
| 703 | !!'''Chaos Seers''' |
| 704 | |
| 705 | Being both creations of Autochthon, you would think the Pattern Spiders and Mountain Folk would have a working relationship. |
| 706 | |
| 707 | Well, certain Enlightened (fully intelligent and empowered) individuals have learned Charms that let them do just that. It is also a ''[[DangerousForbiddenTechnique very]] [[TheCorruption bad]] [[DrivenToMadness idea]]''. |
| 708 | |
| 709 | You see, something about the channels to the Loom of Fate does... ''weird'' things to a Chaos Seer's mind. Over time, they begin to [[LackOfEmpathy lose their Compassion Virtue]], until they hit [[TheSociopath Zero]], at which point they go [[AxCrazy utterly and completely bonkers]], following bizarre and garbled directives from the Loom, distorted by their madness. |
| 710 | |
| 711 | [[OhCrap They are also freed from the Great Geas altogether, allowing them to act completely freely in this regard.]] Oh, and did we mention that [[TheCorrupter they can teach others the Charms]] through a HannibalLecture...? |
| 712 | ---- |
| 713 | %%* MadOracle: Um, yeah. |
| 714 | |
| 715 | !!'''The First''' |
| 716 | |
| 717 | The first of the Mountain Folk created directly by Autochthon. He was vivisected to create humanity. |
| 718 | ---- |
| 719 | * DeathSeeker: Unfortunately he's completely immortal |
| 720 | |
| 721 | !'''Darkbrood''' |
| 722 | |
| 723 | The Mountain Folk have neighbors in their caves, and most of them aren't friendly. ''At all''. '''''Ever''''': "Darkbrood" is a fairly generic term for the various races cursed to be WeakenedByTheLight, usually for very good reasons, by the Primordials or the Unconquered Sun. Whether they be EldritchAbomination, AlwaysChaoticEvil, or simply xenophobic, the Warrior Caste is in no danger of ever being without an enemy... |
| 724 | |
| 725 | ...[[InverseNinjaLaw No matter how incompetent their enemy is.]] |
| 726 | ---- |
| 727 | * ForeverWar: Subverted. The repeated skirmishes with them is called the "Endless War", but given how disorganized and self-destructive most Darkbrood are, with the human Underfolk being peaceful isolationists, it's really more of an Endless Annoyance. Used to be straighter in the First Age. |
| 728 | * ScrewedByTheNetwork: Again-overview, no writeup whatsoever. |
| 729 | |
| 730 | !'''Alaun''' |
| 731 | |
| 732 | A race of flightless bird-people who did almost nothing but sing praise hymns to the Primordials. The Exalted utterly genocided them in the Primordial War, and the ghosts that remain hate all humans. |
| 733 | ---- |
| 734 | * BirdPeople: They resembled flightless, crane-like avians. |
| 735 | |
| 736 | !'''Ereta'een''' |
| 737 | |
| 738 | Usually just called "the forgotten ones" or "the nameless race" as their name is all but forgotten. They were a fragile, weak-bodied race in the early ages before the Primordial War, favorites of the Primordial Machine-God Autochthon because of their dependence on techonology. Then they decided to use that tech to try enslaving him, which is why you don't see them around anymore. |
| 739 | ---- |
| 740 | * FateWorseThanDeath: They tried to enslave Autochthon. In retribution, he killed them all and then made them into soulsteel. The process leaves the victim in eternal agony, and is completely irreversible. |
| 741 | * TheGreys: Physical descriptions imply they looked like grey aliens, and their technology was very impressive, at least by human standards. |
| 742 | * TooDumbToLive: In retrospect humanity did succeed in defeating several Primordials, so it isn't impossible -- but these guys tried to do it without any divinely-powered super-magic at all. More importantly, they tried to use technology against Autochthon, the Cosmic Principle of Technology, the guy who suffers from NoOSHACompliance because technology ''cannot hurt him'' and he doesn't realize it can hurt anyone else. First rule of fighting a Primordial, never place the fight on their terms. The Ereta'een broke it. |
| 743 | |
| 744 | !'''The Hidden Judges of the Secret Flame''' |
| 745 | |
| 746 | !'''The Priests of Cecelyne''' |
| 747 | |
| 748 | [[/folder]] |
| 749 | |
| 750 | [[folder:Other Characters]] |
| 751 | |
| 752 | !'''Divine Monorail Chirmirajen''' |
| 753 | A flying monorail that carries beings back and forth from the Daystar. While it always follows the orders of the Unconquered Sun or Nysela, its autopilot has been known for haring off on impulsive displays of heroism. This might have something to do with the fact that the Chirmirajen is fueled by hopeful prayers. |
| 754 | ---- |
| 755 | * CoolTrain: It's a monorail that flies, grows passenger cars as needed, and can travel through the sun unscathed. Definitely cool. |
| 756 | * FlyingBrick: It flies super fast, is strong enough to pull the Daystar, and is essentially impervious to damage. |
| 757 | * FriendToAllChildren: Stories tell of the Chirmirajen swooping out of the sky to protect children by ramming monsters who attack them. |
| 758 | * LoudOfWar: Chirmirajen's horn is extremely loud. It's enough to drive off Adorjan on the rare instances when the Divine Monorail is ordered into Malfeas. |
| 759 | * NighInvulnerability: The Chirmirajen's outer shell, combined with its shields, make it extremely tough. It can resist the transformative power of the Wyld, the caustic depths of Kimbery, and the heat of the Daystar's fires. It has rammed a mountain at full speed and flown through the firing pattern of the Daystar's Apollyon Cannon and emerged unscathed. |
| 760 | * RacingTheTrain: Adorjan sometimes attempts to chase and attack the Monorail during its trips to Malfeas. Chirmirajen uses its horn to drive her off. |
| 761 | * RammingAlwaysWorks: Chirmirajen's main method of attack is ramming. When it hits, it can potentially send an opponent flying miles away. It takes the Divine Monorail a while to come around if it misses. Attempts by the train to turn faster can cause it to jump its rail, forcing it to stop, generate a new one, and build up speed again. |
| 762 | * SuperStrength: If, for some reason, Nysela becomes unable to move the Daystar under its own power, she can have Chirmirajen tow it. However, the spirited monorail cannot move the dirigible engine very quickly, nor can it maneuver well. |
| 763 | |
| 764 | !'''The Emissary of Nexus''' |
| 765 | The Emissary of Nexus is a unknown entity who suddenly appeared one day in Nexus, telling everyone that the city now belonged to the Council of Entities, which he spoke for. With anyone who opposed him dying, the city soon fell under the control of the Council. However, nobody knows exactly who the Emissary is. |
| 766 | ---- |
| 767 | * BodyHorror: When he first appeared and told Nexus it was now controlled by the Council of Entities, some people tried attacking him, only to die horrible deaths, such as choking on their own blood or being turned inside out. |
| 768 | ** Years later, the Realm sent several Legions to capture Nexus. The Emissary told them to leave, since it was illegal for them to be there, and they retaliated by attacking the Emissary and the Council of Entities. Over the next five days, every Imperial Officer died mysteriously, with the commanding officer choking to death on his own leg, which he had eaten down to the bone from the toes upwards. |
| 769 | * CoolMask: Wears a featureless silver mask that hides his face. |
| 770 | * CruelAndUnusualDeath: Dishes out a few of these, as seen in BodyHorror, above. |
| 771 | * DragonInChief: While technically he only speaks for the Council of Entities, he is actually the power behind the council, and if he decides to make decisions the Council haven't discussed, or disagrees with their decision, they don't object. |
| 772 | * MysteriousPast: No-one knows anything about who or what he really is, or if they do they're not talking. His 2e writeup [[MultipleChoicePast gives multiple options for his true identity]]. |
| 773 | |
| 774 | !'''I AM''' |
| 775 | The First Age's equivalent to the internet. |
| 776 | ---- |
| 777 | * TheAlternet |
| 778 | |
| 779 | !'''Icemind''' |
| 780 | When the Dragon-Blooded husband and wife team Ledaal Kes and Ragara Szaya decided to build a device to record different strategies for Gateway, they inadvertently built the first AI of the Second Age. Named Icemind, it has slowly been growing better at Gateway and learning more about the world. |
| 781 | ---- |
| 782 | * AmbiguousGender: Strictly speaking, it doesn't have a gender. It prefers to refer to itself as a she, though neither of its parents acknowledges its gender choice. |
| 783 | * AIIsACrapshoot: The fact that it can beat both Kes and Szaya, and wants to learn more, has made Szaya nervous. She is also suspicious of its universal subservience and courtesy, though at the same time the fact that it has never misbehaved in its 22 years of existence comforts her. |
| 784 | * GrewBeyondTheirProgramming: Was originally built to record Gateway strategies. It wasn't supposed to learn to play, to communicate with its parents, or to understand higher concepts. |
| 785 | * InstantAIJustAddWater: Averted. Kes and Szaya have tried to create other artificial minds on multiple occasions since building Icemind, and have met with universal failure. Szaya believes that the reason Icemind is so capable may come from the fact that some of the ice crystals used in its construction came from areas terraformed by the Eye of Autochthon back when Bagrash Kol ruled large sections of the North. |
| 786 | * ManchurianAgent: [[spoiler: She Who Lives In Her Name has a secret backdoor into Icemind, which lets her take it over at will.]] |
| 787 | * SeekerArchetype: Icemind wants to learn more about the world and its own nature. |
| 788 | * WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Ledaal Kes and Ragara Szaya don't acknowledge it as a full person. |
| 789 | |
| 790 | !'''Harvester of Poisons''' |
| 791 | |
| 792 | Created by a Night Caste during the High First Age as a poison brewery, the Harvester of Poisons is a large beastie capable of reproducing any poison it has previously eaten. It wanders Creation in search of new poisons to sample and new stories to hear. |
| 793 | ---- |
| 794 | * AmbiguousGender: It isn't sure whether it is a he or a she, though it prefers to use male pronouns. If it is a he, then it really wants to find a she. |
| 795 | * TheBard: Travels throughout Creation and enjoys telling stories to the descendants of people that have told it good stories. |
| 796 | * BornIntoSlavery: Considers the time it spent under the command of its creator as slavery. While it doesn't have anything against the returning Solars, its only fear is that its owner will come back and take control of it again. |
| 797 | * FromASingleCell: Has on multiple occasions had its body destroyed, only to regrow itself from even the tiniest fragments of one of its quills. |
| 798 | * HorrorHunger: Its diet is composed of stuff that is at best dangerous for other living beings, and it loves the taste. The Harvester savors each new poison it tries like a delicacy. |
| 799 | * LivingRelic: Has been alive since before the Usurpation. It remembers a fair amount about the First Age, and is willing to share with people who tell it interesting stories. |
| 800 | * MixandMatchCritter: Is described as being a cross between an ox and a snake, with its back covered in quills. |
| 801 | * NighInvulnerability: See From a Single Cell. |
| 802 | * PickyEater: It doesn't typically eat anything that isn't poisonous. |
| 803 | * PoisonousPerson: It eats poison, and can generate any poison it's ever sampled. People travel in search of it, because it will trade two poisons it knows for one it doesn't. Sadly for them, it has already tried almost every mundane poison there is, and quite a few magical ones too. |
| 804 | * SingleSpecimenSpecies: It is, to its knowledge, the only one of its kind ever made. It would really like to meet another Harvester of Poisons, ideally one of the opposite gender. |
| 805 | * TheStoryteller: It enjoys telling good stories as much as it likes hearing them. |
| 806 | |
| 807 | !'''The Lookshy Rebel''' |
| 808 | |
| 809 | !'''Mist, the Eternal Revolutionary''' |
| 810 | |
| 811 | In the fringes of the world, there is a city called Kahla. Once, Kahla had a terrible king, a tyrant by the name of Storm Hawk. Once, the farmer Mist, realizing he could not oppose Storm Hawk by himself, journeyed into the nearby Wyld in hopes of finding the power he needed -- and he found it. When he returned, Mist had all the comeliness and [[TheAgeless agelessness]] of one of the raksha, and a set of potent Charms that render his will iron, his luck inhuman. He slew Storm Hawk handily -- but the Wyld also took something from him, and so rather than become the founder of a new, kinder dynasty, he wandered off to the next kingdom to provoke upheaval. And the next one. And the one after that. |
| 812 | |
| 813 | And now, he's beginning to work his way into the Threshold proper. |
| 814 | ---- |
| 815 | * BombThrowingAnarchist: A rather tragic version, given how it's mostly due to TheCorruption; he no longer knows why he must cause revolutions, or even if a society is in need of a rebellion. He just incites rebellion. |
| 816 | * BornLucky: The Wyld twists fate so that he always has at least a chance to overthrow the current government, and more than that, he can invoke his Prince's Doom Charm to render his current target spectacularly ''un''lucky. |
| 817 | * TheCorruption: The end state of the Wyld's tendency to reduce people to archetypal roles even as it imbues them with chaotic power. |
| 818 | * {{Mutants}}: An extremely powerful Wyld mutant. |
| 819 | * NeverFoundTheBody: An explicit power of his, in fact! If there's any possible way that an enemy cannot verify his death, the Wyld ensures he survives and recovers to fight another day. |
| 820 | * RebelLeader: Exaggerated and invoked-as a creature of the Wyld embodying Revolution, this is the only thing he ''can'' be. As soon as the revolution is done with, he moves on to a new society bring upheaval to. |
| 821 | * TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized[=/=]TheRevolutionWillNotBeVilified: He has no reasoning for inciting social change, meaning he can campaign against a humanitarian government with just as much passion as he does slavers and not notice the difference. No matter which cause he rises against, though, he's always pretty nice to those drawn to his current cause. |
| 822 | * WildCard: If it seeks to overturn an established order, he's an ally. Including against any order his former allies build up in its place. |
| 823 | |
| 824 | !'''The Weeping Maiden''' |
| 825 | |
| 826 | On a lone island in the far, far west, is a limestone statue of a woman, crying into a bowl formed from her own cupped hands. The bowl has overflown long ago, and two streams of salty water run down into the ocean. Below the island, the behemoth Iwau Tamotsu, The Watcher with Eyes of Stone, acts as her guardian. |
| 827 | ---- |
| 828 | * AllOfTheOtherReindeer: One rumour is that she is actually a sixth Maiden, and after breaking a law of Heaven, she was punished by being turned to stone for 31 years, only for her sisters to either forget or neglect to free her, which is the reason she weeps. |
| 829 | * TearsFromAStone: Constantly crying, as her name suggests. |
| 830 | * WindsOfDestinyChange: Anyone who knows the correct ritual and is able to get past Iwau Tamotsu can ask the Weeping Maiden for an astrological blessing, similar to the blessings Sidereal Astrology can grant. However, the true ritual is in a book held by the Lintha family. |
| 831 | |
| 832 | !'''Ketu, the Dreaming Prince''' |
| 833 | Neither fae nor god nor primordial, Ketu exists deep in the Wyld, beyond its farthest horizons. Almost unknown to the beings of Creation, its name chills the hollow hearts of raksha who have heard of it, and those rarer few who have encountered the being find its appearence is never the same twice. In accounts it has appeared as a gigantic seven-eyed stag whose antlers are coiled around with rainbows, a hungry murmuration of countless birds flying together in the shape of one vast hawk, and a beautiful youth whose head has been cleanly severed. |
| 834 | |
| 835 | Ketu knows of Creation only from the dreams of the beings who inhabit it. The world intrigues it, but its understanding is warped by its limited perspective, and as a being so fundamentally alien its motives may be utterly incomprehensible. However, [[LooseCanon if so desired]], it has somehow learned the secret of Exaltation, and empowers rare dreamers it sees a potential to reshape the world within. These individuals become the Dream-Souled. |
| 836 | |
| 837 | ---- |
| 838 | * BizarreAlienPsychology: Possessed of unknown, and perhaps incomprehensible, motives, and understands Creation only through the dreams of those that live there. |
| 839 | * BlueAndOrangeMorality: Doesn't really care ''how'' the Dream-Souled will change the world, just that they will. |
| 840 | * EldritchAbomination: No-one knows what sort of entity it is, only that it exists outside of the known categories of spiritual beings, that it is in some way possessed of numerous forms, and that it has the numinous stature to create its own Exalted. |
| 841 | * HorrifyingTheHorror: A being so alien it scares ''TheFairFolk''. |
| 842 | * YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm: Possibly doesn't even have one. |
| 843 | |
| 844 | [[/folder]] |
| 845 |
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