Tales of the Exalted

Age of Sorrows, the: See Second Age, the.

Anathema: The term used by the Immaculate Order to refer to the Solar, Lunar, and recently the Abyssal Exalted. Immaculate doctrine describes the Anathema as persons who have become conduits for dark power and whose souls have been forever tainted by the influence of evil spirits. This doctrine is typically accepted in the Realm and anywhere the Dragon-Blooded hold power, as well as Threshold states where the Immaculate religion holds sway, places the Lunar Exalted have terrorized since time out of mind.

Anima: All living things are surrounded by a colorless, invisible aura called anima. When one of the Exalted uses Essence, the power often spills into her anima, making it visible. As a result, an Exalt who expends a great deal of power is usually engulfed by a display of anima that can range from a soft glow to a pillar of heatless flame bright enough to see for miles.

Artifact: An object imbued with magic and generally forged of the magical materials. Many artifacts created in the First Age have been lost or destroyed, and those that remain are fiercely coveted in the current day.

Aspect: Many of the Exalted are divided by Castes, but some are known by their Aspects. Typically said of the Dragon-Blooded, an Aspect points to the nature of the Chosen’s power, in how it manifests and how it behaves, as well as how it shapes the Exalted’s appearance and personality. A Dragon-Blooded of the Fire Aspect may be an aggressive, flashy warrior or a passionate statesman.
He may have fiery red hair, and wisps of smoke might follow his words when he is in a rage. A Dragon-Blooded of the Wood Aspect may be more at home with nature,
better able to deal with loneliness, more capable at medicine and survival. She may have green hair and patches of bark on her skin. Chosen who share Aspects are usually much broader-ranging in their personalities and proclivities than those who share Castes, such that two Chosen of the same Aspect might have completely different roles and responsibilities.

Blessed Isle, the: The great island-continent at the center of Creation, once the home of the gods and now the homeland of the Realm.

Caste: Many Exalted are divided by role or aptitude into Castes—for example, Solar Exalted are Dawns, the greatest warriors to have ever lived; Zeniths, inspirational priest-kings and holy men; Twilights, great savants and engineers; Nights, thieves, thief-takers, spies, and assassins; and Eclipses, heralds, diplomats, merchantmen and troubleshooters. Almost all such Exalted display their roles via the Caste Marks upon their brows.

Caste Mark: Most sorts of Exalted bear a mark upon their brow indicating their Caste, which illuminates as their animas flare. Each Caste of each sort of Exalt bears a different mark, and the Immaculate Order teaches how to identify different sorts of Anathema by Caste Mark.

Celestial Exalted: The Exalted champions of the mighty gods of the sky—the Solar, Lunar, and Sidereal Exalted. The Solars are the mightiest of the Celestial Exalted, but their lesser kin are also the inheritors of enormous power.

Charm: The Exalted express their inherent magic through Charms. The Charms of the Exalted are as different as the powers and natures of their divine patrons. Solars express the invincible, inexorable nature of the Unconquered Sun
through their Charms, while the Lunars manifest the ferocity, weaponry, and forms of Creation’s greatest beasts.

Chosen: See Exalted.

Circle: A Circle is a group of Exalted brought together by oaths, pacts and sorcery, often as the collective answer to a terrible question. While memories of past incarnations sometimes guide reincarnated Solars back into the company
of their fellows from previous lives, many Circles are creations of the current Age. Regardless of cause, most Solars will find themselves as part of a Circle at some point in their lives.

Creation: The world of Exalted. Creation is a flat world floating on a sea of chaos called the Wyld. Once, in the First Age, a great civilization spanned Creation entire, but in the fallen Age of Sorrows, shattered city-states scrabble to survive, struggling under the oppressive boot of the Realm.

Cult of the Illuminated, the: A Creation-wide mystery cult devoted to worship of mysterious saviors who will return the world to righteousness. Though they did not inspire it, Sidereal Exalted of the Gold Faction have covertly encouraged its spread across Creation and now use it to channel newly discovered Solar Exalted into their protection and influence, while the Immaculate Order
deems it heresy and seeks to stamp it out.

Daiklave (DY-klayv): The traditional weapon of the Exalted, each daiklave is a one-of-a-kind artifact sword, usually oversized, forged from magical materials and
imbued with a unique Essence from which its Chosen wielder may learn to call forth Evocations. Other types of artifact weapon exist, such as direlances, grimscythes, and powerbows, but daiklaves are the most iconic and famously
cited when discussing the war arsenals of the Chosen.

Deathlord: A cadre of powerful ghosts who have ruled kingdoms in the Underworld for centuries. Recently, several have become more active in Creation, fielding undead legions and releasing horrors from the bowels of death’s darkness. Each is a monster of horrific power and nature, selected and upraised by the Neverborn. Erudite priests and sorcerer-kings, the Deathlords are behind the emergence of the Abyssal Exalted. The Deathlords may be the most powerful beings to walk the world in this Age.

Demesne (di-MAYN): An enchanted place, a location where magical currents eddy together to create a natural vortex of power. Demesnes are rich in energy for beings who know how to harvest it. Most Exalted harness this power by constructing a manse on the site of a demesne.

Demon: Spirits of alien majesty and deadly guile, demons are the sworn enemies of the Exalted. Demons are the countless inhabitants of Malfeas and the servants of the Yozis. However, they are trapped in service to the Exalted due to an oath they swore long ago. A demon who is in sorcerous thrall to one of the Exalted is unable to harm his master directly or indirectly, but may still work cunning
wickedness to doom his master to courses of action that will imperil the Exalt’s soul. Demons range in power from the lowliest of spirits to the world-shaking incarnations of a nightmarish and primordial Creation.

Dynast: A Dragon-Blooded related to the Scarlet Empress through descent or marriage. Dynasts are the ruling class of the Realm.

Elemental: A spirit arising from the five elements of the natural world. Elementals labor to cycle Essence through Creation. They are physical beings that live in the same world as men and beasts.

Elemental Poles, the: The Five Elemental Poles are the anchors of material existence that border the world and hold it together. The icy Pole of Air borders the North, the Pole of Fire lies to the furthest South, the Pole of Water defines the uttermost West, and the Pole of Wood rises from the farthest East. At the center of the world, the Pole of Earth pierces the heavens in the form of the Imperial
Mountain. The Pole of Earth is the omphalos and axis of Creation, around which the world moves. It is dormant and steady, balancing the elements of Creation into a stable harmony. As one travels away from the Pole of Earth and closer to one of the four active poles, the active pole’s influence grows stronger and stronger. Eventually the elemental effects are so strong that only the mightiest of the Chosen can survive them.

Essence: A current of energy that moves through all things, Essence is the creative charge from which all wonder springs. To channel Essence is to wield the power of the gods, and the Exalted channel the Essence of the mightiest of the gods.

Evocation: Miracles awakened within certain artifacts, generally weapons and armor, by the bond between the artifact and its wielder. The nature and power of an artifact’s Evocations depends on the circumstances of the item’s creation, the magical materials used in its construction, its relationship with its wielder, and the artifact’s history of use through the years or centuries.

Exalted: The Exalted are mortal men and women blessed with the power of the gods. Once they were uplifted to fight the enemies of the gods, and for this service theywere given rule over Creation.
• Abyssal Exalted: Strange new Exalts never seen before the Scarlet Empress’s disappearance, the Abyssals have emerged from the Underworld as champions of the Deathlords. They come with the old laws of the dead, bringing
ghost-fire and doom wherever they walk. Mysterious harbingers, warrior-poets and sacred priests, the Abyssal Exalted have rocked the world by slaying Dragon-Blooded, Exigents, and even Lunar Exalted, and each is easily a match in single combat to one of the Solar Exalted.
• Exigent: Those Exalted and empowered by the Exigence, the Exigents are a whole category of different types of Exalts, chosen by gods of field and river, vengeance and hope. Very few gods possess the strength to empower more than one Chosen, even with the power of the Exigence. As such, the Exigents represent a vast array of eclectic and unique heroes, many of whom are being seen for the first and last time. For a time, no new Exigents were created, but recently the Exigence has begun to flow and grant new champions.
• Liminal Exalted: Existing in small numbers since the end of the Shogunate, the Liminals are the mysterious Chosen-elect of a remnant of the First Age that sank into the darkness of the Underworld long ago. It is believed that they result from passionate attempts to raise the dead. The Liminals search for meaning in their new lives while compelled by their dark mother to police the boundaries between life and death. They are most commonly seen tracking rogue ghosts, fighting wicked spirits of death and plague, and hunting the undead.
• Lunar Exalted: The Chosen of Luna, the Lunars are shapechangers and iconoclasts. The Usurpation chased them to the edge of the world, where they now rule their own tribal dominions, waging unceasing war against the Fair Folk to one side and the Realm to the other. The Lunars look upon the Solar Exalted’s return with uncertain hearts—during the First Age, the Lunars were the slaves, seconds, and consorts to the Solar Exalted. Their bond to the Lawgivers has been broken, but many yet fear a return to servitude.
• Sidereal Exalted (sy-DEER-ee-ul): The Chosen of the Five Maidens, the Sidereal Exalted are the stewards of Fate and Heaven’s agents in Creation. In the First Age, they served as advisers to the Solars, but when they began to see indolence and madness in their rulers, they threw down the Solar Exalted and raised the Dragon-Blooded up in their place. Politically the Sidereals are divided
between the Bronze Faction, who supported the Usurpation, and the Gold Faction, who argued against it and now move to support the returning Solars. Masters of fate, the Sidereals are unmatched prophets and viziers, and their attunement to the movements of destiny make them the practical embodiment of all the tenets of martial arts.
• Solar Exalted: The mightiest of the Exalted, Chosen by the Unconquered Sun, the Solars are mortals with great potential and ambition gifted with the power to fully realize their own excellence. They are warriors, orators, engineers, spies, and diplomats without peer. In the Time Before, they served as both the generals of the Exalted armies and the greatest heroes of the gods. Through fire, combat, and peacemaking, they rose above the Exalted to become their rulers. Through their unmatched sorcery and powers of invention, they raised up the First Age, but over time the Great Curse drove them mad. The Solars were overthrown by the Dragon-
Blooded and their Exaltations imprisoned by the Sidereal Exalted, but now they have returned to try to save Creation from doom.
• Dragon-Blooded: The Chosen of the Five Elemental Dragons, and also known as Terrestrial Exalted, Dragon-Blooded are weaker than the Celestial Exalted but more numerous. Their power does not reincarnate, but passes on through the blood—the children of Terrestrial Exalted may themselves Exalt. They draw their power from the five elements. The greatest current lineage of Terrestrial Exalted is the Scarlet Dynasty. The Dragon-Blooded were convinced by the Sidereals to rise up and murder the Solar Exalted, an event that marked the end of the First Age. Almost no Dragon-Blooded living today knows the true history of these events.

Exigence, the: The Exigence is a force of divine fire and creative inspiration established by the Unconquered Sun so that lesser gods might have their own Exalted champions. Gods who tap the Exigence do not learn the secret of making Exalted, but through interaction with the Sun’s medium, they are able to exude new kinds of Chosen from their own unique Essence. Some gods who petition to create
an Exigent are destroyed by the process; they are simply too weak to produce a Chosen without spending their own lives. Others are powerful enough to make a single champion, though this effort leaves them drained and vastly
reduced for a time. Still others may produce a single Exigent without wavering, while a truly mighty god might bring forth multiple heroes from his own Essence.

Fair Folk: Beings of unreal chaos native to the Wyld, the fae look with resentment at Creation, which defines itself as the center of the universe and imposes its own context on all that is, was, or might be. Those Fair Folk who venture into reality survive by eating dreams or souls. Many claim to seek the dissolution of the world, though a few seem happy to play at life among mortals. At the end of the Great Contagion, the Fair Folk mounted a great crusade against
Creation, and were on the verge of destroying all the lands of shape when they were turned back by the heroism of the Scarlet Empress.

First Age, the: The golden age when men wielded magic far greater than the petty scraps they hold today. The First Age was raised up by the magic and genius of the Solar Exalted. It was an age marked by periods of enlightenment, peace, and discovery, but it ended in horror, murder, war, and the Usurpation.

Five Elemental Dragons, the: Children of Gaia and with power to challenge the Incarnae, the Five Elemental Dragons are the patrons of the Terrestrial Exalted. Each dragon embodies one of the five elements, and is a creature of immense size and unfathomable power. It has been said that the Five Elemental Dragons were most active when the world was new, but over time they have grown distant and tired, and have fallen into slumber, allowing their power and wisdom to seep into the substance of the world. The Immaculate Order venerates the Elemental
Dragons as the apotheosis of spiritual development of the Terrestrial Exalted.

Five Maidens, the: Mercury, the Maiden of Journeys; Venus, the Maiden of Serenity; Mars, the Maiden of Battles; Jupiter, the Maiden of Secrets; and Saturn, the
Maiden of Endings are the Five Maidens of Destiny. Among the Incarnae, they are the overseers of fate and destiny, of what will and must come to pass, and of what
Heaven desires. They speak rarely and impart their secrets to few. Among the Incarnae they chose the fewest champions—the one hundred Sidereal Exalted. Though Luna is not numbered among them, she is considered their equal in power.

Gaia: A spirit of vast creative force, she is the mother of the Five Elemental Dragons. It is said that Gaia was one out of the tribe of the enemies of the gods, but she allied with the gods out of love for Luna.

Ghost: A dead soul pulled out of the cycle of reincarnation by lingering attachments to the world, dark magic, an inauspicious death, or improper burial. Most such shades dwell in the macabre and foreboding Underworld, but some find their way back up to Creation, particularly in shadowlands.

God: A spirit acting as a divine representative of a place, thing, or concept. While all gods are formidable, they range from the little gods of road and field to mighty spirits of war and death. Lesser gods dwell in spirit-sanctums
and temples in Creation, while the mightiest of gods reside in Heaven, ruled over by the Incarnae.

Great Contagion, the: Centuries into the Second Age, a catastrophic plague brought low the Shogunate of the Dragon-Blooded. Crossing species boundaries, it killed nine out of every ten living creature—fish and fowl, man and insect, leaving endless fields of desolation. Those with mastery over Essence were resistant, but were immediately faced with the invading hordes of the Fair Folk.

Great Curse, the: As they died, the enemies of the gods pronounced a curse against the Chosen. The Great Curse is unknown to all beings—save perhaps Jupiter of the Five Maidens—and though it has dogged the Exalted throughout history, it fell most heavily on the shoulders of the Solar Exalted.

Great House: The Scarlet Empress has divided her Scarlet Dynasty into Houses, each headed by one of her many spouses or children, eleven of which currently claim the status of Great House. The eleven in power now have not
always been so; in the past she has engineered the fall of those she deemed too powerful, and raised new ones up in their place. Each House oversees a number of satrapies, raising legions for her armies, managing elements of her economy, and ruling portions of her Blessed Isle. As she never announced a successor, the heads of the Houses, long-accustomed to her pitting them against each other, now prepare to decide who will take her throne—raising taxes on their satrapies even as they call armed legions back to their homelands at the center of the world.

Guild, the: An association of mortal tradesmen and plutocrats, the Guild spans Creation entire, moving drugs, slaves, and sundries across the world. One of the most powerful economic forces in the Age of Sorrows, the Guild is governed almost entirely by mortals. They maintain the silver standard of the dinar and promote economic stability worldwide even as they push opium on entire nations
and enslave entire tribes. Based out of the Scavenger Lands, they are at times opposed to the Realm and at times work in concert with it.

Hearthstone: In the heart of every manse forms a hearthstone, a token of solid Essence that grants its wielder some supernatural power. Rarely, hearthstones may also be found in the wild, usually to mark a place where a demesne had once existed.

Heaven: See Yu-Shan.

Immaculate Order, the: The state religion of the Realm. The Immaculate Order teaches its adherents that the cycle of reincarnation leads in an upward spiral to oneness with the Five Elemental Dragons, from animals through mortals through Dragon-Blooded. It also teaches that spirits are celestial functionaries, and worship is a dangerous activity fit only for the Dragon-Blooded—spirits follow
Heaven’s plan, so those spirits who demand worship are tyrants or con-artists, while mortals who expect better treatment through worship are deluding themselves or commiting bribery. Immaculate monks learn martial arts that they might keep unruly spirits in line and combat Anathema wherever they’re found.
The Immaculate Order is the vector through which the Sidereal Exalted control the Realm.

Incarna: The greatest of gods and rulers of Heaven, the Incarnae are the gods of the great celestial bodies visible in Creation’s sky. See Unconquered Sun, Luna, and Five Maidens.

Luna: The Changing Lady is an Incarna, the goddess of the moon and the premier goddess of night, luck, iconoclasm, and change. She is a legendary huntress and trickster and the patron of the Lunar Exalted. As the mistress of Gaia, Luna made her Chosen bestial, the children of her greatest union.

magical materials: Artificers recognize five magical materials particularly suited for the channeling of Essence—orichalcum, a superheavy gold attuned to the Solar Exalted; moonsilver, fluidic silver attuned to the Lunar Exalted; jade, a stone attuned to the Dragon-Blooded; starmetal, rare metal from the sky attuned to the Sidereal Exalted; and soulsteel, a metal mined from the Underworld with which the Abyssal Exalted seem to have an affinity.

Malfeas: Hell. A nightmarish kingdom of brass and obsidian under a sickening green sky. Malfeas sits outside the world, surrounded by an endless desert at the ends of eternity. The Yozis were imprisoned here with their demon
legions after being vanquished by the Exalted. When a demon is summoned from Malfeas by a sorcerer, it may cross the sands of eternity in just five days, departing five days in advance of the sorcerer’s call.

manse: Sorcerous construction created to channel the power of a demesne. Manses are often temples or fortresses, and in addition to forming hearthstones, they channel the Essence of their demesnes to work magical effects, from the frivolous to the useful to the dangerous.

Neverborn: Through the Exalted the enemies of the gods were slain and became the Neverborn, vast chthonic ghosts dreaming in the deepest part of the Underworld. Their whispers shape the afterlife, and their magic empowers the Deathlords and the Abyssal Exalted. They were the masters of the universe until the gods raised mortal champions against them. Whether they seek to drag the world
into death so they can rule it once more, or obliterate it entirely to escape its fetters and find a final rest, none can say.

Old Realm, the: The government of Creation during the First Age, overthrown in the Usurpation. The Scarlet Empress suppressed usage of the term—she legitimized her claim to rule by insisting her Realm was a continuation of the old, and proclaims false any distinction between the two. Old Realm also refers to the oldest language of spirits, every syllable of which is charged with sorcerous
power.

outcaste: Those Dragon-Blooded who do not claim fealty to the Realm, either by membership in one of the Dynasty’s Great Houses, service as a monk of the Immaculate Order, or soldier in the legions are labeled outcastes. Creation holds many outcaste lines, from Lookshy’s Seventh Legion to the Forest Witches of the deep East.

Realm, the: The mightiest empire in Creation, based on the Blessed Isle and ruled by the Scarlet Dynasty, the Realm controls hundreds of satrapies across the Threshold, nations under Dragon-Blooded boot. The Realm extorts taxes and
tribute from almost the whole of the civilized world. Scarlet Dynasty, the: The ruling class of the Realm, composed of those Dragon-Blooded who are descended from
the Scarlet Empress or have married into her lineage. Organized into eleven Great Houses and many smaller houses.

Scarlet Empress, the: Until her disappearance five years ago, the woman called the Scarlet Empress was the unquestioned autarch of the Realm and the most powerful political ruler in Creation. At the climax of the Great Contagion, she took control of the Realm Defense Grid and single-handedly ended the worldwide invasion of the Fair Folk and the plague devastating the world. She then used
her new weapon’s power to crush all rivals to her throne and, through centuries of political maneuvering and conquest, founded the Scarlet Dynasty, which to this day serves as the ruling class for the greatest empire in Creation.

Scavenger Lands, the: The Scavenger Lands are the territory in the near East of the Threshold who proclaim independence from the Realm, having resisted multiple invasions. Its heart is the River Province, a region containing a series of mighty, loosely allied city-states lining the mighty rivers that run through the heart of the region.

Second Age, the: All the time since the Usurpation is marked the Second Age of Man, where mortals and Exalted war amid the ruins of the great fallen civilizations of the First Age. The Lunars call this era the Fallen Age, while savants call it the Age of Sorrows.

Second Breath: The moment of Exaltation, so called because infant mortals gain their souls at the moment of their first breath following birth. shadowland: Where the Underworld touches Creation there are shadowlands, places where no barrier exists between life and death, and the living may treat with the dead. Those who leave a shadowland during the day find themselves in Creation, while those who leave its borders at night enter the Underworld.

Shogunate, the: The military dictatorship set up by the Dragon-Blooded in the wake of the Usurpation, which crumbled away in the face of the Great Contagion. The Shogunate was marked by endemic warfare between Dragon-Blooded daimyos and the catastrophic loss of First Age magic. Many Terrestrial Exalted savants lionize this period as an age of heroes and a flowering of Dragon-Blooded culture.

sorcery: While the Exalted use Essence reflexively and instinctually as Charms, savants of the First Age codified its manipulation into more rigid but powerful forms. Sorcery can be shared between Exalted of different types.
spirit: Divine beings of Essence and will. Gods, elementals, demons, and ghosts are all spirits.

Terrestrial Exalted: The Dragon-Blooded, the weakest and most numerous of the Chosen.

Threshold, the: The lands between the Inland Sea and the Wyld make up the Threshold, all those parts of Creation that are not the Blessed Isle. The Empress considers all of Creation just a precursor—a Threshold—to her home at the heart of the world.

Time Before, the: A nebulous span of time that includes all history from the dawn of existence to the rise of the First Age.

Unconquered Sun, the: The greatest of the Incarnae, the Unconquered Sun is the god of virtue and will, war and enlightenment, the day and the night, and excellence. He is the King of Heaven and the patron of the Solar Exalted. It was he who led the gods in rebellion against their masters in the Time Before. At the height of the First Age, he turned his face from Creation in anger at the excesses of the Solars.

Underworld, the: The lands of the dead, floating on the sea of the void, the Underworld is a shattered reflection of Creation and a capstone over the tombs of the Neverborn. Those who die and are unable to move on become trapped in the Underworld, where the souls and Essence of dead things have congregated, giving rise to malady and horror. The Underworld is where the Deathlords keep their kingdoms. In service to death, they have built their fortresses into Creation; in every direction, the spires of a Deathlord’s citadel peers out over the skies of
a shadowland.

Usurpation, the: When the armies of the Dragon-Blooded and their Sidereal Exalted allies overthrew the Solar Exalted. The backlash of this event was catastrophic and weakened the world against what would come later.

Wyld, the: Chaos and entropy, the infinite precursor to reality. Creation was raised up from the Wyld, and the Wyld was bound and subsumed i nto its substance. The Wyld still exists beyond the borders of the world, pressing inward and ever threatening to dissolve the lands of shape back into shifting unreality. Strange lands and strange things dwell within and emerge from the Wyld, including the Fair Folk. Pockets of the Wyld exist in Creation’s interior, remnants of the Fair Folk’s invasion long ago.

Wyld Hunt, the: A Wyld Hunt is a group of Dragon-Blooded who band together to hunt and kill the Anathema. The Wyld Hunt has been weakened by the impending war for the Realm’s throne. It will not stay that way.

Yozi: Demon princes and lords of Hell, the Yozis are the enemies of the gods, who peer out at Creation with lust and hatred. Once they were the masters of the universe, but fell to the might of the Exalted. Those of them who were slain by the Solars became the Neverborn. The Yozis are imprisoned in a blasted kingdom of iron and black marble beneath a cold green sun, called Malfeas.

Yu-Shan: Heaven. The celestial city of Yu-Shan is home to the gods and the Incarnae who oversee the management of Heaven, Creation, and fate through a grand bureaucracy. Of the Exalted, only the Sidereal Exalted call it home.