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Exalted/Characters/Spirits


Gods, elementals, fairies, demons, ghosts, world-creating and/or -destroying titans -- Exalted has its share of spiritual beings, and here's where they're listed. Subjectives can be found here.

Gods

The Gods were once the slaves of the Primordials, created to take care of Creation while they played the Games of Divinity. In time, the gods grew discontent at their slavery. They could raise no hand against their creators, however, so they empowered mere mortals to be both their weapons and their champions. These chosen mortals, these Exalted, then rose up and made war against the Primordials on the gods’ behalf. After years of battle, the Primordials were defeated, and the gods became the new masters of heaven, leaving Creation to be ruled by their Exalted champions.

Tropes associated with the Gods

The Celestial Incarnae

The most powerful gods in Yu-Shan, the ones who created the first Celestial Exalted and helped lead the offensive against the Primordials. They were first created by the Primordials to maintain the structure of Creation while the Primordials played the Games of Divinity. After having it up to here with the fickle and somewhat selfish whims of the Primordials, they empowered the Exalted to fight against the Primordials. Once they were defeated, the Incarnae handed the reins of Creation to their Exalted while they took over the Games of Divinity.

Tropes associated with all the Incarnae

The Unconquered Sun

Ignis Divine. Sol Incarnate. The guy with all the arms. The Unconquered Sun represents... well, the Sun, as well as the principle of Virtue in Creation. Before the Primordial War, he guarded the borders of Creation from the raksha; when the time for war came, he empowered his chosen to serve as the Lawgivers and kings of all the earth. He is a master strategist, a peerless warrior, a representation of all that is right in Creation... and addicted to the Games of Divinity like the rest of his peers.

  • Big Good: The biggest. The Dragon's Shadow -- the Primordial that would become the Ebon Dragon -- defined himself in opposition to others, so he crafted the Unconquered Sun to be the personification of virtue, heroism and excellence, just so he could define himself as that much more of a bastard.
    • Deconstructed in that, as noted under Incorruptible Pure Pureness, the strain of actually being the Big Good has him totally worn out and withdrawing into the Jade Pleasure Dome.
  • The Cape (trope): See above. There's a story from the Primordial War of the Primordials taking a human hostage -- just one, mind you, as we're dealing with cosmic principles who can and did burn continents with a glance -- and the Unconquered Sun willingly switching places with the mortal, as he realized if he couldn't sacrifice everything for just one mortal, he was useless. He then proceeded to weather their tortures and beat them at the Games of Divinity.
  • The Fettered: As the cosmic principle of Virtue, the Unconquered Sun gains immense power by following the virtues of Compassion, Conviction, Temperance, and Valor. He can suppress these virtues, however.
  • God Is Flawed: He's the personification of all the virtues listed above, as well as general all-around awesomeness. And he really is a pretty nice guy, especially as gods go in this setting. But he's very much not perfect.
  • Good Hurts Evil: The Unconquered Sun uses the Daystar to decide which beings inside and outside Creation are "Creatures of Darkness," and thus prime targets for Holy Charms.
    • Deconstructed, however, in that the definition of "Creatures of Darkness" is based entirely on whether the Sun thinks you seem like a bad dude, not on any kind of objective measure of evil -- although the Sun's a nice enough guy that he's probably about as close as you can get to an objective arbiter of morality in a universe where no such thing exists.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Deconstructed; He's so pure, so virtuous, that he's been burnt out by the stress of trying his damned hardest to be the perfect ruler. Not to mention that he's pure in four different ways that don't always get along.
  • King of the Gods: Well, duh.
  • Light Is Good: It almost certainly is, but he does have flaws.
  • Living Shadow: He has his own dark half, Five Days Darkness, who is a god in his own right. He's not a bad guy, actually, though he's a little pissed that he only has power at Calibration.
  • One-Winged Angel: Magnanimous Unbound Sun.
    • Super-Powered Evil Side: When in this form, the Unconquered Sun cannot relate to the world through his Virtues, and exists only to destroy the enemies of Creation, without much concern for collateral damage so long as Creation itself is not threatened.
  • The Power of the Sun: Strongest of the Incarnae, and his chosen share his strength.
  • Puzzle Boss: If fought, he cannot be injured in any way unless he has suppressed his Temperance, and his Magnanimous Unbound Sun form cannot be defeated without the use of multiple weapons to break his arms.
  • Weird Sun: His personal superweapon, the Daystar, is what everyone in Creation perceives as the sun. It's actually a weapons station made of the magical materials, suffused with burning Essence, and possessing enough firepower to make the Realm Defense Grid look like a firecracker. Oh, and it can turn into a Humongous Mecha. And knows kung fu.

Luna

The God(dess) of the Moon was created to complement and contrast the Unconquered Sun. She is infinitely adaptable, perpetually evolving, the impossible made possible. In the time before the Primordial War, she stood guard alongside the Sun, to handle those threats that bypassed even his perfection. But she had another, hidden purpose, thanks to her co-creator Cytherea: to seduce Gaia and thereby keep her in Creation. It worked slightly too well -- Luna fell in love with Gaia, and convinced her to side with the gods in the War.

Unlike the Unconquered Sun, Luna has not turned her face from existence. She watches her Exalted, proud of their capacity for adaptability and survival, to see what they will do next. She sends her light out into the depths of the Wyld, in the hopes of one day guiding Gaia back for good.

But even so, she remains bound to the Games of Divinity... for the moment.

The Five Maidens

Mercury, Maiden of Journeys. Venus, Maiden of Serenity. Mars, Maiden of Battles. Jupiter, Maiden of Secrets. Saturn, Maiden of Endings. Together, they are the Maidens of Destiny, who oversee the workings of the Loom of Fate and ensure that everything turns out as it should.

Except that over the eons of their existence, they've found themselves increasingly humanized, and humanity doesn't always sit well with the decrees of Fate.

This may be a problem.

  • Bifauxnen: As befitting her purview of Secrets, Jupiter looks like a guy when her hood is up.
  • Blessed with Suck: Hooray, they can tell the future! Hurooh, actually doing so destroys their free will.
  • Color Coded for Your Convenience: Each Maiden has an associated color, which they traditionally wear: Mercury's is yellow, Venus's is blue, Mars's is red, Jupiter's is green and Saturn's is purple.
  • Don't Fear the Reaper: As is befitting the Maiden of Endings, Saturn is the creepiest. She also ends things like war, sorrow, and disease in addition to lives, and is consistently presented as a natural, and important, part of the cycle of life in Creation.
  • Emotionless Girl -> Defrosting Ice Queen: How they've developed from the Primordial War to the present day, thanks to exposure to the Exalted.
    • However, subverting the usual way this trope is used, this might not be a good thing -- if they let their emotions interfere with their job, reality itself could be threatened.
  • Grandfather Paradox: Their origin. When the Maidens first showed up, the Primordials recognised that they were the Primordials' creations from a future that had yet to happen. For various reasons, that future hasn't actually come to pass, and isn't likely to.
  • Morphic Resonance: No matter what guise Mars assumes, she's always a redhaired woman with bloodstained hands.
  • Prophecies Are Always Right: Deconstructed. The Maidens can consult Samsara to learn what "should" happen in the future--but are then bound to bring that future about.
  • Sibling Team
  • The Stoic: Jupiter and Saturn.
  • War God: Mars.
  • White-Haired Pretty Girl: Saturn.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: Using their abilities to predict a given future forces them to act to bring that future about. A good example is Jupiter, who knows about the Great Curse but can't tell anyone about it, since it's not time for that knowledge to get out.
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Venus's hair is blue, while Jupiter's is green.

The Celestial Bureaucracy

Lytek, the Right Hand of Power

With such an important thing as Celestial Exalted existing, it should come as no surprise there's an important deity overseeing them, and that god would be Lytek. While he cannot control who Exalts, he can effect minor spins on the event such as visions or the exact time, and, more importantly, he prunes their memories and prepares them for their next incarnation-without him, a Celestial would be overwhelmed with memories of his Second Breath's previous bearers, or worst, develop a Past Life (as more than a few Green Sun Princes can attest, since the Yozis value First Age knowledge over their servants' sanity). A master artist and craftsman, he is very much a Reasonable Authority Figure...

...Who would probably be more help if he didn't have every other important god in Yu-Shan out for his blood.

See, during the First Age, Lytek, as a side effect of his dominion over Solars, was once the co-director of the Bureau of Heaven, the part of the Celestial Bureaucracy overseeing the gods themselves and conceptual matters such as memory and loss. Then the Usurpation hit, and the Solar Exaltations which had found their way back to his cabinet for cleaning were stolen by Kejack and sealed in the Jade Prison. With a significant loss of his domain came a significant loss of rank, and thus, power. After the former head of the Celestial Bureaucracy (and the other co-director) was disposed of by Ryzala, Goddess of Paperwork, Lytek was quietly booted out and replaced with the aloof Taru-Han, aka "The Only God In Yu-Shan Who Doesn't Want Ryzala's Job To Belong To Anyone Else". Of course, just because Lytek was now irrelevant didn't mean he wasn't a political threat due to his remaining position, and so much of his existence in the Age of Sorrows was spent fending off attempts to get rid of him altogether.

Of course, the Jade Prison was broken. Slowly but surely, Lytek's fortunes have began to reverse themselves. Unfortunately, his adversaries might get rid of him before then-it's not like there won't be another God of Exaltation if he gets forged into starmetal...

  • Absent-Minded Professor: He tends to get a bit pushy with Celestial Exalts when interviewing them about their lives (he wants to see the progress of the Exaltation after all), and sometimes needs to be reminded of something called "personal space".
  • Glory Seeker: Like Voice of Authority, it's a secondary motive-he cares about the Exalted as people, but he also recognizes they're an excellent way to show off how good he is at his job.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Here's the thing-it's impossible to understand the Second Breath the way Lytek does and not notice the malformations caused by the Great Curse. Before the First Age ended, Lytek thought he could fix it, no problem...so he decided to not tell the Unconquered Sun about it. He's realized that was a mistake, now-but the very fact that he could have stopped the First Age from going to shit makes excellent grounds for capital punishment-and his replacement would probably be chosen by Ryzala, who has been compared to Dolores Umbridge by the writers.
  • Troll: After the breaking of the Jade Prison, he took the liberty of writing the notification...and its delivery. Guess to who.

Parad, the Left Hand of Power

Ryzala, Lady of Bureaucracy and Paperwork

Taru-Han, Lady of Souls

The Syndics

Yo-Ping, God of Peace

Luranume, Master of Fivefold Luck

Uvanavu, the Chrysanthemum Shogun, God of Health and Well-Being

Amoth City-Smiter, God of Tumbled Ruins

Blue Crest Merchant, God of Naval Trade

Burnished Talon, Daimyo of Mammalian Predators

Flashing Peak, Goddess of the Imperial Mountain

Ghataru, Shogun-Regent of the Seasons and Weather

Golden Reverie, God of Euphoria

Hran-Tzu, the Raven King, God of Decay

Hu Dai Ling, Shogun of the Crimson Banner

Itzcalimon, God of Blackmail

Laughing Ragamuffin, God of Smuggling

Livilla, Goddess of Prostitutes

Luxana, Goddess of Recorded Knowledge

Masque of Repose, God of Funereal Arrangements

Nara-O of the Hundred Veils

Ruvia, Captain of the Golden Barque, God of Roads

Scarazan, Goddess of Divine Reallocation

Shining Barrator

Tara-Kül, Goddess of Prayer Transceiver Modules

Vermillion Ink Silencer, God of Mergers and Liquidations

Verumipra, Ambassador to the Cursed City, Warden of the Exiles

Wayang, the Black Puppet Mask

Wun Ja, Goddess of the Shining Metropolis

Xaos the Hidden, God of Things Undiscovered

Yaogin the Fair, Bearer of the Lapis Ewer

Nysela, Charioteer of the Daystar

Little Beam

Granalkin, Archer on the Silver Pass

Tethys on the Untrammeled Path

Grala, Mistress of the Hunt

Asna Firstborn

Celestial Lions

Truculee

Aurichim and Argentim

Pattern Spiders

Canal Gods

The Terrestrial Bureaucracy

Spinner of Glorious Tales

Weaver of Dreams of Victory

Shield of Another Day

The Golden Lord

The Pale Mistress

Shining Flower

Ameru, God of Meru

The Ancient of Stone Journeys

Sessen Douji, the Mountain Boy

Plentimon of the Dice

Burning Feather, Lady of Intoxicants

Gri-Fel, God of the Imperial City

Grandmother Bright

Tu Yu, God of Delhelsen

Tien Yu, Goddess of Lookshy

Kireeki, Huntress of the Waves

Madame Marthesine of the Lost

The Mammoth Avatar

Rabszolga, God of Slaves

Translucent Alabaster, the Porcelain Lady

Vanileth, Shogun of Artificial Flight

Zhuzhiao, High Princep of the Deep Trenches, Arch-Curator of Fuliginous Depths

Caltia the Eternal

Golden-Eyed Jorst

Arilak the Unseen

Five Days Darkness

The Court of Seasons

The Unseen, Gods of Ascending Air

The Divine One, Goddess of Resplendent Air

The Dreamer, Deity of Descending Air

The Cold Roars, Gods of Ascending Water

The Three, Gods of Resplendent Water

The White Terrors, Gods of Descending Water

The Reflecting Silence, God of Ascending Earth

The Seer, God of Resplendent Earth

The Whisperer, God of Descending Earth

The Seven Fangs, Gods of Ascending Wood

The Riddling Tree, God of Resplendent Wood

The Twin, God of Descending Wood

The Golden Stars, Goddesses of Ascending Fire

The Pinion, God of Resplendent Fire

The Desert Noon, Goddess of Descending Fire

Baiji

Bloody Hands

Caravan Gods

Disease Gods

Dogs of the Unbroken Earth

Dream Flies

Dryads

Forest Walkers

Life Trees

Masks

Road Gods

Sirens

Lion Dogs

Scarab Guardians

Least Gods

Forbidden Gods

Leech Gods

Soul Thieves

Han-Tha, The Ghoul King

Currently, the only named deity of the Forbidden Gods, and generally the Big Bad compared to the rest of them. Han-Tha is the god of necrophagy and scavenging animals, and to a lesser extent political corruption (the "scavengers" of a failing society are corrupt bureaucrats, after all). During the Primordial War, Han-Tha remained neutral, preferring to do his heavenly duties without complaint or malice. However, the other gods, both a little Squicked out by his domain and frightened by his Cannibalism Superpower (indeed, he's become Essence 9 due to it-literally one step away from maxing out the meter) didn't care, instead attempting to starforge him. But as the No Party Like a Donner Party might imply, if there's anything Han-Tha is good at, it's surviving bad odds, and he escaped to the Dragon King city of Rathess.

Embittered by what he saw as a hypocritical betrayal, Han-Tha started his cult among the already decadent and corrupt Dragon Kings, accelerating the fall of their society. When Rathess collapsed, Han-Tha was content to sit back and guide the local Cannibal Tribe that saw him as a patron...

...And then a Solar was converted to his cult.

Now a Big Bad Duumvirate with the Dawn Filial Wisdom (and on occasion, the more moral of the pair), Han-Tha has decided to consume the corpse of the world so that a new one may be born...guided by his wisdom, of course. It's only a matter of time before he begins to make inroads...

Elementals

Elementals

The Proto-Elementals

Mindful Forest

The Great Garda

Oceku

Urwl

The Wind Master

Elementals of Air

Cloud People

Doldrums

Huraka

Storm Serpents

Thunderbirds

Chief Storms-As-He-Walks

Nasri, General of the Aerial Legion

Elemental Dragons of Air

The Wind Masters

Blue Skulking Bear

Green Frowning Bear

Black Grinning Bear

Red Stalking Bear

White Venerable Bear

Elementals of Fire

Ambosars

Fire Butterflies

Flame Ducks

Garda Birds

Golden Fire Keepers

Ifrit

Llama-yu

Need Fires

Sandpit Fires

Elemental Dragons of Fire

Cselenine

Jealous Saffron Rage, the Underground Fire

Sorsa Endi

Swan Dragon

The Gardullis

Elementals of Water

Brine Curs

Heketa

Sobeksis

Three-Clawed Sages

Undertows

Urchin Kings

Vodonik

Water Children

Elemental Dragons of Water

Ogime, the Frog Queen

Fakharu, Censor of the West

Elementals of Wood

Artisans

Carmine Lilies

Gardeners

Kings of the Wood

Stick People

Wood Spiders

Elemental Dragons of Wood

Joyous Youth Juritsu

Elementals of Earth

Black Tar Vortices

Gemlords

Jokun

Kri

Mercury Ants

Sandpipers

Serpents-and-Eggs

Seventh Amethyst

Elemental Dragons of Earth

The Quicksilver Queen

The Kukla

  • Eldritch Abomination: Reading about him is akin to reading a description of something from the Cthulhu Mythos.
  • Godzilla Threshold: What he's been kept alive for -- his power assimilates the Wyld and purifies shadowlands even as it blasts them to bits.
  • Kaiju: Miles long, his tail can reduce cities and mountain ranges to rubble. Releasing him also lets loose a plume of steam and ash over six hundred miles high.
  • Legacy Character: Courtesy of a Series Continuity Error. This is the second Kukla; the first is an entity known as an Apocalypse Dragon.
  • Non-Malicious Monster: More of a natural disaster than a true character in his own right.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: He's a dragon, as described above...with twelve legs...four eyes, each with two pupils...capable of instantly rendering areas near him into topsoil...and has a tail with a swinging arc the size of a mountain range.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can


Primordials

The Primordials were born long ago, in the infinite Wyld where chaos ruled supreme. They grew tired of battling their Unshaped cousins, so they decided to make a place where they could have some peace. And so Creation was born, which was attended to by their slave race of Gods as they played the Games of Divinity in heaven. In time, the Gods grew tired of the constant abuse their creators laid on them, so the greatest of the Gods (the Incarnae) decided it was time to revolt.

There was just one problem. The Primordials anticipated that Gods might betray them, and geased them at their creation to never directly harm their masters. To get around this, the Incarnae (with help from two relatively good Primordials who had joined their side, Gaia and Autochthon) imbued mortals with their epic cosmic strength to become the titular Exalted, for the Primordials thought Humanity could never pose a threat to them personally. That...didn't work out too well for them.

The Primordials were cut down from heaven as the Gods ascended to take their place, leaving them near-dead (the Neverborn) or imprisoned inside their own king (the Yozi). The only ones left unscathed are Gaia and Autochthon.

Tropes associated with the Primordials

  • Crippling Overspecialization: Deconstructed -- each Primordial embodies a different concept so completely that they have a hard time understanding anything outside of their paradigm. This is at least one reason why they were overthrown.
  • Eldritch Abomination: They're Genius Loci with multiple, self-aware souls that have their own multiple, self-aware souls. What they aren't alien in, however, is their emotions -- it's perhaps more accurate to say we have theirs, and each one has a personality that can be understood from a human perspective.
  • Genius Loci
  • Hive Mind: Soul hierarchies kinda-sorta work this way.
    • Hive Queen / Soul Jar: The "fetich" soul -- the one that contains the Primordial's self-image -- works like this. Kill it, and you've basically reset the Primordial's identity.
  • Idiot Savant: Fans and writers alike favour this term as a description for them. Their Charms make them transcendentally brilliant in areas related to their themes. In anything else... they're absolutely hopeless.
    • Except for Autochthon. He's spent so much time around humans, that he can actually begin to understand things outside of his purview due to their influence on him. Problem? He SUCKS at doing anything outside of his purview (Imagine a master craftsman losing to a 10 year old at Gateway...Not Kes).
  • Mad God:
    • Come off as this -- the Primordials literally think differently from everyone else, including other Primordials. As a result, they can perform the most horrific of acts not out of any actual malevolence, but because they don't see why it's wrong. Autochthon and Gaia are the only ones capable of social empathy due to their purview (or rather, Gaia is, while Autochthon made himself capable of it), but even they can perform Kick the Dog acts while being completely baffled as to why the dog in question is mad at them.
    • However, their imprisonment has since made the Yozis a different kind of mad. Where they were once happy to just ignore mortal suffering, being cast into Hell by a bunch of puny hairless apes has made that kind of detachment impossible, and now they've grown so bitter and vengeful that most of them are actively malicious toward humanity. (And, of course, the Ebon Dragon was always fairly malevolent as a simple function of what he is.)
  • The Old Gods: Both older and more powerful than (most) of the gods.
  • Our Titans Are Different
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Urges and torment are intrinsic to the Primordial condition.

Autochthon

The Great Maker, inventor of Exaltation, and a general advocate of humanity in general, Autochthon is the greatest inventor of the Primordials, taking the form of a living machine. Weakest of his siblings thanks to Voidtech constantly draining his health, he was constantly belittled and bullied by his siblings until he finally snapped and sided with the gods in their nascent rebellion.

Unfortunately, he possesses all the foresight of a blind lemming.

  • The Atoner: CoCD: Autochthonia reveals that there's a landmark in his body that embodies the guilt he feels over his part in the Primordial War.
  • Blessed with Suck: It's not quite canon yet, but according to forum posts by the Ink Monkeys, Autochthon's illness, madness and genius (particularly his ability to think outside the box) are all outgrowths of his theme of violating boundaries.
  • The Corruption: Voidtech, essentially an Oblivion-fueled cancer that takes the form of various machinery that spreads throughout his body. When he was awake, he was able to treat it without much difficulty, but now...
  • Ditzy Genius: All that intelligence, all that innovation... and a complete lack of anything resembling the ability to plan in the long term.
  • The Dog Bites Back: If the Primordials hadn't treated him like crap while they were free, he wouldn't have created the Exaltations.
  • Eternal Engine: His body is the (extremely hazardous) machine-world of Autochthonia, essentially a planet-sized mass of Magitek and Steampunk.
  • Kick the Dog: We can understand why he had to vivisect various examples of Primordial life-forms in order to create the Exalted, and he did create artifacts which put them back together...but why, oh why, did he leave them in there?
  • No OSHA Compliance: It's not so much that he doesn't care. It's that machines can't hurt him, so it's never occurred to him that they might hurt other people. The entire concept of "safety features" apparently isn't part of his purview.
  • No Social Skills
  • Pet the Dog: The Monolith Garden.
  • Professor Guinea Pig: Modified his Third Circle devas' capacity to produce Second Circles. Went somewhat further when reconfiguring his fetich.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Autochthon is a shining example of how the Crippling Overspecialization of Primordials can render them simultaneously brilliant beyond all compare (while acting within their themes) and dumber than a sack of hammers (when dealing with concepts outside of their themes).
    • CoCD: Autochthonia reveals he actually can work outside of his themes, thanks to some surgery on his fetich (which is essentially Do It Yourself Neurosurgery). He just happens to have no idea how, and he's rather reckless.
  • Trans-God-Monster: Compass of Celestial Directions: Autochthonia reveals he effectively replaced his fetich's brain with himself (roll with it), meaning he can comprehend things outside of his themes. He just happens to be really bad at it.
  • Ultimate Blacksmith
  • World of Symbolism: The Far Reaches -- those parts of his body not colonized by the Autochthonians -- often become this, reflecting aspects of his psyche and personality.

Gaia

The Emerald Mother, youngest of the Primordials, and an explorer and adventurer. Together, she and Cytherea collaborated to build Creation. One of her bodies, a human-looking woman, remains in Creation; the rest of her is deep in the Wyld, searching for the fabled Shining Answer.

  • Beneath the Mask: While her humanoid body's pleasant enough, some of the gods remember the primal force of Gaia in her totality, and fear her eventual return.
  • Les Yay: It's established Cytherea was in love with her, and that they built Creation together, but just how far it went is unclear.
  • My Girl Back Home: Luna. Also sometimes a Guy Back Home.
  • Official Couple: With Luna.
  • Walking the Earth: Well, the Wyld, but still.

Mardukth, Who Holds In Thrall

Once, in distant Zen-mu, in the time before Creation, Mardukth, Who Holds In Thrall, also called the Mountain and the Beast Upon It, was King of the Primordials. When the Empyreal Chaos - Malfeas' original form - arrived to rule the Primordials, there was war between them. In the end, the Empyreal Chaos was King, and Mardukth still lived.

And so it was for countless eons, until the Primordial War.

Mardukth is not among the recorded Yozis, but there is a Neverborn called He Who Holds In Thrall, master of the First and Forsaken Lion and the Princess Magnificent. One of his Third Circle devas, Granalkin, survives as part of Luna's entourage.

  • Loss of Identity: Had a particularly bad case of this, continually questioning the world around him as to whether he actually was Mardukth. Then again, if he hadn't kept asking, Zen-mu wouldn't have kept expanding.
  • Reality Is Unrealistic: In-universe. The reason for his Loss of Identity. He just couldn't accept that something as immense as himself could exist.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: None of the extant Primordials will profess to remember Mardukth ever being King, assuming anyone's in a position to ask.

The Yozis are the Primordials who were defeated in the War and imprisoned in the body of their fallen King, with many being mutilated in some way by the Exalts and Gods. They lie in Hell, hating their treacherous creations, and working towards the day when they'll be able to escape. Or, at least, some of them are. They're also insane, backstabbing, and self-loathing monsters, who can often get in each other's way as they make their escape attempts.

Tropes associated with all the Yozis (With the exception of the Ebon Dragon where it applies)

  • Abusive Parents: To demons.
  • Being Evil Sucks: Save Adorjan, none of the Yozis find fulfillment and comfort in their spite, not even the Ebon Dragon (there's always something more).
  • Dysfunction Junction: Word of God has stated that the personality of each Yozi is modeled on a different real-life psychiatric disorder. That, and all of them possess some amount of ennui and general depression.
  • Obliviously Evil: Back when they were free, though they've picked up more than a little bitterness over the years.

The Ebon Dragon, the Shadow of All Things

If the Prince of Darkness had a teacher, this would be him. The embodiment of vice, creator commentary states that the Dragon is effectively the anti-Exalt -- where the Exalted are supposed to be awesome, the essence (and Essence) of the Ebon Dragon is more about denying others their victories. As long as he comes out ahead of everyone else, he could lose everything and still be happy. If he dies, in Return of the Scarlet Empress, he becomes the Neverborn The Dragon Who Was.

  • A God Am I: Word of God states that the wildest dream of the Ebon Dragon is to become a shinma -- one of the defining forces of the universe.
  • And Now You Must Marry Me: He has an odd obsession with this trope, to the point where Infernals can use it to reduce their Limit. (The game mechanic is called "Exquisite Bride Obsession," and was in fact originally suggested as the Trope Namer.)
    • It apparently has something to do with the (incredibly convoluted) terms of his release.
  • Big Bad: Of the Return of the Scarlet Empress module, and for the Architects of the Reclamation (the five most important Yozis) at large.
  • Blessed with Suck: Many of his powers rely on these tropes. The fact that he's the embodiment of failure and vice itself embodies these concepts in and of itself.
  • Complete Monster: The Ebon Dragon is this in-universe.[1] Not because he's a hateful wretch that can conceive of no greater pleasure than bringing suffering to others (though there is that) or because he's done horrible, unforgivable things (though he certainly has). These would make him a horrible monster, but they wouldn't make him a universal one. The Ebon Dragon transcends the usual subjectivity of the trope because he is hollow, with no identity of his own, and shapes his semblance of identity into the image of his victims' personal conception of the ultimate, unforgivable, abhorrent evil. No matter what your values and beliefs are, or even if there's nothing you believe in at all, the Ebon Dragon is a defilement of everything you hold dear. He makes himself into everything that inspires loathing, fear, and, and disgust in you.
  • The Chessmaster: If there's a pie, he usually has a claw in it.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: See Return Of The Scarlet Empress, page 198. Or even better, go to page 207, where his stats begin to be described, and look at his Urge. He can ignore it and make a Torment roll simply by paying Willpower, therefore betraying his very own nature. This guy is so utterly and irredeemably treacherous, he betrays himself!
    • He also created the Unconquered Sun. Why? So he would have something to define himself by being the opposite of.
    • Should his mad plan work, the Ebon Dragon plans to be first out of Malfeas just so that he can seal the other Yozis in permanently and laugh in their faces. Of course, while he tries to do this, his own component souls will likely be fighting him to make sure they get out and the core of the Dragon gets screwed. That's right; his ultimate plan of inevitable betrayal may get screwed because he will be betraying himself at the same time.
  • The Corrupter: This is his very reason for existing.
  • Devil but No God: Because this trope was in effect when the Primordials ruled Creation, the Ebon Dragon's previous form couldn't manifest.
  • The Devil Is a Loser: Word of God is very emphatic about this: the Ebon Dragon sucks.
  • Dirty Coward: As stated above, all of his virtues are as low as possible, including his Valor. He does not fight fair in the slightest and does NOT have the intestinal fortitude to strike when not absolutely sure he can win.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Completely and utterly averted.
  • Fatal Attractor: He loves those who are doomed to die, and whose deaths will change the world.
  • For the Evulz: As he defines himself as the ultimate nemesis of everything, this is his basic motivation for anything he does (though there are valid interpretations where it's actually somewhat more complicated than that).
  • God of Evil: Strictly speaking, there's no absolute and objective good or evil in the world of Exalted. But as the cosmic personification of spite, treachery and corruption, he's as close as you're going to get.
  • Heroes Act Villains Hinder: While he certainly has plans of his own under way, many of his acts of antagonism fall under this trope, due to his nature. He's not allowed to be anything BUT sneaky, underhanded and subtle, preventing him from (personally) taking overt actions against anyone. But should you try to mess with him...
  • I Just Want to Be Free: So long as he is restrained in any way whatsoever, he is completely incapable of taking any action that does not have the ultimate goal of trying to free himself. If you think of morality as a kind of restraint, this explains a lot about his personality.
  • Manipulative Bastard
  • Nothing Is Scarier: He's so fundamentally hollow on the inside that in a sense, you could say he doesn't really even exist; he's an Ebon Dragon-shaped hole in the fabric of reality.
  • Shaped Like Itself: His previous form, The Dragon's Shadow, is described as being the shadow of himself. His current form is supposed to be the Dragon that he used to be the Shadow of.
  • The Soulless: Not quite literally, since "soul" is a complicated concept for a Primordial. But he does, in a very real sense, lack selfhood -- he defines himself solely in opposition to everything else.
  • To Create a Playground For Evil: His ultimate Goal in Life: "Darken all of existence until Virtue and light cease to be, leaving blackened chaos upon which his will alone dictates possibility."

Malfeas, the Demon City

Once he was the Holy Tyrant, Ruler of All, the absolute and unquestioned monarch of Creation. So transcendent was the Primordial King that he existed only as a numinous immaterial Presence, his majesty too great to be expressed by any physical form. Then the Exalted came and cast down the almighty king of everything. Not content with subduing him and forcing him to take on the utter humiliation of a corporeal body, his conquerors went on to degrade and mutilate him further, turning him inside out and imprisoning his siblings within the tortured city of brass and nightmares he had become.

Malfeas is in constant pain as a result of what was done to him, but that's not the reason why, out of all the Yozis, he is perhaps the one most broken by his imprisonment. As the cosmic embodiment of kingship, power and authority, he is simply fundamentally unable to even begin to cope with the concept of having been so utterly defeated. Now a pathetic mockery of his former glory, he rages senselessly at the world, consumed by shame and hatred, dreaming of nothing else but endless revenge.

Oh, he's also an excellent dancer.

  • A God Am I: Is fundamentally incapable of grasping the concept that other beings have opinions that matter.
  • Alien Geometries
  • And I Must Scream: Malfeas is now an inside-out city in constant agony.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: Malfeas is the cosmic embodiment of one or the other of these. (Does he represent power so great that it is able to force everything to serve and worship it, or authority so great that it is able to crush all lesser things beneath its majesty? Or is it both?)
  • Bizarrchitecture: From The Compass of Celestial Directions: Malfeas:

Magnificent pillared forums and amphitheaters jostle stark blocks of windowless masonry. Many structures make no sense whatsoever. Vast conglomerations of vaulted stairs and landings lead to nothing but more of themselves. Turrets and balconies adorn huge towers with no floors or stairs inside. Immense triumphal arches cross minor side streets. Long fortified walls zigzag between buildings and across streets, defending nothing. They have the forms of architecture but no function.

She Who Lives In Her Name, the Principle of Hierarchy

99,997 crystal spheres rotating around 100 greater spheres, themselves rotating around a single central sphere. Inside each sphere is a flame, and each flame whispers its name -- her name -- to the world around it. Those who hear that name are brought under her sway. As her title suggests, she literally embodies the concepts of order and hierarchy and wants to impose her perfect hierarchy on all of reality. Free will, of course, is much too chaotic to have any place in this brave new world -- in fact, she was against including it in Creation in the first place, and regards the Primordial War as proof that she was right all along.

Nevertheless, so great is her respect for hierarchy that once it was clear the Primordials had lost the war, she willingly surrendered, prepared to submit to a new hierarchy with the gods and Exalted at the top. When she realized that the hierarchy they had in mind had no place for her, she flew into a vindictive rage and smashed three of her spheres into Creation, destroying them along with large chunks of reality and reducing her to her current state.

  • Assimilation Plot
  • Brown Note: if anything weaker than an Exalt or second circle demon hears her true name, they permanently come under her control. Hence her common appellation.
  • Emotionless Girl: Mostly. Her Torment causes her to lose all logic and act on long-subdued passion, and she possesses a playful sense of humor. Otherwise yes, it's hard to get a rise out of her.
  • Evil Gloating
  • The Evils of Free Will: Loathes the very concept, and was only grudgingly persuaded to permit its inclusion in Creation. She regards this as the Primordials' single greatest mistake, and many of her Charms revolve around...rectifying it.
  • If I Can't Have You: See: Three-Sphere Cataclysm, ninety percent of Creation.
  • My Master, Right or Wrong: In the Time of Glory, she wasn't specifically evil, just loyal to Malfeas above all other things (and not a fan of free will).
    • She even was willing to bow to the Unconquered Sun, once the war was over. That the Incarnae decided that she was to be locked away from Creation, too, triggered the Cataclysm mentioned above.
  • Ship Tease: It's implied that she used to be "close" to Malfeas before their imprisonment.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Tossing her into Malfeas and reshaping her into a Yozi led to her turning around and destroying 90% of Creation.
  • World of Silence: This is what she wants more than anything else. Given the Genius Loci nature of most Primordials, she may actually be one in one of her forms.

Cecelyne, the Endless Desert

Once, Cecelyne was the lawgiver of the Primordials -- until the Exalted rose up and taught her that ultimately, there can be no law that matters other than Might Makes Right. Ever since, her only mission is to share that lesson with everyone else.

Though she still sets the laws of Hell, Cecelyne's laws are now quite deliberately based on nothing more than sheer arbitrary capricious hypocrisy, and are designed to ensure the absolute right of the strong to dominate and bully the weak. Embodying the concept of both spiritual and physical desolation, Cecelyne takes the form of an infinite desert that surrounds the Demon City, serving as the boundary between Malfeas and Creation.

Adorjan, the Silent Wind

A case study in why killing fetiches is a bad idea, Adorjan was originally known as Adrian, the River of All Torments -- a sort of living buffer between the Wyld and Creation. During the Primordial War, however, her core soul Lilike was killed completely, causing her to dry up and become a living gale that muffles all sound. The process rendered her completely insane, turning her into a cheerful serial killer who destroys that which she loves and spares that which she hates. Even her fellow Yozis fear Adorjan, and it is for this reason that demons place musicians and musical instruments everywhere, as she despises noise and won't go near it if she doesn't need to.

  • Axe Crazy
  • Bizarre Alien Reproduction: She came to one Solar in his dreams seven nights in a row, simultaneously taking the forms of a woman and a silent windstorm. She got pregnant from those seven consecutive nights of dream sex and gave birth to seven daughters; three retained their human forms, while the other four shed their human bodies and became living winds like their mother.
  • Blue and Orange Morality: Even more than the rest of the Yozis. Of particular note is one of her Charms, which allows her to instantly fall in love with someone -- and then gives bonuses when she acts towards the subject with intent to aid, teach, express affection... or hurt.
  • Came Back Wrong
  • Driven to Madness: Both her, and her Act of Villainy (of the "freeing people from sanity's constraints" motive).
  • Four Is Death: The number four appears constantly in her themes. In the words of one of her charms, it is "...the inauspicious count of Adorjan’s daughters, the numerology of balanced Virtue and the number of secret truths she must teach Creation before The End." Given Adorjan's nature and themes, it is almost directly implied that the final (and fourth) truth she must teach Creation is death.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: What you call insanity, Adorjan calls understanding the world as it truly is. She would love to do you the favor of sharing that enlightenment with you.
  • The Hyena: She finds everything funny, including her own defeat at the hands of hairless ape-things. And, as noted, laughter is the only sound she ever makes.
  • Laughing Mad: The only sound she ever makes, preferring Telepathy for actual communication.
  • Mad Love: As far as she's concerned, she really is doing her loved ones a favor by killing everything they care about so that they can share in the enlightenment that comes from being free of all attachments.
  • Sensory Overload: Adorjan has ridiculously sharp hearing. Unlike most entities that develop this power in Exalted, it does not come with the ability to cope with loud--or even regular volume--noises, compelling her to silence them by any means possible. The charm that grants her (and some Infernals) this power is called Hateful Wicked Noise for a reason.
  • Stalker with a Crush: "Sometimes, Adorjan falls in love. Her hate is safer."
  • Starfish Character: Splintered Gale Shintai allows her to conjure up human puppets embodying aspects of her personality.
  • Too Kinky to Torture: After she became Adorjan, she fell for Marus, Lilike's killer, because she was honestly attracted to him, and causing her extreme pain (particularly the Charm Demon-Wracking Shout) is often grounds for a first date.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: She honestly believes that killing people is a way of enlightenment, since it severs all attachments.
  • What Measure Is a Non Super: Murder is Meat allows her to remorselessly kill mortals regardless of how high her compassion stat is.
  • Yandere: Read her description, why don't you?

Kimbery, the Sea That Marched Against The Flame

The great acid ocean of Malfeas, with a personality to match. If she loves you, she'll drown you in her affections. If she hates you, she'll slowly and utterly corrode you and anything you ever cared about. Usually she does both.

  • Abusive Parents: Specifically, Kimbery is the kind of bitter and resentful parent who avoids facing up to the problems with her own life by ruining her children's lives instead.
  • Acid Pool
  • All Take and No Give: Kimbery's the Giver. The second variant -- where the Giver is the one in control -- is how she relates to others. (The first is how she thinks she relates to others.)
  • Body Horror: She has a bit of an obsession with it, to an extent that actually manages to creep out the other Yozis.
  • Evil Matriarch
  • Hermaphrodite: All the Yozis are, given how they posses both male and female souls, but Kimbery has honed it to a science.
  • Human Resources: She makes coral reefs out of people and demons.
  • Kill It with Water
  • Mood Swinger: Kimbery's Torment involves a positive Intimacy randomly switching to a negative one with no warning.
    • Her Overdrive is worse. She can flip any number of Intimacies to hatred for motes.
  • Moral Myopia: When Kimbery hurts you, it's a well-deserved punishment you needed For Your Own Good. When you hurt Kimbery -- even if only by failing to live up to her impossible expectations -- it's an act of horrific, totally unjustified betrayal that sends you straight over the edge.
  • Mother of a Thousand Young: In her current state, she can no longer bear or sire offspring in the traditional manner, but she can infect others with her essence, causing her parasitic offspring to grow inside them.
  • My Beloved Smother: Her love is genuine in a way, but it's the manipulative, passive-aggressive kind of "affection" that so many abusive parents use to keep their children from escaping their control.
  • Never My Fault: Has an enormous martyr complex, which serves to justify all her actions and avoid admitting that she's in any way the cause of her own problems.
  • Obliviously Evil: Some of the Yozis simply don't care about anything resembling human ethics. Others recognize and embrace their own hypocrisy or villainy. Kimbery, however, is absolutely convinced that she is an unjustly persecuted victim who never did anything wrong to anybody and all her actions are completely justified.
  • Poison Is Corrosive
  • The Power of Hate: Not only is she entirely capable of individually hating everyone in the world, she can draw upon that hatred to send her Dodge regular and mental DV's into the stratosphere, heal herself, or even spread a Hate Plague.
  • Tsundere: A puree of this and Yandere, since she vacillates between hate and love so much...and one's not much better than the other.
  • Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: Why must you always be such an ungrateful child that Kimbery is forced to punish you?
  • Yandere: She hates everyone she loves and loves everyone she hates. Also, her Urge is "the urge to drown", metaphorically and literally.

Szoreny, the Silver Forest

An obscure Yozi, Szoreny is not actually a forest -- rather, he was imprisoned upside-down. Thus, though he originally was The World Tree, now he is a grove of quicksilver-laced reflective trees with a single root system. Is the most coherent and comprehensible of the Yozis, despite his Split Personality problem.

  • Alternate Universe: His fetich soul, Kagami, takes the form of a sapient one.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Widely believed to be the kindest of the Yozis, thanks to his Act of Villainy. This is a mistake.
  • Foil: He reflects the personality of the person he's speaking to, thus he ends up being one for...everyone basically.
  • Hall of Mirrors: He is one.
    • Mirror Match: Has the ability to breathe life into his reflections, resulting in this.
  • Only Sane Man: As mentioned above, Szoreny and his sometimes boyfriend Isidoros are by far the least degraded and debased of the Yozis which is why they're planning to stab the others in the back to Escape From the Crazy Place.
  • Reflective Tropes: If there's a mirror-related trope, he's probably capable of doing that.
  • Worthy Opponent: To anyone he's in an antagonistic relationship with.

Isidoros, the Black Boar that Twists the Skies

A sapient black hole who usually takes the form of, well, a colossal boar, Isidoros is the embodiment of unstoppable force, and is the only one who can stop Malfeas from collapsing two layers of himself together. Just don't get under him.

  • But for Me It Was Tuesday: Most of the destruction he wreaks is the result of him taking a leisurely stroll through the area.
  • Determinator: One of the places of power in Malfeas marks where he raced up the slopes of Qaf for a time. Eventually, he got bored and stopped, but one hoofprint is still travelling up the slope on its own.
  • Gravity Master: He's a black hole, any questions?
  • Heroic Willpower: He embodies this quality, and he really respects it in others -- a plot hook in Return of the Scarlet Empress has him sabotaging the Reclamation when the PCs have proven themselves some of the most dogged heroes around, just to give them a fighting chance. Admittedly, this takes the form of offering one of them akuma-hood, but he doesn't fuss if they turn him down.
  • The Juggernaut
    • Unless someone a.) gets his attention, and b.) convinces him that he really wanted to be somewhere else or doing something else in the first place.
  • Manly Gay: Maybe. See Ship Tease.
  • Screw Destiny: Strongly dislikes the idea of Fate, but agreed to its inclusion in Creation in exchange for "other considerations".
  • Ship Tease: With Szoreny.

Sacheverell, He That Sees the Shape of Things to Come

Another case study in why fetich death is A Bad Thing. Originally, he was the Lidless Eye That Sees, then his fetich soul was killed, and he came back as Sacheverell, who sees infallibly accurate visions of the present or future, depending on whether he is asleep or awake. As long as he's asleep, he sees only the present, and free will is still an option. Should he wake up, all of existence will get to find out what You Can't Fight Fate is like. Absolutely no one wants this.

  • Enemy of My Enemy: Pretty much everyone wants him to stay asleep.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can
  • Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: While he sleeps, he dreams of the present. Should he awake, he would see the future and ensnare the universe with the power of his self-fulfilling prophecies.
  • Villainous Breakdown: One interpretation (endorsed unofficially by some of the game's writers) says his sleep is really one of these -- in the instant of the White Ram's death, he grasped that he's ultimately just a supporting character in the story of the Exalted, and nothing he could possibly do really matters. Now he's essentially too depressed to get out of bed.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: This is what pretty much everyone believes will happen if he wakes up.

Qaf, the Heaven-Violating Spear

An endless mountain without summit or base, ensconsed in his own pocket dimension within Malfeas. The creator of the concept of perfection, and a bit of a guru.

  • Eldritch Location: You can ascend Qaf physically, but the only way to make real progress up his slopes is through spiritual discovery and understanding. Trouble is, Qaf's lessons are innumerable, and hostile to mortal souls (but not to demons). So far, no one has managed to pass the lessons and attain his nonexistent summit.
  • Immovable Object

Metagaos, the All-Hunger Blossom

A Yozi with the personality of Audrey II, who takes the form of a sprawling swamp. It's really not wise to venture in.

Elloge, the Sphere of Speech

The results of fetich death are unexpected, but not always nightmarish. For example, the rebirth of the Primordial known as He Who Bleeds The Unknown Word was the female Yozi Elloge. She drifts through the layers of Malfeas, taking the form of an invisible sphere.

  • Eldritch Location: Elloge's interior dimensions are defined by linguistics and correspondences. Within her, features of language become real (and often dangerous). Even entering her requires transmutation into a linguistic description of you as a character.
  • Gender Bender: Her Fetich apparently contained her masculinity.
  • Invisibility: Because she's composed of words, it's often hard to see her until she's directly interacting with the world.
  • Ms. Imagination: Elloge doesn't pay all that much attention to extant reality, preferring to manifest worlds within herself.
  • Ship Tease: With Oramus.
  • Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Strongly implied to do this.

Oramus, the Dragon Beyond the World

The eldest of the Primordials, who defined what would be in Creation and what would not. Fearing that his paradoxical nature would enable him to find a way out of Malfeas, the gods and Exalted caged him in his own wings, the only prison he can't escape.

  • And I Must Scream: Worse than Malfeas. At least he can understand the world outside of him. Oramus can only go more and more insane.
  • Mad Artist: Spawns his own unique creations, and inspires others with impossible visions.
  • Morphic Resonance: His description says that, in pretty much any form he could assume, he always has seven of something.
  • Reality Warper: Does this by existing. Even asleep and imprisoned, things get weird around him.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can

Hegra, the Typhoon of Nightmares

A living storm who not only rains down nightmares, but dreams and emotions as well. A force of chaos in the culture of Malfeas, she regards every form of personal interaction as a form of trade, which is why she dislikes both gifts and thieves (after all, one of the parties is getting absolutely nothing in return).

Cytherea, the Mother of Creation

Also known as the Divine Ignition, since she awoke the Primordials after they were born dreaming (apart from Oramus, whose reaction could be best stated as "What took you so long!?"). Built Creation along with her lover Gaia, and also had a hand in the creation of Luna and the Unconquered Sun. About her, nothing more is known.

  • Les Yay: With Gaia, before the Primordial War.
  • Riddle for the Ages: Pretty much everything known about her is myth and legend.

Neverborn

You remember that bit about fetich souls? Kill it, and the Primordial has its identity completely and irrevocably altered?

With the Neverborn, the Solars went one step beyond. Several, in fact.

Unlike the Yozis, who were merely lessened and bound by a Geas, the Primordials who would become the Neverborn were killed completely--every Third Circle soul, every scrap of dirt from their Genius Loci self, every bit that connected them to Creation. This did not go well. You see, Lethe, the mysterious mechanism by which souls have their memories scrubbed and put in newborn bodies, was never meant to handle a Primordial soul, since they never realized they could be truly killed. However, since Creation was of Primordial design, neither could the Wyld reabsorb them or Oblivion wipe them from reality. So, the metaphysical Essence of creation...broke.

Thus, undeath--and by extension, The Underworld--was born.

This would be bad enough--how would you feel if the god-monster you killed came back with the ability to phase through walls and massively pissed off?--except, for some reason, the Neverborn could not become ghosts, instead becoming massive, oddly-built cathedral-tombs of soulsteel and obsidian. In them, their minds lived on in an endless nightmare, between being and unbeing, knowing nothing but pain...

...At least, until the Black Nadir Concordant had the bright idea to wake five of them up to learn necromancy.

Now aware, their dark will infests the Labyrinth in the form of the Whispers, bending ghosts to their nihilistic will and transforming them into malevolent spectres. What's more, they're practically all-knowing; everything a ghost has known or a person who rose as one, filters down to them. While they aren't as much help as they could be, a being with the Whispers can attune their dreams to theirs and learn much of the world...and how to destroy it.

For that is what the Neverborn, mad to incomprehensibility they may be, desire-not out of true malice, but to end their pain-by any means.

Abhorrence of Life

Tears of Want

Whose Whispers Chain

Principle of Consumption

He Who Holds In Thrall


Devas

Devas

The Primordials aren't just physically immense; they're spiritually immense as well, such that they have multiple souls which take on an existence separate from their parent Primordial.

These are the devas of the Third Circle, and they are of sufficient spiritual magnitude that they typically have seven souls of their own, which themselves have independent existence. These are known as the devas of the Second Circle.

Second Circle devas are small enough, spiritually, that they possess only one soul within themselves. Their offspring, the devas of the First Circle, are not part of a Primordial's soul hierarchy.

The Yozis' devas became demons with their progenitors' defeat in the Primordial War. Most of the Neverborn's devas died with their parent Primordial. Only Gaia and Autochthon have had their devas remain as such, although Autochthon has... tinkered with his soul structure.

The Five Elemental Dragons

Gnosis

The Core

Fetich Soul of the Great Maker

Runel

Divine Minister of Order, Smooth Functioning, Productivity, Efficiency, Cities, Commerce, Life, and Health. Chief Regulator of the Element of Steam.

Kek'Tungsssha

Divine Minister of Smelting, Craft, Tools, Industry, Mass Production, Fertility, and Reproductive Sex.

Debok Moom

Divine Minister of War, War Machines, Violent Paradigm Shifts, Privacy, and Wealth. Chief Regulator of the Element of Metal.

Noi

Divine Minister of Curiosity, Research, Exploration, Innovation, Rebellion, and Progress. Chief Regulator of the Element of Oil.

Mog

Divine Minister of Authority, Proper Functioning, Dogma, Righteous Action and Just Punishment. Scourge of the Lumpen and Chief Regulator of the Element of Lightning.

Kadmek

Divine Minister of Design, Architecture, Structural Integrity, Biogeomancy, Arts, Wisdom, Strategy, and Prophecy. Chief Regulator of the Element of Crystal.

Domadamod

Divine Minister of Reuse, Repair, Recycling, and Cannabalism; Enlightened Guardian of the Eternal Cycle.

Ku

Divine Minister of the Reaches and the Far Reaches, Seals, and Thaumaturgy. Chief Regulator of the Element of Smoke.

Viator of Nullspace

The Dread Gear. The Bringer of Death. The Minister of Wrath.

All of these titles apply to the Autochthonian spirit called the Viator of Nullspace, a mechanical god-and possibly a forbidden subsoul of Autochthon's-that menaced the Eight Nations just under a thousand years ago. It (like similar weapon-gods, the Destroyers, it doesn't have a gender identity) is an Incarna-level menace, more powerful than a couple Deathlords, a nigh-unstoppable monster the size of a warstrider and a great obsidian beamklave that fuels its own power with the lives of those it has destroyed.

And according to the Viator, it is doing all of this for Autochthon's own good.

You see, the Viator initially desired to extract the Core, the fetich soul of Autochthon (and thanks to some self-surgery on the Great Maker's part, his mind) from his increasingly disease-ridden body, via forging the souls of every human in Autochthon into a great wedge through which it could dislodge the Core from the Godhead. Since no one was particularly keen on becoming a still-conscious component of an artifact, it got into a feud with the generally Nice Guy nation of Jarish, destroying the Alchemical city of Jast in the process (almost). Through a combination of great heroism and cleverness, the Viator was trapped in its own Node Link, forced to content itself with exploring the place where Autochthon's dreams meet Elsewhere.

If only it was the only one there.

For some reason or another, the Ebon Dragon had found his way to the Eldritch Location in his infinite quest for escape, wherein he encountered the Viator. This...did not go so well for the Dragon (all he managed to do was evade being imprisoned twice over). While the Viator managed to chase off the Dragon, it was not unchanged by the experience-it learned of the nature of the Yozis, and how cruelly they had treated Autochthon (the fact that it learned this through the Ebon Dragon probably didn't help).

Thus, whereas before it planned to merely save Autochthon, it now plans to transform him into the instrument of his own revenge.

When-not if, when-the Viator escapes, it will be with a different plan to save Autochthon; It will kill all humans it can find, certainly, but as an offering to the monster Autochthon will become. Once it has fed the gears with the viscera of the Eight Nations, it will alter the nature of the Divine Ministers, the Third Circle Souls of the Great Maker, into generals of mechanized war. The voices of the surviving Autochthonians will sing praises to their new god as the blood of their sacrifices grease the spiked prayer gears of the Bleeding Engine. The cities will be altered into mandalas of destruction, feeding his darkened heart.

And then the skies of Malfeas will burn, and he shall scream as the great Uran-drills of a new, savage Autochthon dig deep into his flesh, mad with hate...and hunger.

Ruvelia

Second Fetich Soul of the Empyreal Chaos

The White Ram

Fetich Soul of The Lidless Eye That Sees

Lilike

Fetich Soul of the River of All Torments


Demons

Demons

See: Devas. For the most part, the designation between deva and demon is a political one--there is still a Third Circle, who gives birth to a series of Second Circles, who create First Circle servants.

The difference? Their personalities.

You see, all demons, besides being descended from beings who now qualify as insane, self-loathing, and emotionally abusive (physical abuse tends to get the demons dead), all of them spend the vast majority of their (theoretically immortal) lives in Malfeas, who is usually planning to commit small-scale genocide at any moment as an extension of his self-loathing. While trying to keep all their limbs attached to their bodies, they have to deal with the screwed-up social system put in place by Cecelyne, which rewards cruelty and callousness and punishes charity. This, combined with a Byzantine and draconian set of taboos--for example, Cecelyne bans demons looking at her sacred color, azure...which is the color of the ink used in her written laws--means that at any practical time, a priest of Cecelyne (who are not demons themselves, but possibly loyalist gods) may choose a demon at random to torment and bully. This, combined with the deliberately anarchic yet corrupt and bloated government...

You get the idea.

That said, no demons, not even Third Circles, are inherently evil, just bitter and selfish. True, they are alien--thanks to the bizarre Motivations encoded into them--but when push comes to shove, the average demon is not altogether different from a god. It's quite possible to redeem them, and indeed, a Sidereal Charm is specifically made for converting willing demons into gods so that the Yozis cannot use their connection to take them over.

Just don't expect that to be easy, and for the romance fans, keep in mind--demons think Love Hurts, literally.

Ligier, the Green Sun

Fetich Soul of the Demon City

In the skies over Malfeas, a green sun blazes, never setting. This is Ligier, the fetich soul of the Demon City. In his humanoid form, Ligier appears as a handsome young man with auburn hair. He is the greatest blacksmith in Hell, and his Goal in Life is to create works that express his own magnificence so thoroughly that all must celebrate his glory.

Since his defeat, Malfeas has been consumed by utter shame and self-loathing. As his most central soul, Ligier expresses this by being everything Malfeas isn't and wishes he was. Ligier still has the confidence in his own power and majesty that Malfeas has irrevocably lost, and so where Malfeas is all about endless rage and overwhelming force, Ligier is a being of calm, courtesy and restraint. Feeling that to crush a lesser opponent would be beneath his dignity, he holds himself back in battle, and if his opponent unexpectedly manages to get in a glancing blow, he salutes their accomplishment and withdraws.

As you'd expect, Ligier finds basically everything about Malfeas profoundly embarrassing. Especially the whole dancing thing.

  • Affably Evil: Not exactly nice, but he's a pretty cool guy as major demons go -- he has to be cooler than Malfeas in order to look down on him properly.
  • Foil: Malfeas hates himself so much that his own heart is a foil for himself.
  • Mr. Fanservice: Okay, the whole "sexy Ligier" thing is mostly a fandom meme, but he is always portrayed as being very handsome.
  • Noble Demon
  • Ultimate Blacksmith: The best in Malfeas by a wide margin.
  • Unholy Nuke: His secret name from the time before the Primordial War is the word of power that triggers the spell Total Annihilation.
  • Weird Sun: That's not just a title, he's literally a radioactive green sun.
  • Worthy Opponent: He refuses to face any challenge less than a perfect circle of Solars or a full army of Dragon-Blooded.

Amalion, the Manse of Echoes Ascending

Fifth Soul of the Demon City

In every layer of Malfeas, there's one manse that surpasses all others in elegance. These are the bodies of Amalion. When summoned into Creation, she takes the form of a handsome middle-aged woman, her skin patterned like marble and her face veiled. Expressing some of Malfeas' less wrathful aspects -- his creativity and appreciation of beauty -- she is one of the greatest architects in existence, and serves those who summon her by drawing up the blueprints to an exquisite manse in exchange for a unique and beautiful object. So valued were Amalion's services during the First Age that she got on quite well with the Exalted and even married the sorcerer Five Moons, whose memory she still cherishes.

  • Reincarnation Romance: Maintains an Intimacy to the current bearer of Five Moons' Exaltation, though it's unclear whether they've actually met yet.
  • Token Good Teammate: The gentlest of Malfeas' souls -- and she's apparently nice enough by human standards that her marriage to Five Moons was actually socially acceptable; the Solar Deliberative even threw them a wedding party.
  • When She Smiles: This trope applies so hard that she veils her face as a courtesy, so that anyone standing nearby when she accidentally cracks a grin won't fall desperately in love with her.

Ipithymia, the Street of Golden Lanterns

Thirteenth Soul of the Demon City

Suntarankal, the Crucible of Brass and Iron

Fifteenth Soul of the Demon City

Orabilis, the End of All Wisdom

Sixth Soul of the Endless Desert

As the Lawgiver of the Yozis and the physical barrier between the Demon City and Creation, Cecelyne embodies the concept of boundaries. Her sixth soul represents the limits of knowledge. Orabilis is a builder of libraries and a patron of learning, but he also defines the secrets that must not be known except by the Yozis. When any lesser demon learns knowledge that Orabilis has forbidden, he lays his hand upon them and casts them into the void between the layers of Malfeas.

Munaxes, the Ravine of Whispers

Fourth Soul of the Principle of Hierarchy

Munaxes lives inside the fire in her Yozi's 30th sphere, but when she's summoned into Creation, she exists as a massive chasm in the earth. The voices of those who spread rumors against their friends, families, or rightful lords echo in her depths.

Jacint, the Prince Upon the Tower

Eighteenth Soul of the Silent Wind

In every layer of Malfeas there's a black stone tower, and on the tower there's a huge brass statue of a winged man, and on one of the statue's hands there stands a marble pillar, and at the top of the pillar there's a disc of glowing light. On the disc stands Jacint, the Prince Upon the Tower. His passion and purpose is the building of roads.

  • Token Good Teammate: The kindest of Adorjan's souls -- although, while we haven't met any of her other Third Circle souls, knowing Adorjan herself that may not be saying much. But his basic Goal in Life is essentially creative and nonviolent.
  • Winged Humanoid: He looks like a man with wings of basalt.
  • Words Can Break My Bones: He builds new roads merely by speaking.

Marsilion, the Eidolon of Shadow

Fourth Soul of the Shadow of All Things

Erembour, That Which Calls To The Shadows

Seventh Soul of the Shadow of All Things

There is no true night in Malfeas, but sometimes, the Ebon Dragon eclipses the Green Sun and the skies darken. When that happens, the Dragon's seventh soul walks the land, playing on her silver horn a song that celebrates the darkness.

Akallu, He Who Deceives

?th Soul of the Shadow of All Things

Ululaya, the Blood-Red Moon

Third Soul of the Sea that Marched Against the Flame

Madelrada, That Which Wears Down The Mountains

Eighth Soul of the Sea that Marched Against the Flame

Kimbery's eighth soul is one of the Eight Masterful Demon Generals, the surviving strategists and military commanders of the Primordial War. Her specialty is guerrilla tactics. As inexorable as the tide, she's patient and utterly relentless, gradually and mercilessly wearing down her enemies until no resistance is left.

Gnimersalt, the Mouthless Eater of All

Eleventh Soul of the Sea that Marched Against the Flame

Gnimersalt embodies Kimbery's hunger and other base desires, taking the form of an enormous, disgusting whitish-yellow maggot. He lives in the sewers of Malfeas, consuming all the Demon City's filth and refuse (and, as a side effect, absorbing information associated with what he eats). He's constantly growing, and his size is only kept in check by a team of lesser demons who slice off pieces of his outer layers. These slices are sold to restaurants in the city above, where they're highly sought after as a delicacy -- not because of the taste, mind you, but because some of the stuff he knows is contained within it, meaning a lucky eater can discover something very useful by chowing on it.

  • A Form You Are Comfortable With: When he needs to not gross people out, he takes the form of a hot, pungent ocean breeze, an emaciated man with extra teeth, or a plump hairless woman.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies
  • The Omniscient: He devours the stories of the things he eats as well as the physical matter, as well as some of the memories of anyone close to him. He knows his stuff.
  • The Unfavorite: He serves a purpose, but he's not Kimbery's favorite soul. Can you blame her?

The Tide That Knows No Life

?th Soul of the Sea that Marched Against the Flame

Kagami, the City of Mirrors

Fetich Soul of the Silver Forest

Bostvade, the Quicksilver Highway

Second Soul of the Silver Forest

Bostvade's title is more literal than that of many demons: he's an actual highway of actual quicksilver, wending its way out of the Silver Forest and into the Demon City. Representing Szoreny's desire for escape, exploration and conquest, he changes his path as he wills, and is responsible for outbreaks of mercury poisoning on a regular basis. He is a parasite of whatever Malfean neighborhood he parks himself in, creating a much better-kept version of it within himself, calling demons who can survive the swim through his essence to him. Over time, the entire place empties of residents, eventually resulting in a Ghost Town, at which point Bostvade moves on to the next town to repeat the process.

  • Poisonous Person: Not only is his normal form made of mercury, but in his humanoid form he has quicksilver hair and eyes, can conjure needles of mercury to hurl at enemies, and can summon a spring of quicksilver from the ground.

Saltran

?th Soul of the Silver Forest

Ferand, the Chariot of Embers

Seventh Soul of the Black Boar That Twists The Skies

Hrotsvitha, the Spawning Forest

Ninth Soul of the Black Boar That Twists The Skies

As anyone who has read the Interplay of Sex and Violence page might guess, Isidoros is quite interested in the way lust works, and that interest is shown in Hrotsvitha, who is both hunter and the great brass forest which he dwells. While he's an excellent combatant in his human form, this is actually rather demeaning of his real abilities-specifically, the qualities of his forest-body's vapors and water to drive people to an Unstoppable Rage or Unstoppable Arousal. Demons don't care, of course-as with many native hazards, they can feel the effects but resist them without really trying, but Exalted aren't as lucky; So long as their Compassion or, more hopefully, their Temperance (there's nothing in there about one having to force people to acquiesce to the lustful version of the Spawning Forest's madness), even they can do something they'll find themselves regretting when it wears off-either because it pains them, or it forces them to ask uncomfortable questions (the picture of Hrosvitha working his magic involves a prematurely ended battle between Harmonious Jade and Disciple of Seven Forbidden Wisdoms).

  • Horny Devils: He usually isn't involved himself, but he can certainly inflame lust.
  • Love Is in the Air: What happens if your Temperance isn't up to snuff when resisting Hrostvitha's powers. Not towards anyone in specific, mind, just a general need to screw.
  • Mundane Utility: How he spreads from layer to layer-female demons who don't like being homeless can service one of his more suggestive branches to impregnate themselves with a sapling which, if properly cared for, can grow into a hut (and don't worry, they give birth before this happens). Not keeping the hut in line and well-treated though, will cause it to fold into itself, becoming the trunk of a new, fully grown brass tree.
  • The Wild Hunt: He hosts one wherein the designated prey is set loose for five days-if they manage to evade or fight off the hunters for that time, they're allowed to leave with his blessings. The less adept ones have the hunters enabled to...do what they will...so long as they are sacrificed to him at the end.

Kashta

Eighteenth Soul of the Black Boar That Twists The Skies

Lypothymie, the Mask of Melancholy

Twelfth Soul of the Typhoon of Nightmares

Living proof that White Wolf is of the opinion that the stranger the antagonist, the better, Lypothymie is not "just" a Demon Princess-she's a sapient emotion, best described as a contagious form of Nostalgia Filter. People in her grip suffer mournful flashbacks to the glories of their culture as they imagine it, with the most lethal stage actually sending them into a mild Angst Coma (mild, because she goes into remission after five days until something triggers her again). During this time, the mind of Lypothymie can communicate through Master of Illusion Charms, or, should she get pissed, assault the sufferer with sorrow so great that they might lose the will to live (she rarely does this, though, on the basis that people who pull through exorcise her completely). If so desired, one can enter her sanctum using her sufferers as a portal, where her mind manifests as different to each person, but always something that inspires a sense of melancholy (demons tend to see her as something akin to an angyalka). Besides the massive amount of information she's picked up from her sufferers over the years (she can read their minds), she also has the ability to turn others into spiritual emotions like herself, immortal but restricted.

Of course, that also means people will literally feel the same way the new emotion-spirit feels. See where I'm going with this?

  • Affably Evil: She's depressing, certainly, but she's not really malevolent. Of course, she doesn't particularly care what happens to people in her grip, either.
  • Demonic Possession: Infecting people with her essence is the only way she can interact with the world outside her sanctum, and the same goes for her sapient emotion children.
  • Emo Teen: Her literal Goal in Life is to share the melancholy of her nature, and she tends to gravitate towards things that inspire it (graveyards, mourners, rain...).
  • The Spymaster: Unintentionally. Besides being able to read minds, she can perceive whatever is happening nearby her infectees, meaning she's a veritable repository of information. Not that she uses it unless asked.
  • Starfish Alien: Again: Sapient. Transmissible. Emotion. Who is explicitly female.
  • The Virus: Normally people don't feel her, but exposure to someone who currently is in her grip allows her to infect them with herself via...
  • Wangst: Causes people to feel this, and indeed how she spreads--paying attention to the poetic whinings of her infected is her vector.

Daendels, the Unfettered Heart

Fetich Soul of the Dragon Beyond the World

We don't know much about Daendels, but his Yozi, Oramus, is even more trapped than his siblings, without even the freedom to roam Hell. A being of chaos and possibility, Oramus was constrained in a cage of his own wings by the Exalted, who feared that his transgressive power could not be contained in any other way. His fetich soul seems to embody his yearning for freedom, and Daendels wanders the Demon City without ceasing, searching endlessly for a way to free his master.

Remondin, the Misconstrued Counselor

Sixth Soul of the Dragon Beyond the World

Benezet, the Gardener of Identities

Seventeenth Soul of the Dragon Beyond the World

Mursilis, the Skittering Jungle

Twentieth Soul of the Dragon Beyond the World

A soul spawned by Oramus after his imprisonment, the Skittering Jungle expresses the restless Yozi's constantly frustrated yearning for movement. Strictly speaking, Mursilis only looks like a jungle; there's not a single real tree in the place. Everything within Mursilis is made up of swarms of whirring, skittering metal insects.

Demirkol, the Wayward Child

Seventh Soul of the Mother of Creation

Sondok, She-Who-Stands-In-Doorways

Warden Soul of the Green Sun

Being an Ultimate Blacksmith, it should come as no surprise that Ligier has things he wishes to guard from thieves and saboteurs. This desire for safety is represented in Sondok, a Hot Amazon with two of the most Badass Uh-Oh Eyes in fiction (seriously, they look like blood pools filled with stars), and her dog, Biyru (actually an extension of her subconscious -- kill him, and she'll be able to bring him back on the next new moon). As her title and purpose suggest, she is the ultimate security guard, able to sense any intruders into the hoard she is set to guard, and if her Harrow the Mind Charm doesn't work in running off potential thieves, her utter and complete mastery of martial arts will. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the merchants she's worked with have formed a cult, the Cult of Darkness's Unseeing Eye (of which the Salmalin is a sub-order). While she isn't a manipulator by nature (it's not her job), she recognizes a large group of minions/co-workers is very useful when it comes to making sure none of Ligier's stuff gets in Creation without his permission.

As one might expect, she's one of the more steel-hearted people in Exalted...with one rather large indiscretion. Around twenty years ago, she fell for one of her summoners and had a (Dragon-Blooded) daughter. While the father's status is unknown (it's left up to the Storyteller if she killed or imprisoned him to protect the daughter's identity), drenching Sondok in her daughter's blood will be what removes her Destiny Sponsorship. Not being the Ebon Dragon, she's a bit reluctant to kill her own child, leaving one, critical, chink in her armor.

Whether her slayers will be able to forgive themselves is another matter.

  • Angry Guard Dog: Biyal.
  • City Guards: Her Goal in Life -- preventing things of her current employer's and Ligier's from being illegally tampered with.
  • Nigh Invulnerable: The Destiny Sponsorship literally makes it so that Fate itself protects her until her Kryptonite Factor is brought to bear.
  • Ominous Fog: Inverted -- Sondok's abilities allow her to dispel conditions that impede searching for thieves, such as fog or cloud cover.
  • Scarily Competent Tracker: Well, actually Biyal is, but given how it's literally impossible to permanently kill him while Sondok lives on...

Berengiere, the Weaver of Voices

Indulgent Soul of the Green Sun

Gervesin, the Grieving Lord

Messenger Soul of the Green Sun

Sometimes Gervesin is a young man with beautiful green eyes, his brown skin covered in tattoos. More often, he's a massive brass spear that blights whatever it flies over. Gervesin needs no wielder, but he likes to have one. Whoever picks him up will never put him down again; Gervesin drags them from battle to battle until their corpse falls to pieces. Once he had no other purpose -- but that was before he met Kinnojo.

Kinnojo was a mortal defender of the city of Chiaroscuro. Gervesin was the reason Chiaroscuro needed defending. At the instant the spear pierced Kinnojo's heart, Kinnojo was killed and Gervesin fell in love. Still grieving for his lost love to this day, Gervesin's only purpose now is to protect Chiaroscuro in honor of Kinnojo's memory.

  • Bishounen: According to the art in Games of Divinity.
  • Blade on a Stick
  • Evil Weapon: Subject to the usual caveats about how almost nothing in Exalted is truly objectively evil. But the stuff about dragging people around till they die and being a literal blight on the world -- that's pretty nasty, no matter how touching the Kinnojo story sounds.
    • As befitting Exalted, the "not objectively evil" bit comes from a Compassion score of 3-ie the part where his desire to help other people starts affecting his actions. He used to be a lot worse before he encountered Kinnojo, but now, he's mainly concerned with protecting Chiaroscuro.
  • Heartbroken Badass
  • The Lost Lenore: Kinnojo.

Gebre, the Pavane of Dying Stars

Messenger Soul of the End of All Wisdom

Lucien, the Guardian of Sleep

Expressive Soul of the End of All Wisdom

A tall, gaunt man with innumerable tiny holes through his body, Lucien enforces the law of Cecelyne by dispatching those who trouble their betters -- in particular, those whose actions threaten to wake Sacheverell.

Florivet, the Whim-of-the-Wind

Reflective Soul of the End of All Wisdom

Once a sage and scholar, Florivet turned his back on his original task to become an explorer. Orabilis disapproved, but chose to be merciful and allow his Reflective Soul to do as it pleased. Now Florivet sails the seas of Malfeas and the edges of Creation, searching for adventure.

  • Disproportionate Retribution: He generally takes rejection very well...but if you actually manage to wound his pride, or if you sleep with him and turn out to be bad in bed, he'll conjure acid and throw it in your face.
  • The Hedonist: His fondness for booze and mortal women is notorious.
  • Lovable Rogue: Uh, sort of. Aside from that whole acid thing.
  • Mix-and-Match Critters: He's some sort of wolf-owl-man.

Octavian, the Living Tower

Defining Soul of the Ravine of Whispers

Known in the Demon City as the Quarter Prince, Octavian reigns over a full one-fourth of a layer of Malfeas. He resembles something like a monstrous, bipedal alligator snapping turtle, dripping with toxic black oil. Octavian once loved the earth, but it rejected his love and now trembles under his touch when he walks in Creation.

One of the most fearsome combatants among the demons of the Second Circle, Octavian can sometimes be called into Creation by a challenge shouted from a mountaintop by a Worthy Opponent for seven consecutive days. He has never been defeated except by his hated foe the Mushroom King, who struck down Octavian with the help of his mighty axe Lentinus and his allies, the princess Watercress and the Lord of Nine Falls.

  • The Beast Master: He has a magic acorn, a gift from a wood elemental, that lets him command any animal that walks on or burrows in the ground.
  • Expy: A (much Darker and Edgier) Expy of, believe it or not, Bowser. (Read that bit about the Mushroom King again...)
  • Poisonous Person: The oil that coats his body can blind or deafen, sears the ground white wherever it falls, and destroys the taste of any food Octavian eats.
  • Tears From a Stone: The earth hates him so much that it weeps when he walks on it.

Stanewald, She Who Surmounted the Omphalos

Reflective Soul of the Ravine of Whispers

Malfeas is known for the art of dance, and throughout the Demon City, only the Yozis themselves and two other demons are known to surpass Stanewald as dancers. Stanewald loves the sound of shattering stone, and her thirteen Efficacious Dances all have the power to smash boulders or crack open the ground. At one time, her Goal in Life was the destruction of the spirit courts associated with the land; for this reason, her title was "the Answer to the Earth." Seventy years ago, that changed after one of the Yozis commanded her to climb the Imperial Mountain -- that is, the Elemental Pole of Earth, also known as "the Omphalos of Creation." It is not known what happened to her at the peak of the Imperial Mountain, but whatever it was, it changed her. Now Stanewald seeks a new purpose.

Zsofika, the Kite Flute

Messenger Soul of the Prince Upon the Tower

When you summon Zsofika over a dying fire, the first thing you'll hear are the drums. For seventy drumbeats, she turns in the embers, choosing her prey. Then she goes on the hunt. With each drumbeat she takes a step; every ten steps she clashes her swords together; every hundred steps, a standard-bearer appears to march behind her. Atop each standard-bearer's banner is a hollow pipe that catches the wind and plays a haunting tune -- the "kite flutes" that give Zsofika her title.

Once she's caught her prey and eaten its bones, she can do whatever you summoned her for.

Gumela, the Jeweled Auditor

Wisdom Soul of the Prince Upon the Tower

Gumela looks something like a man made of gold and silver threads. When he walks in Creation, his approach triggers a loss of inhibitions and ecstatic, orgiastic behavior in mortals. But while he enjoys mortal passions, that's not his purpose. He's looking for Mayoigo, and the fact that no one in Creation or Malfeas has the slightest idea who or what Mayoigo might be will not deter him.

  • Bilingual Bonus: Mayoigo is Japanese for "lost child."
  • Cloudcuckoolander: It's really hard to follow his thought process sometimes.
  • Lack of Empathy: He bears absolutely no malice toward mortals -- he just doesn't care what happens to them either, viewing them as simply part of the environment like trees or rocks.
  • Seeker Archetype

Makarios, the Sigil's Dreamer

Warden Soul of That Which Calls To The Shadows

Taking the form of a young man with a rainbow glint in his eyes and fine copper wire for hair, Makarios is a buyer and seller of dreams. When he's able to walk in Creation he can usually be found in the nearest marketplace, but most of his transactions take place within a dreamer's sleeping mind. Come to his alabaster citadel, and he'll offer you a comfortable seat and discuss the wonders he's picked up in other dreams, which can be yours for a reasonable price: trade concessions, help in expanding Makarios' market, unique objects from the mortal world or your own dreams, and for the most expensive items, your promise to set his mark on a certain number of mortals.

In truth, though Makarios is a skilled haggler, the prices usually really are pretty reasonable... you just don't want to fall behind on payments.

  • Bazaar of the Bizarre: The Equitable Market, his personal fiefdom in Malfeas. By demonic standards, it's simply a rather large and varied marketplace, but by Creation's standards, it's downright dazzling (a fact which is not lost on certain marketeers, who have a long tradition of selling what is fantastic but common in Hell for massively marked up prices to naive Creation-born).
  • Beware the Nice Ones: He's certainly nicer than much of the Guild, Creation's resident Mega Corp, and he explicitly spells out what his price will be. He can also break out of Malfeas to collect a payment if someone tries to rip him off.
  • Bilingual Bonus: Makarios is Greek for "lucky" or "blessed."
  • Cannot Dream: Those with his mark on their forehead are unable to dream, and sometimes go mad before it fades. If they die before it's removed, they dream for Makarios eternally.
  • Evil Debt Collector: He's not really evil the rest of the time, but seriously, failing to pay him back in a timely fashion is not a good idea.
  • Intrepid Merchant: He is excellent at appraisal and bargaining, and is frequently summoned just for personal financial advice.

Mara, the Shadow-Lover

Defining Soul of That Which Calls To The Shadows

Mara's apparent age and ethnicity vary each time she's summoned into Creation, but she is always a beautiful woman, with bright blue eyes and the hooves of a deer. A seductress, she eventually kills most of her lovers by drawing their souls out with a kiss.

Alveua, Keeper of the Forge of Night

Expressive Soul of That Which Calls To The Shadows

An artist at heart, Alveua knows that if she were allowed to reforge Creation, she could make a better world -- a world where the Yozis were free and gods and mortals knew their place. As long as the Ebon Dragon and Erembour are bound, though, so is she, and so there are limits to what Alveua can fix. When a suppliant gets her attention by sacrificing an innocent to her, Alveua takes the petitioner and forges them into a metal object. The mortal doesn't survive, but their spirit lingers on in the object, which is destined to serve the mortal's goals and protect the things they loved for as long as it exists.

  • The Blacksmith: Not the Ultimate Blacksmith in Malfeas -- that honor goes to Ligier -- but she is very good at what she does.
  • Drop the Hammer: She carries a massive, permanently red-hot hammer on one shoulder at all times.
  • Elegant Gothic Lolita: She appears to be a small, thin, pretty young woman wearing a black metal dress, with little horns peeking out of her short red hair.
  • Friend to Bugs: Insects love Alveua, and will attack anyone who hurts her in swarms.
  • Little Miss Badass: She's short, slender, and appears rather delicate. This appearance is misleading.

Aetamos, Brother of Brass and Iron

Constructive Soul of That Which Calls To The Shadows

Emerenzia, the Minister of the Ivory Tassel

Defining Soul of He Who Deceives

Sigereth, the Player of Games

Indulgent Soul of That Which Wears Down The Mountains

When you summon Sigereth, you'll see a slim, hairless boy holding a small box in his hands. The boy is a mindless puppet; the box is Sigereth. She is a master of all games of strategy, holding all sorts of cards, dice and game pieces within the box. She never plays without wagering something, whether money, property, favors, or even abstractions -- emotions, relationships, memories. Those who wager themselves and lose are turned into Sigereth's First Circle progeny, the baidak.

Iyutha, the Vitriolic Dragon

Messenger Soul of That Which Wears Down The Mountains

Appearing as either a horrifying black-and-purple dragon or an ugly old hag with rusty iron fingernails, Ithuya is one of the most straightforwardly nasty demons in Exalted. The thought of cooperation or social harmony offends and enrages her, and she lives to sow discord, treachery and hatred wherever she goes.

Kimbery's Dawn, Dam of the Eristrufa

Progenitive Soul of The Tide That Knows No Life

Janequin, Fortune's Fool

Indulgent Soul of the Misconstrued Counselor

Remondin, the Misconstrued Counselor, knows all possible futures. Janequin personifies his delight in the most outrageous and unlikely ones. One of the most unpredictable demons in Malfeas, she has no purpose but to act capriciously on her own whims. Although she's a skilled swordswoman, her luck is her greatest weapon.

Isary, the Four-Helmed General

Warden Soul of the Wayward Child

Nizar, the Unending Glance

Messenger Soul of the Wayward Child

Corr'dal, the Slug Mother

Unknown Progenitor

Before we begin to describe Corr'dal, one should hear the story of the Invisible Fortress, masterwork of the Properly Paranoid First Age Twilight Kal Bax (and, coincidentally, the mentor of the Solars who became the Deathlords Mask of Winters and Walker in Darkness). Unlike his fellows, he suspected that the Usurpation or something similar would occur, so he build a mighty manse, the aforementioned Invisible Fortress, to hide from the Bronze Faction and the Dragon-Bloods during the political upheaval. Of course, even a master architect like Bax couldn't create something that needed no maintenance, even with the self-preserving power of manses, so he summoned a Second Circle demon and her entire progeny to protect and defend it. That Second Circle demon was Corr'dal, and her progeny the dal'sharr (though the latter call themselves the Founders now).

Unfortunately, Bax and all of his eleven apprentices died before they could get out (or rather, Bax died and the other, more insane Solars killed each other off soon after) and so, Corr'dal and her children ended up stuck in Creation... in what quite possibly is the most miserable part of it, the distant North. Needless to say, she isn't particularly a fan of the Exalted. This would simply be another aside, a story about a miserable demon and her spawn guarding a place that no one would bother with...

...Were it not for the fact that as befitting someone called the Slug Mother, Corr'dal has certain appetites that need to be filled. Since the Founders lack the genitals (or given how she's their mother, the desire) to fill said appetites, they have made a habit of rounding up powerful beasts for her to breed with. Being a spirit, many of these actually impregnate her, making her give birth to the highly-intelligent monsters called ice eaters (so called, because if they don't have fresh food, they'll chew on ice in frustration). As a result, she's become an unintentional bane of the North, and thanks to the mechanics of her binding, she can't permanently die until she's been released from service.

But she's not a dishonorable demon, even if she is passive-aggressive. After all, there might be someone who can free her...

  • Anything That Moves: She's turned to this out of desperation.
  • Fantastic Racism: She really doesn't like Exalts. Can you blame her? That being said, she's willing to swallow her distaste if she thinks they can free her.
  • Fat Bastard / Gonk: She's called the Slug Mother, what did you expect? That being said, she'd probably get more help if she didn't have such a stubborn and distasteful personality.
  • Manipulative Bastard: She isn't now, but before she was bound, she was one of the most adroit speakers in existence, to the point where Kal Bax actually crippled her ability to manipulate. If she were free, her tongue would very quickly turn superhumanly silver again.
  • Mother of a Thousand Young: Again: Slug Mother. All of her children are sexless, so she actually has to breed to make each and every one of them.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Subverted. She'd just like to go back to Malfeas, but her bond of servitude has forced her to remain in Creation, making her more dangerous than she should be.

Erymanthoi, the Blood-Apes

Progeny of She-Who-Stands-In-Doorways

Most Exalted demons, while not peaceful, are rather alien to popular ideas. They aren't ravening monsters, they aren't elemental beings of fury, and they don't kill for the hell of it.

Erymanthoi are the exception that proves the rule.

Carnivorous gorillas with bone spikes sticking out of their joints and reddish fur, Erymanthoi are the cheap muscle of the Yozis, with their fast reproduction process (utilizing painful acupuncture to make a blood-ape scream just so that the sound gathers flesh and becomes a new Erymanthus) makes them cheap and effective soldiers to throw at a problem needing to be dead or harried, and great for heavy lifting. Blood Knights to the core, an Erymanthus that is allowed to hunt for his own food is a happy Erymanthus, leading them to be the minion of choice for infenalists everywhere.

Neomah, the Weavers of Flesh

Progeny of the Weaver of Voices

Attractive, shapeshifting demons that live to fulfill a business arrangement: negotiable affections in exchange for pieces of flesh from their clients. From these pieces, they create new life, and then move on.

  • Designer Babies: They can be summoned to make them.
  • Evilutionary Biologist: Sort of. They're not particularly good at it.
  • Hermaphrodite: Comes from being able to change gender at will. That being said, the default form of a neomah is a slightly-androgynous female, so neomah traditionally get feminine pronouns.
  • Horny Devils: The poster "girls".
  • Mundane Utility: That a neomah can produce a child from any donors, and that one of the ways a neomah can be called to Creation is via the mixing of parents' tears and afterbirth of a stillborn child, cannot possibly be coincidence.
  • Purple-Hided Demon Lady: A neomah's true form.

Noresores, the Passion Morays

Progeny of the Weaver of Voices

Decanthropes, the Body Snatchers

Progeny of the Grieving Lord

Metody, the Malfean Elementals

Progeny of the Grieving Lord

Metody are the elementals of Vitriol, a liquid that catalyzes growth and transformation. The hate of Malfeas has turned it into an incredibly caustic acid, but Metody can be instructed to cleanse it into its more useful form.

  • Elemental Powers: Of a sort.
  • Hollywood Acid: Even in its purified state, Vitriol is still a "transcedent acid", a fact metody use to their advantage. Still, if properly used, purified Vitriol can burn away only the weakness of items immersed in it, given, say, silk the resistance of steel while remaining its flexibility and softness.

Gilmyne, the Dancers at the Saigoth Gates

Progeny of the Guardian of Sleep

Perronele, the Living Armor

Progeny of the Guardian of Sleep

Tinsiana, the Scorpion Demons

Progeny of the Guardian of Sleep

Agatae, the Beauteous Wasps

Progeny of the Whim-of-the-Wind

As their title implies, agatae are wasps so impossibly beautiful that even their cruelest summoners can rarely bring themselves to harm one unless their lives depend on it. Big enough to carry two armored men, their purpose is to serve as steeds.

Naneke, the Readers of Forbidden Texts

Progeny of the Masterful Scholar

Gethin, the Harvesters of Rarities

Progeny of the Living Tower

Luminata, the Deer That Hunt Men

Progeny of the Living Tower

From a distance, a luminata looks like a beautiful white deer. Up close, you can see it's actually a deer-shaped mass of writhing white tentacles. It'll generally run from humans...until the hunters stumble or tire. Then, the hunt turns around.

Tomescu, the Clamorous Cloud Arsenals

Progeny of the Living Tower

Many species of demon fight, but there are a few who are exclusively meant for the battlefield, and most of these are motivated by loot, glory, or bloodlust. Not the tomescu. The clamorous cloud arsenals are brave in battle not because of their attitude towards it, but because each and every one of them knows that it will die, and has a general idea of how.

It's impossible to tell what a tomescu looks like, because as the title suggests, they're surrounded by a thick cloud at all times (though anecdotal writing suggests they look like a cross between a crab and a praying mantis). What is visible, though, are the dozens of weapons they're holding at any given time-and they're very good at wielding them, to the point where they can counter or parry against all attackers in a given combat. The other part of their name refers to an interesting quirk of theirs-every day, at dawn and dusk, the vast majority of clamorous cloud arsenals scream in dismay at the anticipation of their inevitable doom (and indeed, this is how demons can tell what time it is-thanks to Ligier never setting, the screams of the tomescu are the only way to tell when it hits night or day in Creation). Only one in 10,000 tomescu don't do this, and 99 times out of a hundred, that's because the individual tomescu is mute or insensate, or they've simply come to terms with their death.

The hundredth? He doesn't scream, on the basis that his death is too glorious for him to worry about. Fear these tomescu.

  • The Fatalist
  • Screw Destiny: They don't actually try this, but thwarting a destiny in Creation occasionally lets one out. Most of the escapees get ganked by Sidereals drawn to the glitches this causes, but there's always going to be a few stragglers...
  • Seers: Due to their interesting relationship with Fate, a tomescu often understands how fairly minor actions can advance the cause of the Yozis. As a result, stopping a tomescu is often a lot easier then ensuring her schemes don't come to fruition.

Gallmau, the Hooded Lanterns

Progeny of the Answer to the Earth

Despite their mother having changed in nature and title, the gallmau are still very much an extant race of demons, still cleaving to the purpose of guiding people through spelunking the Demon City's and Creation's deep places. Serpentine, flexible demons, a gallmau's face is little more than a mouth with a pale blue-white glow shining from it...right up until they peel their lips back like a hood, which reveals the source of the light is a rather large tongue, and the inside of their mouth looks something like an ivory flower.

Guiding people around is not the general Goal in Life of the hooded lanterns, though -- no, that would be making more hooded lanterns. And it's pretty easy for them, too -- in a place lit only by its own tongue, a gallmau plucks out a dying person's (human or demon-they aren't picky) teeth and tongue, and impregnates itself with them. One hour later, it spits out a larval gallmau, which grows to maturity in a year.

Oh, and if a gallmau is born in Creation, it stays in Creation, free of any sorcerous bindings on its parent. Yeah, they can get to be a problem.

  • A Light in the Distance: Gallmau will resort to this tactic if they can -- and their Charms make their tongue-light seem even more appealing.
  • Face Full of Alien Wingwong: Inverted. They're Aliens Full of Other Species' Wing Wong, with the caveat it's not exactly Wing Wong.
  • Hermaphrodite: It's arguable whether they even have genders, and in any case, all gallmau can give birth.
  • Kill It with Fire: Why explorers of dark places are advised to carry torches-open flame inflicts aggravated damage on hem.
  • Typhoid Mary: Their saliva carries rabies. They could not care less.

Angyalkae, the Harpists

Progeny of the Kite Flute

Teodozjia, the Lions Sent Into The World

Progeny of the Kite Flute

Teodozjia look like big jade lions. Their purpose is to recite and spread their scripture, which teaches the folly of loving mortal things when it is the will of the Yozis that humanity should wither and die.

Amphelisiae, the Teakettle Courtiers

Progeny of the Jewelled Auditor

Demjen, the Quickeners of Ores

Progeny of the Jewelled Auditor

Mermaid (and merman)-like demons with the ability to swim in the air, demjen are one of the Adorjani demon races whose music their progenitor cannot stand, but unlike their anglykae cousins, music is not their end goal as well-rather, it's the magic by which they get their name: by singing at metals, a demjen can cause it to animate and assemble itself into a crustacean-shaped Robot Buddy called a chalcothete, which serve as both minion and occasional food source (though the demjen honestly hate it when they have to do that). While not mean by any stretch (they have a Compassion of 3 and their general Goal in Life is simply to create more chalcothetes from unworked metal), they can be a real pain in the hands of a clever master-any metal is game for their abilities, up to and including that used in weapons. Thus, a demjen able to get within voiceshot of a heavily armed warrior can walk away with a dozen more chalcothetes, and the warrior either naked and/or dead, depending on the quickener's mood.

  • Fearless Fool: Not them, but chalcothetes simply don't care if they die, only about the pain. They are also rather stupid.
  • Sirens Are Mermaids: They look like merpeople, and they universally posses a nice set of pipes.

Marottes, the Hopping Puppeteers

Progeny of the Jewelled Auditor

An inactive marotte looks like a fist-sized knot of rope covered in disgusting slime. When it's active, several gangly legs extend from the central mass. Naturally driven to alter their environment, they're very handy for construction jobs.

Hopping puppeteers are particularly notable for being very fond of human infants...in more or less the same way humans are fond of flowers: while they really genuinely like the infants, it's in a way that doesn't involve empathizing with them or knowing anything about how to take care of them. Given the opportunity, a marotte will carry around as many babies as it can manage until it notices they've died of thirst, at which point it drops the corpses and wanders off to look for fresh ones.

Chrysogonae, the Crying Women

Progeny of the Sigil's Dreamer

Ever wonder what the Exalted version of a "demonic tempter" is? Well, this is them.

A chrysogona resembles what would happen if you took a tree and carved it to resemble an impossibly old woman with a Tragedy mask for a face, who walks on her long branch-fingers (but not by moving them-rather, when they want to go somewhere they grow new finger-branches while burning the excess ones). Master manipulators, chrysogonae feed on ambition, to the point where an ambitious subordinate overthrowing his rightful (by cultural standards) leader can allow one to escape Malfeas without summoning. They set about this by encouraging people to act on their desires instead of their needs, so a smart summoner sets them to advise their enemies and watches from a safe distance as they self-destruct.

That being said, their common appellation arises from something that actually disgusts them-the crying women despise beauty being destroyed or true love betrayed, and that's what causes them to turn on the Water Works. But don't be fooled-they won't hesitate if their summoner orders them, and even when they're gone, a piece of themselves remains in those they manipulate-and their crying can be heard in the rain...

  • Beware the Nice Ones: They're fairly civil, for demons. But they're still some of the most dangerous off the battefield.
  • Emotion Eater: Ambition is the only sustenance they find palatable.
  • Obviously Evil: Lampshaded-the text of their Subtle Whisper ability points out it's the only thing that allows a chrysogona to be trusted.
  • The Virus: A chrysogonae's bite causes their victims to transfigure into wood. Thanks to their Healing Factor, Exalts can recover, but a mortal killed by this has their wooden corpse quickly turn itself into a new chrysogona. Thankfully, they can't use this to create a Crying Women Apocalypse-they're rather frail.

Bisclavarets, the Shadow Eaters

Progeny of the Shadow-Lover

Firmin, the Makers of Needles

Progeny of the Keeper of the Forge of Night

Sesseljae, the Stomach Bottle Bugs

Progeny of the Keeper of the Forge of Night

Aalu, the Cannibal Bureaucrats

Progeny of the Minister of the Ivory Tassel

Baidak, the Empty Pawns

Progeny of the Player of Games

Radeken, the Madling Hellstorms

Progeny of the Vitriolic Dragon

Eristrufa, the Mist-Demons

Progeny of the Dam of the Eristrufa

Heranhal, the Fervid Smiths

Progeny of the Blood of the Forge

  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Pretty much -- they're womanizers, and they're excellent blacksmiths. They just happen to have a wider range of crafts then most dwarves in fiction.

Anuhles, the Demon Spiders

Progeny of everyone and their mother


Fair Folk

The Fair Folk

The Fair Folk -- or raksha, as they call themselves -- are, to put it simply, sentient aspects of the Wyld.

In their native, Unshaped forms, the raksha appear as a combination Genius Loci/Hive Mind -- a setting, and the major characters within it. (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.

Being effectively Eldritch Abominations 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.

One thing that may help to understand something of raksha psychology: in their native realms, normal actions don't matter, since they can just shrug them off. The only real way for raksha to have an impact on one another is through shaping combat, their reality-warping games. 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.

  • Arbitrarily-Large Bank Account: 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.
  • Barehanded Blade Block: Your basic Raksha defensive Charms provide this in Creation.
  • The Beast Master: "World-Angering Beast Mastery" and "Thousand Gnawing Fangs" provide this power.
  • The Beautiful Elite: Raksha nobles are fabled for their superhuman Appearance ratings. And there are Raksha Charms that make the user so beautiful that people will do whatever they want or even become physically addicted to their presence.
  • Blue and Orange Morality: They honestly don't understand why their actions have permanent consequences in Creation, and that frightens them to no end.
  • Changeling Tale: Quite often, Raksha in Creation will satiate their hungers by abducting a mortal to Mind Rape. This practice, probably more than any other, is what makes them so feared. On the other hand, many just buy slaves from the Guild instead.
  • Church Militant: 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.
  • Creative Sterility: 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.
  • Deadly Decadent Court: All Raksha courts are these.
  • The Dreaded: Nothing scares the Muggles more than the Fair Folk. Even many Dragon-Blooded see them as bigger threats than the Solar Exalts.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Unshaped Raksha.
  • Elemental Embodiment: "Assumption of (Element) Shape" will turn a Raksha into this.
  • Elemental Powers: The Elemental Influence Charm tree.
  • Emotion Bomb: The Emotional Influence Charm tree.
  • Emotion Eater: In their case, the Virtues. If they chew on down long enough, the victim is left a mindless husk.
  • The Fair Folk: No. Really? We never would have guessed.
  • Fate Worse Than Death: A mortal who falls in with the Raksha will be repeatedly Mind Raped until he/she becomes a soulless, near-mindless drone. And then he/she will probably be sold to the Guild as a slave.
  • 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 feeding.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Shaped Raksha.
  • Humans Are Cthulhu: Sort of. They understand humans perfectly well, and admire our imaginations. Creation itself freaks them out.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: The hannya, the generation of Unshaped that arose after the Balorian Crusade. They are endlessly hungry, predatory stories, and what they prey on is other raksha.
  • It Amused Me: If a shaped Raksha is not an Omnicidal Maniac, this will probably be its motivation.
  • Lack of Empathy: 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.
  • Little Bit Beastly: Depending on how many Mutations a Raksha with "Assumption of Bestial Visage" takes, they will appear to be one or the other.
  • Magically-Binding Contract: 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 Loophole Abuse and Exact Words for precisely that reason.
  • Master of Illusion: In the Wyld, Raksha are Reality Warpers. 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 Your Mind Makes It Real until that happens.
  • Mind Rape: In theory, a Raksha requires consent to use its Emotion Eater powers on you. In practice, "consent" obtained through Mind Manipulation counts. This creates something of a disincentive for a Raksha to take the time to talk to you into it.
  • Nigh Invulnerability: 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 Cold Iron.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: Many Raksha want to destroy all of Creation and return all to the Wyld. On the other hand, many, if not most, have gone native and want to keep Creation around, if only For the Evulz.
  • Our Elves Are Better: 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.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: 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.
  • Reality Warper: 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.
  • Speak of the Devil: Saying their name won't actually summon them, but most mortals believe it will. Hence, "the Fair Folk."
  • Theory of Narrative Causality: 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.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: 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).
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Cold Iron.
  • The Wild Hunt: 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 having since 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.

Ishvara

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-run thing...

The Fomorian Dream

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.

  • Brown Note: To imagine the creature that made the Dream's steps was to die of fear on the spot.

Prince Laashe, the Morning Star

The Unconquered Sun is perfect, but not infallible.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

He rages there still, and will for all eternity.

Prince Balor of the Terrible Gaze

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.

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 Great Contagion would probably have killed all of them.

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, the Fair Folk are not particularly bound to each other.

And unfortunately (for him, miraculously for Creation), that same disorganization is what killed him.

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.

And it was at that moment that the Scarlet Empress figured out how to operate the Sword of Creation.

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 thanks to the mechanics of unshaped creation, had given rise to the hannya, who would devour their cousins with relish.

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.

  • Dark Messiah: To the raksha, though they would dispute "dark"...
  • Evil Eye: 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.
  • Posthumous Character
  • Eucatastrophe: If it wasn't for his men and the Sword of Creation.


Notable Unshaped Raksha

Princess Melusine of the Glittering Train

The Duke of Mirrors

Incarnadine and Viridian

Thief of Words

Orchinast, the Golden Mirror

Salt That Cuts

Semiramis, the Whisperer in the Leaves

Swar, the City of Formlessness Constrained

Prince Ginnungagap

Notable Shaped Raksha

Neshi of the Double Whips

Dilari of the Sea Foam

Nlassa of the Lion's Mane

Shizuki the Weaver

Lord Kazour

Subarto

The Laughing Boy

Judge Nehemeth

Hannya

Ghosts

Ghosts

The Dual Monarchy

The Timeless Order of Manacle and Coin

Where the Guild (see the Exalted Other page, Mortals folder) are living Creation's premier trade organisation, the Timeless Order of Manacle and Coin serve as the Underworld's. The wealth of mortals, however, is a commonplace in the realms of the dead; what truly matters are souls. And the Timeless Order has had many centuries to become adept in trading -- and enslaving -- them.

The Timeless Order is far older than the Guild, tracing its origins to the First Age. When the Guild rose to power after the Great Contagion, however, it caught the Order's attention, returning their focus to Creation after centuries concerned with the dead. The Order looked upon the Guild, and decided that it was theirs, now -- their anchor and their obsession.

In the Order, the Guild have found something even more predatory than themselves, something that sees the Guild as their special prey...

The Sovereign of Chains

The ruler of the Timeless Order of Manacle and Coin.

The Anacreons

The lieutenants of the Sovereign of Chains.

The Uddshua

Deathlords

Some nihilistic ghosts, whether out of madness, vengeance, or despair, swear themselves into the service of the Neverborn, working towards their agenda of ending all that is. The greatest of these servants are the Deathlords, the souls of the most decadent and vile Solars of the First Age.

The First and Forsaken Lion

Often considered the greatest deathlord in terms of personal power, resources, and military prowess, The First and Forsaken Lion is often the standard Big Bad for most Exalted games. FaFL is most famous for being spot-welded to his armor by his Neverborn masters after botching the Great Contagion by involving the Fair Folk invasion that is believed to have halted the Contagion in its tracks. He's now banished to a far off mountain range, gathering resources and plotting his next move on Creation, so that he doesn't mess up a second time.

The Dowager of the Irreverent Vulgate In Unrent Veils

The discoverer of the Great Contagion, the Dowager is a civilized savage (to the point where some Deathlords think she's an ex-Lunar), and a powerful necromancer. One of the three canon Deathlords that plans to actually destroy Creation (the others want to rule over its corpse), the Dowager is a shameless psychopath and torturer, even worse than some of her contemporaries. See: her orphanage.

  • Eldritch Abomination: All of her forms. They have to qualify, seeing as how she keeps asps for fingers and cloven hooves.
  • Eldritch Location: The Dowager lords over the Well of Udr, a dimensional nexus where all possible realities collide and disintegrate. Anyone who looks into it without proper protection goes mad. She had such protection, and was able to extract the Great Contagion from the Well.
  • Evil Old Folks: Her human form looks a little past middle age.
  • Orphanage of Fear: Hoo boy. She steals the children of villages she's killed, raises them with all the love and affection of a mass murderer, furbishes their rooms with soulsteel made from the ghosts of their parents, then proceeds to release them once they come of age...until they have children of their own, at which point she attacks them and does the whole thing over again. She says this is to create the ideal Abyssal, but she's been at it a lot longer then they've been around, meaning that she just has a reason other than For the Evulz now.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifter: All the Deathlords are, really, but she's mastered it.

Eye and Seven Despairs

Some of the Solars did not do very nice things in the First Age, and Eye and Seven Despairs is testament to being on the losing side of that. He was the youngest in his circle, and was in fact the next incarnation of their lost member. This means he was, effectively, their punching bag, and lined up for all sorts of abuse. This culminated in being told that everything was over, his circle mates had realized what dicks they were being, and presenting him with a gift that would make it all up to him -- his father's eye. He killed himself right after this, and claims to have been the first Solar ghost to sell himself to the Neverborn.

And what has he accomplished with this? Absolutely dick. He's a genius among the Neverborn, able to do things no one else has. But he hasn't done anything to actually kill Creation because he's busy focusing on tracking down the reincarnations of his old circle and doing hideous things to them, over and over again, for all time. As such, he's the lowest in station among the Deathlords, even compared to Princess Magnificent (who almost got shunted into the Void for her grand screw-up).

  • Brilliant but Lazy: He has made, among other things, a plague that raises its victims as zombies and Cold House (see below). But he hasn't actually done anything with this stuff because of his obsession.
  • Butt Monkey: This is who he was in the First Age and, given his current interests, who he is among the Deathlords. It's gotten to the point where his only Abyssal servant (who he Exalted mainly to fill a quota) is considering throwing himself behind some other undead master.
  • Eldritch Location: His particular manse, Cold House, is both somehow in Creation and overlooking the Void at the same time.
  • Gender Bender: In addition to Shapeshifting Squick below, he also has as one of his primary alternate identities the Prioress of Bloody Sands.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Shrug of God says that it's quite possible for a storyteller to make it so that his Harmless Villainy is really a cover so he can bide his time.
  • Revenge Before Reason: His modus operandi.
  • Shapeshifting Squick: One of his favorite ways to break the reincarnations of his circle mates is to take on the form of one of their lovers (or someone they'd fall for) and then sow discord from there.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Look at what happened to him in the First Age, and you see he may just have a point. Well, if he tried actually destroying anything besides his old circle.

The Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears

Another walking testament in Names to Run Away From Really Fast, the Lover believes in both the little death and the big one. She wants to take all of Creation to the limits of pleasure, and by showing them how fleeting it is, instill a cosmic urge for suicide. Her fellow Deathlords mainly think she's using this as an excuse to get off, and don't think too highly of her.

  • Combat Sadomasochist: She pioneered the Laughing Wounds Style of martial arts, which uses BDSM tools and gear as form armor and weapons and grants the user bonuses based on how much pain they're feeling.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Her First Age incarnation did something so hideous that even the Silver Prince -- who's widely believed to be the ghost of Desus -- looks on her with fear.
  • Nietzsche Wannabe: Even before she was a Deathlord.
  • Out with a Bang: She takes a lot of lovers... mainly because most of them don't survive the experience.
  • Too Kinky to Torture: Again, Laughing Wounds Style.
  • The Vamp: Boy howdy.
  • Xanatos Gambit: She created a giant soulsteel warstrider that ended up getting captured by Lookshy for inspection. It's stated that she did this mainly so it would end up in Lookshy's possession...

The Bishop of The Chalcedony Thurible

One of the other Deathlords that seeks to destroy Creation altogether (and friends with the final one, Walker in Darkness), the Bishop is also, oddly, the most sympathetic one. Somewhere along the line, he came to believe that existence is the root of all suffering. He took that to its logical conclusion and decided that Oblivion is the only really meaningful thing. What makes him sympathetic is that he...really isn't a jerk about it. Truthfully, he thinks that he can willingly convert everyone to his philosophy of suicide, and while he's certainly willing to resort to blunt means to get his point across, he prefers to be as peaceful as his position will allow him.

He's also the first of the four Deathlords that has the Sidereal known as the Green Lady on staff, though he thinks she's a guy.

The Bodhisattva Anointed by Dark Waters

Some Deathlords are keen to preach philosophy, or conquer, or torment and harrow. Not the Silver Prince. He rules openly, and clearly, and fairly. In the Skullstone Archipelago, he oversees a transhumanist religion and government that focuses on fairness in both this life and beyond. The ghosts of the dead are full citizens, and encouraged to provide for the state on both sides of death in return for noble rewards.

It's all a hideous lie, of course. The Bodhisattva has set all this up so that he has a steady stream of souls willing to throw themselves upon his forges (not that they know it until it's too late) so that he can build up an armada of necrotech and soulsteel. He built the religion of the Archipelago, vanished for a few centuries, and returned so that he could claim the rewards. And he has a plan...

...Assuming the Green Lady, who is also on his staff, doesn't stab him in the back beforehand.

  • The Cake Is a Lie: No, there is no joy at the end of your living if you follow him.
  • The Chessmaster: He's been pulling off a very long plot, centuries in the making. And it's pretty clear he has everything planned out; when the Scarlet Empress vanished, he was relieved, as that shaved a few centuries off the whole thing.
  • The Necrocracy: Set up an apparent Type 4 that's really a Type 3.
  • Path of Inspiration: The religion he set up has souls who've fulfilled their purpose going on to a better reward. In reality, they're turned into soulsteel.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Green Lady, again. He knows she's a girl, but thinks she's very young for an Exalt (she's an elder) and is named Unfolding Corpse-White Lotus. Again, maybe.

Mask of Winters

The main reason the people of Creation know Deathlords exist, and the only one whose living identity we know (Larquen Quen). Four years before the return of the Solars, he marched out of the Underworld and laid siege to the city of Thorns. Thanks to his army of deathknights and his undead behemoth, he managed to claim the city. He now rules over it with a firm hand, and has even set about reestablishing trade relations with pretty much everyone. He's the "kind" tyrant, the one who rules the conquered city and plans to extend his hand to the rest of the world.

...except in Return Of The Scarlet Emperess, wherein Her Redness pwns him.
  • The Chessmaster: Not as keen on playing the long game as the Silver Prince, but he does have a hand in all the affairs of Thorns and is slowly working his grip outwards, both through his machinations and that ever-expanding shadowland of his.
  • Evil Overlord: Somewhat more suave about it than the First and Forsaken Lion.
  • Evil vs. Evil: He and Walker in Darkness do not like each other. Which makes sense because he killed Walker's living self (though thanks to Laser-Guided Amnesia, Walker doesn't know that).
  • Genre Blindness: His Fatal Flaw-he doesn't realize that a lot of his schemes are well-treaded in the supervillain world.
  • Kaiju: His personal behemoth, Juggernaut, is an undead citadel behemoth that was one of the key parts of his siege engine.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Ends up on the losing side in Return of the Scarlet Empress, when the Empress's first act upon returning is to grab the reins of the Realm Defense Grid and nuke Thorns right off the map.
  • Two-Faced: His title descends from the fact that he wears a mask with two faces -- one face is happy, and the other face is displeased. Each side takes up the front or back of his head, and he indicates his mood by reversing every joint in his body so that the side in question is now facing his subject.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Yup, the Green Lady's playing him, too -- and he's the one who's got the hooks in deepest, as he loved her before he went all Deathlord.

Princess Magnificent with Lips of Coral and Robes of Black Feathers

Princess Magnificent was one of the key figures in making sure the Great Contagion reached all corners of Creation. Resting high on the laurels of her success, she settled in the East and attempted to establish dominance as "the Heron" over three tribes with their own gods. And that's where she screwed up, as the three gods of what would become Great Forks drove her off with a story. A resonant, glorious story, but a story nonetheless. She was forced to flee, and her bosses weren't happy. She was about to be tossed headfirst into Oblivion until the First and Forsaken Lion spoke up on her behalf, offering to take her under his wing. She's been there ever since, extremely bitter and trying to make her own way.

  • Butt Monkey: She's the second lowest in regard amongst the Deathlords, was stripped of absolutely none of her faculties after being shanghaied into the Lion's service, and has spent every minute of her existence since then dreading and loathing.
  • Eldritch Location: Her former citadel, the House of Bitter Reflections. When she fled, she cursed it, and mortals who live there tend to die, their souls dragged screaming into the Void.
  • Overly Long Name: Her name is pretty much the longest of all the named Deathlords.
  • Parasol of Pain: Her weapon of choice is the Umbrella of Discord, woven from the flesh and bones of five dead Solars.
  • The Starscream: She's just looking for the right moment to stick the dagger between the Lion's shoulder blades.
  • You Have Failed Me...: Almost ended up a victim of this.

Walker in Darkness

Some Deathlords do it For the Evulz, for power, for revenge, or for the orgasms. Walker in Darkness does it because he truly, honestly believes that dumping all of Creation into the great cosmic garbage disposal is a good thing. The warrior-priest of the Deathlords, he regularly takes to the field and preaches the word of Oblivion. He's also got a grudge against Mask of Winters, but he'll be damned if he can remember why...

...Oh yeah, and the Green Lady is on his staff as well.

  • An Axe to Grind: His weapon of choice, the Ebon Spires of Pyrron, is a gigantic grimcleaver that no non-magical creature can ever hope to lift.
  • Colonel Badass: Whereas other Deathlords are content to just send their deathknights out with vague orders, the Walker is more than happy to join them on the field, fighting the same fight.
  • Evil vs. Evil: It's left unstated if he dislikes Mask Of Winters because of residual memories or because of the latter's recurrent Genre Blindness. Either way, they spend as much time scheming against each other as they do actually pursuing their goals.
  • Fantastic Caste System: For all his positive traits, the Walker in Darkness believes every Abyssal should be good at every part of their Caste skills, which means he'll occasionally have Daybreaks who specialize in necromancy and necromancy alone try to put together soulsteel warstriders.
    • This also results in some rather boneheaded position assignments-he gave a Dusk who is quite legtimately insane-and not Ax Crazy, insane-control of his armies, and his Moonshadow ambassador to the Funeral City of Sijan? An ex-gladiator.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Walker in Darkness doesn't remember that Larquen Quen, the Solar who became Mask of Winters, betrayed him and murdered him.
  • Unwitting Pawn: The Walker believes he wooed the Green Lady away from both Heaven and the command of the Mask of Winters. He is wrong on at least one count there.
  1. ↑ (Many players would argue that he's one out-of-universe too, but that's a matter for the YMMV tab. Don't get into it here.)
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