Exalted/WMG

The Unconquered Sun is an Alternate Universe version of Lucifer.

He's associated with light, he's the greatest of the Creator(s)'s servants, he betrayed his master(s)...about the only difference is that the Unconquered Sun won.

• This may shed new light on why the Solar Exalted were so quick to fall from grace themselves...it's In the Blood, you see.
  • The Great Curse was canonically caused by the Neverborn. That would explain why Hunters are all insane, though, if they're the new Solars.
• It's mentioned in Demon: the Fallen that Lucifer actually was able to rule for a time before God did an smackdown and things went back to being crap. Why is this important? The original idea (now dropped) for Exalted was that it was the precursor to the Old World of Darkness.
  • Note that the newer idea rumors Exalted to be a precursor to the real world, so maybe Sol was our Lucifer.
• Incidentally this also means that God is a chthuloid monster.
  • Unless the Yozis and the Neverborn actually being the Primordials before their defeat was just propaganda on the part of the gods, who would have a vested interest in demonizing their predecessors. Also, the Yozis only became Eldritch Abominations after being beaten; the whole multiple souls thing was an expression of their transcendence and general superiority, not incomprehensible monstrosity. Gaia is technically a Primordial, yet is 'normal' enough to still be worshipped by non-Immaculate mainstream humanity.
• Jossed by Glories of the Most High: the Unconquered Sun was specifically created by the Primordials to embody virtue. (This was deemed a necessity by them as the Ebon Dragon's concept required something to rebel against, as his shadow needed a light to cast it.)
  • This Josses it how?
    • Traditionally, Lucifer is created by God who embodies good and virtue. Unconquered Sun's creation is the exact opposite - he was created by an entity that embodies evil and malevolence(the Dragon's Shadow AKA Ebon Dragon). So, Lucifer=Unconquered Sun theory only holds water in very specific conditions. Also, Ebon Dragon is neither omnipotent, nor omniscient and not even omnipresent. He's also not the only creator nor even the greatest of them. So it would have to be a very alternate universe indeed.
    • The Ebon Dragon didn't create the Unconquered Sun. He got the Empyreal Chaos to do it.
    • Empyreal Chaos made the Daystar, the Ebon Dragon made the Unconquered Sun.
      • You're assuming, of course, that Judeo-Christian ideas of God and the history of the universe are infallibly accurate. In a White Wolf production, this is a very dangerous position to take.
• Alternatively, and taking a page from Gnosticism, the Unconquered Sun is Jesus and That-Which-Became-Malfeas was the Demiurge.
• This was actually canon for a long time, though in a circuitous route. In Hunter: The Reckoning, you find out that the Messengers have come to earth before and empowered mortals (the book makes it fairly clear that the Hunters are a new take on the Solars). You then find out, in Time of Judgment, that the Messengers are actually 1 Messenger: Lucifer, and this is not the first time he's tried this. Basically, until they moved the canon away from the World of Darkness, yes, the Unconquered Sun was Lucifer.
  • So in Demon and Hunter, God Is Evil and Satan Is Good, and The Bible's just wrong? That would mean that "God" in D:F is actually all the Primordials, not just one entity. It also doesn't work with the "Cain is an Abyssal, God is Sol" theory. The "God" in Vampire would have to be different from the "God" in Demon and H:tR. And if Lucifer is Sol what does that make the oWoD angels and demons? Angels = the devas and demons of Exalted, and oWoD demons = those who left their Yozis to become minor gods? It also begs the question why Sol Invictus would ask his new Chosen to kill all the Chosen of Luna and the Maidens, aka shapeshifters and mages.
    • It never mashed up perfectly, but that WAS the answer for a while.
    • Actually, it does not imply God Is Evil and Satan Is Good, as that would imply the Sun is Good. While later fluff trends in this direction, earlier fluff made the morality of what the Incarna did very blurry. Second, God does not have to be different from Vampire to Demon, just a different interpretation. Or, as one of the Hunter supplements indicated, God is another entity entirely and, eventually (another demon supplement backs this up) got pissed off at what happened, moved against the Sun, and finally set up Hell. Basically, the Demons in Dt F would be... gods. It was all very messy, but kind of fun to try to make sense of.

No Solars returned

Actually, all of the apparent Solars Shards which didn't get corrupted into Abyssals are Infernal speeper agents, whom the Yozi will reclaim command over once they have defeated the Empire and taken over Creation.

• Amusingly, this means that the Death Knights may be Creation's only hope.
• Given that the Green Sun Princes are apparently free-willed, this theory may just be an interesting Myth Arc idea.

Chejop Kejak is actually a Solar.

He orchestrated the deaths of all the others because There Can Be Only One.

• Jossed by Dreams of the First Age -- he has stats there, and they list him as a Sidereal, specifically a Chosen of Secrets.
  • Unless he's using Twisted Words Technique. Were you wearing your tinfoil hat when you read "Dreams of the First Age"?
• Aaaand, Jossed again by Scroll of Exalts, which has his current in-game stats. Essence 10 Sidereal Exalted, Chosen of Jupiter.

The Solar Usurpation was faked by the Solars.

As the tensions and rivalries among Solars reached their boiling point, the Deliberative decided that it would be best for creation to dissolve their government and persue their personal projects in private. To this end, they manipulated the Sidereals into a massive "extermination campaign" which removed the hundred or so least populat Solars (who would later be claimed by the Death Lords, and become Abyssals), and let the rest go into hiding. The Emissary of Nexus, the Perfect of Paragon, the Scarlet Empress, the Syndics, the Great Forks Trio, Tien Yu, Sessen Douji, The Bull of the North, Dukantha, and many others are all really Solars, still playing their game from the shadows of Creation. A handful have died over the years, resulting in the "returning" Solar Exalted.

• If anyone is capable of pulling off a scam so excellently that even omniscient narrators in a different reality are fooled, wouldn't it be the Solars?

The world of Golden Sun is the distant future of Creation.

Alchemy is Exaltation, and its return to the world via the Elemental Lighthouses and the Golden Sun (!!!) is the last stage of a Xanatos Gambit designed to grant its power equally to all mortals, rather than a small, powerful elite that would be tempted to abuse their power over un-Exalted mortals. The long period of being "sealed away" was to give new cultures completely independent of Exalted rulers a chance to develop--in other words, the Thousand Streams River, minus Lunar supervision. The dependence of Weyard upon Alchemy, and the absence of gods, is explained by the gods either having left to facilitate this plan, or having been absorbed into the mass of Exaltation before its being sealed away; this made Alchemy the only source of divine power left in the world, and explains why the world has been wasting away in its absence. The Imperial Mountain is, of course, Mount Aleph. Finally, the various elemental Adept tribes are the last remnants of Terrestrial Exaltation, which, as an inheritable trait, couldn't be completely removed from those bloodlines.

• The only problem I can see with this is that Wood and Earth have somehow been combined into a single element. Though that might provide another explanation for the dependence on Alchemy; with two elements merged, Creation became unstable.

The World Of Darkness is actually a prehistory of Exalted.

The World of Darkness is a very, very bad place to be a normal human, has many complex ways of making the existences of such humans constantly painful, and can be warped by someone with enough understanding of the rules, though all of that may be put on hold when the world seemingly ends, wiping out everything, then is remade in a new image - all traits ascribed to Creation under Primordial rule. When the Incarnae eventually rebel, they will reforge the World of Darkness into the far more human-friendly Creation.

• The WoD doesn't have to worry about Raksha, because Sol and Luna are holding them off full-time, and not playing the Games of Divinity.
  • Not to mention Adri án (who later became Adorjan) who formed an ever-flowing river bordering Creation.

Luna was an unshaped Fae.

Her chosen servants are shape shifters. Without the outside help of mystical tattoos the Wyld causes them to start mutating (reverting?) into bizarre monstrosities even faster than everyone else does. She has many roles, many faces she shows the world, and her waxing and waning controls the tides of the Wyld against Creation. Clearly, Gaia found an Unshaped and dipped it in Moonsilver.

• According to the 2nd edition Fair Folk supplement, the Primordials were originally Unshaped Fair Folk. They chose to become something else when they forged Creation.
  • The truth of that explanation is explicitly stated to be ambiguous at best. The Fair Folk care more about the fact that it makes a good story than about whether or not that's what actually happened.
• Jossed by Glories of the Most High.

The world of Girl Genius is a distant future of creation.

Sparks are exaltations altered to allow them to survive the colapse of creation. The Other is the one remaining Yozi.

The Games of Divinity are...

• ...a tabletop RPG.
• ...a metaphor for Poop Socking.
• ...an abstract representation of events in Creation, allowing those who play them a much higher level of influence and awareness in Creation than they could ever have by appearing in person. Thus, becoming absorbed in the Games is not a sign of negligence, after all. This also explains how the Incarnae could spend all their time playing the Games and still know pretty much everything that goes on in Creation.
  • This one is actually specifically spelled out as not the case in the very first place they appear, the aptly-named book The Games of Divinity. In fact, that was the one thing that that book definitively stated about the Games. Every other write-up on Yu-Shan since then has been very careful to specifically and definitively repeat that statement that, whatever the Games of Divinity are, they have no effect on Creation and are specifically not games involving the fate of Creation itself in any way.
• ...Exalted itself.
• ...something incredibly and hilariously inane, like tag or hide-and-seek.
• ...a simulation of our world.
• ...Pong.
• ... The Old World of Darkness.
• ... The New World of Darkness.
• ...all of the theories listed in this section. And none. It's a bit confusing, for mortals.
• a subtle trap left behind by the Primordials.
• ...a lie. The Incarnae rebelled for some other reason, and aren't interfering Creation for whatever handwavey reason all those other gods in assorted fictional settings don't interfere.
  • Maybe their noninterference was the price they paid to keep the Yozi bound for all time?
• ...Tetris.
• ...A literal cosmic Xbox. Or Empyrean Everquest. Or any other literal interpretation of the mocking nicknames fans give the Games.
• ...Calvinball.
• ...The Game.
• ...Dungeons And Dragons.
• ...Mortal Kombat.
• ...I Wanna Be The Guy.
• ...Cluedo.
• ...Monopoly. They want to stop playing, but they can't because somebody keeps landing on Free Parking whenever they're about to go bankrupt.
  • Probably the Maiden of Endings, for irony value.
• ...Nothing. The gods that play it just snicker the whole time, and make up elaborate rumors as to what other people should think the Games of Divinity are.
• ...Scissors, paper, rock.
• According to Glories of the Most High, they are merely a game, if a transcendent game operating on conceptual levels that even the gods can barely understand. Not an eidolon of reality, not fate, not anything like that, merely a games device. And one that's totally addictive to anyone less than a Primordial who sits down to play them, which would seem to be the same kind of posthumous revenge on the gods that the Great Curse was on the Exalted.
  • Also, the gods canonically did not rebel just to, or even primarily to, get their hands on the Games. The Unconquered Sun didn't even start playing them willingly, one of the last free acts of the Primordials was to coerce him to.
  • Whatever they are, we know they only have a limited number of controllers/pieces/whatever - one of the Primordials obsessed over it and would get antsy when it was someone else's turn. The scoring in the Sidereals book might just be total scores over a number of rounds.
  • Upon further reading of Infernals: Cosmic X-Box is pretty close to it. They have controllers (the section on Adorjan) and a power source (the Defiler Caste summary). It's just that it's a supernaturally addictive X-box powered by the world.

The Angelic Days-verse version of Kaworu is a Sidereal. Most likely, Chosen of Secrets.

He's extremely manipulative and cryptic, and knows more about what's going on than anyone else, including the supposed "experts". He's always...not quite at the center, but more just out of the spotlight of nearly every major event. He seems to have issues with fate and inevitability, and he seemed rather resigned to losing his friends at the end, as if it had happened many times before. Obviously the Sidereals still haven't gotten rid of the Arcane Fate, and his vanishing from everyone's records and memories was caused by his resplendent destiny reaching its expiration date.

The Sea of Chaos and the Wyld are one and the same.

Self-explanatory. Incidentally, this would make L-sama the true source of all Fair Folk. Lord of Nightmares, indeed...

The Breath of Fire setting exists in the future of Exalted

It would explain all the half-human hybrids.

The Jade Pleasuredome is a psychic amplifier

The Jade Pleasuredome has special dream-projecting machines, that record, store, and replay the experiences of everyone in the dome. The Games of Divinity are actually some kind of fun but simple activity. When the Incarnae first tried it, the sheer orgasmic feedback channeled mixed with the high hopes of the Incarnae mixed, and the Games have been a legend of lies ever since.

Exalted is what happens if the Akashic Brotherhood win the Ascension War.

This isn't an exact analogy, but the general theory is that whoever wins the ascension war gets to go off and make their own world - supported by their own paradigm. In the case of the Akashic Brotherhood, the notion of the disciplined body and mind giving rise to power (i.e. Essence) seems an exceptionally good fit, even leaving aside the cultural influences on creation. The Exalted themselves are more akin to the Hunters or Garou, due to the external source of their power, but the change in the dominant paradigm means that the spirits responsible took rather... different approaches in how they implemented their gifts.

Chejop Kejack was the original incarnation of Batman.

Think about it. Bruce Wayne is one of the world's foremost martial arts masters, and as a Chosen of Secrets, Chejop had one of the keenest analytical minds in all existence. Batman is simply what Chejop would have been had he never exalted. He shares the same brooding and somewhat treacherous nature, doing what he believes is absolutely necessary. Much like Chejop, Batman carries plans and information on how to take out his own comrades if necessary, though he lacks the original's foresight that having the loom of fate granted.

The Great Curse is part of some Solar's ambition to overthrow the Unconquered Sun.

The original Exaltation went to some psycho-Solar's head, deciding that if the Celestial Incarnae couldn't kill the Primordials that the Exalted could, the Exalted were better. However, the UCS is unbeatable in battle, so he decided to go by way of subversion, causing so much corruption and backbiting that the UCS would turn his head away from Creation in despair. Eventually, the eons would wear away his resolve and he would leave, allowing him to take over. He didn't exactly think the full ramifications out too well.

• • Jossed by Abyssals 2e, Glories of the Most High, and several other places: the canonical origin of the Great Curse is the Neverborn. Also, according to the UC's stats in Glories of the Most High, he's only unbeatable under certain circumstances: the UC's base power level is "merely" that of an extremely extremely powerful god. His "perfect" effects (and he has perfects not just for defense but for damn near everything he does) all possess variants of the Four Flaws of Invulnerability: they can and will crap out if he's maneuvered into circumstances where he has to act against or suppress the relevant Virtue. Granted, as the god who not only embodies but actually defines the four Virtues, this is easier said than done, but it is possible. Just. Barely.
    • ... exactly. According to this theory (which, yes, contradicts canon dating back to the Corebook about Neverborn being the culprits), some Solar created the Great Curse so that Sol would get so disgusted with Creation he would systematically suppress his Virtues, becoming beatable, which is exactly what happened.

The nature of stunts

The 2e Gods and Elemental describes will as the root of existence, the foundation of creation. Stunting works because you dare to spit in reality's eye, and impose your will instead of the world's. The Solar victory over the Primordials is a result of this, which is why Adorjan can't stop laughing about. Ditto with the Dragon-Blooded victory over the Solars. If a farm boy ever tried to kill a deathlord with a rusty sword, and didn't immediately exalt (thus evening the odds) , the deathlord would be permanently destroyed as reality buckled to the sheer ridiculousness of it.

• Stunts have already been explained in canon -- it's the pattern spiders, who tweak the laws of physics in the favor of people who really impress them.
  • Then again, creatures outside of Fate can still Stunt - in most cases better than Creation-Born. So there must be something else going on...
    • Well, out in the Wyld, things explicitly run on narrative causality, not physics. Of course stunting would work better there.
    • Autochthon built the pattern spiders and has his own set of Mark 2's.

The Games of Divinity is a sentient being, and has been manipulating everything.

It manipulated the Primordials into making the gods, it manipulated the gods into making the Exalted, it manipulated the Sidereals into betraying the Solars, its manipulating the Solars into taking the Realm back...All of it. Evidence? Look at the initials. G.O.D. There is truly a supreme being/biggest fish, and it is the Glorious Golden Gameboy.

• Interestingly, there is no stated "God" of the Games or the Jade Pleasure Dome... but in World of Darkness, one of God's names (in the East) is the August Personage of Jade. Coincidence? I think NOT

The Scarlet Empress is a Solar.

Think about it: she's much older then the other Dragon-Blooded, and she's better then all of them. Perhaps she's a Solar that impersonates a Dragon-Blooded.

• Word of God about the upcoming "Return of the Scarlet Empress" supplement says otherwise: part of the Ebon Dragon's master plan for the Akuma Empress is that she has access to the high-level Terrestrial Exalted Dynasty charms and is the direct ancestor of the vast majority of Dragon-Blooded now alive. Which, of course, means that she is a Dragon-Blooded (as the Dynasty charms don't work for anyone but Dragon-Blooded).
  • It's out now. It has stats. She's an Earth-aspected Dragon-Blood.
• The age thing can be explained with four words: "Gem of Immortality hearthstone". As for power, well, most Dragon-Bloods are limited by their lifespans - which, with said gem, suddenly stops being an issue for Her Redness.
• There's also an example of an unusually long-lived Dragon-Blooded in Dreams of the First Age -- Saibok Gauto, who was over 3000 years old (even if hopelessly senile). Add in that the Scarlet Empress had Legendary Breeding (hell, in the Age of Sorrows the Breeding background is practically defined by how genetically close you are to the Scarlet Empress) and the part where the entire Bronze Faction was manipulating the Loom of Fate hardcore to enable her rise to power, and its hardly surprising that she'd end up with an unusual lifespan.
  • jossed in Return of the Scarlet Empress. Her stats are that she is an earth aspect dragon blood (that is Akuma or just under controll of the ring).

The title Glories of the Most High doesn't refer to the divinity or rank of the Incarnae.

It refers to the fact that they are all hopelessly addicted to divine super-drugs. "Glories" could refer hallucinogenic visions or just a general narcotic haze, and as for "Most High"...do I even need to explain that one?

Regent Fokuf isn't as inept as he seems

After successfully maneuvering the great houses into giving him the throne, he realized that the only way he'd be allowed to keep it is if he pulls a Shojo Gambit on everyone. This possibility is acknowledged in Compass of Celestial Directions Part I: The Blessed Isle.

• This was acknowledged at least as far back as the first edition book The Autochthonians.

Autochton is Primus

Huge, planet sized guy, with robotic champions. And Unicron is Oblivion combined with all the Neverborn.

Exalted is Scientologist propaganda

YOU TOO can have incredible cosmic power by awakening the soul-fragments of long-dead beings that attached to your own soul!

The Island is a Primordial that ran away during the war

Jacob and the Man in Black are probably two of its third-circle souls, but the Light at the Heart of the Island is probably its fetich, considering what happened when it was (temporarily) extinguished.

Malfeas is actually Divis Mal, Villain Sue of Aberrant fame.

Divis Mal was a firm believer that the powerful make their own rules, which describes Malfeas' philosophy precisely. And at the end of Aberrant's timeline, ascending rapidly in power towards near-omnipotence, Divis Mal took all his supporters and left for another reality to create their own world -- while at the beginning of Exalted's timeline, a group of near-omnipotent beings appeared from nowhere to create the world. The fact that most of the authors of Aberrant immediately went on to write Exalted plays a role in it, too. This theory has been referred to directly by some of the game's writers.

• Except this doesn't fit Malfeas' nature or thought process at all. Malfeas is totally solipsistic. "The powerful get to make their own rules" fits Cecylene, not Malfeas

The Perfect of Paragon is a Sideral.

This would explain, among other things, why he hasn't Exalted as a Solar. And why he doesn't have an actual name.

• Alternatively (this is a blatant rip-off of something Path mentioned on The Freedom Stone, not my idea; I just think it's cool), he's an Alchemical.
• Well, Co TD:South explicitly mentions that he's a former scavenger with nothing but enlightened essence. Only the sceptre kept him alive so long. Also, his lack of Solar Exaltation is far from a mystery: Solar Exaltations generally happen when one is in deep trouble (be it an enemy army surrounding your troops, being cornered by a few enemies, or simply having a mixture of Villainous BSOD and mid-life crisis (That'd be Panther, the signature Zenith)). The Prefect never really had any challenge, his sceptre did all the work for him, all he had to do was minor political manoeuvring at the beginning of his reign. If he was a Sidereal, he'd rule half of creation by now with the resources he has.

Dace is actually Andy Parsons.

Just look at a picture of Mr. Parsons. Their faces are almost identical. Just imagine Andy Parsons with massive pauldrons, and you've got Dace, right there. And have you ever seen them together in the same room?

The Discworld is located out in the Wyld somewhere.

Great A'Tuin is the Primordial of Narrative, who realised that the Exalted were going to win the Primordial War and wandered off into the Wyld with a chunk of Creation to play out his stories in peace.

• The Auditors could be first-circle demons of She Who Lives In Her Name, who never got along very well with A'Tuin.
• Lu-Tze is clearly a Sidereal. Perhaps too clearly.

Autochthon is growing something.

Autochthonia is filled with tubes containing nutrients that can support human life. But they don't seem to be for the benefit of humans. They don't have convenient outlets, so humans had to learn to tap them. And they're just as common in the uninhabited regions. Obviously all the nutrient lines are actually feeding something biological in the uncharted reaches.

• More likely that the nutrient flows are an aspect of the physical weakness that his Charms give him. We know that he is dying because he can't feed himself without access to the Wyld, so the nutrient flows are likely mostly for himself.

Gaia doesn't love Luna.

When your girlfriend heads off into the Wyld and doesn't come back for thousands of years, you should probably get the hint. Sure, Gaia's jouten is still around. But even Luna can tell that isn't actually her. Gaia just lost interest in Luna and took off, with a lie about the "Shining Answer" to soften the blow.

• Objection: Gaia is still around! Gaia is also exploring the depths of the Wyld, and has been for thousands of years. There is no contradiction between these two statements. Primordials can do weird things like manifest in multiple places at once, and a Primordial's jouten is that Primordial--if you kill them, it's Neverborn time, regardless of the status of their other jouten. If the Gaia in Creation dies, so does the one in the Faraway, and vice versa. Gaia is only gone in the sense that she has only one jouten holding down the fort in Creation at the moment--but that jouten is still her, with all of her power, intellect, and personality.

Gaia has a second set of Exalts, who are secretly watching, waiting for her to send a signal...

The Terrestrial Exalts were created with her blessing, but she has a second, secret set of Exalts, waiting in the wings for her. There's a very small number of them - a hundred, like the Sidereal - divided into four Castes based on the four seasons (none exists for the Calibration). The four Castes are centered around Virtues, similar to the Fair Folk; they have subtler anima banners so that no one notices them in action. Whatever Gaia seeks out in the Wyld, she knows enough that she set the Gaian Exalts up to shield Creation from it. It's rumored that Luna is the only other person who knows about these Exalts as a collective, to keep Nara-O and the Celestial Order from finding out. Their special power relates to Geomancy, as the Sidereals' relates to Astrology and the Abyssals' to Necromancy

• My belief is that if Gaian Exalted exist, they are actually repurposed Exalted shards from lost Exalted types whose concepts were eradicated in the Three Spheres Cataclysm (i.e.: the shards of Fltarlgl are functional, but since they can only attach to people who embody Fltarlgl, and Fltarlgl does not exist except as some random string of letters meant to embody a concept this writer can't actually fathom, they're kinda SOL).
• For the Record, my Gaia Season/Virtue pairings: Spring = Compassion (A time of sowing, new birth), Summer = Valor, Fall = Temperance (a moderation between the extremes), and Winter = Conviction (a hardy season, testing those who walk through it). In theory, they may be free of the Great Curse, since: a) the Yozi didn't know of them, as secretive as they were; or b) they hadn't been created yet. As child of Gaia, they also may have their own Shintai charms, since she IS a Primordial. Where Alchemicals develop attachments and "moduals," Gaian Exalts "grow" some of their charms. Nothing else has really been defined, since I'm not good at rule-writing (esp. new Charms), but here's my basic concepts.
  • Of course, everyone in Exalted has to have a Fatal Flaw, no matter how minor it may be, so a big fear for them is the potential to become assimilated into Gaia's ecosystem and become little more than a slightly-individualized Hive Mind.

Raksha are Role-Players.

When they take on a shape, they have created a PC. The mortals they interact with are NPCs. That's why raksha seem so alien to mortals; we live according to principles and rules they cannot ever understand, as they are fictional and are bound by rules of reality which are dependent on die-rolling. The raksha who turned themselves into Primordials are normal people who became the creators and writers of RPGs. The exalted are seen by the raksha as essentially NPCs who took the games the writers made and took them over (metaplot or simply NPCs who inject the setting with imagination and variety).

• Not so much WMG, really. It's one of the easiest and fastest ways to describe Raksha to people having difficulty understanding them. Then everything falls into place.

The 100 children at the end of Rot SE are the new Sidereals

In the comics, it isn't said if any Sidereals escaped or not; the book allows for some to have done so, but that was more for Sidereal characters. If all one hundred were murdered or fell in the final battle, the Maidens or Lytek could have easily pointed the remainder of the Empire and the Gods in the direction of the reincarnations of their Exaltations.

• Not WMG, it's... exactly what was intended.

Little Beam will replace the Unconquered Sun

When the Ebon Dragon kills the UC, Little Beam will step up; he has the personality and virtue needed to become the new son. That's why Jupiter sealed all of his records - she couldn't risk anyone discovering his Destiny or how to alter it.

The Maiden of Wisdom is the Mother of the other Maidens

There are 15 other Maidens, each of which has 20 Exalts; they are, in turn, the children of the Maiden of Wisdom who sacrificed herself to stop the Three-Spheres Cataclysm from spreading. She will be born again (and again) by the Greater Astrology which bears her name.

Manosque Cyan will become the new Ebon Dragon

After she's knocked out during the inquisition on the Blessed Isle, she'll use her powers to escape, only to find that the Dragon is dead and now a Neverborn. She'll return to Malfeas and begin developing his powers, until she has developed his Cosmic Principle and replaced him.

The Ring will undergo a change after the Dragon dies

The Wedding Ring is forged from one of the Ebon Dragon's 3rd Circle Souls; when he dies, his souls fall with him and become Raitons. The Ring is STILL one of his souls, which means that, instead of giving the Ebon Dragon's Charms, it now gives the Charms of the Dragon That Was.

Whenever the Dragon (or any of the other Yozi who've undergone Fetich death) dies, the Neverborn will learn the ritual for making Akuma.

The Neverborn never learned how to make Akuma; the Yozi developed the ritual for that AND the Exaltation inversion. They taught the latter to the Neverborn as part of the deal for the Solar Exaltations in the Jade Prison, but never gave them the techniques for making Akuma. After the Dragon (or one of the other Yozis who have been trapped in Malfeas) dies and becomes a Neverborn, he (or she, or it) will come with the knowledge as to how to make Akuma; with it, the Neverborn can corrupt non-Abyssals into Akuma.

A Solar can use their own personal warstrider to pilot the Sun in giant warstrider mode, which in turn can pilot Autochthon, who wields the sword of X Creation after piloting Mount Meru

Mainly because you can never have enough meta-,mecha. Plus this possibly happended before versus Malfeas.

• • So... that makes Malfeas the Anti-Spiral King? I'm okay with this.

All Solars become ghosts.

We know plenty of Solars who have an exaltation that belonged to someone else, and they're casually referred to as "incarnations". But there's not a single mention of anyone who is the true reincarnation of a Solar, having received their hun soul at birth. The explanation is simple: the Solar exaltation selects for people bloody-minded enough to become ghosts after death, and none of them reincarnate. It's canonical that Solar po souls almost always form hungry ghosts, this is just the other side of the coin.

• Problem: Ghosts can, and usually do, decide to eventually let go and pass through Lethe. This includes Solar ghosts-Shogun Widowmaker and the Deathlords are explicitly called out as aberrations, in that they're evil, grasping jerks without the Great Curse.

Elloge, the Sphere of Speech, is TV Tropes

Someone here help, I got this idea from the Poison Oak Epileptic Trees page where someone said TV Tropes is an Eldritch Abomination and it just fit.

The Ebon Dragon's plan in Rot SE is oddly out of character because he was always supposed to lose.

The Players have done everything right. The Army of Light is impossibly strong. The Green Sun Princes and their Abyssal stooges may have done the impossible (as Solars are wont to do) and Conquered the Sun, but the Maidens are prepared to provide a replacement, going so far as to use a redeemed Abyssal, ensuring that the Sun is not tarnished by the Great Curse. The new Sun's former existence as a mortal may even allow her to subvert the programing inherent in the gods that prevents them from harming the Primordials, allowing her to face the Ebon Dragon in person. Even the Daystar is fully operational. The Ebon Dragon's wedding may have gone perfectly, and Gaia is terribly wounded, but even as the ceremony concludes, the Fiends, the Serenity Akuma presiding, and even the Queen of Hell herself conspire to give the Army of Light the final tools they will need to destroy the Shadow of All Things - after all, betrayal of the Ebon Dragon is inherently service to him.

The Army marches, the Sun shines, the Daystar obliterates, and the Dragon's servants betray. Earth is healed, the Shadow's works cast down, and the Dragon himself is slain.

Just as planned.

The Ebon Dragon had finally figured out that he was the problem linking all his failures; that his own nature was what was holding him back and what would ultimately cause his demise. Faced with self-destruction, he selfishly chose to betray his own nature to preserve his existence. He crafted the ultimate tale of megalomaniacal villainy, one his enemies could never resist the urge to thwart. He set them up against a suitably terrifying and invincible dragon: of course, his enemies would assume, a coward such as he could never bring himself to face them in a form less impossible to slay; surely he must have forgotten that they achieve the impossible all the time. It would never occur to any of them that a coward such as the Ebon Dragon could betray his own Fetich Soul and force it to take the fall for him.

The being that had once been the Shadow of All Things would reform in a manner that could not be predicted, but it would have a chance to exist in a way that the Ebon Dragon never could. Even if it were to reform in perfect reflection of its self-created nemesis the Sun, the very concept of perfect invincibility would be undermined, and so to must be the concept of perfect failure. The Dragon Reborn might have a chance at actually succeeding at something for once in its miserable existence.

And if the unthinkable should happen and the Solars should somehow FAIL to do the impossible, then he rules the world with a shadowy fist for a while. Good enough. The plan can always be tried again when the inevitable uprising finally comes.

Of course, being a plan of the Ebon Dragon, it has one humongous hole in it: it relies on none of the Army of Light being clever enough to realize that the dancing shadow on the ground might actually be more important that the great honking dragon casting it, and focusing their attacks on it instead.

But maybe the Neverborn have the right idea anyway. Maybe it's time to stop trying to screw all the other players and just kick the board over already.

Not that the Neverborn actually want anything to do with him, of course. He's enough of a pain already.

• So being all about betrayal, he decides the only chance he has to succeed is to betray himself? Very meta.

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The Primordials weren't evil

The Rebellion seems awfully similar to killing your parents to play on the X-box. The only bad things the game books say about the Empyreal Chaos's rule was that the gods were forced to work like slaves. Which isn't so bad in the light that now they neglect creation almost entirely, and the Celestial Bureaucracy is the most corrupt organization in existence. The only evil primordial was the Dragon's Shadow, who wouldn't appreciate other Primordials stealing his concept anyway. However, he got bored (being an evil overlord with no rebellion is awfully boring), and forced the Sun to wage war against the Primordials, and the other gods were only too happy to go along with it. However, the Sun being the Sun, he had to go and win. The Primordials imprisoned became evil because the Exalted mutilated their souls. Unfortunately, the Incarnae weren't as good as ruling as they hoped, and everything kinda went to hell.

• ....I thought this was canon. Truth is, from everything that can be ascertained, the Primordials were uncaring, not cruel. Taking apart the Clay Man to see how he worked and to torment Autocthon was sort of like the cool kids stealing the creepy nerd's favorite action figure and looking at the inside before putting it back together haphazardly from their perspective. Jerky, but not evil. As mentioned in the Character Sheet, the Yozis only really became bitter and malevolent after their imprisonment for things they couldn't understand. The part about the Sun is wrong, though; Compass of Celestial Directions: Autocthonia makes it clear he thought the Primordials were being callous based on the ambivalent attitude they had towards humans and Dragon Kings.

The Unconquered Sun is the Ebon Dragon's Heart

The Heart soul is the soul that defines a primordial. It makes them what they are. They have power, but can't act without it. The Dragon's Shadow was so heartless that he literally had no heart. So he had nigh-unimaginable power, but no ability to express it. So, like any other primordial would he fashioned a heart for himself. There is no shadow without light to cast it, and there is no villany without good to contrast with it. Just as the Dragon embodies darkness, villainy, and failure so the UCS must embody light, heroism, and perfection. The Unconquered sun defines the Dragon through contrast.

The Well of the Void is the Shinma of Annihilation

The Shinma are basically physical laws of overarching concepts that define The World of Exalted. Before the Exalted slew the Primordials, nothing was ever destroyed. When they did, the Slain Primordials became a paradox. They're essence couldn't be reabsorbed into Lethe, as that was designed for specifically for Creation's mortals. They couldn't be reabsorbed into the Wyld, because they were in Creation or Yu-Shan. So a new Shinma was introduced so the laws that govern The World of Exalted would still fit the reality. Perhaps the Shinma of sparation recognized Destruction then.

• • The shinma don't work like that. They define something by being its opposite, like Nirguna who defines existence by not existing. So a shinma of 'things can cease to exist'(which is what a 'Shinma of Annihilation' would be) would define ceasing to exist by being impossible to make cease to exist. Oblivion may be an aspect of said Shinma, just as Nishkriya's aspects are weapons, but it can't be a shinma of annihilation.

They will make an Exalted videogame

That would be fucking awesome