Sidereals

ATTENTION: Its pronounced "/saɪˈdɪəriəl/". Anyone caught referring to them as "side reels" will be sold to the fair folk for a much deserved mind fucking.

Playing Sidereals: If your game isn't at least this weird by the end of the first session you're doing it wrong.

Reality warping kung fu bureaucrats fighting an endless war to make sure nobody can remember who they are or why they're fighting an endless war to make people forget that they're fighting an endless war to-

....

What were we talking about? Right, Sidereals. Like everybody else in Exalted they're assholes, and probably the reason creation is in the sorry ass state it is, but they are also one of the few factions successfully keeping things from going completely tits up. Their sacred charge is to guard the loom of fate and maintain creation. In practice they spend most of their time bickering amongst themselves and viciously abusing the loom while pawning any real work off onto the Dragon-Blooded.

Notable Sidereals

Chejop Kejak

Badass grandpa, leader of the bronze faction, and by default everybody else who was smart enough to fall in line. If you want to fight him in your campaign he's an essence ten Sidereal who knows all the standard charms in addition to celestial/terrestial sorcery and the violet bier of sorrows, charcoal march of spiders, and prismatic arrangement of creation styles. Oh and he has a staff that beats the destiny out of you. So enjoy your TPK. Un-canonically he ends his 4995 year career leading a failed strike team against the infernal Scarlet Empress....he was only five years away from retirement, poor old sod.

The Green Lady

A Sidereal attached to the death lords. She's currently playing a con so magnificently long that not even she (he?...it?) knows which of her five bosses she's actually working for, but she (he?...it?) does know that they are sleeping with all of them.

Ayesha Ura

Leader of the gold faction who want to con the Solars into doing their work for them, because Solars pwn everything and can therefore solve everyone's problems forever. This is ignoring the obvious downside that Solars don't like to be used as pawns and can break Creation if you piss them off, say by using them as pawns.

Nazri

"Leader" of the Sidereals who think that arguing over the solars is stupid and everyone in the Bronze and Gold factions should get back to doing their own damn jobs. Has a colossal murder-on for the Fair Folk.

Protips

• With the 2.5 errata Sidereals are, by most accounts, finally playable
• Most Sidereal Martial Arts are still very broken. Use with caution.
• Sidereals are mechanically quite limited in that accord to RAW they cannot design their own custom charms. This makes problem solving for things they don't have charms for very difficult. Consider investing in side-lined skills - Sorcery (and/or even Necromancy), Martial Arts (see above), sometimes even thaumathurgy can give you some edge.
• The book tells you to get the Ox-Body Technique Charm as many times as possible, as extra health levels are needed against some of the more powerful enemies in Exalted. This is a grotesque lie. Having a large essence and Willpower pool and therefore the ability to use many magical dodge-anything Charms gives you dramatically better value. (Slightly fixed as of the Scroll of Errata, but increasing your pool of magical power is still better value for most characters than purchasing Ox-Body Technique.)
• Depending on the theme of your game, Sidereals can be VERY versatile and varied: A game centered on a circle of bronze-faction sids can be quite fun - or as gold-sids trying to keep Solars in check
• With the right archery charms you can, instead of arrows, shoot water, love, justice, racist abuse, or anything smaller than an arm (Like hedgehogs, snakes and hacked off limbs) at people. You can also turn it into a dinosaur mid-flight.
• Arcane fate, the mechanic by which pretty much everyone forgets a sidereal once out of sight, can be a bitch depending on how the ST handles it. It can be kinda infuriating when the guy who gave you a quest forgets who you are and what he told you to do.

Exalted Classes
Solars - Lunars - Sidereals - Dragon-Blooded - Infernals - Abyssals Alchemicals - Liminal - Getimian - Exigents - Fair Folk Jadeborn - God-Blooded - Mortals