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The Elder Scrolls

2019-07-31T02:19:24Z

2601:1C1:8904:D7C0:F1E7:437E:5CE9:AB8D: /* The Elder Scrolls VI */ Hammerfell not Hammerfall

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[[File:Crabomancy.jpg|300px|thumb|right|During the Oblivion Crisis, the Dunmer of House Redoran revived a whole city, Ald'ruhn, which was made out of shell of the Great Skar to fight on their side, as a Giant Friendly Crab. This series is hardcore like that. They still lost.]]
'''The Elder Scrolls''' is a [[video game|vidya]] series, and the setting of five main games and a number of spinoffs. Despite being a vidja, it is considered a type II game.

/tg/ also has a [[Scrollhammer|40k/WHFB hack named Scrollhammer]], [[Scrollhammer 2nd Edition|Infinity hack 2nd edition]], and a number of pen and paper games (notably [[Morrowind PNP]] and the [[Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG|UESRPG]]) set in [[The Elder Scrolls]] universe.

Its canon is notoriously unstable and intentionally 'postmodern'. Long story short: imagine every canon clusterfuck 40K has ever experienced, only there are no editions to draw a neat line between lore changes. And on at least one occasion, time has been known to break in order to allow simultaneous mutually exclusive outcomes. You know how in 40K everything is canon, but not everything is necessarily true? Here, nothing is canon and everything is true, especially when it contradicts itself, so histories are intentionally interpretive and unreliable.

==Setting==
[[File:Elder_Scrolls_Cosmology.jpg|400px|thumb|right|An approximation of the cosmology of the Elder Scrolls. Not shown: mindfucks.]]
The games mainly take place in Tamriel, a continent consisting of nine separate lands. After being [[Anal Circumference|buttfucked]] by the [[Eldar|Ayleid]] for several centuries, humanity rises up and overthrow their elven overlords, and took control themselves. Then, a few thousand years later, a man named [[God-Emperor|Tiber]] [[Alpharius|Septim]] steps up and leads his armies to [[Great Crusade|conquer all of Tamriel to found the Third Empire of Cyrodiil]]. But instead of exterminating all the elves and beast races, they were allowed to co-exist with the other races and a time of prosperity began, ending with the death of Emperor [[Star Trek|Jean-Luc Picard the 7th]], and [[Khorne|Mehrunes Dagon]] then began to fuck his way from [[Warp|Oblivion]] into Tamriel, starting a chain of events that resulted in him being kicked back into hell by the Emperor's lost son, [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Sean Bean]].

Being Sean Bean meant he died in the process, and without an Emperor the Empire began to crumble. The Aldmeri Dominion (think Ayleid 2.0) sensed their weakness and began a war to subjugate the lesser races. The Empire only barely managed to stop them, and a tense cease-fire is currently in effect. The fluff of this series, unfortunately, suffers greatly from dissonance between written background and shown foreground due to all the shit mentioned in the intro.

There's also a bunch of other weird cosomology crap involved, but it's all kind of trippy and kind of in a grey area when it comes to canon. Don't think too much about it, unless you're into that. The setting works if you don't care for it, and it works if you do. The games themselves don't acknowledge the "deeper" lore outside some in-game books and a few references thrown in some main-story dialogue.

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If you ''do'' want to read on some of the (possibly) weirdest, at times incomprehensible, yet at times original without being ~~subversive because we can~~ lore ever written, click to open.
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'''Creation of the world'''

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJD-Ufi1jGk Listen to this.] This is the main theme of Morrowind, the third game in the series. It also contains the history of the cosmology of The Elder Scrolls. Listen to it, because it's a damn fine tune. But as you listen to it, you might realise there are no spoken words in this music. So how can it tell the history of a setting? Well, sit that five-dollar ass of yours down before I make [[Tzeentch|change]].

Long ago there was an entity who had fallen deeply in love, but his brother loved the same person, so he out of jealousy killed his loved one. That brought such distress to him that he fell into a coma of sorts, he "hid in a sun" and started dreaming. Thus he became The Godhead. From his dreams sprung Anu and Padomay, Stasis and Change. These "brothers" (the term used in the loosest sense here, solely on being related but different forces) accidentally created Nir, Grey maybe, personification of creation itself. But Padomay grew jealous of the relationship between Anu and Nir and out of spite decided to break her. Nir was killed and Creation was shattered, maimed for ever. Anu then fought Padomay and they were cast out of time forever, even though they still exist and will always exist as long as there is Order and Chaos. You might have thought to yourself, "Didn't that happen twice?", yes it did. Everything in the Dream mimics original Godhead and his mind, everything comes from it. In this case Anu was avatar of the Dreamer while Padomay represented Godheads brother and Nir their shared love. Same scenario of two mirror brothers, one being force of Stasis, The King and one being force of Change, The Rebel always repeats. The souls or core concepts of Anu and Padomay on which all of creation runs are called, Anui-El (IS) and Sithis (IS NOT).

Eventually from endless energies and "blood" of Anu and Padomay came the Et'ada (Et'ada means original spirit, while Ada means just generally any spirit), each representing different idea and concepts. Et'ada tended to categorize themselves with Anu or Padomay. Auri-El, Kyne and other Et'ada who lean more towards Order are Anuic while more chaotic ones like Mehrunes Dagon or Molag Bal are more Padomaic. Later after creation of realms those who were Anuic became Aedra, which means "our ancestor" in Ehlnofex, because Aedra took part in creation of the world we usually visit in TES games, while those Padomaic spirits who did not take part in creation and created their own solo realms became Daedra, which translates to "not our ancestor" (though that was not always the case, Jyggalag for example is a Daedra, but he is clearly Anuicly aligned.)

In the Dawn Era, time, in the shape of Akatosh (Ara, Auriel, Auri-El Tosh'Raka, AKHAT; take your pick), was non-linear. It flowed freely wherever it wanted, without direction, form of shape. In this temporal soup floated the souls of the proto-Mer. Think pea soup, except with millions of Ada of all sorts instead of peas. Time, in this form, was a single point. It was called the Ur-Tower, Ada-Mantia. Except it was not really a point or a tower, but more of a sound.

''Bom. (0:00 to 0:01 of the song)''

The Et'Ada saw it, and it was good. Except for one. A being born from Padomay who wanted no name, but eventually came to be first known as Lorkhan (LKHAN, Shor, Sep, Shezarr, maybe even Shepard). Having little interest with the rest of the Et'Ada's activities, or more likely inactivity, he spent his time wandering the Aurbis (all of existence), eventually coming to the very edge. He saw the universe, shaped like a wheel with eight spokes. Then he looked at the wheel from another perspective, and it looked like a Tower, a perfect line. An I.

"I."

This was his first word, and he would never, ever forget it. He understood everything right then and there, all of creation and its true nature was revealed to him.

Wanting to share this revelation with the other Ada but knowing that none of them would be able to comprehend it as they were, he came up with a plan for a creation and showed it to Magnus, The Grand Architect. Magnus went along with the plan and recruited the help of the Et'ada that we know as Aedra today: Akatosh, Dibella, Julianos, Kynareth, Mara, Stendarr, Zenithar and many other lesser spirits that you probably never heard of to serve as the basis of their creation. Except that they did not know this last part, Lorkhan had fooled them. Their divinity was drained into the creation, or re-creation of long shattered Nir, Nirn was born. When they discovered they were tricked the Et'Ada were [[RAGE|not amused]]. Magnus buggered off into infinity along with his servants, tearing through the edge of Mundus and creating The Sun and The Stars in the process...yeah, everything you see in sky is a giant non euclidean portal to realm of infinite energy, the original crib of Et'ada, The Aetherius. Others gave Lorkhan his due: [[RIP AND TEAR|Trinimac tore his heart out and Auriel(Elven aspect of Akatosh) shot it out over the sea]], where it landed in a spot and created a crater that would gain the moniker "Red Mountain". The halves of Lorkhan's body became the moons Masser and Secunda, [[Emperor|the last visible remnants of a corpse god.]] But this was [[just as planned]], throughout the whole thing the Heart of Lorkhan was laughing at them like a maniac, because Red Mountain was Red Tower, the second Tower, and the beat of his heart would be added to the sound of Akatosh. His Heart would become the prison for The Dragon God of Time.

''Bom bom. (0:01 to 0:07 of the song)''

This completely, utterly and irrevocably buttfucked spacetime. Because there now was a second point in existence, time could no longer flow anywhere it wanted and had to flow from Akatosh to Lorkhan. With time becoming linear, Nirn could start to grow. Aedra were drained and "dying", so they had to reproduce, create worshipers or someone that could sustain them. Slowly Ehlnofey, the "Earth Bones", Ada of all forms and shapes, some descendants of crazy reproduction, started popping up. Some created simple truths and laws for Nirn, for example gravity, others reproduced more, creating less energized spirits that slowly stabilized in different ways, slowly becoming mortal. They are ancestors of Humans (Men) and Elves (Mer). These Ehlnofey fortified their borders from the chaos outside, hid their pocket of calm, and attempted to live on as before. Other Ehlnofey arrived on Nirn scattered amid the confused jumble of the shattered worlds, wandering and finding each other over the years. Eventually, the wandering Ehlnofey found the hidden land of Old Ehlnofey, and were amazed and happy to find their kin and a comfy place, built by them. The wandering Ehlnofey expected to be welcomed into the peaceful realm, but the Old Ehlnofey being arrogant douchebags, refused to accept their kin. Anywho, war broke out between them and raged across the whole of Nirn and sunk large part of planet in ocean. Old Ehlofney (the asshole ones), who primarly lived in Tamriel, became Elves (gee, you didn't expect that, did you?), while their kin on other continents became Humans (Yokudans, Atmorans and Akaviri/Tsaesci).

''Bom bom. (0:07 to 0:39 of the song)''

The Mer, one of the first to mortalize were not [[RAGE|not pleased]] by this. They blamed Lorkhan for their predicament, naming him the Doom Drum, bringer of mortality, death and the herald of all misfortune. But they made the best out of the situation, and the races of Mer prospered. New Towers came into existence, one by one: Walk-Brass Tower, White-Gold Tower, Snow-Throat Tower, Crystal-Like-Law, Orchalc, Khajit and Tree-Sap.

''Bom bom. (0:39 to 1:19 of the song)''

But, as time went on (something new back then), more and more happened. New peoples stood up. Empires were founded and fell. The races of Men were discovered, the beast races prospered, and the Empires of Men were founded.

''Bom bom. (1:19 to 1:42 of the song)''

Yet nothing is eternal. The Thalmor, the ruling faction of the High Elves, desires nothing less than the destruction of the Doom Drum and all of creation so time once again becomes non-linear, mortality would get destroyed and they could return their eternal soup-floating. Removing Lorkhan would stop the music of existence, and everything once again becomes singular.

''Bom bom. Bom. (1:42 to 1:55 of the song)''

And then... silence.

'''On the importance of Towers'''

For every Tower there is a Stone, an artifact that can be used to activate or deactivate a Tower. For Ada-Mantia Tower this is the Moment of Creation itself (making it rather difficult to obtain), for Red Tower this is the Heart of Lorkhan and for White-Gold Tower this is the Amulet of Kings. The Towers serve many purpose besides keeping [[Homestuck|spacetime]] from becoming a massive alinear clusterfuck. What is this? Well, it's easier for you to do it yourself that for me to explain. Make yourself a print of the map of Tamriel further down on this page. Then get yourself a pin board and a black, a red, two brown, three white, and two green tacks. Put the map against the pinboard and do the following:

*Put the white tacks through the map in the Imperial City in Cyrodiil, the Throat of the World slightly south-east of Whiterun in Skyrim, and Crystal Tower in the Summerset Isles (northern part, west of King's Watch). (White-Gold, Snow-Throat and Crystal-Like-Law)
*Put the green tacks in Yokuda (exact location unknown) and in Valenwood (somewhere in the middle). (Orchalc and Tree-Sap)
*Put the brown tacks in Daggerfall (southernmost tip of High Rock) and in Elsweyr (again in the middle). (Walk-Brass and Khajiit)
*Put the red tack in the middle of Vvardenfell in Morrowind. (Red)
*Put the black tack on the little island deep in the Iliac Bay near High Rock. (Ata-Mantia)

That's the locations of the Towers that keep time flowing. All's fine and dandy with those holding the world together, right? Wrong! Some have been destroyed or deactivated over the course of time; three times, this was done by the player. [[Fail|Whoops]]. Remove the following:

*Red Tower (deactivated in Morrowind by you)
*White-Gold Tower (deactivated in Oblivion by you)
*Crystal Tower (destroyed in Oblivion by the Daedra)
*Khajiit Tower (Their leader, the Mane was killed, likely assassinated by Thalmor. S/He was also known as the Mane Moon which appeared when Secunda and Masser overlap)
*Tree-Sap Tower (both located in Thalmor territory, likely deactivated)
*Orichalc Tower (destroyed along with Yokuda)

Snow-Throat Tower is very much active (but damaged), but its Stone is an unknown cave. Walk-Brass Tower is very much active, but somehow it is "besieging reality well into the Fifth Era", meaning that it's in the future yet somehow active. Which is not a bad thing, since [[Titans_40k|Walk-Brass tower is a fuckhueg robot]] that has a nasty habit of fucking Time so hard it breaks. So yeah, the only things standing between Tamriel and the primordial time-grog are a mountain and one of the [[Void Dragon]]'s action figures. Unless, of course, Akavir and\or Pyandonea would be revealed to host their own Towers, which is likely since certain prominent rulers of both lands somehow managed to achieve godhood, something that Towers are very helpful at.

Removing the Tower-Tacks has another side effect: the veil between [[Materium|Nirn]] and [[Warp|Oblivion]] becomes thinner. At the time of Oblivion it had even grown so thin that the Daedra could slip into this realm on their own accord. So your actions in Morrowind partially caused the Oblivion Crisis. [[Fail|Way to go, champ.]] And what happens if you remove all the tacks? Right, your map falls off the pin board, Mundus falls into Oblivion.

Thalmor, who often claim the need to deactivate all Towers, don't really need that. Their main goal is the biggest and newest anchor of existence, Talos (essentially Lorkhan 2.0), hence why they try to ban his worship so hard and unmake him. Thalmor want him and all of mankind to be gone, believing their extermination necessary to unmake the Mundus.

'''How to Break your Dragon (Or Jump Your Shark)'''

You might have heard the phrase "Dragon Break" (both words capitalized) a few times. Simply put, this means cock-slapping Time so hard it breaks and becomes non-linear for a while. But not just any cock-slap, oh no. This is the hard part: Imagine a dick if you will. A really big dick (no, this does not make you [[gay]] <s>unless you imagine balls touching</s>). So big in fact, that even Long Dick Johnson would say "That's a big fucking dick". Right, you see it? The biggest fucking dick your feeble mind could comprehend? Good.

Now, imagine if you will, Time. How you do this is up to you: [[Doctor Who|causality, a linear progression of cause and effect]], floaty magic thingies, [[Tallarn|sand]], a clock, perhaps even a more anthropomorphic presentation in the shape of a [[loli]] or a cute [[monstergirl]]. Right. Now take the dick and slap Time in the face. Cockslap it so hard that time itself just outright breaks and loses its linearity. This is a Dragon Break. The name itself is derived from the notion that the Linearity of Time is Akatosh, who is a dragon. Hence if you break time, you "Break the Dragon". While inside a Dragon Break time is perceived to pass normally, but when one exits it might appear that a lot more or less time than you observed has passed in the rest of the world.

The first known Dragon Break occurred near the end of the Dragon War, where a trio of [[Vikings|Nords]] confronted Alduin the World-Eater, First-Born and Aspect of Akatosh that personifies the End of Time (meaning that somehow he was [[Wat|his own father]]), the leader of the [[dragon]]s. The Nords created a localized Dragon Break to fling Alduin into the future so that he wasn't their problem anymore. Mind you, they had no idea where the stuff they shunted was actually going; they just knew it disappeared things, and decided that making Alduin someone else's problem was as good as killing him, essentially causing (or at least amplifying) all the problems in the 4th Era out of laziness. [[Eldrad|What a bunch of dicks.]]

The second known Dragon Break happened during the Battle of Red Mountain, where the First Council of the [[Elf|Chimer]] went to war with the [[Dwarves|Dwemer]]. The Dwemer were working on a giant golem they called Numidium. However, it had one minor design flaw: every time someone pushed the "ON" switch it fucked the dragon right up the butt, no lube. This allowed for the multiple truths on the events that transpired on Red Mountain: Ayem, Seht and Vehk stood by their friend Nerevar as he succumbed to his wounds. Almalexia, Sotha Sil and Vivec murdered their Hortator (war-leader) Nerevar. Ayem Seht Vehk = Almalexia Sotha Sil Vivec = ALMSIVI. Everything is true, nothing is correct.

The third suspected Dragon Break occurred during the time of the Alessian Empire, when Saint Alessia freed Man from the slavery of their Mer rulers (think of her as a booby [[Sigmar]]). A cult of the Alessian Order known as Marukhati, lead by monkey man Marukh. wanted to exorcise the aspects of Auriel from Akatosh, basically substracting the Elf from the Dragon. This is said to have resulted in a thousand-and-eight year Dragon Break and might have resulted in creating more Dragon aspects than just Auri-El and Akatosh. But some claim that this was little more than [[Administratum|a fuckup of the scholars and historians of the time]].

The fourth known Dragon Break took place when [[Emperor|Tiber Septim]] unleashed Numidium on the Khajiit of Elsweyr. This included the subjugation of Elsweyr, Valenwood and eventually the Summerset Isles. Tiber Septim threatened to activate it again and have it wreck the Aldmeri Dominion, but they liked their assholes to only be violated by one another, so they too stood down. It has been recorded that Numidium was then used to destroy hostile royal families to replace them with the Emperor's puppets, likely by having it step on them.

The fifth and currently final known Dragon Break occurred during the events of Daggerfall, where it was turned on in the Iliac Bay. But because of the nature of Numidium fucking space-time a new lovehole when it activates (hence, "turned on"), a number of the states in the region obtained the "FUCK EVERYTHING" button of Numidium and pressed it at the same time. Two days of hilarity later, everyone conquered one another until the Empire ended as top dog and everyone swore fealty to the Empire. Because of the events surrounding the activation of the Dragon Break, Numidium disappeared and fell into the future, where it still stands as Walk-Brass Tower.

When the Dragon Breaks happen, Akatosh deploys the Jill to fix time so that everything does not fall apart. These minute-menders (akin to angels) tend to take the form of great wyrms who fly around and fix the little bits of time with the power of their Voice (i.e.: they shout at holes in space-time until they bitch down). If this sounds familiar to you... it is! Jills are female Dragons, while Drakes are the male ones; Dragons can't really reproduce and are born of Time/Akatosh, but it's more of a conceptual thing, with Jills having the concept of healing while Drakes have the concept of Domination. So yeah, Dragons you kill, fight, kill and soul-rob to increase your own unholy power are actually servants and minor aspects of Akatosh. So in other words, [[Adeptus Evangelion|you have been killing the heralds of a new era]].

...Or at least ''you would be if they were actually doing what they were supposed to do'' - as it turns out, some time before that first Dragon Break Alduin, who is also aspect of Akatosh himself decided that he would rather rule over the broken bits of time himself, and the dragons are bound to obey him without question. It's not certain if he did it because he knew that he wouldn't get to eat the world this time around or if he just felt like ruling the world instead of resetting it. So all of reality is increasingly fucked and the only beings who can fix it stopped giving a shit a long time ago. Gods plotting against themselves is fairly common in TES since most of the Gods are broken and crazy with tons of split personalities.

There is also the whole issue of Aka-Tusk, or simply Aka. Apparently all the Dragon Aspects of time at one point or another were Great Dragon God of Time known as Aka-Tusk, but got broken and shed millions of times, maybe even before the Marukhati Dragonbreak. We may never know because Dragonbreaks are usually at least partially retroactive.

And then there is the whole issue of Akatosh and Lorkhan being one being and Akatosh being trapped in Heart of Lorkhan literally. This timey wimey bullshit is really getting out of hand.

'''CHIM: Or "You took HOW MUCH LSD!?'''

[[File:Chim explained.png|300px|thumb|right|CHIM. It's sort of like this.]]
That muffled explosion you just heard was caused by a number of people exploding out of sheer [[rage]]. Sit tight, because this shit is meta wrapped in an enigma inside a mindfuck.

In Morrowind you can find a series of books titled the 36 Sermons of Vivec. If you pick them up and read them at face value they might appear as parts of a religious text, filled with metaphors, truths twisted throughout the ages, and copious amounts of [[Anal Circumference|buttfucking]] (no, seriously). In these books you will find several references to CHIM, The Tower, and The Ruling King. Now, early on in the books Vivec is shown as the teacher of Lord Indoril Nerevar (more on him below), yet Nerevar does not understand the lessons. Because he was not the intended student. Instead, these lessons were meant for you. Not only for your player character, but for ''you'', the player. For if one attains CHIM, one's physical form becomes a mere avatar of the self.

But now you may wonder, what the Charles fucking Dickens *is* CHIM?

Imagine if you will, a great wheel with eight spokes. The wheel is everything that exists: Aurbis. The hub is Nirn, the world that the series takes place on. The spokes are the Aedra, the <s>Nine</s> Eight Divines. The space between the spokes is Oblivion, where the Daedra reside. Mundus encompasses both Nirn, its moons and the realms of the Aedra. Now, if you were to turn the wheel 90 degrees, you'd be looking at the rim of the wheel so it resembles I (as in, the thin side of a disk). This is the Tower, the Secret of Aurbis, holder of the secret. CHIM. The wheel is the entire universe. Outside there exist only two forces: Anu and Padhome, stasis and change. Think a great void filled with only two bubbles: there where these bubbles touch exists the wheel. Now, the Tower is not something physical, but an ideal. Something that can be attained, conquered, stolen. For one to reside within the tower, is to know the truth of all that is. This was the revelation of Lorkhan's that made him want to create Nirn.

This truth is that everything is a dream. The supreme power in TES is the Godhead, the unknown creator of all. Everything, Aurbis, Anu, and Padomay - all created in the dreams of the Godhead. Attaining CHIM is to know this, the relentless alien terror that is God and your place in it. Everything you know, are and do is but a dream. Now, if you discover this one of two things can happen. The most common one is to realize you do and don't exist at the same time: you lose your individuality (you zero-sum) and become one with the dreamer, the Godhead, and you disappear in the proverbial puff of logic. The second option is the rare one: to realize that you are part of the Godhead, you *are* the Godhead. If everything is an extension of the same thing, and that the thing can reshape reality with a thought, being a dreamer within the dream.

If you thought that shit was meta, just you wait. The principles behind CHIM can be taken further to mean that the Godhead and its dreams are a metaphor for the computer running the game and the game itself. In-universe the metaphor of the godhead and being awake within the dream is needed to prevent characters who realize this from zero-summing out of existence at the resulting paradox. It can be inferred that a character who achieves CHIM essentially gains access to the console and the Construction Set. Talos used the Construction Set to retcon Cyrodiil from a jungle land into a generic European fantasy land (Talos has a terrible imagination). Vivec gave himself levitation abilities by using the console to erase the texture file for his chair (no seriously). Whether or not the player achieves CHIM varies. Generally when a player becomes fully immersed in the game, they do not have CHIM. However, a player who gets fed up of getting bugged by cliff racers every five seconds and installs a mod that removes them from the game is using CHIM. They are remembering that the world they are in is a game and altering it as they see fit. Exploits, mods, console commands, etc can all be explained in-universe as the player character achieving CHIM and using it to reshape reality or bend its rules... or all of that could be stupid speculation.

Meta as FUCK.

You can go deeper than that and find Amaranth though, but that is whole another level of [[mindfuck]].

'''It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine'''

We've mentioned a few times that the world of Nirn is slowing being destroyed by a few reasons. In a normal fantasy setting, this would be a terrible thing, and the hero must try and stop it; however, the Elder Scrolls isn't a normal fantasy setting. One of the dragons, Paarthurnax, mentions that when the world ends, Alduin, the first born of Akatosh, will/might simply recreate it, thus returning it to the point of creation. Granted he also states liking the current one is a good enough reason to fight Alduin (''that and the fact that Alduin is an absolute prick who would rather rule over the broken remains of the old one instead of actually doing his job'').

This is due to the Kalpic nature of Nirn; Kalpa is the time span from Convention to the end of the world, one turn of a wheel. Eventually, Alduin The World Eater grows in size and literally eats the world, turns the Kalpa like a wheel and everything resets back to the Convention, the moment when Heart of Lorkhan was torn out, time became linear. From that point on things can go differently in different Kalpas; for example, according to Seven Flights of Aldudagga, one Kalpa had Molag Bal as its ruler and Dreughs as the supreme race. That being said, it is possible to end the Kalpic cycle and destroy shit for good, hence what the Thalmor are trying to do. They also believe that this will make them Ada (Spirit/God) again.

In essence, the world might be ending, few care and fewer understand, and Elder Scrolls lore is more complicated than trying to keep track of the number of penises [[Slaanesh]] has at the moment.

'''Seriously?'''

Remember way at the beginning of this page, we said that how crazy the Elder Scrolls series is depends on if you take an ex-writer's blogposts as gospel? Well, if you don't, and only trust what you see in-game, it looks a bit like this.

The Godhead almost certainly doesn't exist. Neither does CHIM. Only two in-game sources claim it does; one is a colossal liar and the other is shown to be wrong about absolutely everything that comes out of his mouth. They're both bugfuck nuts and they both end up dead at your hands. The big historical event allegedly caused by CHIM could easily not have been. At least two alternate theories have been suggested: either the event never actually took place and was the result of a [[skub|transcription error]], which is boring, or the White-Gold Tower did it on its own after humans booted the elves from the Imperial City and moved in, which is not. Speaking of, the Tower thing is definitely true, because the plot of Oblivion is, broadly, that the bad guy shut one down and tore reality a new asshole. The Dragonbreak is an empirical event that happens within living memory; in Oblivion you can read the Imperial report on what the fuck happened in the last one, and you can see one happen in Skyrim. The kalpa thing is definitely happening, and you hear as much directly from the mouth of a time-spirit who knew Alduin personally. You meet Pelinal Whitestrake's ghost in a DLC questline, and he doesn't ''seem'' to be a robot, or even remotely crazy.

Mantling deserves special mention, even though it hasn't been mentioned anywhere else on the page. Basically, by adopting the mannerisms and vestments of something else, you become that something else. In a word: [[awesome|apotheosis]]. You mantle a daedric prince at the end of Shivering Isles, and use your new divine powers to kick the ass of another daedric prince. Have we mentioned that these games are really, really good and you should play them? SI also added the caveat that whatever you're mantling has to be either dead or gone in a big way for you to pull it off, and you're basically filling in its place in the universe.
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==Gods, Deities and other important people==
Most of the Gods in The Elder Scrolls are Et'Ada, the "original spirits" that came from the interplay of Anu and Padomay. These spirits later depending on their alignment with creation got categorized into Aedra and Daedra, if you took part in creation of Nirn you are Aedra, if you were egotistic dick and went to Oblivion to make your small shitty realm, you are Daedra.

===Aedra===
The Aedra (Our ancestors in Aldmeris) are Et'Ada of Anuic origin. Many of them took part in the creation of Nirn, during which they "died", their essences fused together into Mundus. As such they do not have "physical" forms like the Daedra have. Yet their spirits live on in Nirn: as the Gods of the world they live in every part of it. While not as "focused" as their Daedric counterparts they are more widespread, worshiped and give their blessings and artifacts more freely than the Daedra, plus they have control over one realm that everyone wants to have, Nirn.

Eight of the Aedra are worshipped in Tamriel as the Eight Divines (along with the human god-hero Tiber Septim, aka. Talos, to make the more assonant Nine Divines), a fusion of the old Nordic pantheon and the Aedra worshipped by the Ayleids:
*'''Akatosh''': Also known as Auri-El to the Altmer and the father of the dragons, the chief deity of the Eight and the top god of the Cyrodiilic Empire as he represents duty, legitimacy, endurance and obedience (but his different identities also have additional roles. Akatosh proper is the god of time, but Auri-El is the god of the sun, which it is worth noting can be used as a timekeeping device. All the other gods also work like this, as Divinity in this setting is ''weird''). His artifacts are Auriel's Bow, and Auriel's Shield, which have completely different powers depending which game you are playing. In the most recent games the appeared in, the bow infuses arrows fired from it with the power of the sun to do more damage to the undead, and the Shield can absorb energy from attacks it blocks and release it as wave similar to the Unrelenting Force shout.
*'''Arkay''': Lord of the Wheel of Life, master of life and death, burials and funeral rites. Arkay priests are some of the fiercest necromancer hunters around, as those foul practices are an affront to their god.
*'''Dibella''': Goddess of beauty, love and affection, as well as art and music. Effectively Nirn's equivalent of Aphrodite. She teaches that, "No matter the seed, if the shoot is nurtured with love, will not the flower be beautiful?" Oh boy. Her artifact is the Brush of Truepaint, which can turn a canvas into a portal to a world made of paint that the artist creates with their imagination.
*'''Julianos''': God of wisdom and logic; literature, lore, history and contradiction are the domains of Julianos. Though Magnus is the god of magic, many wizards worship Julianos. The scholarly Bretons also hold a particular reverence for him. Monastic orders dedicated to Julianos are the keepers of the Elder Scrolls.
*'''Kynareth''': Goddess of heavens, winds and the elements. Known as Kyne among the Nords and the widow of Shor. It is said that Kyne gifted men with the Thu'um so they could harness the power of dragons and save themselves from Akatosh's errant children. His artifact is the Lord's Mail, a cuirass that grants its wearer healing, magicka absorption, and the ability to cure their self of poison.
*'''Mara''': Goddess of agriculture, compassion, fertility, love-... Hey, wait a minute, doesn't that overlap with Dibella? Well, it does, and it is complicated. Among the Nords, Mara is Kyne's handmaiden and Shor's bit on the side. Among the Altmer, Bosmer and Bretons, Mara is the wife of Akatosh/Auri-El. Among the now extinct Kothringi of Black Marsh, Mara was just one of three aspects to an older Mother goddess with Kynareth and Dibella as the other two aspects. As said above, Divinity in this setting is ''weird''. Whatever the case, weddings in Tamriel are overseen by priests of Mara.
*'''Stendarr''': God of mercy, charity and justice. Apologist of men and patron deity of the Imperial Legion and many Breton knightly orders. Stendarr welcomes heretics, the afflicted, hopeless and forgotten just as readily as his devout followers. However his mercy ends at the enemies of mortals, the abhorrent and unnatural. Stendarr's priests are often hunters of lesser Daedra, lycanthropes, vampires and undead. Real bro-tier god overall. His artifact is Stendarr's Hammer, a hammer that increases the user's stamina and does incredible damage, however, the hammer is also very fragile and far too heavy for a mortal to use.
*'''Zenithar''': God of honest work and commerce. Very strong ties to the people of Cyrodiil, and many in High Rock and Hammerfell too.
*'''Talos''': NOT actually an Aedra, but worth mentioning as he is often placed among the other Eight. Talos, known in life as Tiber Septim and Ysmir to the Nords, is the greatest god-hero of mankind. He conquered all of Tamriel and ushered in the Third Empire of Cyrodiil at the end of the Second Era. When he died, his spirit ascended to godhood. As of the Fourth Era, Talos worship is banned in the Empire as per the terms of the White-Gold Concordat, because the idea of a man becoming a god pisses the stupid sparkly prisses off to no end. That, and it is also likely that Talos is helping to hold the world together, and the Thalmor know this and want to starve him of worship, effectively destroying all Nirn to regain the divinity Lorkhan is said to have stolen from them. Fucking elves.

The Altmer also worship, or at least acknowledge, other Aedra that don't belong to the Eight Divines above, but are worshipped in most elven lands, these being:
*'''Jephre''': The god of songs and forests and the spirit of Now, also called Y'ffre. He was one of the first spirits to become Ehlnofey, or Earth Bones, and set in place the rules of nature and life on Nirn. The Bosmer consider him their main god and he's the reason they're carnivores and cannibals.
*'''Lorkhan''': The Creator-Trickster-Tester god present in every races mythology. Known alternatively as Lorkhaj, Shor, Sheor, Sep, or Shezarr, every single version goes the same way: creation happens, other spirits and gods get pissed at him, he's bound, he's killed/torn to pieces/separated from his divine center and forced to wander the earth. His heart landed in Red Mountain, and was destroyed in Morrowind, and some say that his corpse became the two moons of Nirn.
*'''Magnus''': The god of magic and the supposed architect of creation. When he realized what he made, he ran the fuck away, ripping a hole through creation to Aetherius, with this hole becoming the sun. Some part of him got caught in creation though, becoming the force of magic. He also had a host of assistants called the Magna-Ge, who ripped similiar holes in creation when running away, these becoming the stars. His associated artifact is the Staff of Magnus, which has the power to drain magicka, and possibly the Eye of Magnus, a mysterious floating orb of incredible power whose purpose is unclear, though may have been one of the tools Magnus used to create the world.
*'''Phynaster''': An Ancestor-God of the Altmer, though some Bretons also worship him, who taught them how to live another 100 years by using a shoter walking stride.
*'''Syrabane''': Another Ancestor-God of the Altmer, who aided men in destroying the Sload kingdom of Thras. Often called the Apprentice's God, as the younger members of the Mage's Guild worship him.
*'''Trinimac''': The warrior god of the ancient Aldmer, who lead armies against the men. He eventually got eaten by Boethiah and became Malacath (more below).
*'''Xarxes''': The scribe to Auri-El, and the god of ancestry and secret knowledge. He made his wife Oghma ([[Oghma|no, not that one]]) from his [[Wat|favorite moments in history]].

===Daedra===
"Not Our Ancestors" in Aldmeris and "Our stronger, better ancestors" in Dunmeris, the Daedra (singular: Daedroth, not to be confused with the crocodile-like Daedra called Daedroth) are the Et'Ada who did not partake in the creation of the world. Because they didn't quasi-suicide themselves to pour their essence into the world, their power is both more focused, but their power on Nirn is more limited compared to their Aedric counterparts. As such their powers are limited to the likes of curses and artifacts, and can only walk the realm in forms that severely limit their powers.

Daedric Princes instead have their own singular realms, the Realms of Oblivion. A Daedric Prince is Omnipotent within their realm, because it is part of them and their mind. Their own realms are made out of them, similar to how Nirn is made out of Aedra; the Daedra are still fully alive and have much greater control over their own realm, but the tradeoff is that each realm is pretty small. Despite serving as the setting's "devils" (in that the word Daedra pretty much means Devil), they are not all completely evil. They range from "hates undead" and "wants to hunt dangerous game" to "prince of destruction" and "king of [[rape]]". Even if they are benevolent at times, the Daedra are not to be trifled with and are very dangerous.

* '''Azura:''' The Daedra associated with periods of change, twilight in particular, and magic and prophecy. Allegedly Nocturnal's sister, and one of the few Daedra not to be considered evil, though she is intensely prideful and easily aggravated, treating the Dunmer with a character not unlike how old testament Yahweh treated the 12 tribes of Israel. Azura is worshipped by the Dunmer and Khajit, though she had a mutual hatred for the Dwemer. Her realm of Oblivion is Moonshadow, a beautiful place of silver cities, gardens, and perpetual twilight. Her artifact is Azura's Star, an item which can hold the souls of living creatures. If this sounds like the soul gem items found across the series, it is, but Azura's Star is a max capacity soul gem they doesn't get consumed upon use, and is thus reusable.
* '''Boethiah:''' The Daedra associated with deceit, ambition, treachery, competition and sedition. Goes hand in hand with Mephala and is basically her louder sibling. Despite sounding like some kind of fucked up noble, Boethiah often takes the appearance of a patrician warrior (can be female, but usually male), and they enjoy inflicting mayhem and bloodshed on mortals. Regarded by the Dunmer, either through worship or hatred, and some versions of their origin tale has all sorts of scholarly pursuits emerging from their teachings. Their realm is Attribution's Share (also known as Snake Mount), a place of [[Tzeentch|labyrinthine policies and betrayals]]. Their artifacts are Goldbrand, a high end katana, and the Ebony Mail, high end armor that cause poison damage to those around the wearer.
*'''Clavicus Vile:''' The Daedra associated with wishes and pacts. He's the asshole genie who ensures that all the wishes and pacts are twisted so he comes out on top, usually while gaining the soul of the one foolish enough to deal with him. He appears as a jovial fellow with horns sprouting from his forehead, and is usually accompanied by '''Barbas''', a dog who holds half of Clavicus' power. His realm is the Fields of Regret, which, despite its name, is a tranquil countryside, dotted with cities of glass and ornate buildings. His artifact is the Masque of Clavicus Vile, which makes its wearer more popular and likeable.
*'''Hermaeus Mora:''' The Daedra associated with fate and forbidden knowledge. Supposedly the sibling of Mephala, he seeks gather and obtain as much knowledge as possible. He often appears as a collection of eyes, tentacles, and pincers. His realm is Apocrypha, an endless library filled with and made from books of forbidden knowledge, with seas of ink and tentacles. His artifacts are the Black Books, which transport their reader to Apocrypha and can grant access to forbidden knowledge, and the Oghma Infinium, a tome that can allow one to achieve near-demigod level abilities.
*'''Hircine:''' The Daedra associated with hunting and therianthropes. He created the many werebeasts that exist in Tamriel, and claims their souls upon death. He appears either as an animal or a man, with the horns of a deer, unless he appears as deer. His realm is the Hunting Grounds, a realm of dense woodlands and vast grasslands, inhabited by daedra, beasts, and therianthropes, where werebears and Nords hunt by day, and Hircine along with a pack of werewolves hunts by night. His artifacts are the Saviour's Hide, a hide cuirass that makes the wearer more resistant to magic, and the Ring of Hircine, a ring that allows one to transform into a werewolf, if not already a lycanthrope, and lycanthropes to control their transformations.
*'''Malacath:''' The Daedra associated with orcs, [[goblin]]s, [[ogre]]s, curses, and outcasts. ''Definitely'' a good daedra if you happen to be an Orc, but to other races he's benign at the best of times (altohugh he's never outright malevolent to the degree of Molag or Mehrunes). Originally he was '''Trinimac''', one of the ancestor sprits of the Altmer, who was eaten by Boethiah and then shat out as Malacath, though he says the story is too literal minded, and there are those who say that Trinimac and Malacath are two separate deities. He appears a muscular orc wielding a heavy weapon. His realm is Ashpit, a realm of dust and ash, dotted with palaces of smoke and gardens, where levitation and magical breathing are necessary to survive. His artifacts are the Scourge, a mace that banishes all daedra that make contact with it, and Volendrung, a Dwemer made warhammer.
*'''Mehrunes Dagon:''' The Deadra associated with destruction, revolution, change, ambition, and energy. One of the more evil daedra, of whom little is known, and the antagonist of [[The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion|Oblivion]]. He appears as red-skinned giant with four arms, carrying a two-headed axe. His realm is the Deadlands (no, not [[Deadlands|that one]]), a realm of scorched, volcanic islands and ruined structures amidst a sea of lava, with hostile life living on the islands. He once was a good guy before a curse was put on him by Alduin for interfering with his devouring of the world. His artifact is Mehrunes' Razor, a dagger that has a [[Vorpal Sword| small chance of instantly killing whatever it cuts]].
*'''Mephala:''' The Daedra associated with spiders, webs, [[Tzeentch|lies, secrets, plots]] and murder. Sibling to Hermaeus Mora, the Dunmer worship her as one of the "Good Daedra", with her having taught them the arts of stealth and assassination. The Morag Tong, the assassin's guild in Morrowind, worships her through murder. She often appears as female of some form, but sometimes appears as a male. Her realm is the Spiral Skein, a wheel-shaped realm, with her palace in the middle, and the space between the "spokes" dedicated to one of eight sins. Her artifacts are the Ring of Khajiiti, a ring that makes its wearer faster and harder to detect, and the Ebony Blade, a life-leeching katana.
*'''Meridia:''' The Daedra asssociated with light and the energies of living things, and one of the few non-evil Daedric Princes. She was originally believed to have been one of the Magna-Ge, the spirits that followed Magnus to Aetherius, but was cast out for consorting with daedra, eventually creating her realm by bending and shaping the light of the sun. She hates all undead with a passion, and usually rewards those who destroy them. She either appears as an orb of light, or a blonde-haired woman in a gown. Despite all this, she generally does not command popular worship due to her haughty, bitter and aloof manner, stemming from her exile from the magna-ge. The last time she threw her support behind a mortal race She made the mistake of being the patron of the Heartland High Elves of Cyrodil, who were into human slavery and were generally tyrants. They ended up being near exterminated. There are hints in the lore that Molag Bal is obsessed with her and caused her fall from heaven. Her realm is the Colored Rooms, a cross between a coral reef and a field of floating stones, strewn with colorful trails of dust/clouds. Her artifacts are the Ring of Khajiiti and the Dawnbringer, a sword that burns the undead and upon killing them makes them explode.
*'''Molag Bal:''' The Daedra associated with domination, enslavement, rape, and vampires. Arguably the most evil of the Daedric Princes, as he simply desires to harvest souls of mortals by inciting strife and discord among them. He also created the first vampire by raping a Nedic woman. He appears as a monstrous being of varying appearance, but usually has horns and hooves. His realm is Coldharbour, which is an apocalyptic and desolate reflection of Nirn. His artifact is the Mace of Molag Bal, a mace that drains the energies of those it hits and traps their souls upon death. Main antagonist of both the original game and Elder Scrolls Online, with Mehrunes Dagon basically stealing his invasion plans. Seriously Mehrunes invades Nirn in the same ways in the same order.
*'''Namira:''' The Daedra associated with ancient darkness, revulsion, and cannibals. Not much is known of her, other than she's associated with anything revolting, and her followers prefer to live in dark and squalid conditions. Her realm is the Scuttling Void, of which nothing is really known about. Her artifact is the Ring of Namira, a ring that boosts one health after cannibalizing a corpse, or reflects damage back onto the wearer's attacker.
*'''Nocturnal:''' The Daedra associated with darkness, night, and thieves. Most thieves in Tamriel revere her to some degree, for obvious reasons, and the Thieves Guild reveres her as their patron. She appears often as a dark-haired woman in a hooded gown, accompanied by ravens. Her realm is Evergloam, a realm in perpetual twilight, consisting of a primary plane and constantly shifting pocket planes. Her artifacts are the Skeleton Key, a key/lockpick that can open anything from locks to portals to one's hidden potential, the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal, a cowl that hides the wearer's true identity and makes him a better thief, and the Bow of Shadows, a bow that can turn its wielder invisible.
*'''Peryite:''' [[Nurgle]]'s less-jovial cousin, this is the Daedra associated with tasks, pestilence, and natural order. Peryite is considered one of the weakest Daedric Princes (not that ''any'' daedric prince can be called "weak" by mortal standards), and is charged with keeping the lower realms of Oblivion and the lesser daedra in line. He often appears as a green, four-legged dragon, but sometimes appears as ghostly apparitions of vermin. His realm is The Pits, which resembles Deadlands in its landscape. His artifact is the Spellbreaker, a shield that can reflect magic.
*'''Sanguine:''' Basically just a less-rapey or /d/isgusting [[Slaanesh]]. The Daedra associated with hedonism, debauchery, indulgence, and revelry. He's often depicted on seals and signs of brothels and whorehouses. He appears as a portly dremora, with a bottle in one hand and a whore in another. His realms are the Myriad Realms of Revelry, countless pocket realms that are fashioned to meet the needs and demands of its visitors. His artifact is the Sanguine Rose, a rose-shaped staff/staff-sized rose that summons a dremora to fight for its owner.
*'''Sheogorath:''' Everyone's favorite, This is the lolrandom [[Chaotic Stupid]] Daedra associated with madness and creativity. There are many stories and legends about him, like how he invented music from [[Rip and tear|the body parts of a woman he killed]] and how he trolled everyone of the other Daedric Princes at various points. You take his position at the end of the Shivering Isles expansion. He appears as an elderly, fine-dressed gentleman with a cane. His realm is the Shivering Isles, a landmass surrounded by islands that's divided in two, to represent both shades of madness. His artifact is the Wabbajack, a staff that does something completely random when used.
**'''Jyggalag:''' The [[Lawful Stupid]] Daedra associated with logic, order, and deduction. Originally, he was the most powerful of the Daedric Princes, but the others cursed him to become Sheogorath, who represented everything he hated. The curse did allow him to return at the end of every era, and by the end of the Shivering Isles expansion, the curse is broken and he heads off to parts unknown, having yet to make a reappearance in the games despite his DLC being canon. He appears a as a giant, gray knight wielding a sword.
*'''Vaermina:''' The Daedra associated with dreams and nightmares. One of the more evil daedra, with some saying that torture also belongs to her sphere of influence. She appears as an old woman in a robe, wielding a staff. Her realm is Quagmire, a nightmarish realm where Vaermina draws the minds of mortals, collecting their memories and leavings nightmares in return. Her artifact is the Skull of Corruption, a staff that creates a clone of the target, who then attacks the target.

==Races==
[[File:Tamriel.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Tamriel, shown alongside the now sunken islands of Yokuda, the original home of the Redguards, and Pyandonea, a land inhabited by the Maormer, sea elves.]]
The first two Elder Scrolls games had eight playable races; the three after that added Imperials and Orcs as playable races. There's also a ton of unplayable races as well, but UESP can explain them better than us.

The races of Tamriel are generally divided into three categories; the races of Men are the various ethnicities of [[human]], the Mer races are the different species of [[elf]], and the [[Beastmen]] are explained as "where the fuck did these dudes come from?"

===Men===
*'''Imperials:''' Also known as the "Cyrodiilics", the Imperials are a civilised and cosmopolitan people, more or less Roman in culture (but in very early lore they were actually Mesoamerican). Like practically all humans in fantasy settings, they're average at nearly everything, control the world, and are kind of boring compared to everyone else. They've forged three continent-spanning empires in their history, and the first time involved a time-bending magical giant robot. They've also in the past had a space race with the Altmer to colonise Masser and Secunda. Yes, really.
*'''Nords:''' The First Men of the setting. Basically manly, magic and elf-hating not-Vikings from the frozen land of Skyrim. Tend to be very very badass because they have to live in an inhospitable hellhole with bears, sabre-tooth cats, trolls, giants, big nopey frost spiders the size of bears and they also fought and killed all the dragons in the past. [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Their ancestors, the Atmorans, nearly exterminated the entire Snow Elf race with just five hundred warriors.]] Nord women are tall, blonde and gorgeous, and love candlelit conversations over mead, long walks on the frozen beaches, and killing things with big swords and axes.
*'''Bretons:''' Best described as [[Half-Elf|half-elves]] from [[Bretonnia]] with a hint of French-ness. Probably the least badass of the humans here (which is all relative - many great heroes throughout Tamriel's history were Bretons) but they are still the most gifted with magic because of their elf blood. They even get a magic resistance out of the deal. True to the French stereotype, they're great cooks but also a bit snobby. Their home province of High Rock isn't even a united kingdom, but rather a patchwork quilt of petty kingdoms, embroiled in political conflict and usually only tangentially aligned with the Empire.
*'''Redguard:''' Fantasy Moors/Africans. Skilled warriors hailing from the sunken islands of Yokuda (the sinking of which they were the apparent cause by their warriors overusing a forbidden sword technique that let them split atoms), and the only guys to have invented gunpowder. Redguards are some of the greatest sailors in Tamriel, and they tend to scorn magic due to religious taboos against necromancy and their many past wars with the magic-proficient Bretons. Destruction magic is the only kind of magic they tolerate because doing more damage can't be a bad thing.

===Mer (Elves)===
*'''Bosmer ([[Wood Elves]]):''' Wood Elves in the "Dwarf Fortress" sense, only less insane. They are some of the greatest archers in Tamriel and they have a long history of warring with the Khajiit. They also happen to be cannibals because of an ancient pact they made with the forest god Y'ffre (basically said forest god won't let them eat vegetation, so they can't afford to let ''any'' meat go to waste). Through this pact they can also turn themselves into monsters, though this trick is only used when the existence of Valenwood itself is threatened. They also have no understanding of woodworking and they brew alcohol from the fermented flesh of their dead enemies. Hardcore. (As a note on the cannibalism thing, you don't actually have to worry about getting shanked and eaten by every wood elf you <s>meat</s> meet, it's just their standard means of dealing with dead bodies.)
*'''Altmer ([[High Elves]]):''' Every stereotype of Elves being narcissistic pricks, amplified a hundredfold. As of the Fourth Era, their home of Summerset Isle (now Alinor) is governed by the Thalmor, fucking literal elven Nazis who are out to unravel all creation because they believe mortality was a cruel trick played on them by the gods of Men (and no, this belief is not just some quirk of the Thalmor, the ancient Aldmer believed this as well). They even practice eugenics and kill any undesirable progeny. Nearly every Altmer is either a wizard or a magical warrior.
*'''Dunmer ([[Dark Elves]]):''' Elves with a blue-grey tint to their skin who got cursed by their Daedric patron for complex reasons. Their culture is a bizarre mish-mash of China, Japan, Mongolia, ancient Mesopotamia and the Biblical Israelites, with northern English accents. They primarily worship the Daedra along with the Tribunal, three mortals who ascended to godhood by tapping into the Heart of Lorkhan. Highly supremacist and xenophobic, the Fourth Era has bitten them in the arse hard, as most of Morrowind was devastated by volcanic eruption and their Argonian slaves have occupied what's left, leaving most surviving Dunmer as unwelcome refugees. How the mighty have fallen.
*'''Orsimer ([[Orcs]]):''' Also known as the "Pariah Elves", descended from a race of Elves who got screwed over due to Daedric faggotry. Most Orsimer live assimilated into other cultures or in destitute and isolated strongholds, akin to native reservations, far out in the wilderness. Every time they have tried to build a new city-state in High Rock, Orsinium, the Bretons or Redguards came and knocked it over and as of the Fourth Era the Orcs have been effectively enslaved by the Bretons at sword-point. Also, the Nords only wish they could be as hardcore warriors as the Orcs, which means the two races have something of an odd friendship. Worth noting is the fact that at the time of the very first game, Orcs [[/pol/|''weren't even considered PEOPLE'']] by Tamrielic culture, but by the time of Oblivion nobody would think twice about walking into a shop to find that it was run by an orc anymore than they would a shopkeeper of any of the above races.

===Beastmen===
[[File:Khajiit Family.jpg|300px|thumb|right|A family of Khajiit. Given how these things work it is very possible that the housecat that the catgirl is holding is the father of the tiger in the back. TES is weird like that.]]
*'''Argonians:''' A race of warm-blooded lizard people, well-spoken and skilled as both warriors and mages. Have a weird connection to semi-sentient trees called Hist where they may or may not be gene engineered super soldiers enslaved by said Hist trees. Also, they actually start life as perfectly ordinary lizards that only gain sapience and humanoid shape upon eating the sap of said trees. Despite being weirdos and the targets of discrimination, they have an unbreakable hold on their homeland: Tiber Septim never truly conquered Black Marsh, he just barely conquered some of the border towns and called it a win and apparently the Argonians didn't care enough to contest it; and during the Oblivion Crisis, the Dremora were eventually forced to close the gates [[awesome|because the Argonians were sending invading armies through them]].
*'''[[Catfolk|Khajiit]]:''' Technically related to Elves, but hard to tell by looking because they have many different forms that are determined at birth by the waxing and waning of Masser and Secunda: some Khajiit look like the Bosmer, some like furries, some look like housecats except they can talk and use magic, and some get to be completely badass horse-sized tigers, named Battlecats by the Imperials. They are skilled desert raiders, merchants and farmers. Their culture is basically the Romani. Their prime export is said Moon Sugar, a substance that can be best described as [[Doomrider|magical cocaine made from crystallised moonlight]]. Like Argonians, they are a prime target for racism.

==Games==
Though several spinoffs were made, when referring to "The Elder Scrolls" only the five central games are being referred to.

===The Elder Scrolls I: Arena===
Jagar Tharn, the Imperial Battlemage and trusted servant of the Emperor Uriel Septim VII turns evil, locks the Emperor inside Oblivion, and takes over Tamriel. His apprentice Ria Silmane discovered this and told the player, so Tharn killed the former and imprisoned the latter. Yet Silmane persisted, and helped the player escape prison and revealed how Tharn could be destroyed: by recovering the eight parts of the Staff of Chaos from all over the empire. The player succeeds, kills Tharn, returns the Emperor and all is well. This was the only game where the player could visit all of Tamriel.

===The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall===
The player, a personal friend of the Emperor, is sent to the city of Daggerfall, High Rock to investigate a haunting by the ghost of the former king. Things quickly get out of hand when you discover the Numidium, a massive golem used by Tiber Septim to gain control over Tamriel. There are several mutually exclusive endings possible; canon opted to [[what|make them all happen]] in an event called the Warp in the West, a Dragon Break, which is a specific type of event where divine fuckery causes [[FATAL|time and space to take it up the ass hard]].

===The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind===
[[File:Morrowind.jpg|300px|thumb|right|If you can explain at least 75% of what's going on on this image, you are a true fan.]]
{{Main|The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind}}
Morrowind ships the player to the island of Vvardenfell, in the Dunmer province of Morrowind, where you are to report to the [[Snowflame|perpetually shirtless crackhead]] called Caius Cossades to investigate a [[Cultist-Chan|cult]] that is growing rapidly in size. This cult is revealed to be the doings of the Sixth House, a clan of Dunmer that was destroyed after its leader, Lord Voryn Dagoth, rebelled against Lord Indoril Nerevar, the leader of the war against the Dwemer. Nerevar died shortly afterwards (though it is unclear if he died from the wounds Dagoth inflicted on him, or that his advisors, the Tribunal, killed their lord so they could use the tools of the Dwemer to grant themselves near-divinity), and the Tribunal took over as the god-kings of the Dunmer. There was only one problem: Dagoth wasn't actually dead, and he granted himself near-divinity too.

You take the role of Nerevar's incarnation, and long story short you kill him properly.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ow5lGFju1c Here is a great review about the game. Every N'wah in existence worth their salt must watch it.]

===The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion===
{{Main|The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion}}
Emperor Uriel Septim VII and his heirs are assassinated, and it's up to the player who was unintentionally released from prison to fix that shit by finding the Emperor's last son who had been sought out the last known child of the Camoran Dynasty, the family who had ruled over man for years before Alesseia came and slap their shit. It was the first big-name RPG to appear on seventh generation consoles, and made the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 work for their money. By the end of the game, you end up driving off an army of Daedra but the Septim dynasty comes to an end.

===The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim===
[[File:Song of Skyrim.jpg|500px|thumb|Dat Nord Frost Resistance]]
Also known as the Volsunga Saga: The Game.

You're a prisoner, but in a shocking turn of events, this time you're actually told WHY! Turns out you crossed the damn border illegally, you filthy alien (of course, if you are a Nord it's just chalked up to bullshit bureaucracy). And you're to be executed along with the a group of captured rebels called Stormcloaks, along with their leader - Ulfric Stormcloak (who is voiced by Vladimir Kullich). Before you're sent to Sovngarde (Guess what that is. Go on.), a giant dragon god named Alduin the World Eater decides to introduce himself to the world. Alduin being referred to as Akatosh's firstborn son is an outright confirmation that he is also an aspect of him. Some background characters speculate that Alduin is Akatosh himself in the role of a destroyer. You end up learning you're the legendary Dragonborn who can basically do any of the shit a real dragon can do (besides, you know, flying), and defeat Alduin. And possibly stop the civil war too.

===The Elder Scrolls Online===
TES: the MMORPG. Early on it suffered from growing pains and problems, but after surviving the hate and becoming only buy to play, it became a rather nice game.

===The Elder Scrolls VI===
Recently announced at E3 2018, the game was confirmed to be in production. Rumors speculate that, based on the trailer, it will be based in either High Rock or Hammerfell. Almost certainly Hammerfell since not only was High Rock already covered in Daggerfall but because High Rock is the most forgettable province (it has stiff competition) some people have their memories play tricks on them and remember Daggerfall as the Hammerfell game (the name doesn't help) so this will finally clear up the confusion.

==Gallery==
{{promotions}}
<center>
<gallery>
image:Lel.jpg
image:N'wahs with attitude.jpg
image:1402853718622.jpg
image:Averagedayatbeth.png|This is depressingly true.
image:Tribunal_awaken.jpg|[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure|Almsivi!]]
image:Kobold romance diary by Weaver.jpg|An average day for a TES protagonist.
</gallery>
</center>

==See also==
*[http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, the definitive wiki for the series.]
*[[Scrollhammer]]: if the Elder Scrolls and Warhammer had a bastard son, it would probably be like this.
*[[Scrollhammer 2nd Edition]]: If Elder Scrolls and Infinity had a bastard son.
*[[Unofficial Elder Scrolls RPG]]: A pen and paper [[RPG]] currently dead because Seht decided to take a break, but he's back now. Core 3E is pretty polished with many supplements actively being worked on and released by various anons.

[[Category:Video Games]]

Exalted

2019-07-30T21:32:39Z

2601:1C1:8904:D7C0:F1E7:437E:5CE9:AB8D: /* Liminal Exalted */ excised the butthurt but kept the concept. Everybody wins.

{{awesome}}
{{Game Infobox
|name = Exalted
|picture = [[Image:EXALTEDlogo.gif|200px]]
|type = [[RPG]]
|publisher = [[White Wolf]]
|system = Modified [[Storyteller System]]
|authors = Geoffrey C. Grabowski, John Mørke, Holden Shearer, Robert Vance, Eric Minton
|year = 2001 (1st edition)<br />2006 (2nd edition) <br />2016 (3rd edition)
}}
[[Image:Sniper-guitar.jpg|right|thumb|The Performance ability meets the Firearms ability]]
'''Exalted''' is a role-playing game by White Wolf, Inc. currently in its third edition. It is well known for its epic scale, as far as story and mechanics, and allowing the players to participate in (and cause) epic events rather than simply being bystanders. A silly group can turn this into a Kill La Kill/Gurren Lagann crossover, a serious group can turn this into the Ramayana: Romance of the Three Kingdoms edition. Both options are awesome. Compare [[Legends of the Wulin]].

==Brief Summary==
Exalted is a game where one of your main antagonists is Death, Creator of the Underworld. Except there's several of him, probably six or seven. Oh, and he's got 13 dread henchmen, one of whom was probably you at some point in time. Also, Hell has a personal grudge against you this time.

Magical Rome/Persia/China regularly trains and sends ninja-monks out for you personally. Ninjas specially trained in asskicking. And if that doesn't work, they keep giant color-coded gundams and suits of power armor as backups.

The Transformers have united under [[Æonic Orb|Unicron]] (who has robo-AIDS), and are invading because they have a shortage of souls.

The Jedi Council has corrupted Heaven and usurped your rightful place as the Masters of Everything - but nobody can remember them. The only reason they haven't hunted you down is that they're too busy trying to keep reality from imploding.

Your ex-wife dropped by; she's a two thousand year old shapechanging man-eating monster, interested in maybe going on a date next Thursday for dinner, followed by breeding a new race capable of rewriting the biosphere.

Your best friend from growing up -and your last life- now seeks to cover all the lands of Middle Earth in darkness, if he can just find this damn ring.

Your god has the world's biggest crack habit, and needs some serious rehab.

You may bump into some fairies, but instead of granting wishes, they eat people's souls.

And yet, in theory, you think you can fix everything!

Welcome to Creation, kid! Hope you've got enough Essence!

Have Fun.

==Backstory==
Here's a history of the setting of Exalted, which may answer a bunch of questions and put things into perspective all at once.

Once upon a time, in the formless twisting chaos of the Wyld, there appeared the [[Primordials]]. The Primordials are impossibly vast alien beings with multiple souls. Imagine if Cthulhu was the size of Asia and you could meet and hold conversations with his major organs, which had separate identities, and you kinda get the idea.

“The formless chaos that spawned us sucks,” said the Primordials. “Let's build someplace cool to live, rather than hang out here!”

And so they did. They made Creation, and nailed it down with the Elemental Poles of Earth, Fire, Air, Water, and <s>Heart</s> Wood.

“This place isn't going to maintain itself,” said the Primordials. “Let's make a bunch of servants to run the place for us! We'll give them intelligence, free will, and hopes and dreams, and then keep them as slaves for eternity! It'll be great!” And so they made the gods. Some gods, such as the Unconquered Sun, Luna, and the Maidens, were built to be exceedingly cool and do lots; others were built to do stuff like make sure individual shrubs grew properly.

“Huzzah!” said the Primordials. “We have people to do the dirty work of running the place for us! Let's spend half our time playing the impossibly awesome Games of Divinity, and the other half screwing with the lives of our lessers!” And so they did.

“This sucks,” said the gods, after moving the Elemental Pole of Fire back into place for 700th time after one of the Primordials went on a drinking binge and knocked it loose, causing untold thousands of deaths and nearly causing Creation to fall back into the Wyld. “We should kill those assholes and take their stuff.”

“Ha ha!” said the Primordials. “You can't kill us! When we built you, we programmed you so you could never attack us! Suck it!”

===Making of the Exalted===
So the Unconquered Sun, who is the God of Awesome, came up with a plan. “Let's take those little mortal humans down there and give them incredible power. Then we can have them kill the Primordials, and then we can get at their Games of Divinity and play them ourselves!” So they developed Exaltations, which are sort of like an additional component to the human soul that lets you do magic and super kung fu. Then they picked out the coolest people in Creation and instilled these Essence Shards in them.

“Are you planning on using those Exalted mortals to kill my asshole brothers and sister and take their stuff?” asked Autochthon, who was just about the only Primordial on the side of the gods, because most of the time it was his stuff that the other Primordials were breaking when they ran amok. Plus they made fun of him all the time.

“Um... no,” said the gods.

“Gee, that's too bad. I was gonna hook them up with ultimate weapons of Primordial-slaying destruction, but since you're not rebelling and all...”

“Oh, in that case, yes. Yes, we are.”

Meanwhile, Luna, shape-shifting (and gender changing) god/goddess of the moon, managed to sweet-talk his/her/their Primordial hippy sugar mama Gaia into not fighting during the rebellion. “I'll do that thing with my tongue,” Luna promised.

“We have granted you the power to be totally awesome!” said the gods to their Exalted. “Now, go kill those Primordial assholes!”

“Aww, isn't that cute,” said the Primordials. “Those little humans think they can OH SHIT THEY'RE STABBING ME OW OW OW!” Half of them died.

“Don't kill us!” said the other half.

“Now you have to be our slaves for forever, ha ha ha!” said the gods, and then sewed them all up inside the butt of the head Primordial, Malfeas. (Malfeas got turned inside-out and sewn into his own butt.)

“You guys suck,” said the dead Primordials to the Exalted. “We hereby curse you so that you'll all turn into assholes someday!”

“Whatever,” said the Exalted.

“Well, now that that's over,” said the Unconquered Sun, who had since declared himself King of All Cosmos, “Let's go play the Games of Divinity all day! You folks we Exalted, you guys can run the world. Make sure none of our lamer siblings start acting stupid. Make sure I get plenty of prayers coming my way. Other than that, have fun!”

“Hey, I feel kinda guilty for helping kill my brothers and sisters and enslaving the rest,” said Autochthon. “I'm going to leave Creation to go brood for a few thousand years.”

“Have fun!” said the gods (and their new Exalted buddies.)

So the Exalted – particularly the Solars – ran the world. Having been cool to begin with and then granted badassitude by the God of Awesome, they proceeded to do all sorts of cool stuff, like build magical cities out of glass, make mountains float, create currency that reinforces the fabric of reality and ''breed dinosaurs who pissed heroin.'' YES, SERIOUSLY. THIS IS SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS IN EXALTED.

===The Usurpation and the Immaculate Order===
Eventually, though, the Solars got bored and jaded and full of themselves. “We killed the Primordials and made all this cool stuff. Everything we do must therefore be right. Let's run amok!” And so they did.

“This sucks,” said the Sidereals, whose job it is to make sure that the Loom of Fate, which is sort of the engine that runs Creation, doesn't crash. “At the rate they're going, they're gonna wreck Creation. Let's kill them and take their stuff!”

“Hey, we need your help,” the bronze faction Sidereals (lead by Chejop Kejak) said to the Dragon-Blooded, who were the least awesome and powerful but most numerous of the Exalted (cause theirs is heredity), who acted as lieutenants and aides and local governors and such. Secretaries, too. “Your asshole Solar bosses are gonna wreck the world. Can you help us kill them?”

“Figures they'd end up doing something like that. Sure, we'll help,” said the Dragon-Blooded.

“Come to our big dinner banquet!” said the Dragon-Blooded to the Solars. Then, when the Solars arrived, the bronze faction Sidreals blew the place up, and trapped the Solar's Essence Shards in a magic cage so that no more Solars could be created.

“Yay it worked! Now we'll erase all evidence of our existence and run the world from behind the scenes, while the Dragon-Blooded can do the dirty work!” said the Sidereals, thus proving themselves to be the only people in the setting with basic pattern recognition.

Meanwhile, the ghosts of the dead Primordials caught 13 of the dead Solar's ghosts on the way down into the Underworld. “Work for us,” they said, “and we'll give you incredible power, like what you had when you were alive!”

“What's the catch?” asked the ex-Solar ghosts.

“Well, you have to be our slaves and try to make everything, everywhere, die forever.”

“Deal! Let's get cracking!” And so were the Deathlords were created, super-powerful ghosts who want the world to die.

Back in Creation, the Dragon-Blooded had a conundrum.

"Hey, what the hell, guys?" The people said. "Those Solar and Lunar guys were fucking awesome! Why the hell did you kill them?"

"Um..." The Dragon-Blooded said as they came up with a solution. Eventually, one of them said, "...because they were DEMONS possessing mortals! Yeah, that's the trick!" And so the Immaculate Order was invented, a religion that almost everyone in the Realm follows, which paints all Celestial Exalted as evil "Anathema", demons that possess awesome people and turn them into cunning evil monsters. Which, to be fair, is technically true. Wyld Hunts (think modern special forces with magitech in a mostly standard fantasy setting) are sent out to kill Celestials and keep the status quo all status quo-y.

===The Great Contagion and the Balorian Crusade===
So while the Dragon-Blooded were doing a fairly good (although not nearly as impressive as the Solars) job of running Creation, the Deathlords were building a doomsday plague.

“Taste the bitter poison mixed from the ashes of our hopes and the tears of betrayal in the dark pit of our tortured souls!” said the Deathlords, presumably while wearing too much eyeliner, and unleashed their doomsday plague into Creation.

“This sucks,” said 90% of the living beings in the world, and died. Including plants.

“Hey,” said the Deathlords to the Fair Folk, who were into that sort of thing, who lived in the Wyld outside of Creation and didn't like the idea of a place that didn't just change according to their thoughts. “Just about everyone in there's dead now. If you went in, ate the souls of the survivors, and tore the place down, no one could stop you!”

“Thanks for the heads up!” said the Fair Folk, and promptly invaded in force.

“This is bad,” said one of the surviving Dragon-Blooded to her friends. “Fortunately, I just remembered that there's a sealed-off control center for an ultimate magical doomsday weapon that the Solars made for defending Creation against exactly this sort of thing. Let's go on an epic world-saving quest to get in there!”

And so they went. On the way, they came across a shitton of Lunars fighting the Fair Folk.

"Oh shit, Anathema! Let's fight!" One said. The Lunars rolled their eyes and kept fighting.

Another one said to them, "Hey, if you cover us, we can stop this whole thing, and then we'll pretend we never met you and keep feeding Creation the cock-and-bull-story about you being demons!"

"Deal." The Lunars said. And they bought the Dragon-Blooded time to get to the Imperial Manse.

Most of them died trying to get past the defenses, but eventually, two Dragon-Blooded finally made it to the control panel.

“Please insert soul to activate this device,” said the control panel.

“What does that mean?” asked one, and then the other shoved her into the soul-extraction device.

And so this unnamed Dragon-Blooded, through an act of supreme badassness/[[Eldrad|dickery]], gained access to Creation's greatest magical weapons systems and used them to blow up the Fair Folk.

“I hereby declare myself the [[Scarlet Empress]] and ruler of the world,” she said.

“Nuh uh!” said some, until she blew them up. This brought lots more people over to her side, and thus was born the Realm, which is the major power in the world today.

Still, some said, “You were just a lieutenant who got lucky and stumbled across some doomsday weapons. We still have some doomsday weapons of our own, and we'll fight back!” The Scarlet Empress wanted to blow them up too, but a lot of her weapons didn't reach and she was kind of afraid of a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario, so, despite the occasional invasion attempt, they remained independent.

And so things went for over 750 years, until fairly recently, when the Scarlet Empress just up and disappeared. Having named no successor, the entire Realm is now leaderless and gearing up for civil war to see who's gonna be the next one of the Scarlet Throne. Right now, they've got this spineless bureaucrat warming the seat, but this guy is a total pussy who's basically being manipulated by whichever member of the shogunate is feeling power-hungry today. If you've seen Scrubs, imagine Ted with twenty-something Kelsos to suck up to.

Meanwhile, the Yozi known as the Ebon Dragon discovered where the Sidereals has stashed their cage full of Solar shards. They told the Neverborn -the ghosts of their brothers and sister who said Solars killed- tantalizing them with the idea of the power of the tools that destroyed them. “Hey, we can twist those and use them to create our own invincible deathknights!” The Deathlords pointed out. "We'll tell you where it is, just give us, uh, 50 of them!" the Yozi promised, planning to reap the benefits if the plan succeeded and covering their asses if it didn't. “Deal, let's go get that cage!” Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for everyone else), half the Essence Shards got loose. Now, once again, there are Solar Exalted.

And that's where the game begins.

===Return of Scarlet Empress===
And this is how the game can possibly end.

"Oh man! This sucks," said the Scarlet Empress. "When I die whoever takes over is going to screw up everything I worked for! What am I going to do?" She then found out that if she wrote ''The-Broken-Wing-Crane'' (which is pretty much the Necronomicon) she'd be immortal. "Aight I finished the Necronomicon! Now I'm immortal!"

"Sucker!" Said the Yozi known as the Ebon Dragon, as he dragged the Scarlet Empress off to Hell. There he brainwashed her [[/d/|with tentacles]] as his slave. He then said to the other Yozi "I've got a plan to get us out of here, any of you in?"

"Damn skippy!" said Malfeas.

"Affirmative," said She Who Lives In Her Name.

"Whatever," said Cecelyne.

"It's not like I've got anything better to do," said Adorjan.

The Ebon Dragon told his plan to his conspirators which amounts to: 'take the Akuma and Green Sun Princes to the four corners of Creation and fuck shit up!' Meanwhile Realm has a civil war, at least until the Scarlet Empress came back "I'm back and here to stay, mwahahahahahahahahahaha!" said the Scarlet Empress.

"Hmm, something's not right" said Chejop Kejak. So he called all the Sidereals together to try and assassinate her. It doesn't work and Chejop dies. Then back in Heaven Akuma, Green Sun Princes, and their Abyssal allies kill the Unconquered Sun (also possibly Luna and the Five Maidens.) This turned out to be less than good as now all the Exalted are Maximum OverExalted and make their pre-Incarna-death forms look like children with very flimsy sticks. Back in Hell the Ebon Dragon marries the Scarlet Empress breaking him out of Hell. "So long suckers!" he said betraying the Yozi.

"Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" said the Yozis still in Hell and then proceeded to commit demon genocide.

Back on Creation the Apocalypse and Ragnarok are happening at the same time, the Exalted gather mighty armies to fight the forces of the Ebon Dragon in a mighty battle, and the Scarlet Empress dies of an incurable condition called a Daiklave to the chest. The Ebon Dragon is defeated, the day is saved, and everyone lives happily ever after. Except for the part where the Ebon Dragon is now in hiding unless you killed him; in that case he's now a Neverborn. Speaking of the Underworld there are a lot more ghosts in there for the Deathlords and Neverborn to take advantage of. Also more of Creation possibly was taken by the Wyld via the Fair Folk, the remaining Yozis are still trapped in Hell and now know they can get out and the fact the world is a much bigger mess and in more disarray than it was before. So Huzzah?

==Important Elements==
===Exalted===
====[[Solars|Solar Exalted]]====
[[Image:Chess-solar-exalted.jpg|thumb|right|Solar Exalted]]
The Solar's main themes are 'excellence' and 'rulership'. Solar Exalted were created by the Unconquered Sun, King of the Gods, to lead the other Exalted, and to rule the world. Most of their low-level powers are normal human abilities turned up to 11, like simply being impossibly good at sneaking, or fighting, or persuasion. Their high-power abilities are normal human abilities turned up to OVER NINE THOUSAAAAND!!! A mortal blacksmith can make a sword using iron and a hammer and forge--a Solar craftsman can take a heap of hematite, and ''wring'' a sword out of it with their bare hands, and it'll be a masterfully made one, too. A mortal can survive, at least for a little while, in a hostile environment, like a raging snowstorm. A Solar with the right Charms can survive being at the bottom of the ocean, or '''inside''' an erupting volcano. A mortal can use a sword to parry a sword-strike. A Solar can parry an angry Primordial hitting them with a mountain range. And so on.
Solars also excel at inspiring and persuading others. Or, to be less polite, only the Fair Folk come anywhere close to their skill at being [[Eldrad|dicks]].

====[[Lunars|Lunar Exalted]]====
Lunar Exalts are the chosen of Luna. After the Terrestrials murdered all the Solars, they then moved on to their second in command Lunar servants. Fortunately for the children of the moon, they had always been good with stealth and survival in the wilderness, unfortunately for them the Dragon Bloods were a very organized and driven genocidal force. The Lunars had no choice but to move into the borderlands between the Wyld and Creation and try to plan their resistance in secret. However the Wyld is not a nice place and the borderlands can mutate even Exalted with its touch. Thus three things have happened: The Lunars have taken to ritually tattooing themselves with moonsilver, the normal 5 caste system has been simplified into the Full Moon, No Moon, and Changing Moon castes, and almost all of them have acquired bestial traits either through their devotion to Luna or the Wyld mutations. Ergo Lunar Exalts are a race of [[furry]] demigods. But one should always remember what power the Exalted wield, telling a lion-man of the Full Moon to "yiff in hell" is almost always a horrible idea as he can rip you and thousands like you to pieces without even trying. The Lunars have the unique "Meerkat Steals The Spotlight Prana", which makes any Real Life conversation about Exalted eventually evolve into a discussion about Lunar Exalted, as, pre-3e, they were by far the most interesting Exalt (except maybe the Fair Folk, below).

The new edition paints them as one of the main threat for the Realm's expansion before the Empress fucked off to Dragons know where. Their caste changing are also given a different reason, instead of being broken by the Wyld they were purposefully changed by the Lunars themselves to better fit into the new age. A couple of Elder's were changed some by a lot, others not so much, and few others were introduced like Aum-Ashatra the Spider King and Sha'a-Oka, The Black Lion the leader of the ongoing holy war in the Caul.

====[[Sidereals|Sidereal Exalted]]====
The Sidereals are the Chosen of the Maidens. To cover up their role in the Usurpation they broke the universe a little, and now everyone keeps forgetting that they exist. If they want to be remembered, they can use Resplendent Destinies, but then people remember the Destiny and not the person. If a certain Destiny is inconvenient or widely hated, the Sidereal can drop it and use another. In other words, Sidereals are anonymous 4chan users, and Resplendent Destinies are tripcodes.

These guys are the Men in Black and the CIA of Exalted. They live and work in the coolest place evar (Heaven) and are sent on missions to make sure everything in Creation is Working as Intended, "by any means necessary". Not surprisingly, Siderals are notorious for being lying, cheating, backstabbing Magnificent Bastards by the people who can manage to remember them.

They are also more crazy, but less powerful than the Solar exalted, when fighting. A battle with a Sidereal can result in you turning into a mountain, your opponent turning into a river, and then the two of you doing battle with the concept of love as a weapon. Sidereal Martial Arts are the pinnacle of kung-fu, and instead of emulating facets of Creation, they make Creation a facet of the Martial Art. This lets them punch people so hard they turn into ducks (it makes marginally more sense in context). Sidereals are also the only Exalts capable of manipulating the Loom of Fate directly, and are tasked with making sure it doesn't break down.

====[[Abyssals|Abyssal Exalted]]====
By twisting the Solar Exalted Essences in a Monstrance of Celestial Portion, the Neverborn managed to create the Abyssal Exalted. Abyssal Exalted don't suffer from the Great Curse, but instead suffer if they act too nice to people. They are also kept on a short leash, since the dead Primordials aren't exactly pleased with the Exalted. Generally an Abyssal has two choices in life, be the grand villain or attempt to redeem themselves. Both suck for obvious reasons.

Abyssal Exalted charms are largely mirrors of Solar Charms with a darker aspect. As a general thing, where the Solar Exalted gain bonuses, the Abyssal Exalted force penalties on their foes. Their magical material is Soulsteel, the forged souls of ghosts who live in constant pain (and moan and stuff too). They generally fall into one of a few categories; Emo dicks, giggling psychotic mass murderers, devoid of all redeeming qualities, and CRAAAAAAAWLING IIIIIIIIIIIIIN MY SKIIIIIIIIIIIN. There is a part of their soul that is still a Solar and it keeps reminding them of all the bad shit they do, and lots of them use it to be even more emo.

Fortunately, if they run into their Lunar Bondmate, they don't HAVE to suffer if they act too nice to him/her/it and/or those around him/her/it, and if they DO get to the "redemption" stage (BIIIIIG if), they don't have to worry about that pesky Great Curse anymore.

Unless, of course, their player took a look at the way that the Abyssals' development paths basically boil down to either 'devoted slave of the biggest dicks in existence' (which not everyone really wants to be) or 'the Abyssal whose one goal in life is to stop being an Abyssal' (which kind of misses the point) and said, "Fuck that noise, I'm going to be the biggest baddest ass in the underworld and the most horrifying thing in existence, no-one's going to tell me what to do, and it's going to be freaking AWESOME and metal and shit!" and proceeded to rewrite the rules until they could do just that.

Interestingly, this last part seems to be something that Third Edition seems to be running with. Abyssals are no longer slaves to their Deathlord, and are allowed as much free will as they desire to exert, because speculation indicates that Abyssals also no longer have a delete button (A monstrance) that their Deathlord can press if they start thinking too much. Additionally, there is nothing indicating any longer that Abyssals must kick puppies in their spare time to avoid becoming murder nukes. Much of their fate is speculation, but the direction that WW seems to be taking is to make them much more accessible as player characters in 3e than they were in 2e, where everyone pretty much universally agreed they were completely shitty to play. An Abyssal character is probably still not going to be building any orphanages, but at least he's no longer required to arbitrarily burn them down. Abyssals are also no longer required to genocide everything in their path for no reason other than Muh Death, as the Chivalry of Death replaces this compulsion with the imperative to "spread the influence of death to the living", a concept that is very open for interpretation (You can still do shit the old way, which makes people fear death and react with horror, but you can also cultivate positive interaction with the dead as well) since it now states that death itself is not the goal, but how much death influences the living mentally and emotionally.

====[[Dragon-Blooded|Terrestrial Exalted]]====
Terrestrials, also known as Dragon-Blooded, have a fitting name. They are the Exalts of the Five Elemental Dragons, souls of the Primordial Gaia. This gives them the ability to kill stuff with fire or their personal equivalent.

Since Terrestrials are the current bosses in Creation (with some secret aid from the Sidereals), their empire is the biggest single nation in the world and their state religion proclaims them to officially be the Best Thing Ever, they can freely go around and strut their stuff without being decried as Anathema, a term they invented themselves so that no other Exalts could strut their stuff. This in turn has a tendency to cause them to be enormous assholes. Also, when they use their magic a lot, they are liable to start burning or cause storms or other stuff that's less than safe for innocent bystanders.

The Terrestrials are soldiers. Like, all of them. They lean towards hierarchy, and even if not all of them fight, all of them could, and probably would if they were asked, contribute to a war effort. And the Realm is pretty much always at war in some area. Funny how that turns out.

Life in Dragon-Blooded society is competitive and merciless. To prepare for this, their training as soldiers and politicians starts as soon as they can speak and is so brutal that many don't survive to maturity even without considering the occasional assassination attempt. The end product is sort of a Sidereal-lite flavour of badass, particularly the ones that decide to become <strike>Shaolin</strike> Immaculate monks.

Terrestrials take strength in numbers, and since their Exaltation is the only one that is inherited (Dragon-''Blooded'', remember?), family is very important to them. From this follows that the production of new family is also very important to them, so if a Terrestrial isn't trying to kill you, he's probably trying to sleep with you. Even if he's gay.

====[[Alchemicals|Alchemical Exalted]]====
Basically <strike>robots</strike>Autobots. They work for Autochthon, also called The Great Maker, who is one of the last free Primordials and has a bunch of people living in cities built inside of him. He's got Primordial robot cancer that's called Gremlin Syndrome, The setting is half "Void tainted"(no relation to the Underworld) or infected by Gremlin Syndrome, and the other half varies between Steampunk to Cyberpunk. (Void-tainted Alchemicals are called Apostates, but they're only really comparable to Decepticons if all Decepticons, ever, eventually go into gleeful rampages of slaughter) As Alchemicals get more powerful, they get more and more like giant, inhuman robots until they turn into living cities.

Alchemicals are the only Exalted who require a soul that has demonstrated heroics worthy of Exaltation in many past lives. Given what's required to become one. Aside from that, then it could be worth noticing that Autochthon, being the guy who invented Exaltation, essentially made Alchemicals as prototypes for all the other Exaltations. Orichalcum Alchemicals for Solars, Moonsilver for Lunars and so on. <strike>Even Abyssal Exalted are covered by the Soulsteel Caste, making you wonder if he anticipated death-themed Exaltations...</strike> Retconned in Second Edition, Abyssals weren't planned for and resonate with both Orichalcum and Soulsteel, but the question remains for ''what'' Autocthon planned to do with them, as well as Adamant Alchemicals that do not fit anywhere, and the later Infernal Exalted don't match any Alchemicals either. On the other hand, said Infernals resonate with ALL of the Alchemical Castes - whether it's because they're proto-Primordials or SCIENCE!/MAGIC!/EXALTED! is up for debate.

====[[Infernals|Infernal Exalted]]====
The result of the Yozi's deal with the Neverborn to steal them some Solar Exaltations, the Infernal Exalts are tasked with turning Creation into Hell so that the Yozi can escape their prison. This is easier said than done because, like their Abyssal cousins, literally every other faction in existence thinks this is a terrible idea. Infernal charms are actually their Yozi's charms, and thus follow strict thematic grouping. When an Infernal develops a custom charm their Yozi learns it as well, which allows individual Infernals to change their Yozi over time. They are also slowly becoming Yozis in their own right over time, though they have the potential to be far more awesome Primordials than the original Primordials ever were.

Infernal Exalted is a collective term used to refer to two types; Akuma and Green Sun Princes. Akuma are the result of the classic Faustian bargain, selling their soul and free will for unstoppable power. Green Sun Princes get the same powers, except they still have the option of flipping the bird at this whole Reclamation thing and running off to get coked out of their minds, and since Akuma don't have free will you'll usually be playing as the latter.

[[That Guy|Some people]] will try to tell you that if you try to play an Infernal who is also a fundamentally decent character, you are [[Matt Ward|doing it wrong.]] Those people are idiots. No one says you have to put '''heroes''' in an elaborate death trap, explain your plans to them at length, and then leave with a hearty evil laugh to bleed off Torment. The head of a major crime syndicate works just as well.
Additionally, the potential to become an Über-primordial means that slipping the leash and gaining 'redemption' places you in the position of absolute power. You can become Armageddon, destroyer of all, Genesis, creator of worlds, or Über Gaia, mother/father/progenitor of everything. Dickhead, dispassionate weeder, or eternally-loving-and-benevolent Cthulu, those monikers become meaningless when you can make your ''soul/imagination'' a REALITY IN OF ITSELF. In theory, at least. In practice, the Devil-Tiger Charms (Said reward for slipping the leash) are absolute garbage and and not worth the xp to get them. Of course, after you do become a Devil Tiger, there is always the avenue of custom charms, but that's a whole different kettle of Lunar-Fish

Seriously though, check with your storyteller first. The [[fluff]] for these guys is positively ''fucked'' from being written by two different teams of dudes that had ''zero'' contact with each other and very different ideas of what to do with the archetype. Naturally, that means that DMs are divided into armed, angry camps over the "[[skub|right]]" way to play/run an Infernal campaign, and if he wants to use them one way, then let him use them that way. It might be in your best interests to pick one of the more traditionally "heroic" kinds of Exalt if he wants them to be child-raping murderers rather than screwed-up dudes with many possible motivations and flaws. And even if he ''does'' let you run the way you want, nobody likes the guy who [[Drizzt|won't stop whining about]] [[Vampire: The Masquerade|how hard it is to be misunderstood]] all the time. Remember: being an Infernal is fun. It feels good. It's like being the centerpiece of a heavy metal album cover, whether you're trying to be a hero or not.

====[[Chernozem|Liminal Exalted]]====
We don't know much about these ones. They've gotten scattered mentions in the second-to-last book of second edition, have some sort of interest in body parts, and are tied to the lands of the dead. They're also called "Chernozem", chosen of the black earth. Their Aspects apparently include Blood, Marrow, Flesh, Breath and Soil.

They are on a quest to learn about their Humanity.

It'll probably be years before they receive an official sourcebook.

Based on tentative things released with the Kickstarter, Liminals are the result of people trying to use rituals to bring back the dead (something impossible in Exalted). The Dark Mother, a strange being who lives somewhere in the Underworld meets the conductor of the ritual halfway and instead creates a whole new soul inside the corpse, which is the Exalt. Liminal Exalts are tasked by her with keeping restless spirits bound and down, but can give her the finger and do their own damn thing (unlike Abyssals). They can collect and replace body parts to modify their skills, taking the legs of a legendary dancer, the arm of a swordsman, or the tongue of a master storyteller and making these abilities their own. Additionally, as long as a Liminal's brain is intact and they can access most of their original body's matter, they can recover from any injury.

====[[Getimian Exalted]]====
Apparently at some point a Sidereal looked up from his endless paperwork, realized saving the fundaments of reality every day was something that just wasn't going to end, and said WELL FUCK THAT and wandered off. He then proceeded to--in ascending order of badassitude, and perhaps sequentially--quit his job, declare war on heaven, and then recruit an entire type of Exalted to help, and they now regard him as their collective boss. They have some sort of crazy internal alchemy and have a miniature version of the machine that keeps reality running inside each one, thanks to ''colonies of pattern spiders that live in their spines.'' [[Drow]], eat your hearts out.

And like the Liminals, that's about all we know until their hardback comes out.

====[[Exigents]]====

Discount Exalted. Basically, every god has the capacity to carve out some of their own power and then give it to a mortal as a permanent upgrade. This would probably result in all humanity being Exalted in short order given how literally every blade of grass has a god and everyone wants their own action figure, were it not for the Law of Diminishment-if you're going to make something that's going to be great and perhaps eternal, you have to permanently give it some of your own power. Hell, the first time the Sun set was when he made the Solars, and that was just stamping his name on the things Autocthon already made! This is often more than what lesser gods can take and what greater gods, being dicks, are willing to give up, hence why they're saved for emergencies. Once that happens though, they each get a custom Charmset, for a personal style of kicking ass.

And you guessed it, that's all we're gonna know until the hardback.

===Gods===
Creations of the Primordials. The Gods were meant to maintain Creation while their masters played the Games of Divinity. That didn't turn out so good.
====Celestial Incarnae====
These are the strongest deities in the setting by dint of their celestial nature, and led the other Gods into rebellion against the Primordials. They don't do much now except rubber stamp paperwork and maybe say hi to new Exalts every now and then, being utterly addicted to the [[World of Warcraft|Games of Divinity.]]
=====The Unconquered Sun=====
The Unconquered Sun, Ignis Divine, king of kings, lord of Yu-Shan and Chief God of War, is the greatest of the gods in Exalted, he is the God of Perfection. He is usually depicted as a shining four-armed warrior bearing in each hand a symbol of the virtues he exalts: a shield for temperance, a spear for valor, a branch for compassion, and a horn for conviction. The Solar Exalted are his Chosen, and he is the chief deity of the Dragon Kings. He's actually a pretty cool guy who has to make an effort to repress being compassionate, temperate, holding to his convictions, or being valorous. What that adds up to is a god who will always protect the innocent, never back down from a challenge, and will always hold true to his convictions...Or at least that used to be the case. When the Solars started going crazy, he had a nervous breakdown and refused to leave the Jade Pleasure Dome in heaven where the Games of Divinity are kept. Now he's just as addicted to the GoD like all the other Incarnae, and has become just as detached from Creation as the Primordials he overthrew. The burnout from being ranked ten in every virtue isn't helping. Meanwhile, the celestial bureaucracy that he designed to revolve around himself and his Incarnae buddies grows increasingly corrupt without his oversight. He's actually SO powerful that his shadow is, in and of itself, a god.
Has a specialty in 'riding' Luna and Gaia, although the girls he keeps trying to marry are the Five Maidens.

=====Luna=====
Luna is either [[Mork|intensely cunning or utterly mad]], or perhaps both. Some say she is a Fair Folk noble. Like the Wyld, she is malleable able to take whatever form pleases her. The Lunar Exalted are her Chosen, and she is Gaia's lover (but so is just about everyone else).

Luna is a shapeshifter, which explains the Lunars' entire shtick, but doesn't have any limits on what she can turn into. Gender isn't a thing for Luna and it's not unheard of for Luna to be portrayed as a guy (protip. if you have a portrait of the Incarna and there's a silver-haired dude, that her). Out of all the incarnae, Luna is the least affected by the games and she actually takes the time to visit each Lunar as they exalt. Luna doesn't have a true form but her most common forms include but are not limited to a bow wielding huntress, a male traveler dressed entirely in white, a pregnant woman, a pregnant man, a sorceress with a tiara that keeps the Terrifying Secrets Gods Were Not Meant To Know from destroying her mind, and a knife wielding, half naked, wild woman that is apparently the greatest predator in creation.

In order to create Luna they had to stuff all the other moon gods in the Jar of Things that Can Not Exists and have them fight to the death. What popped out was Luna who promptly decided to whisper sweet nothings to UC and seduce Gaia.

=====The Five Maidens=====
Originally created to service the Loom of Fate, these Five Maidens are likely most enigmatic of the Incarnae. The Five Maidens are, together, second in power only to the Unconquered Sun and about equal to Luna. Their Chosen are the Sidereal Exalted, champions and guardians of fate. Okay people, mostly, though they keep running into... problems. For instance, actually ''using'' their powers to look into the future locks it in immutably into place, for good or ill, so they don't like doing it.<br/>

The Five Maidens are:
* Mercury, the Maiden of Journeys
* Venus, the Maiden of Serenity
* Mars, the Maiden of Battles
* Jupiter, the Maiden of Secrets
* Saturn, the Maiden of Endings

====Celestial Gods====
Also known as the Celestial Bureaucracy, they are, surprise surprise, the bureaucrats of Heaven. They fill out paperwork, kiss up to their bosses after work and try to avoid anything that resembles real work. They are assigned to Departments that manage Creation-wide phenomena, such as Dreams, Fate, Weather and Mammals. They avoid the Sidereals as much as possible.

====Terrestrial Gods====
Like the name says, they live in Creation. For various reasons, they loathe the Celestial Bureaucracy. Their purview (and power) is more limited than the Celestial gods, such as a city or a specific type of tree. Their proximity to mortals means that they're the gods most likely to bully them, but also the ones most likely to cut a deal with.

====Elementals====
Elementals are terrestrial spirits devoted to ensuring a small, local purview functions properly. They are also arranged into the Elemental Courts. There are five categories of Elementals (Air, Earth, Fire, Water and Wood) and numerous subdivisions there in. While numerous, each Elemental is a unique sentient being and has its place in Fate. Most Elemental beings are noticeably drawn from Earth mythology. (e.g. dragons, thunderbirds, ifrit).

====Little Gods====
Little Gods are the barely-aware deities of common objects. They interact with other little gods behind the scenes and generally ensure that things work properly. For example, a lumberjack goes to fell a tree: The axe's little god informs the tree's little god that it should probably fall down now. Usually it will, and the Loom of Fate makes a note of the fact and everything continues on its merry way. Other times, the tree doesn't fall (or fall in the right direction, or falls, say, purple) and the Bureau of Destiny might dispatch a Sidereal to figure out what the problem is.

===[[Primordials]]===
The Primordials made Creation from the infinite possibility of the Wyld. They are beings beyond measure, and composed of many subsidiary souls. They are defined by their Third Circle souls, and most importantly by their Fetich Soul (though it might be that they define their souls). During the Primordial War, those who lost all of their Third Circle souls died and became the Neverborn, while those who survived with some intact became the Yozis.

====Neverborn====
Slain during the Primordial war, they fell through the fabric of Creation and left Shadowlands in their wake. As they conceived of a state of 'not being', Oblivion was born. Similarly, their unconscious thoughts created the Underworld, now more static and unchanging to fit their ideals. Like all ghosts, the Neverborn have fetters to Creation and were unable to truly fall into Oblivion. In fact, as they created the world, they have the strongest fetters of all undead. They realized that the only way to achieve their goal of true death was to destroy their fetters, all of Creation. At first, they were more fearful of the Exalted than anything and half-asleep besides the fact. When the Black Nadir Concordat intruded into their tomb-cities and stole the secrets of Necromancy, they were roused to wakefulness and incredibly angry. Though dead, the Neverborn are still incredibly powerful and command hosts of Abyssal Exalts, Deathlords, Hekatonkhires, and Spectres.

Remember Tolkien's description of Sauron's fate at the end of Lord of the Rings? That's the Neverborn. The tragedy isn't that they're "dead", because beings that huge can't actually die - the very concept of Death is beyond them since they didn't build Creation to ''handle'' them dying. The tragedy is that they're so obsessed with something they've already lost that they can't look past it. They're all caught in a permanent, inescapable angst-loop, and if any of them could just sit up and notice they could abandon their forms and go back to the Wyld. But instead, they sit and spiral further into their "we got our asses handed to us and now our favorite toy is gone" drain-circling, and the psychic emanation of their collective regret has created an entire Underworld for similarly-resonant souls to live out their own miserable pathos.

Unlike the Yozi, and unlike the truly Dead, the Neverborn are simply incapable of noticing anything that might free them from their eternity of navel-gazing. They have nothing left but self-hatred, and the desire to see everything else wind up even more screwed than they were.

No wonder the Ebon Dragon likes them so much.

====Yozis====
Those Primordials who survived the Primordial War were shoved inside the butt of their General/King, Malfeas (who was turned inside out and shoved into his own butt!). They then swore many oaths, some known only to the Unconquered Sun, for they are engraved into the haft of the Orichalcum spear he wields. The Yozis feel nothing but anger for their betrayal and diminution at the hands of the Exalted and the Gods, and plot to return the favour. The Yozi known as the Ebon Dragon (the Primordial responsible for the concept of Opposition: he created honesty so he could be dishonest, loyalty so he could be treacherous, and virtue so he could be its antithesis. In order to talk to you he has to turn himself into exactly what you personally most despise and fear. Not a nice guy!) has been tasked by his peers to find a way to escape from their prison. Which has been going roughly as well as you might expect.( dude, he's the embodiment of assholery. You really gonna trust this fucker?) An unknown number of Yozi Cults also flourish in Creation, aiming to learn demonic practices and perhaps ultimately bring the true masters of Creation back to their world.

It's worth noting that those oaths mean that unlike the Neverborn, the Yozis can't act too openly to fuck up Creation, else they get called before the Incarnae to account for their actions. What happens next is likely... unpleasant.

=====Akumas=====
An Akuma is a mortal or Exalt who has been granted [[Daemon Prince|a measure of power by an Yozi, but essentially becomes a puppet of that Primordial, devoid of free will]]. While this sounds like a horrible trade, the Yozi are very convincing even when they ''aren't'' just lying about it and some people are incredibly power-hungry. The first Akuma was a Solar Exalted, and the Yozi eagerly seek to turn more Exalted into Akuma. The Green Sun Princes (read: Infernal Exalted), the 50 Solar Shards altered by the Yozis, are not Akuma, though there are enough similarities that the two frequently get confused.

=====Demons=====
The lower souls of the Yozis are called Demons now. Thanks to the terms of the Yozis' surrender, they can be summoned into Creation and ordered around. This is difficult for mortal occultists, since Demons can be very willful, but prepared Exalted sorcerers usually don't have too much of a problem with this. There are specific astrological condition required. For example, the strongest ones, Third Circle Demons, can only be summoned during a five day window called Calibration once a year. First Circle Demons are numerous and interchangeable, while Second and Third Circle Demons are unique.

Demons aren't, unlike [[tanar'ri|the D&D version]], ''naturally'' depraved and evil. They are, however, the products of a nightmarish culture created, ruled by, and located inside of a number of beings that are almost as unnecessarily assholish as they are bugfuck nuts. They may be capable of moral choice like humans, but that doesn't automatically made them good people either. Unless you're a Sidereal with the charm that lets you essentially put them into the Witness Protection Program for services rendered, tread lightly.

====[[Primordials]] (Who aren't dead or imprisoned)====
=====Autochthon=====
Autochthon was the Primordial who created much of the technology and industry of Creation. Including the Loom of Fate that enforces causality in creation. He was not well regarded or well-treated by his peers and resented them greatly. During the Primordial War, he sided with the Gods and helped arm their Exalted. After the War, when asked to put a geas on his Mountain Folk, he worried the Exalted would turn on him next. Gathering up his loyal followers he departed Creation for Elsewhere, sealing the way behind him with the Seal of Eight Divinities.

=====Gaia=====
Gaia sat the war out, thanks to Luna's insistence. The Five Elemental Dragons are her creations, as of third edition it is unclear if they are her subsouls or just spirits she made. She is not often spoken of, and seems to have no agenda beyond leaving most of herself behind in heaven and then running around the wyld looking for 'answers'.

===Others===
====[[Jadeborn]]====
The [[Dwarves]] of the Exalted setting, also called the mountain folk (because they live in mountains). They are divided into three castes, the Artisans, the Workers, and the Warriors. The Artisans are the leaders while the workers work and supply the Warriors who are in a constant fight against the Darkbrood. They were originally created by Autochthon when he found some of the Rakasha trapped in blocks of Jade. He then formed them into the first Jadeborn. Eventually they evolved into a caste system with some of the workers and warriors having an exalted like tendency called enlightenment. The Jadeborn provided many of the wonders of the first age and had such technology that they were cursed by the unconquered sun to never roam the surface of Creation without being lead by a member of the exalted. Jadeborn Charms come in five Patterns: Foundation, Artisan, Worker, Warrior and Enlightened.

====Dragon Kings====
The Dragon Kings are large lizard-like beings of great power, resembling dinosaurs. The Dragon Kings are sworn in allegiance to the Unconquered Sun, their creator. Before the time of the Exalted, the Dragon Kings ruled Creation and the mortals who dwelt there, but as the methods of Exaltation were crafted and improved they become obsolete in the gods' eyes. Think inca and aztec style biped dinuars. The Unconquered Sun used them as powerful servants to his chosen whom they served faithfully, honoring their Exalted brethren. After the First Age ended in war and disease, few survived. Their numbers grow slowly but steadily in the Second Age, though the once great Dragon Kings remain hidden in the furthest corners of Creation. Their most powerful stronghold would be the Aztec-flavoured Rathess, an ancient home filled with a variety of powerful artifacts made by the Dragon Kings in the glory days of the First Age. There are four types of Dragon Kings, each living in a direction of Creation; the graceful flying Pterok (North), the nimble and lithe Raptok (East), the powerful and loyal Anklok (South), and the clever amphibious Mosok (West).

====Fair Folk====
The Fair Folk are creatures composed of raw Essence, and inhabit the Wyld – the place that exists between the ordered Creation and pure Chaos. Inhuman and beautiful beings born from chaos, they feed on the dreams and aspirations of the inhabitants of Creation in order to give them strength and form in their own intermediate realm. (In other words, they EAT PEOPLE'S SOULS.) In essence, they are the "kissing cousins" of the Primordials; their territory having been pushed back when the Primordials formed Creation. They prey upon the dreams of mortals and do a brisk trade with the Guild (a powerful economic organization in Creation) in slaves... well, the souls of slaves.

The Raksha are divided into four castes: Diplomats, who favor the Staff Grace and the virtue of Conviction; Entertainers, who favor the Cup Grace and the virtue of Compassion; Warriors, who favor the Sword Grace and the virtue of Valor, and Workers, who favor the Ring Grace and the virtue of Temperance. Noble Raksha belong to two of the four castes, favoring the graces and virtues of both. There is also a fifth Grace, the Heart Grace, which is associated with identity and the trait of Willpower. Graces are differing outlets for the use of Essence and are similar to the suits of tarot. The most powerful of the Fair Folk are the Unshaped. Unlike the Raksha, the Unshaped are unable to survive within Creation for extended periods of time, each Unshaped is actually a symbiotic cluster of Fair Folk consisting of a single "guiding intelligence" and one or more "subsidiary intelligences" with no true form.

Being born from a place of fluid reality that resembles a Loony Tunes skit as much as it does creation, fair folk have difficulty functioning like "real" people. For one thing they suffer from "calcification", their natural unshaped forms are incompatible with creation's stagnant, static existence. Even when they take on a semi-real shape (as a Rakasha) they bleed essence while in creation and must feed on dreams and souls to keep themselves alive. Secondly a fair folk's emotions and virtues are entirely artificial, represented by their graces. When their phony identities break down they suffer from 'Bedlam'. This can have effects such as losing the ability to comprehend that other people aren't just figments of his imagination (conviction) or forgetting that he is capable of inflicting harm on others (valor).

====Ghosts====
Ever since the Neverborn's death broke the cycle of reincarnation, those who die with their business unfinished turn up as Ghosts in the Underworld. Ghosts have access to what they were buried/burned with (their grave goods) and are able to channel essence and learn ghost charms, called Arcanoi. Ghosts who settle their business can pass into Lethe as they should have and reincarnate. Those who give into the Whispers of Oblivion (usually by wandering the Labyrinth) turn into crazed Spectres intent on spreading the word of Oblivion by force. Their third option is to toss themselves into the Mouth of Oblivion and utterly cease to exist.

=====Deathlords=====
Ghosts of 13 First Age Solars who died during the Usurpation, they took the Neverborn's offer of real, ultimate power in exchange for promising to drop all of Creation into Oblivion. They are rather bitter and psychologically maladjusted from the Usurpation. Each one is pretty unique in their psychosis and plots. Some are making more headway than others. The Dowager's Great Contagion managed to kill 90% of all life in Creation, while the Mask of Winters has captured Thorns. Others have suffered rather embarrassing setbacks, and are dealt with harshly by their Neverborn masters. As may be expected, they like to fight and argue with each other a lot, which makes even some of their greatest successes a comedy of errors. The Great Contagion, as previously mentioned? Yeah, the only reason it only killed most of all life in Creation was because two other Deathlords, The Eye and Seven Despairs and The First and Forsaken Lion, went out and invited the fair folk to invade Creation, which ended up uniting all of Creation against a common cause, and gave the world the strength and focus to endure the plague, plus it screwed enough with creation's reality that the plague stopped working right. The other thing that seems to get in the way them succeeding are, ironically, the Neverborn themselves. As they Neverborn hate the state they are in, they hate it when the Deathlords don't preform to total perfection and brutally punish them for it. The First and Forsaken Lion, for example, is actually waiting to come up with a plan because he wants to be sure the plan will work out of fear it might not and getting punished like when he displeased the Neverborn in the past.

* Bishop of the Chalcedony Thurible:** possibly the craziest Deathlord(though the Dowager and Eye and Seven Despairs are giving him a run for his money), convinced that he can convince Creation to murder itself through pure rhetoric. Currently running a rather large suicide cult based in Creation's equivalent of the Gobi Desert. Might actually be onto something, because going on genocidal killing sprees generally just causes souls to reincarnate rather than become ghosts or fall into Oblivion. Also, his battle form is covered in dicks, absolutely no explanation is given (might be a commentary on sex abuse in the clergy, but he's always been characterized as too crazy to really take an interest in procreation or understand human biology).

* Bodhisattva Anointed by Dark Waters/The Silver Prince: undead ruler of Skullstone, an island nation known for its use of GHOST PIRATES! In all seriousness though, he's built a seemingly utopian island society based on ancestor worship and necromancy, but GASP he's really just built a dystopian soul farm that tricks its inhabitants into doing his bidding while harvesting 9/10ths of souls for smelting into soulsteel(because he's a Deathlord, therefore EVIL). He's building a giant fuck-you Creation fleet of sci-fi ships out of ghosts.

* Dowager of the Irreverent Vulgate in Unrent Veils: the Deathlord responsible for the Great Contagion(which she pulled out of a portal to an alternate universe, Exalted is weird like that). Currently running an "orphanage" populated by children she herself has orphaned, with the building's furniture being made out of the ghost's of the orphans' parents. When they reach a certain age, she either lets them go free(to have kids that she then orphans to start the cycle anew) or she kills all but the most traumatized one, smelts their souls into soulsteel, and Exalts the survivor and gives her weapons made out of her friends. Because she's crazy evil like that.

* Eye and Seven Despairs: was horribly abused by other Solars in life, currently using the Abyssal exaltations of those same Solars in a game of navel gazey torture revenge porn rather than doing his job(which he used to be rather good at). That's about the beginning and end of his canon characterization, good Storytellers usually give him other motivations though, like the whole revenge porn thing being a ploy, or a method to terrify his Abyssals into subservience.

* The First and Forsaken Lion(FaFL): Generic Sauron-esque big bad for your campaigns. Was bolted permanently to his own armor by Who Holds in Thrall for his fuckups involving the Fair Folk Invasion. Currently camping out in the southern underworld building a fuckass huge ghost army and trying to figure out a plan that doesn't cause his bosses to torture him again. Also may or may not have been brainwashed by his masters into being Tsundere for The Princess Magnificent.

* Lover Clad in Raiment of Tears: On the surfaces she's a generic "Evil is Sexy" hedonist. Deep down she's a full on nihilist who hopes to expose people to so much extreme pleasure that it leaves them emotionally burnt out and unable to enjoy *any* form of pleasure other than waiting for the sweet release of oblivion. The Bodhisattva is legit terrified of her and chose his current location in part to be as far as possible from her.

* Mask of Winters: another Generic Sauron Expy, though more active than FaFL. Main Deathlord in the games. Conquered the city of Thorns using a fortress made out of an undead giant, the Realm and the rest of Creation collectively shat a brick in reaction and are currently panicking thinking of an appropriate response. Most likely to be your Abyssal PC's shitty boss.

* The Princess Magnificent with Lips of Coral and Robes of Feathers: third biggest fuckup amongst the Deathlords after FaFL and Eye, was chased out of her own fortress by nothing more than a story about how she would be defeated(granted, it was a magic story was told by gods, but it was still a hail mary shot in the dark). Was punished by being made subordinate to FaFL (who, as mentioned before, is creepy Tsundere for her).

* Walker in Darkness: has no memory of his life as a Solar(Mask of Winters killed him using a weapon that destroyed memories back when they were still made of meat), meaning he has no grasp beyond the basic of how his own Abyssals work. Still hates Mask of Winters though, but has no idea why.

* Four other Deathlords for the storyteller to create in the above aren't good enough.

=====Hekatonkhires=====
These are ghosts of Behemoths or the Neverborn's Third Circle Souls. Occasionally the Neverborn's thoughts birth a new one. Hekatonkhires are unique and very powerful beings. Imagine undead Cthulhu's zombie kidneys, as a roaming monster.

====Mortals====
[[Image:Mortals_in_exalted.jpg|thumb|right]]
Everyone else. Mortals are unable to channel essence (unless they become sorcerers, which is no easy task and won't give them the strength to match an Exalt anyway) and thus are at a severe disadvantage. While Exalted is largely a cinematic and epic game, it is grim and gritty for Mortals. Their only real advantage is numbers. The most prominent mortals, Humans, were created by the Primordials to provide prayer (and the subsequent ambrosia and quintessence) in Yu-Shan, and nearly all Exalted are of Human stock. There are sub races of humans however some for instance are products of first age bioengineering such as the Air folk who can glide through the air on wings.

===Martial Arts===

Considering all the shoutouts to Ramayana: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or [[Legends of the Wulin]], then it must be noted that another really big part of Exalted are its many magical martial arts that a character can learn in the game. The magical martial arts in Exalted are a key aspect of what can make a good combat character into an ungodly god-killing machine, but there are also strange and down-right weird martial arts that will let you do things that even the greatest of wuxia movie director can only dream of.

Every style tends to have a form weapon or two, a specific weapon that the style functions with - such as one-handed swords, spears, hook-swords and so on. Crunch-wise, if using a given martial art's form weapon, then that character counts as using unarmed attacks. So even if you're using a sword while fighting with Five-Dragon Style martial arts, your blade and fists blazing with elemental essence, then you will be using Dexterity+Martial Arts to hit stuff, not Dex+Melee. As a general rule, then using a form-weapon is always better than fighting bare-handed, unless its a style that doesn't allow form weapons at all, but then there's usually a reason for that...

Not all styles work while wearing armor, but the ones that don't tend to contain charms that compensate for this, either through charms that grant extra damage soak, or charms that make the martial artist really difficult to actually hit in the first place. Or if hit you just shatter because you were in fact just a [[https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Anime <s>shadow</s> mirror clone]], or you absorb the punch into the infinite depths of the ocean, or because after landing your last hit your opponent exploded into the chunkiest of salsa. And if you are still not convinced, there is always the Armour That Is Not Armour, Silken Armour. (And also Infinite Resplendence Amulet but that is different)

The martial arts in Exalted are tiered as follows:

====Mortal Martial Arts====

That's it, non-magical stuff available to everyone. Mentioned only because you need some training in these before moving on to good stuff.

Unlike the magical martial arts, then normie martial art skills are represented via dots in Brawl or Martial Arts abilities, depending on what edition you're playing in.

====Terrestrial Martial Arts====

Dragonblooded, being the weakest but most numerous of the exalted, can normally only learn these magical martial arts. Mechanically they don't do all that much, but they'll let even the weakest dragonblooded exalted fight the strongest of mortal men or low level demons quite effectively, parrying swords bare-handed and whatnot like a boss. This is your basic "I punch the bad guy's minion, my fists blazes with elemental power, and he dies" martial art.

It should be noted that unless its an all-DB game, no player ever really wants to touch these. Also, mortal sorcerers and other people with unlocked essence can learn these. They can be helpful for some power in low level Solar games, since Swallowing The Lotus Root makes them stupidly cheap and easy to get. Depends if your GM allows the fan-made TMAs

====Celestial Martial Arts====

CMAs are the most common martial arts in the game, and while blocked to Dragonblooded unless they get some special training, then everyone else usually goes for these. The effects players can gain from these martial arts are what most people will think of when thinking magical martial arts.

A good example of this from 2nd edition was Solar Hero Style, AKA [[https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Fist_of_the_North_Star Fist of the Daystar Style]], which can allow a player character to punch people so hard that they'll fly off several dozen yards and take damage if they hit stuff on the way, or throw people around like ragdolls, or kick down massive castle walls or gates with a single blow, or use giant Yak-creatures as weapons. Think Dragon Ball Z style fighting (without energy beams) and you'll only be wrong on the parts where it doesn't matter.

Of other commonly seen CMAs there are the five Celestial Dragon styles, which can reasonably easily be summon up as "Avatar the last airbender, only they kills people and spirits really damn good". Celestial Water Dragon style lets you scream a tsunami to melt faces, Fire Dragon style can let you light other people's essence on fire inside them, making them burn from within, and so on. Any Solar is wise to take heed when facing a master of any of these styles, as they can turn an otherwise unassuming Dragonblooded exalt into a major threat, very quickly.

Of course, there are also far more exotic CMAs, such as Crystal Chameleon style, which can best be described as "Ninja disco style". There's also Celestial Monkey style which has a fun little charm that lets you punch people in their virtues for extra damage (and valor is apparently rooted in the groin...), or Hungry Ghost Style which is all about soul-eating, or Rightous Devil Style which is basically gun-fu, or Silver-Voiced Nightingale Style which is basically beating people up with the power of music. If you liked Tron, then the Alchemicals have access to a martial art that is basically disc combat, but made for chainsaw discs you throw around for deadly and very messy effect.

There are loads of other styles, such Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Style which is best fought in ball-gowns as a pretty princess, or Laughing wound style which best practiced by first slashing your wrists and conjuring whips of blood from the cuts. In short, there's a martial art for every kind of character concept in Exalted. Also, there's one that lets you fight with your dick (though it was invented by demon).

...and that's not to mention all the homebrew martial arts that the Exalted community has dreamt up, an example being [[https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Meatbread Orichalcum Chef Style]] in case you actually want to play as an Iron Chef.

====Sidereal Martial Arts====

Its been mentioned earlier that there's a SMA that lets you turn people in ducks. This is true, and its not even the most impressive thing you can do in that particular style. Dragonblooded can, RAW, not learn SMAs at all, and outside of Sidereals then others need to find someone (A sidereal usually) who'll train them - this isn't something a character is supposed to develop on their own.

SMAs are best characterized when compared to CMAs. CMAs tend to deal with great might and power, while SMAs deal with more abstract concepts. Border of Kaleidoscopic Logic Style lets you punch people in their sanity, driving them mad and then fighting them inside their mind as abstract concepts. Charcoal March of the Spider style emulates the pattern spiders that run reality, meaning that you punch people in their reality. This is the "punch people into ducks" style. Citrine Poxes of Contagion Style punches you in the health, making your targets magically sick. Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style is... well...

The game describes Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style by saying "[the style] holds a mirror to Creation and breaks it" - and that putting it really mildly. Mirror clones, mirror dimensions, and being able to gleam possible different futures... this style is just weird. It also, appropriately, has a charm literally called "Shattering the Balance," and is generally seen as genuinely broken in a game where everything being fucking broken is a selling point. Several later sourcebooks took digs at it.

Of course, when it comes to weirdness few things can beat Quicksilver Hand of Dreams Style, which lets you punch people in their dreams, punch dreams out of people, and ultimately punch reality to turn it into a dream... or a nightmare. There's also Scarlet-patterened Battlefield Style, which gets really abstract since the martial artist 'punches' with units of soldiers. Yes, really. Another fun SMA is Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Style, which is almost entirely made up of form charms, but lets the martial artist punch people in their essence for various fun effects, like catching and redirecting other people's charms, or punching your way into other people people's essence to temporarily posses their bodies. This also works on inanimate objects... like [https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Mecha Warstriders!]

Basically SMAs let you punch concepts, such as love, to achieve really weird and specific effects - but they're none the less absolute nightmares to fight against. It should be noted that most SMAs are locked behind really high stat requirements, such as essence 6+, meaning that most players will NEVER get access to them. Considering how utterly devastating these martial arts are, this is not necessarily a bad thing. SMAs do make for really fun boss fights though.

All in all, magical martial arts are a cornerstone of what makes combat in Exalted fun and exiting. It turns a plain dragonblooded monk with a sword into a far more interesting and flavorful opponent, it turns a dread deathknight into a truly terrifying opponent, and it gives added flavor to player characters as they internalize the wisdom and tactics that their style informs.

==System==
The basic mechanic is a modified [[Storyteller System]]. Pools of d10s are rolled; 7,8,9 count as one success, 10 counts as two successes. Successes are scaled against target numbers at a set difficulty against non PCs/NPCs. If no successes are rolled and at least one die comes up with a 1, then the roll is a botch (catastrophe ensues).

There are a few exceptions to these rules of success, however. Some Fate-based or Shaping-based effects can reduce the number needed to get a single success from a die. These won't come up unless you pull out the relevant splatbook, though.

'''Stunting''': A way to mechanically allow players to use Rule of Cool as a game mechanic. How does it work? A player describes how their PC does an action. Depending on the degree of description, a 1 to 3 dice bonus is given to the roll. (1 dice bonus is incredibly common, 3 dice bonuses almost never given).

*+1 Bonus - Make an effort, try to do something cool. Be brief.
*+2 Bonus - Make a cool description that fleshes out the scenery a bit. Be brief.
*+3 Bonus - Make everyone at the table give you a standing ovation. Be brief.

Did we mention that you should be brief? Well, you should.

Stunts can pretty much be done on any action, and don't necessarily have to follow the laws of physics. A good example of an athletics stunt would be the wallrunning in Prince of Persia games, while a combo in a fighting game might be a good example of a flurry stunt. But above all, make it short, snappy, and keep the flow of the game going.

Just if you're curious - The reason why they hand out bonus dice is two fold - Firstly, newly made characters tend to be a bit handicapped, being baller at the things they were made to do and pretty much not at the other stuff. So, stunting gives new characters the chance to succeed at almost anything as long as the player thinks of a pretty cool way to do it, and it teaches new players that as long as you make it feel cool your character can do ''anything''. Secondly, prior to Second Edition, the way multiple actions were handled was by splitting dice pools, so you needed to succeed at two different (generally fairly hard) tasks with half the dice you would otherwise. Stunting helped offset that, offering you the chance to succeed at complicated things that you otherwise wouldn't be able to just because they were epic. Second Edition works a little differently, applying flat penalties to your dice pools based on the number of actions you're taking, (take two actions, first action's on -2 and second is -3; three actions, -3, -4, -5, and so on) but stunts still help to offset that somewhat.

It's a kickass system all told, that helps to bridge between the role playing and the crunch, with a real benefit for staying in character while you splat things. It takes a lot of heat off the ST to make the dice rolling seem interesting because the characters are always trying (maybe not always succeeding) to be cool, so the ST doesn't have to come up with a million different ways to say 'you punch a guy and he falls down'.

Stunts also have rewards besides dice, namely motes and Willpower; a stunt is worth twice its die value in motes, or you can take a point of Willpower for a two- or three-die stunt. Generally, (there are exceptions) motes fuel magic stuff, while Willpower fuels more mundane stuff. (meaning things that anyone can do) Running out of either one can be a death sentence, even in Exalted 2.5; stunts help keep that from happening. If a character does a stunt that also counts towards achieving their Motivation (what they want to do most of all) counts as one stunt higher, except if it is already a three dot stunt, then the character should be allowed an experience point.

Earlier editions suffered tremendously from problems of [[Linear Build Quadratic EXP]], and the character-creation system was often mockingly regarded as a Byzantine "mini-game" in and of itself. Third edition is in development right now, and promises to be markedly different from both previous editions - by different we mean BETTER. It redid the combat engine and fixed the persistent bugbears that plagued the first and second ed, and is giving much-need attention to Lunars and a few other splats. It was also supposed to have its second and third book out three fucking years ago. Fans have taken to calling it Exalted: the Waiting. It conspicuously refuses to fix the Xp problem (with one of the devs infamously imperiously declaring, and this is a direct quote, [https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?768985-Exalted-Why-is-Everyone-Praising-3e&p=19548177#post19548177| "We have a policy not to give people bad rules just because they think they want them."] [[Troll| Holy shit.]]

Fortunately, while the problem's still ''there'', a number of core gameplay and pricing tweaks have at least made the problem less severe.

==Relationship with the World of Darkness==
Exalted is not part of the [[World of Darkness]], but parts of it were conceived as a mythical prequel to the old WoD before that was moved away from. All of the major forces and types of Exalted have a less-epic equivalent in the WoD lines.

Indeed, Exalted actually was intended to be a kind of, sort of, maybe prehistory to the old World of Darkness, as evidenced by the 1st edition corebook and the Storyteller's Companion (which even referenced one of the Yozi's component souls being slain and reborn as Anthelios from Werewolf the Apocalypse), as well as numerous shout-outs from Hunter and Mage (which even directly name dropped Chejop Kejack). The unholy couple that is the Ebon Dragon and the Scarlet Empress show up in [[Kindred of the East]]. They are less evil there, which makes you wonder just what went down to mellow out the concept of dickishness incarnate.

This was downplayed in 2nd edition, but left as a perfectly serviceable option, and completely removed from 3rd edition. Rage ensued.

<center>
{|border=1 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0
|- align=left
! World of Darkness
! Exalted
|-
| [[Vampire: The Masquerade]] || [[Abyssals]]
|-
| [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]] || [[Lunars]] (with [[Primordials]] as antagonists)
|-
| [[Mage: The Ascension]] || [[Sidereals]] (with [[Alchemicals]] taking some aspects of the Technocracy)
|-
| [[Wraith: The Oblivion]] || The Underworld and its NPCs
|-
| [[Changeling: The Dreaming]] || [[Fair Folk]]
|-
| [[Hunter: The Reckoning]] || [[Solars]]
|-
| [[Demon: The Fallen]] || [[Infernals]]
|}
</center>

==See Also==
*[[Exalted/Custom|Errata and fan-made rules]]
*[[Exalted/Exalted 2nd Edition Character Sheet Template|Blank Wikified Character Sheet]]
*[[Mystic Empyrean]], a game with similarly epic-powered player characters.

==External Links==
*[http://rathess.xi.co.nz/exalted/index.php/Main_Page Archive of the old official wiki]
*[http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/wiki.pl Unofficial Exalted wiki], mostly 1e stuff
*[http://www.brilliantdisaster.net/wiki/Overgame List of Exalted games being run.]

{{Exalted-Classes}}
{{WW-Games}}

[[Category:Exalted]][[Category:Awesome]]