r/exalted

Previously on mapping Exalted Essence: https://www.reddit.com/r/exalted/s/JnH1v7qnoU

For our 4th part in this series, I am going to look at how the other realms of Exalted Essence fit in with Creation. We have The Wyld, Malfeas, Heaven, Autochthonia and the Underworld. There isnt much details to go on at all for these locations as to how they relate to Creation spatially. Therefore some speculation must be made.

The Wyld is a sea of chaos with creation being an island of stability within, so we can tell that Creation is within the Wyld, as previously mentioned during the first part of map creation. Yu-Shan aka, heaven is a small continent within an endless sea of quicksilver. Malfeas has no details on its position other than being inside one of the titans and surrounded by an endless desert and the Underworld(the afterlife) and Autochthonia (robotland?).

With very little to go on, I shall propose 2 mutually exclusive cosmological models.

The first is the Petal or Island Model. Here I propose that all Realms of Existence live inside the Wyld, as the endless silver of sea of heaven could easily just be part of the Wyld since as far as I can tell the Wyld can be anything. Hell also is surrounded by an endless desert so that could be similar, just a transitional boundary than never obviously fades into the Wyld. The Underworld and Autochthonia don't seem to have any known qualities to their borders but might have similar effects. Thus Creation is a more solid continent in the sea of the Wyld while the other realms are loosely connected by Shadowlands and magical gates to Creation as smaller islands surrounding it.

https://preview.redd.it/k39aufti07kh1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b5aaf778765ebc4915742c8457295e0e4118211

The second model is that all the Realms are stacked attop each other in a squat cylinder. We can call this the Cylinder model, layer cake model or dishstack model, more research may need to be done. Heaven of course must be on top of Creation, its called Heaven after all so it must be there. No cultural bias has been introduced into this analysis of course. Autochthonia is above Heaven, uh mostly because I couldn't think of where it could go to balance the stack in a pleasing way. The Underworld clearly goes underneath Creation as its self evident in its name, and thus Shadowlands are like sticking a chopstick through layers of cake and puncturing both Creation and the Underworld. Malfeas, aka Hell is below the Underworld, since its a prison and the people who put them there probably wanted it to be in a terrible place to live. The Wyld spreads out betweeen each layer and around it like icing in a cake.

https://preview.redd.it/oauuiyuj07kh1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f497d02332b64d2654703441b8be28c479e09bad

And with that we are done with all the setting material within Exalted Essence! I do have this other book called Pillars of Creation that has yet more setting information although I have not analyzed it yet for inclusion in the map. If I do, I would hope that the authors have carefully maintained continuity between publications and avoid changing the locations of already analyzed and placed map locations. It would be a shame if locations that are clearly landlocked suddenly were retconned into being coastal locations. Such revelations would cause havoc on my true and accurate map.

Any way thanks for checking on my mapping of Exalted Essence and hopefully you will be able to use this map material to guide your players in traveling between locations in Creation!

Is there any information on what happens if someone Exalts as an Infernal while pregnant or holding a child or animal in their arms? Do they dissolve in the sublime acid? Do they stay intact/relatively unchanged/uninjured? Do they get some mutations, become Demon Blood or Half-Castes? Does something else happen?

Previously on mapping Exalted Essence: https://www.reddit.com/r/exalted/s/WFrirREILU

With the Dreaming Sea and East done, the South is up. So looking at the intro, its hot and deserty outside of the coastal area being mediterranean as mentioned earlier. Major locations wise we have Chiaroscuro which based on the art is a postapocalyptic modern city. Actually it looks like Dubai from Spec Ops the Line! Which I guess makes sense seeing that game was from the 2010s or something and Exalted Essence is from 2023! Wait a minute isn't the main building in the middle of the picture the Cayan tower? Does this game have some hidden lore that its set in the postapocalyptic future like the Shannara chronicles?

Anyway Chiaroscuro is apparently a massive port city so that means its coastal and its in a desert but no other location details. Its also Arabian inspired so maybe the Dreaming sea can be its Red Sea. After that is Gem which is inside a volcano and it mines jewels in a place called the firepeaks, so it sounds like its more inland towards the Pole of Fire. I can put it far south while Chiaroscuro is up in the Strait of the Dreaming Sea. We also have the Varang City States which is a in a river valley that goes from the Summer Mountains to the Inner sea. It sounds like they are unrelated to Chiaroscuro so I could place them on the far side of the landmass, theres no mention of rivers for Gem or Chiaroscuro. An-teng is a minor location that is in a jungle and a Realm colony, so its probably coastal. We also have Dajaz with is specifically mentioned to be 1000 miles south of Gem! Sounds pretty hot. It means I wont place Gem right at the edge of the world then. Last minor location is the Bronze Tide, but they sound like a Nomadic fleet instead of a fixed area. They arent in the Dreaming sea so I can put them on the left side of the map since thats the only place that would fit.

So Chiaroscuro is going on the peninsula in the South that is on the Dreaming Sea's northern tip. I'll add a mountain range to seperate the rest of the Dreaming Sea coast from the South proper, like the Arabian Peninsula and then Gem will be in that mountain range while Dajaz is helpfully exactly 1000 miles south of that.

https://preview.redd.it/ruwqdxi2jljh1.jpg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bf4704ba2b983dddfc1f5da0415f7ae44c260af2

For the Varang city states, Ill add a bunch more mountains and volcanos around the left side of the map and then add a river from one of these mountains that goes to the sea and put them there. Then I'll add An Teng as a coastal city with a little river going to it and some jungle. Bronze tide can just be off the coast.

https://preview.redd.it/qpphkux3jljh1.jpg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6598ff406e928b9e43490a06d9f189a2a6d702dd

That does it for the South. Not sure what would go in the big empty zone in the middle. Maybe I could have moved An Teng there to be right across from Arjuf but I figured that they should use the same river as Varang since there aren't any other rivers mentioned.

Finally, at least before I try to take a crack at where Heaven and Hell area, we have the West.

First up apparently its all one big ocean, and we have the pole of water at the end. Wu-jian is the first major location and its just a small island that is heavily built up like Singapore or Hong Kong. Its the gateway for the Realm so it must be close to the Blessed Isle's west. I can put it as an island a off the the west, a few thousand miles north of An Teng since thats a Realm colony and also near Bittern since that is their major port. Skullstone which is next, is said to be a volcanic archipelago, so that sounds farther south. I can put it near the Bronze Tide. The Caul is a place where Lunars are winning the war against Realm occupation. No location given but its full of Jungles so it sounds more southern.

https://preview.redd.it/v92imc25jljh1.jpg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e867574895df92ab17a72324bbbf2e3f3a335a13

For minor locations we have Wavecrest, another island group, Volcanic soil, owned by the Realm, I'll put them south of Wu-jian. Azure and the Coral Archipelago sounds like a cooler climate and much of the west is still empty so Ill put them to the north of Wujian. Lintha and Bluehaven is given a precise location of near the southwest coast so thats easy to place.

https://preview.redd.it/c0697b96jljh1.jpg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2e7779edd1b2474710f82fbee76a6fc91c688b3c

Now we have a complete and as accurate as possible map of Creation!

https://preview.redd.it/tsts2bg7jljh1.jpg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d3faaf411be460f3e785085a2cc9a87c4a3a726

Next up, I guess I can see if the other Realms are mappable. If Heaven, Hell and the Afterlife exist, maybe they fit together as some kind of cylinder? Then I can crack open the Supplement known as Pillars of Creation and see if that has some locations to fill out this map.

let say your a up coming solar exalted facing five elite trained military soldiers with pole axes and decent armor. how hard is it for you to safeguard yourself. Are their any good scene long defense you can use, or really mote efficient defenses you can use to live?

I know there's new for alchemical book. How good is it?

So, I'm noodling around with some system hacks for Exalted. I've run several 3E campaigns so far, and have found myself surprised by how infrequently certain mechanics come up. So I'm curious, how often do these things tend to happen in your games?

Limit Break
Bonfire Anima (especially for 'anathema', where it's highly detrimental)
Initiative Shift (Crashing the opponent who crashed you)

Hello my esteemed fellow Exalted 3e enthusiasts!

I come to you today with a bit of work several others have asked me to post publicly so as to share it with more that may find it useful!

I long bemoaned the status of Craft and Lore for Solars in Core, and after both Infernals and Abyssals came out I decided to do something about it!

Attached with the Google drive link at the bottom you will find my take on a revision to both trees in question!

I aimed to incorporate much of the mechanical and organizational advancement offered by the release of the later Solaroids, as well as to greatly reduce overall bloat of the trees, while still having them resemble the spirit of the the genuinely good part of their original versions.

I believe I was greatly successful at doing both. (Though if you disagree I invite you to leave feedback on this post, as I am always interested in hearing it)

I believe as far as bloat reduction goes (including keys as they are purchased) i reduced Craft by about 55% and Lore by about 45%.

(I cant remember the precise figures and can't be bothered to count at the moment)

I think i could have pared away from Craft more in hindsight, but what still exists some may view as extraneous I have endeavored to make optional so that they may be ignored as a matter of taste.

A couple of the juicier highlights aside from the various smaller changes to every charm or the deletion/combination of many others:

A new Craft capstone charm that allows use of N/A dot or 5 dot artifacts before they are finished.

A Wyld Shaping technique that is shamelessly taken from 3E infernals, though I hope to add on an additional key that gives Solars something more unique!

As I said please read and give feedback! Im very interested to hear what the broader community has to say!

Link:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pmEBVtd5mn-a\_Ij7qcI4Ilgc7XD\_NzHR

I would say I am unlikely to give similar trees of Core the same treatment simply because I dont think its warranted in the same manner it was for these 2 trees....which are fairly disastrous. The rest of the trees are quite easily adjustable on the fly by a competent play group.

As the title of this post suggests, what happens if someone figured out how to weave the Great Curse into Fate? I am thinking just the Curse on one Solar shard. Would it get a god assigned to it? What powers might it have? Would all of the higher ups in Heaven automatically become aware of its existence?

Has anyone used this for running a game before? I see that there is a module for running exalted but I'm mainly concerned about combat and tracking a shifting initiative. At the same time how easy is it to use for players that are new to exalted 3rd mechanics?

I remember when E3 came out there was a lot of charms. How has that progressed since then, have the other splats toned that down a bit or is it still rough? Also what is crafting like in the other splats?

Hello there I am looking for a new ttrpg and I wanted to DM something high fantasy. I am new at this but I got really into journey to the west after playing black myth wukong recently and I wanted to run a ttrpg that has over the top fights like that.

I was recommended exalted and was told it has heavy inspiration from journey to the west. Is this the right fit for what I'm looking for? What are the most important things to know about this rpg and where should I start first?

This is a post about Where generally Onyx path is heading but contains some curseborn stuff

Like news about the Tangled Web supplement

I ran a couple Solar games when 3rd edition first came out and then just moved on to other stuff. Now that a bunch of different books have come out was wanting to get an idea on what kinds of games each of the different exalted types lend themselves to.

I’m curious to hear about people’s experiences in moving an ongoing campaign between editions and what they had to change or what their players noticed/complained/praised about the changes?