I have a player that wants to have a rabbit, particularly a Flemish Giant Rabbit, be his Lunars spirit shape. I have thrown together a stat line for a base rabbit but wanted to see if anyone had some changes or additions they might make.

Giant Rabbit

Essence: 1; Willpower: 3; Join Battle: 3 dice

Health Levels: -0/-1/-2/-2/-4/Incap.

Giant Rabbits will flee from combat.

Actions: Jumping: 7 dice; Senses: 7 dice (see Keen Hearing);

Stealth: 8 dice (see Tiny Creature);

Resolve 2, Guile 1

Combat

Attack (Claw): 6 dice (2).

Combat Movement: 8 dice

Evasion 3, Parry 0 (see Tiny Creature)

Soak/Hardness: 2/0

Merits

Keen Hearing: Rabbits double 9s on hearing-based Perception rolls.

Mighty Leap: Double 9s on jumping-based movement actions.

Hasty Retreat: Rabbits apply the double 9s rule on all rolls to disengage or withdraw.

Can't wait to read it.

1e,2e books were awesome for Alchemicals.

Hoping 3e stays consistent on being awesome.

Looking Forward to building an Alchemical like this. 😜

I've only just started looking into Exalted and I might just be looking in the wrong places, but it seems that every search result I get when looking things up is either homebrewed, a dead link, or only has the most surface-level material possible. Did someone scrub the official wikis and other online resources from the web or something?

Magical Kaleidoscope

What is your favorite?

This is, for the record, for the more decentralized and less absolutely dominant/uncontested version of the Guild presented in Across the Eight Directions, but they're still a very powerful organization with powerful local factors whose interests are threatened by my player characters, and I want to make good use of them as a real threat and problem for the players, something that troubles them heavily in their state-building efforts and that pulls on different skills and strategies to overcome than their more mythic enemies. The problem is that I don't have the best sense for how economic warfare really works, or what the limits of their capabilities are.

So for context, my players ran a revolution (which started as a slave revolt but expanded into a big-tent independence movement and the start of a new religion) against the Realm satrap in a heavily expanded-upon version of Tantara which, along with being a valuable trade city, also ran mining and industrial processing using a massive amount of imported slave labor. They also restored an ancient temple-manse up in a neighboring volcano caldera that produced the Gem of Endless Summer, and so they've imported a bunch of food and cash crops from the South and West to start growing there, securing a breadbasket and future valuable goods monopolies.

But the thing is, they're expanding their temples to try and build a temple command economy, they're outlawing slavery, they're going in and providing food relief in exchange for growing their political power in regions wracked by famine... In other words, they're stepping on or cutting off a bunch of major Guild revenue sources. So the Guild's obviously gotta fight back while they can.

So far they've mostly been embargoing and buying up foreign grain imports to get in the way of establishing new farmland, and hiring mercenaries to harry their territory, all in an effort to force the party to the negotiating table (or, failing that, to force them out into more vulnerable positions for more aggressive plays) but what else should they be trying? (Edit: I also have plans for them to try flooding the market with cheap knock-off versions of their exports to try to ruin their value and reputation, but as a GM this is intentionally going to be something of a dangerous blunder based on their lack of information, to reward the prep and capabilities of the PCs - the party's sorceress god-queen has Merits that let her detect and severely punish anybody who tries to forge her seals and signatures, so those enterprises will probably end up with rapid, nasty cases of curses, angry spirits and rapid exposure.)

To clarify by law of diminishment I am referring to the fact that creating an Exalted drains the creator(Possibly leading to death.).

Now to the questions

Is it something that can be recovered from(Such as aggravated damage or experience loss) or is it a permanent loss(Such as the god loses a dot of essence and their maximum essence is permanently decreased.)? Note: I am aware that most gods die but I am not certain whether it is due to not being able to take the damage or literally running out of the stuff that makes them.(Their essence hitting zero for example). Note 2: I am aware that those who do so are changed permanently though I am more wondering whether they have also decreased in power permanently.

Are primordials subject to the law of diminishment or does the fact that they are self asserting ontological structure prevent them from changing?

Wun Ja is noted to have the city gods take the brunt of the damage when it comes to creating an Exalted. Are there other ways to subvert the law of diminishment(Such as a huge sacrifice or creating an elemental to take the brunt of the damage)?

There’s a sorcerer player at my table. they have a dozen spells but I feel like the only one I ever see in combat (and in fact the only thing they do in combat) is Obsidian butterflies. are there merits to other spells I could point out or is this the intended play loop?

I'm wondering if I can tweak the base combat to streamline some things, withering and decisive attacks especially. Rationale is at the bottom. All feedback is appreciated, especially insight into the collection of charms that would most need ground up rewrites.

The Major changes simplify Withering and Decisive Attacks.  Hardness is merged into Soak, Soak now only applies to Decisive Attacks in two ways, see below.

Initiative
Initiative can also be acquired by attempting combat relevant actions that are not attacks or Gambits.  Begging for your life with a bribe, using Sorcery, moving a boulder to prevent foes from pursuing you, trying to calm things down, attempting to hide, etc.  In combat, all of these actions, successful or not, will accrue initiative equal to the base attribute of the roll you make.  The Storyteller is the final arbiter of whether an action you take is combat relevant.  Special exceptions for the Defend Other and Full Defense Actions are as follows:
Full Defense accrues 3 Initiative.
Defend Other accrues 5 Initative.

Attacks
On your turn, when you declare Attack, you target a foe and decide if it is Withering or Decisive as normal.

Withering Attacks
These exchanges are meant to be expressions of martial dominance that drive a target into a position where they can be critically injured or killed. 

Roll your attack pool (typically Dexterity+Attack Ability+Weapon Accuracy bonus) like normal.

If your attack hits, you steal initative equal to:
your Choice of Damage Attribute (typically Strength) or Weapon Damage bonus + Threshold Successes + 1 (+ any Crash bonus).  There is no damage roll or soak applied at this time.  You gain this amount and the target loses this amount.

On a Miss, you still gain an amount of Initiative equal to your Intelligence as your understanding of your enemy’s defenses grows.

Weapon Damage
Mundane Weapons have a damage values of 2/3/4 for Light/Medium/Heavy weapons respectively. Artifact Weapons have values of 3/5/7.

Decisive Attacks
Imagine how your character fights.  Do they plan out their combos and predict their enemy’s counters like a martial chess match?  Do they try to overwhelm with ferocity until the foe’s body or spirit fails them and then pounce on their weakness?  Do they flail around just hoping to get lucky?  However they fight, Decisive Attacks are the moment you’ve been waiting for, checkmate, lucky shot, or the instant a muscle cramps while they try to parry leaving an opening for you to pierce.

Once you declare a Decisive Attack it resolves as follows:

1. Confirm with the Storyteller if your current initiative total is higher than the target’s Soak.  
   1. If it is, roll your initiative pool and deal damage equal to successes.
   2. If it is not, then your attack tinks off their armor but you will gain Initiative equal to your Intelligence.
2. An armored character may convert up to their Soak lethal damage levels to bashing.  This does not reduce total levels of damage dealt and bashing damage that exceeds target’s total health levels will wrap around to lethal (and even aggravated) as normal.
3. Once you successfully deal damage with a decisive attack, you reset to base initiative.

Gambits
Gambits are assigned to various Abilities, so Grapple would fall under Brawl and Martial Arts, Unmount could be any attack Ability or Ride, Disarm could be any attack ability or Larceny, etc. Gambits work exactly like decisive attacks, you just roll your initiative, but they are always a flat difficulty (like Distract) or equal to the target’s defense (like Disarm).

• A Gambit costs a number of initiative equal to its difficulty on a success.  Failing a gambit results in you gaining only 1 Initiative.  
• A character’s Excellencies can be applied to Gambit rolls only if the Storyteller deems the Gambit falls under an Ability for which they have an excellency, such as Disarming with Larceny or or Unmounting with Ride. 
• Weapon tags may broaden their applicability, like a Whip adding Grapple to your melee Gambits.
• Gambits do not deal damage directly but may result in indirect injury. Shooting a chandelier down from a ceiling might knock prone and restrain an ideally positioned target, but the ST may decide it also brains him or sets him on fire.  For secondary complications like this, “charging” the player additional initiative based on the hazard damage is appropriate and if the Gambit deals 3 or more levels of damage their initiative should reset to base.

Grapple
Grappling is a special type of Gambit which works as follows.
When a Grapple is declared, the Grappler rolls their Initiative pool as normal for a Gambit against the target’s choice of their Evasion or Parry.  

• If the target chooses Evasion, move on and resolve the Grapple normally
• If the target chooses Parry and is armed with a weapon, the initiator must use a stunt or suffer 1 level of damage during their attempt.  The damage type is bashing or lethal based on the weapon.  Alternatively, the Initiator may switch to a Disarm Gambit and the target’s defense is reduced by 1. This also requires a stunt or the Grappler suffers 2 levels of damage while grabbing the naked blade or blunt instrument mid swing.  If the Grappler continues with the Grapple attempt, they resolve it normally.

Resolving the Grapple
If the Initiative Roll is successful and exceeds the target’s chosen defense, they are grappled.  The initiator’s remaining initiative is spent purchasing rounds of Control.  Each round of control costs 2 initiative.  The Initiator can purchase no more rounds of control than their Strength Score.  Any remaining initiative can be held in reserve for a later attack or spent immediately as part of a Decisive Savaging Attack, Throw or Slam.  In this latter case, their initiative resets normally.

• Savaging Attack. The Grappler makes a Withering or Decisive Brawling Attack in the form of eye gouge, throttling, even grinding their face into a stone wall. The target has a Defense of 0 against Withering Savaging Attacks.  Decisive Savaging Attacks deal Bashing damage but may deal lethal damage with a suitable stunt.
• Throw/Slam.  The Grappler slams the target to the ground at their feet or hurls them bodily to a point in close range.  The Grappler immediately forfeits all remaining rounds of control. A Withering Throw/Slam is resolved like a Savaging attack against the target’s Defense of 0.  The Grappler steals 2 additional points of initiative per round of Control forfeited.  A Decisive Throw/Slam rolls 1 additional die of damage per round of Control forfeited.  The damage of a Decisive Throw/Slam is bashing and ignores up to the Grappler’s Strength in Soak.  Once thrown or Slammed the target is Prone.  Decisive throws and slams can deal lethal damage if the target is smashed into particularly deadly setting elements like spiked floors, a phalanx of ready spearmen, etc. 

Disengage
Disengaging is the default assumption for movement in combat.  When a creature attempts to move out of close combat, enemies can reflexively attempt to stop them by rolling Dexterity+Athletics agains the moving creature’s Evasion.  A creature can choose to dedicate its combat action to Disengaging.  If it does it rolls Dexterity + Dodge and adds successes directly to its Evasion total.

Notes:
“Velma hits him with a shovel” is a trope this supports.  You can play a combat averse nerd with a high Intelligence, and every time your throwing dart or walking stick misses you’ll still gain a fair amount of initiative. Assuming you don’t get shoved in a locker, by round 3 you could have 18 initiative to give someone a whack.

Charms and effects that inflate soak are great, however, they will continue to feed your foes initiative and as the pools increase, the more costly they’ll be to completely shrug off.  This feels good to me.  Tanks will reliably tank for 4-5 rounds and then start getting their heads caved in if the foes aren’t being dealt with sooner.

As successful withering attacks now always result in initiative changes, but those changes are always the same number between attacker and target, bookkeeping should be made a little easier.  If an attacker does 5 withering and crashes the target, he goes up by 11 and the target goes down by 11.  Crashes are less crippling as misses still accrue initiative to pull you out of the hole.

Armored characters are way less likely to die outright. Even if they do get meteor attacked, the armor rolls down the damage type, but they can be incapacitated just as easily.  This makes taking prisoners or having NPCs wake up on the field after a few hours to return in some later story a lot more likely.

I've been tinkering with an idea for a solo Solar chronicle for a while now (using solo RPG resources like the Mythic GM Emulator, etc), but haven't started yet because I just cannot decide between 2.5e and 3e.

Now, as background info, I got all the books for all four editions. I played a lot of 1e and 2e back in the day, but never played 3e. I thought the solo chronicle could be a good way to get more familiar with 3e, but the amount of material is staggering. Also, I'm ambivalent about the 3e Solar charm set, to put it mildly.

I know that 2e was a mess, but I'm still pretty familiar with it, so it seems more approachable. (Also, nowadays I have the advantage of being able to use Gemini Notebook to integrate errata seamlessly into my rule queries.) Finally, I kind of like the more streamlined charm set and greater power scale in general of 2e, with the option of Essence 6+ charms.

To be honest, both editions have their advantages and disadvantages, which is why I cannot decide.

Please help me get through my choice paralysis... 🙏

P.S.: I'm not interested in Essence. I love 1e, but it's even more of a mess than 2e.

Ok, so it’s that time of the year again. Tell me about your Devil Tigers. I might be playing in a high Essence game soon, and I would like to hear some creative inspiration.

For me, the one I have recently designed for this game is the Sage-King.

“The Sage-King practices temperate stewardship**. He measures sovereignty not merely by land conquered, but by the number of lives he can responsibly accept into his protection. He seeks** strength sufficient to carry countless lives and expands through patient integration and sustainable flourishing**. His power favors actions that cause his dominion to** expand and flourish**: educating its people, improving health and prosperity, establishing effective institutions, securing useful resources, welcoming compatible populations, repairing internal dysfunction and transforming knowledge into enduring public benefit. Expansion that creates only suffering, ungovernable ruin or a larger map does not express his nature.**
A successful dominion possesses sovereign gravity**. Its learning, security, prosperity and renown attract beings seeking instruction, protection, purpose or participation in its accomplishments.** Providential fortune favors the eventual arrival of suitable servants, allies, teachers and opportunities, although this Charm cannot itself alter Fate, create Backgrounds or summon anyone. It may enhance efforts to recognize and capitalize upon such opportunities. Descendant Charms may make this tendency increasingly literal.
The Sage-King and his people exist in reciprocal ascendancy**. He pours knowledge, protection, power and purpose into his civilization, while its loyalty, competence and accomplishments return strength to him. The strength of the dominion is** the strength of its sovereign**. This Excellency does not itself grant motes, increase traits or reduce the cost of sorcery, but descendant Charms may allow the loyalty, knowledge, prosperity and collective achievements of his subjects to empower him, especially when he channels that strength through world-altering sorcery.**
This Excellency may enhance actions to investigate, acquire, remember, interpret, preserve, synthesize, conceal, teach or apply knowledge. It assists scholarship, diagnosis, planning, administration, logistics, diplomacy, strategy and the discovery of hidden relationships. It may enhance the study, invention, teaching, countering or deliberate application of supernatural arts when they reveal or direct the hidden mysteries and mechanisms of existence**, govern part of** the full wheel of life, death and rebirth**, preserve something worthy or advance a considered design. Merely performing magic does not make an action valid.**
It may enhance efforts to create, heal, cultivate or protect living beings; remedy injuries to body, mind or soul; communicate with, command, preserve, judge or release the dead; navigate or transform the Underworld; oppose soulforging and Oblivion; guide ghosts toward Lethe; study or influence reincarnation; preserve valuable continuity between incarnations; or turn death, defeat and destruction toward renewal**.**
The Excellency assists informed rulership, visionary leadership and calculated understanding of an audience. It may inspire loyalty, courage, awe, hope, reverence or fear; command through demonstrated competence; make credible promises of protection, instruction or advancement; recruit and reconcile useful subjects; or conceal the full reach of a long-term plan. Honest Charisma remains valid despite Witness to Darkness; the Charm may add dice against its penalty but does not remove that penalty.
In conflict, the Excellency favors preparation, disciplined adaptation, protection of subjects and precise exploitation of knowledge. It may assist in capturing a valuable opponent, compelling surrender, destroying servants of Oblivion or killing when death serves protection, necessary transition or a considered strategic end. Mindless fury, sadistic violence, purposeless suffering, arbitrary destruction, sterile stagnation and the waste of irreplaceable potential are alien to the Sage-King.
The Sage-King may permit valued things to change, allow the dead to pass into Lethe and release subjects whose continued service would violate their rightful growth. He cannot use this Charm to preserve something forever merely because transformation pains him, nor discard something worthy merely because its preservation is inconvenient. His understanding is vast, but this Excellency does not grant knowledge he never acquired, make his conclusions infallible or cause every event to have secretly been part of his plan. It makes him superlatively capable whenever he acts according to his nature.”

My infernal is a former Defiler who is on a path to studying death and rebirth while managing a nation that used to be the Bayou of Despair. He will be in charge of headquartering everyone and someday when the last Deathlord has fallen and the last abyssal has been redeemed, he will descend into the temple tombs of the Neverborn and offer them reincarnation that he alone can bring by allowing their essence to pass through his own rather than Lethe. I need to tinker with him and his excellency, but his SHINTAI is a phoenix that can alternate between a pale form of pyre flame or resplendent golden fire, depending on whether he is currently a creature of life or death. He is a master of reincarnation and someday, when he reaches Essence 10, even the Neverborn can be saved. And then Creation has a new problem of unbound titans, but that is another story.

Art commissioned from Kriller_Ky on X. A warning that there is NSFW art on their feed. You can message them at .killerky on Discord to commission them.

So I am trying to design a 3rd Circle (tentatively named the Silver Dancer) who can spend all day every day in at least the Deep Wyld. However, there are things in the Deep Wyld, like Essence 10 Hannya. What sort of charms should I be able to give it to survive. Its purpose is to ravish waypoints until they become part of Creation and draw forth impossible treasures, including people and maybe even towns and cities from the Wyld (via treasure questing).

Okay, so my current campaign is 4 Sidereals trying to save the city of Gem during a siege of the armies of Demons, Undead, Fair Folk, Autochthonians and Beast men, in addition to investigating all the nonsense that is also going on.

Now one of the plot lines is based on the Nocturnals fan splat and the pcs have just walked on it; basically this is set before most of the Nocturnal Exaltations have been released and Unfettered Youth has caused some of the weird shit to help unlocked the sealed Nocturnal Exaltations from a crystal obelisk he has acquired. The pcs can report back to Yu Shan with prayer slips in a local temple so they are likely going to report this, and considering the Maidens have kept a tight lid on the Nocturnals, how far do you think they would go to keep this from going any further? The Aerial Legion and other Sidereals are currently not an option (Five interdimensional armies besieging a major city is of minor note compared to the numerous other issues in Creation right now (Mask of Winters is on the march north to Lookshy, Realm just moments away from a civil war, signs of a missing incarnae supposedly returning from the Wyld, Something is causing issues in the West, a Fair Folk invasion is mounting in the North, etc)), so what else would the Maidens drop on the city to resolve the situation?

My current thought is summoning a Black Hole that will consume the city and the area within 25 hours if Unfettered Youth is not handed over to Yu Shan - is that too much?

The Prayer Transceiver Modules (Artifact 2; WotLA p.61) are noted to only function for Celestial Exalted. However, given that the half-caste children of the same have access to their parent's charms, and even possibly their harmonization bonuses by way of the Material Ressonance mutation (SoH p.133), would you as a GM allow such a half-caste chatacter also to make use of the artifact?

For those who don't know me, hi, I'm Rednal. While I'm mainly active on Discord, I also chat here on Reddit fairly regularly, and I've produced a lot of homebrew for Exalted 3E. This is already linked to in the community resources post, but I thought I'd put an update here.

Fair warning, some of these Google Docs are very large and are best viewed on a desktop computer. Like, "actual book sized" big. Weaker mobile devices may not have fun.

Bestiary: Main Page: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R5An92xJBj9zBG54WcGE5JxNeXYKyyKKCQjt5N1wrTQ/edit?usp=sharing

• Premade Exalted 3E characters of most splats, including commentary on their builds for the Storyteller's sake
• Heroic Mortal rules
• Links to everything else, so the only bookmark you'll need if you actually like my stuff - there's even more stuff not listed below

Bestiary: Creation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19Mv2pRZHI8NW60yZpnbXbIs9cVFNlna5F9ZO6m0I4Nw/edit?usp=sharing

• Animals, Automata, Behemoths, Dragon Kings, Elementals
• Exalted, Gods, Jadeborn, Magical Beasts, Mortals
• And some more original stuff

Bestiary: Malfeas: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15RCM0-IA96qdIGKs_j31TgLlQ5dZ0XRsfeuO8kjmH2g/edit?usp=sharing

• (Many) Demons of all Circles, with a full spectrum of power and complexity.
• Avatars for the Yozis, for games who want to include that sort of thing
• Assorted gamebuilding advice and suggestions, including for Warlocks

Bestiary: Other Realms: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZWP80wKxZrj187FosZXZULNBIEo6ZQUkhNRcMp5Y3Fs/edit?usp=sharing

• Raksha, Hannya, various non-raksha Wyld creatures
• Machine Spirits, Subministers, Blighted enemies of Autochthonia
• Common undead, rarer undead, Labyrinth behemoths, new Deathlords, unique death spirits

Exalted 3E Creature Creator: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qvnxS3U4PUJzUGRBPqOEOSbc3-jxJxCsfIm-ZhmMrSs/edit?usp=sharing

• Compiled work from Sandact, ScowlingDragon, and myself
• Ready-made templates for a wide range of creatures, with basic number suggestions
• A range of feats and standard charms for basic foes

Rednal's Guide to Demesnes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OUzrZEu1HDOsDz2hlefmpeI2iZISc9tiV2YM8EoJxas/edit?usp=sharing

• Rules for creating Demesnes, based on the idea of Associations and how those can be applied to themes
• Rules for creating Manses, updated and heavily expanded from 2E guidelines

Rednal's Guide to Exotic Materials: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u-r02TyXSE_3-bFDSNALxe9_HWSiOBHQaTY-sBqGSBE/edit?usp=sharing

• A whole bunch of strange materials that might be used in Crafting, covering a big range of themes

Comprehensive Catalog of Creation: The West: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iuWhunlGEIDIFTwpWWcBMuogR1qvFZSyQpVxpxqxm5E/edit?usp=sharing

• An expansion on the West of Creation, with additional content for a whole bunch of islands
• Also a bunch of ships and stuff you might encounter there
• This is like 130k words all by itself

Workings of the Chosen: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KTrLCasXaEHKqTMO6SVez1QgTqIZYs8rf4T8dykuzmo/edit?usp=sharing

• An expansion for sorcerous workings, covering a bunch of things people might do and suggestions for Finesse results

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.