Intro to Exalted

Exalted is a table top pen and paper role playing game. It uses a dice pool system, a game master to weave plot and adjudicate the rules and a group of players cooperating (usually). It combines aspects of both class systems and classes systems in that there are no levels, just individual abilities that are bought piecemeal, but access (or at least discount) is given based on a player's choice of what type of exalt they wish to play

Exalted is about over the top fantasy awesomeness. Player characters are beings called exalted who routinely do things like punching a god in the soul, literally wrestling the wind, literally slicing a mountain in half, and other such over the top fantasy actions. Exalts are immune to disease and old age. The setting is somewhat grim-dark and life as a mortal sucks.

New players will likely find the world extremely alien and confusing and might have trouble grasping what is going on. It is thus a good idea to give them a rough rundown of the setting, which cannot adequately be explained without a bit of history

The setting: There is an infinite sea of chaos called the Wyld. In it were born titans, each titan contains an entire world (like an alternate dimension), populated by devas which are actually the components of the titan's mind and personality as a whole (like the trinity in christianity or aspects in Hinduism). The titans are living conceptual beings and the source of concepts such as language, love, growth, death, and so on.

The titans created the world, calling it creation. It is in fact the living body of the titan called Gaia, her devas are dragons. In the world the created mortals as a renewable power source. The descendants of unions between dragons and mortals are called dragon blooded and have a chance of becoming dragon blooded exalts. Dragonblooded are the weakest yet most plentiful exalted around, and are referred to as terrestrial exalts, there is no limit to how many dragon blooded may exist at once.
The world itself is flat and has 5 elemental poles (poles such as the north pole and south pole). at its center is the elemental earth pole. it is surrounded by air, water, wood, and fire poles in each of the 4 cardinal directions. There is no such thing as planets. The sun and moon are both living gods who appear in the sky, no orbits or rotation is involved. The moon is lit by its own divine power.

To manage the world for them, titans created gods. Gods in exalted are not like those in other settings, everything has a god. there is the god of a single pencil, the god of a single house, the god of an entire city, the god of an entire kingdom, the god of a river, the god of a forest, the god of a single tree, and so on. The bigger the god, the more powerful and intelligent they are. A god of a single pencil is weaker than a human infant and has the mental capacity of an insect. The greatest gods could only be defeated by an entire army of exalted working together. The most powerful god is the sun, followed by the moon, who is equal to the 5 maidens of fate.

The gods were designed such that they must obey titanic orders, they eventually rebelled. to do so they created a fixed amount of exaltation spirits, gifts to mortals that grafts a second soul unto them that is designed to empower them into living weapons that could destroy the titans. Those are called celestial exalted, when a celestial exalt dies their exaltation spirit goes out and seeks out a worthy mortal to exalt. Obviously the titans would order the gods to stop the exalted, to prevent this the exalted were made completely independent and free willed to do whatever they wish with their power. Individually they might be weaker then a titan or the greatest of gods, but working together they are unbeatable.

The Sun created 300 solar exalted, called lawgivers, they were made to rule the world and are the most powerful, also responsible for inventing the most advanced magitech. The moon created 300 lunar exalted, shape-shifting warriors, they each have a solar soulmate. The 5 maidens made 100 sidereal exalted, they are seers and administrators who run creation. Each of those 3 kinds of exalted is split up into castes, which have different power sets

The titans Gaia (the world) and autochton (order, science, and technology, inventor of exaltation) sided with the gods in that rebellion. The rest of the titans were defeated.
Some titans were killed, sort of. Such beings cannot be truly killed, but the sort of dead titans fell through the world, damaging but not destroying the machinery responsible for reincarnation, and creating a literal underworld underneath creation. they are called the neverborn, are insane, and wish to destroy creation. You can reach the underworld by digging down deep enough, it is literally an underworld.
Other titans surrendered, their leader was inverted inside out, all of them had their souls and minds mutilated to prevent them escaping, and were imprisoned within the inverted body of their leader. They and their twisted devas are called the yozis (demons), they are insane from the mutilation of their soul, they want to destroy creation.
The infinite chaos of the wyld spawned the fae, they are insane and wish to destroy creation.

Even though there are all those powerful factions out to destroy the world, united the exalted have no problems facing them. After the defeat of the titans they forged the "first age", a post scarcity utopia running on magitech. But when the titans were defeated they cursed the exalted, it is called the great curse and it affects the way exalted think, leading them towards corruption, insanity, and internal strife. This caused a lot of infighting between the various exalted, destroyed the first age. As a result from this internal strife, no matter what type of exalt you choose to play there would be many exalted factions out to kill you. For players, this mental influence is mechanically implemented via the concept of limit break (see the appropriate chapter) which cause bouts of temporary insanity expressed in a specific manner based on your virtues. It is handled in a risk/reward fashion and can be avoided if you always play it safe.

The specifics of the fall of the first age is that the solars, the rulers of exalted society, were going insane from the great curse. The sidreals also affected by the created curse, came up with a plot to assassinate all solars via a rebellion of the dragonblooded exalted, and then imprison their exaltation spirits forever so that no new solars will exalt. The dragonblooded, also affected by the great curse, established a religion that vilifies all non dragonblooded exalted as anathema: demons who consume the soul of the human they inhibit, absorbing their memories to trick their former friends and family, dragonblooded hunt other exalted whenever they appear. The lunars escaped into the wyld outside creation to save themselves from said rebellion, resulting in their exaltations being tainted by chaos, new lunar exalts now must receive magical tattoos from their elder that limits their powers or else they become mindless chaos monsters called chimera. The sidreals themselves got erased from fate itself due to the backlash of using their power to hide a plot of that magnitude from so many beings of such power. They still exist, but anyone who isn't a god or a sidereal keeps forgetting their existance

After the fall of the solars and the first age, the world started collapsing. With nobody to direct the magitech defenses that protected creation, nor the power of the celestial exalts, the dragonblooded were losing ground to the yozis, neverborn, and fae that were trying to destroy creation. This went on for 700 years until a dragonblooded exalt managed to figure out a way to enter the central command vault from the first age and seize control of the dormant defense grid. She saved the world from annihilation, crowned herself as empress, and ruled the world for 800 years. During that time the gods have become ever more corrupt and unruly, and make life even more miserable for your average mortal.

Over the centuries various demons have managed to corrupt a few exaltation spirits, creating infernal exalted. A few years ago the empress disappeared and the dragonblooded empire has fractured into infighting. Simultaneously (or at least close to it) to her disappearance the prison for the solar exalted was ruptured. About half of the exaltations held within were corrupted by the neverborn into abyssal exalted. The rest have escaped and found worthy mortals to turn into new solars. Meanwhile the lunars have returned from the wyld. There are many countless smaller sub factions as well all over creation.

This is the world into which the players are dropped. They begin as fresh exalt, hunted by a plethora of factions and the world falling apart. With countless enemies and factions to take on. Rogue gods extorting human sacrifice, Fae undermining creation, demons and neverborn, and exalted of every flavor out to kill them. They are also able to make friends and allies in all places. Fae can be acclimated to become creatures of creation. Dragonblooded may reject the dogma of the religion they were brought up on. Lunars, solars, and sidreals may be either friends or enemies depending on their faction. And even the abyssals and infernal exalted may turn on their masters and defend creation.