<strong>Ryan</strong> <strong>Bailey</strong> (<strong>order</strong> <strong>#2639004</strong>) 1GUIDELINES FOR PLAYING FIRST AGE GAMESand allow functional games with what’s presented alone,but the best, most inspiring characters, most awesome andimpressive locations, and most important historical periodswe leave to you to create.Make the First Age yours.POTENTIAL HANG-UPSA couple of elements of the First Age setting can beproblematic <strong>if</strong> Storytellers don’t take them into account:MANY CHARACTERS ARE VERY, VERY OLDThe number of Exalted elders with whom the players’characters are likely to interact on a regular basis is muchhigher in the First Age than it is in the Second. There’s morethan one way to treat this issue.Very old characters are beyond humanity: Under thefirst extreme assumption, living for thousands and thousandsof years fundamentally changes a person, even before theGreat Curse rears its ugly head. Maybe someone who’s livedfor millennia is totally disassociated from human experience,and is as far beyond humanity as humans are beyond smallfuzzy mammals. This is a popular premise for some sciencefiction and in <strong>br</strong>illiant roleplaying games featuring fangedprotagonists. Posthuman elders are intriguing, and they feelplausible. On some level, it makes sense that someone who’slived for thousands of years would see the views of a humanadult as the babblings of a toddler who hasn’t yet learned tospeak a language.The problem with this assumption is that it’s veryhard to satisfyingly portray a character who should be asfar beyond your own capabilities and thought processes asyou are beyond the thought processes of your pet hamster.It’s also divorced from human experience. There are no3,000-year-old people in daily l<strong>if</strong>e, so it’s hard to makestories about 3,000-year-old posthumans feel relevant,except possibly as parables about how humans are toys forforces beyond our understanding… which isn’t really whatExalted strives to be about.A person’s a person, regardless of age: Under the otherextreme assumption, living for thousands of years doesn’tchange people much. The l<strong>if</strong>e lessons provided by age offerdiminishing returns. Chejop Kejak still makes small talkwith his peers, holds petty grudges and sighs in annoyancewhen someone shows up for an appointment 15 minuteslate. This assumption has the advantage of making powerfulcharacters more accessible. As a Storyteller, you can alwaysbase the behavior of elder characters on people you’ve actuallymet, rather than theoretical super-geniuses you can onlyimperfectly imagine. You can give them agendas informedby motivations you understand, such as pride, fear, ambitionor exasperation. It’s also easy to tell stories that are relevantto the human experience when the characters within thosestories behave like real human beings.The problem with this take is that older characters mightnot feel very frighteningly impressive <strong>if</strong> they’re just normalpeople with a lot of high-Essence Charms and toys. It canalso strain s<strong>usp</strong>ension of disbelief for those players who thinkvery old people would be posthuman ciphers.Exalted is written under an assumption of compromise.Elder Exalted remain people, but are twisted by the GreatCurse. Elder Exalts are mostly human in attitude, exceptwhere the Great Curse has ampl<strong>if</strong>ied problematic personalitytraits. Characters behave in extreme fashions under theeffects of Limit Break and rationalize those actions as reasonableonce the Limit Break passes, but they otherwise goback to behaving like normal folk. (They’re just incrediblyprivileged, rich, powerful, jaded, isolated normal folk withthe Great Curse playing the role of a serious supernaturalmental illness.)EVERYONE IS REALLY RICHThat is, the Exalted are. In some ways, the Exalted ofthe First Age are richer than the richest human beings onpresent-day real Earth. This means that players’ characterswill have a lot of toys. It’s hard to predict characters’capabilities <strong>if</strong> they can buy an infinite number of four-dotart<strong>if</strong>acts. The main thing to remember is that all these toysare just the window dressing of the story. Sure, a charactercan own a royal warstrider, myriad warstrider-scale art<strong>if</strong>actweapons and a fleet of sky yachts, but does he want to keepall his Essence committed to a bunch of giant weapons andpower armor he might never use? How helpful is a fleet ofsky yachts <strong>if</strong> he can fly around in only one at a time? Thewealth is there to play up the fabulousness of the time. It’snot there to provide the players with a way to get one overon the Storyteller characters.LAWSThe book spends some space on the subject of laws;what is allowed and what is forbidden.The key thing to remember about laws is this: If there’sa law, someone is making a profit somewhere by <strong>br</strong>eakingit. (Probably a lot of someones.) If people weren’t <strong>br</strong>eakingit, nobody would have thought to make it into a law. Nopeacekeeping force is strong enough to ensure a populace’sabsolute compliance with the rules, and no rule acts as aperfectly deterrent. Especially in a world that counts theExalted. The First Age’s crime rate is low, but that just meansthe crimes that are perpetrated are all the more notable.Any law in this book is included as a story hook. Wehave endeavored not to spell out the First Age’s full legalcode—merely those elements that are most interesting. Ideally,when imposing your own vision on the setting, you willexpand that legal code, adding new taboos and customs.THE USURPATIONIt all goes wrong.The Solar Exalted find it increasingly d<strong>if</strong>ficult to seepast themselves and their own desires. Power alone doesn’talways corrupt, but power and isolation are trouble. TheSolars of the Era of Dreams are lost in their own fantasies.Exulting in paradise, unable to connect to the common7
<strong>Ryan</strong> <strong>Bailey</strong> (<strong>order</strong> <strong>#2639004</strong>) 1INTRODUCTIONman and divorced from human pain and inconvenience,the elder Solars now ask themselves what need have theyfor men and gods. The proud, frightened Sidereals andDragon-Blooded act without giving the Solars time to findthe answer.In time, the Sidereals will think back upon the Deliberative’shistory and see all the times it almost failed—andthe one time it did fail. When they see what was needed to<strong>br</strong>ing it back, they will enact a secret prophecy to determinethe ultimate future—a prophecy that’s great but flawed, forit cannot account for the actions of those outside fate. Theywill spend time gathering and collating information, s<strong>if</strong>tingthrough possibilities, discerning which chains of causalityare possible and which seem possible but cannot be resolved.Finally, they will boil down all the billions of possible waysfor events to progress into three eventual outcomes. Theywill then take advantage of the increasing unrest amongthe Dragon-Blooded and the increasing paranoia of theSolars (directed almost exclusively toward the other Solars,and not toward their loyal soldiers and advisors). The HighFirst Age will come to a <strong>br</strong>utal, tragic end.Maybe it happens in just five years. Maybe the GreatProphecy occurs over a single night, with every Sidereal overcomewith a five-day trance over the Cali<strong>br</strong>ation followingYear 3517. Perhaps the long-dead, long-lost Last Maiden,Pluto, Maiden of Hours, projected her consciousness forwardacross the millennia at the end of the Primordial War (beforeshe was scoured away by She Who Lives In Her Name) todeliver a singular warning to the Chosen of her sisters.Maybe it doesn’t happen at all. Maybe some group ofExalts, young, experienced or ancient themselves—Solars,Lunars, Sidereals, Dragon-Blooded, perhaps even refugeeAlchemicals, perhaps a circle of allies of d<strong>if</strong>ferent sorts (inother words, your players’ characters)—changes things. Maybethey can <strong>br</strong>ing the world to its senses and avert disaster andthe fall of the First Age of Man.The Usurpation stands poised, but there’s still time toprevent it.8
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