their copy of their 3.5 Edition Player's Handbook for a copy of the Exalted Second Edition Core Rulebook. The promotion was called "Graduate your Game" and has received mixed reviews from fans of both games. The success of this promotion was not revealed. Setting Background The history of the setting begins with the Primordials: vast entities akin to Greek primordial deities or the Outer Gods of H. P. Lovecraft's works, even going so far as to use similar epithets to the latter. They shaped Creation – a flat world of finite extent – from the primordial chaos, and placed the gods to watch over it. In time, the gods decided to overthrow the Primordials, but were forbidden from taking arms against their makers. Instead, the most powerful of the gods imbued exceptional humans with their power (the titular Exalted) to fight for them; the blessings they bestowed (also known as Exaltations) would pass on to new champions with their death, allowing a new hero to rise when one fell. Upon victory, the gods retreated to the Heavenly city of Yu-Shan to oversee from on high, and left Creation to the Exalted and Humanity. However, the Exalted suffer from the "Great Curse," uttered upon the dying breaths of the slain Primordials. The Solar Exalted—those empowered by the Unconquered Sun and mightiest among the Exalted—eventually grew decadent and corrupt from this influence, and were slaughtered in a massive insurrection known as the Usurpation by their servants and advisors. After the Usurpation, the majority of the Exaltations of the Solar Exalted were locked away, and an organization known as the Wyld Hunt was organized to kill all the others, and to drive the Lunar Exalted from the civilized lands of Creation. During the intervening age, the Terrestrial Exalted became the rulers of the world, ruling in a shogunate. After the Great Contagion (a plague originating from the lands of the dead) and the Balorian Crusade (a war with the Fair Folk) wrought devastation across Creation, a young captain of the Dragon-Blooded armies gained access to powerful weapons of the First Age. With these, she saved Creation and then asserted her rulership over much of the it, dubbing herself the Scarlet Empress. Nearly eight hundred years later—in the present day of the game—there are eleven Great Houses of the Realm, nearly all of whom claim direct descent from the Empress. Five years prior to