TEXT: An Aspect Book for
  An Aspect Book for
  An Aspect Book for
  The Dragon-Blooded
  
  By George Holochwost and Ellen P. Kiley
  A S P E C T  B O O K
  WOOD
  ™
  
  EXALTED
  2
  FOR THE LOVE OF FLOWERS
  The garden. An endless series of spirals superimposed on one another. No discern-
  able beginning, no foreseeable end. A blossom. Another blossom. Flowers differentiating 
  themselves with colors and pageantry premeditated within the seed’s seed…
  Petals like feathers, feathers like colors unfold in circles of station, majesty, usefulness…
  Blessed rose. Ripe and bright, the garden’s queen resplendent in red.
  Scavenger poppy. Soft and thick, desire and salvation reside in its petals. 
  Martyr’s cup. Dark and stinking, it catches water for other plants despite its 
  own ugliness. 
  Fair ivy. Greedy and poisonous, the vigorous vampire of Creation’s ﬂ ora. 
  Emerald braids each rearing a different head, countless. Bouquet as convoluted as 
  voices joined in song, myriad colors unending, unending. There is only one smell, one 
  ﬂ ower, one garden. There is no distinction…
  “He’s here,” so distant.
  “He’s here,” a cool, wet cloth is applied to my brow by soft, trembling hands.
  “Milord Nagezzer. Your guest, he’s here,” I’m shaken to full consciousness, merci-
  lessly ripped from my journey by a servant whose name I can not rightly remember 
  but who is, in fact, holding my opium pipe and looking rather anxious. I slowly adjust 
  myself on a stack of black cushions as twin girls, eyes as blue as the West, gather my 
  robes over me and comb the prongs of my moustache into place. 
  He’s come, after three requests on his part, to the Throne of Roses. My silk-clad 
  servants scurry about the bodies that adorn the sea of carpets, oil lamps, pillows and 
  hookahs, as if there was something they could do to make the main orgy hall more 
  appropriate for a visiting ofﬁ cer of the Scarlet Empire’s legions. I remember my time 
  with the legions. There is nothing here that he will ﬁ nd shocking or unfamiliar. 
  Though it has many rooms, of the chambers within the Throne of Roses, the 
  main hall is the heart of its power and spirit. It is here that appetite is laid bare and 
  the animal of desire is set to run free. Due to the endless efforts of myself as well 
  as countless courtesans, apothecaries and menservants, this Manse is well known 
  throughout the Realm and Nexus as a place of pleasurable escapes not to be found 
  in any other one place. It is in this orgy hall, with its lavish tapestries, fountains, 
  statues and high mosaic dome, that nearly all of my dealings occur.
  My guest’s name is Cathak Abona Krespus, and he’s considered to be one of the 
  most valiant and loyal of the Cathak Second Legion’s ofﬁ cers, excelling during his 
  time at the House of Bells, manifesting the leadership, strength and skill of a one 
  of Her Majesty’s ﬁ nest well before it would have been expected of him — a promis-
  ing hero of the Realm. Considering this, I mindfully assume the posture of respect 
  due such a digniﬁ ed personality — much as one softens one’s gestures when in the 
  presence of a potentially violent animal. I will acknowledge his rank, as I did when 
  I served in the Legions. This is the least he deserves for serving the Realm.
  My, this is taking a bit, isn’t it? He must have worn some absurd amount of armor, 
  not taking into account the warmth and humidity of my dead mother’s Manse. It is 
  also possible that he is discussing his travels with Autumn Spiral who takes pleasure 
  from the travel tales of those who come to visit.
  The twins, so reserved in their movements, so lithe in their form, recline on 
  either side of me, clad only in jeweled ornaments, their symmetry so perfect as to 
  almost be doubted. These are their only tasks — to enhance my presence and impact 
  on those who come to deal with me and to declare my hospitality to those with 
  whom I give audience. On more than one occasion, they have held the fascination 
  of a merchant prince when a most critical twist of negotiation was in the making. 
  However, these men, however rich and jaded, were mere humans. I am not expect-
  ing so dramatic an impact on this son of House Cathak, seeing as he is, like myself, 
  a Child of the Dragons.
  
  3
  PROLOGUE
  Ah! So gallant he comes with his cape and sashes blown on the wind of his 
  pace. Red and gold, Cathak Abona Krespus struts through the bodies of my courtiers, 
  guests and servants. He is a truly a striking ﬁ gure, as if drawn from the reliefs of the 
  First Age, an aspiring legend who has fostered every visible trait a hero could possess. 
  Even from this distance, his ﬂ aming warrior’s braids and ﬂ ashing red eyes bespeak 
  a sort of breeding that the Great Houses revere. My man, Ledaal Ansharu, called 
  Autumn Spiral and trained as an Immaculate devoted to the teachings of Sextes Jylis, 
  accompanies Krespus through the carnal swell. The intense look of annoyance and 
  stiﬂ ed expression on Autumn Spiral’s face foretells the niceties that I will endure at 
  the hands of this legionnaire. 
  “Winglord Cathak Abona Krespus, Master of the Cathak Second Legion” an-
  nounces Autumn Spiral, the bitten back contempt in his voice completely undetected 
  by this man he introduces to me. 
  The azure eyes of the twins stir to focus “Our master, Sesus Nagezzer, bids you 
  blessings of peace and joy. Welcome, dear guest, to the Throne of Roses. What is your 
  want and pleasure?” They speak in a voice that moves like the ﬁ ngers of a courtesan 
  on young ﬂ esh. I am surprised when Krespus raises an eyebrow, his look of dismissal 
  an obvious veil for his self-judged inappropriate attraction to the twins. 
  I address him. “Would you care for a seat, Winglord Cathak? Some other refresh-
  ment? Wine? Fruit? You must be so very weary from your long voyage from…”
  “Cherak.” he interrupts demonstrating his impatience. “My men and I traveled 
  from Cherak.” 
  “Your men? Are they yet to arrive?”
  “They await me in the Imperial City. This business is my own, and my men are 
  loyal. They needn’t worry about the details of such dealings. Although they are able-
  bodied,” a stab “they require good rest before returning to duty.” His responses betray 
  his contempt for me; this contempt in which I can not ﬁ nd fault. 
  “Well, I can not say that I am not disappointed about being deprived of the 
  opportunity to give a few of the Realm’s ﬁ ghting men some quality recreation. They 
  would have been very much welcome. The Throne of Roses is a splendid place to 
  take one’s leisure.” I entreat.
  Krespus looks repulsed as two robed servants surround my guest and myself with 
  screens and curtains, cutting off our conversation from the rest of the hall. “Such a 
  place is not good for a true soldier’s spirit. This house, albeit rich, would be a distrac-
  tion. They can wait for the riches of conquest and the glory of battle, rather than 
  having their courage dispersed by the drunken pleasures of your manse, Slug.” 
  Slug. He said it. So soon? My, how pleasantries vanish when the Children 
  of Hesiesh are wanting! “Have I done something to offend you, Winglord? Is 
  there something you need for your comfort that I have so rudely failed to offer? 
  Is there something…” 
  “I have come to discuss a matter of the Realm” 
  This ought to be entertaining. “The Realm?”
  “There is a place, not far north of Cherak, that would be a great asset to 
  the Realm.”
  “Ah. Yes?”
  “It is a place, a sacred keep, of the First Age.”
  “Interesting. Continue?”
  “This keep, called the Hold of White Idols, is currently occupied by icewalkers, 
  barbarians, who serve, it is rumored, the shape-changing Anathema.”
  “That is most deﬁ nitely a fascinating matter.” I afﬁ rm. “So, the location of this 
  place has been veriﬁ ed? You have visited the Heptagram’s libraries to conﬁ rm that 
  this place, the Keep of Ice Statues…”
  “The Hold of White Idols.” he expresses with contempt, correcting my deliberate 
  misspeaking with the snap of undeniable condescension. 
  “Yes. White Idols. I apologize. Its location has been conﬁ rmed?” 
  
  EXALTED
  4
  “There is no time for such scholarly scrutiny and time-wasting. If I don’t recover 
  this site, the icewalkers will solidify their hold, become fully entrenched, and I’ll 
  never take the Hold from those savages. I have seen what happens when hesitation 
  delays such operations as this. Haste must be made.”
  If I don’t recover this… I will never take it from them. I thought this was a 
  matter of the Realm. Nonetheless, such an endeavor without conﬁ rmation is a fool’s 
  errand, far more likely to result in a slew of wasted lives accompanied by profound 
  embarrassment rather than the glory that this winglord chases like a gilded tourna-
  ment trophy.
  “Understood. What do you think this will require, this matter of the Realm?” 
  I reply.
  “I will need a talon’s worth of your best men. I will need them outﬁ tted with 
  foul-weather gear and repelling equipment, as well as the ﬁ nest standard equipment 
  your armories can provide.” Cathak Krespus catalogues all of this as if the men he 
  asks for are children’s toys and not citizens of the Realm. 
  “Where do you wish to assume command of these forces?”
  “I will meet them in Port Cain, and then, we sail to Cherak. From there, we 
  move North. I don’t expect that the campaign will require more than a fortnight of 
  military force.” An arrogant, inaccurate and reckless estimate. “I understand that 
  you think highly of your mercenaries. Let us see if they are worth the jade I’ll be 
  paying for them.”
  “Then, we are agreed on terms? Shall we discuss the terms of payment?” I in-
  quire, with a smile, holding back the bile that this selﬁ sh brat’s words have brought 
  up from my belly.
  “Jade is no matter. My coffers have adequate jade to pay whatever is required.”
  Indeed.
  “Well, then.” I slide my right hand out of my rope and raise two ﬁ ngers with my 
  thumb pressed against my palm, my smallest ﬁ nger protruding, subtly. 
  The twins respond immediately. Autumn Spiral switches places with them, 
  moving behind me as they move to stand on either side of me, each holding a crystal 
  ﬂ ute of sweet wine. Despite its rich body and color, this wine is quite cheap and is 
  so thick as to coagulate like syrup between the teeth, its ﬂ avor so honeyed that no 
  other quality can be tasted but an overwhelming sweetness. The twin on the right 
  ﬂ exes her right shoulder ever so slightly.
  “Let us drink, then.” I say in closing, gesturing to the twin on the left to give 
  my guest his well-deserved glass of wine as I meet the eyes of the twin on the right 
  as she hands me my glass with a ﬂ irtatious pursing of the lips.
  “To conquest.” Cathak Krespus boldly barks as he sharply raises his glass, the 
  weight of the heavy ﬂ ame embroidery on his robe’s cuff pulls his sleeve to his elbow, 
  the motif accentuating the rashness and pride of his proposed toast.
  “Not at all, good Winglord.” I smile, “For the Realm.”
  “Very well. For the Realm,” the tone in his voice reﬂ ecting his disappointment 
  with my alteration of his words, all interactions perceived as a conﬂ ict of ego.
  For a moment, the tingle of crystal against crystal is the only sound in my hall.
  We drink every drop. The glasses are empty. We exhale. He clears his throat. 
  I smile.
  “Thank you for your hospitality, Sesus Nagezzer. It was not my intention to cut 
  this visit so short, but I have men to lead to glory,” the Winglord states, taking leave 
  rather than requesting it, as the twins ease back onto my cushions, one massaging 
  my knee, the other my hand, as Autumn Spiral comes to the soldier’s side to escort 
  him out of my sight as quickly as won’t be noticed.
  Autumn does not look back at me as he escorts the Winglord back through 
  the orgy hall. A servant comes, and the twins move off into the hall. He offers me 
  a selection of delicacies from a wide, stone plate. I choose a swollen pomegranate 
  and recline.
  
  5
  PROLOGUE
  I did not poison the Winglord, nor did my servants, though it was surely a 
  tempting prospect. The Winglord, it seems, was poisoned in spirit before he ever set 
  foot upon the grounds of my Manse. The Winglord’s desire for greatness at any cost 
  is what will undo him. The Scarlet Empire provides numerous avenues of glory that 
  do not require one to compromise the resources of the Realm.
  I understand that the method I implemented to destroy Winglord Cathak Abona 
  Krespus was not unlike the methods of momentum and redirection used in the martial 
  arts. The Winglord never would have approached me with this business if there had 
  been any chance of him procuring Realm forces for the attack on the Hold of White 
  Idols. He came to me because he knew this task was purely for his own gain. This 
  is why, upon reaching Port Cain, he will meet with a small group of my men, who, 
  upon reaching Cherak, where they will have assured the young Winglord the rest of 
  his mercenaries will be waiting, will alert the local magistrate (a dear old friend of 
  mine) of Cathak Krespus’ intent, having him arrested for treason, sedition or any of 
  many career-ending charges.
  What I did, whether good or bad, was necessary. Since the disappearance of 
  the Scarlet Empress, my grandmother, the Realm has suffered constantly because 
  of Dragon-Bloods like Cathak Abona Krespus. These young warriors and aspiring 
  heroes, so desperate for grand signiﬁ cance and recognition, would have the entirety 
  of the Blessed Isle’s resources allocated to fund their glory-seeking whims. The Great 
  Houses, in all honesty, do this as well, each desperately grabbing for its own piece of 
  the Realm as if its conquered portion would thrive though the rest then falls to ruin. 
  Although ultimately devastating, the play between houses is not as foul to my heart 
  as what Krespus is: a parasite who would commit those forces that I have gathered for 
  the Realm’s needs alone to an ill-planned and reckless scheme to set his own deeds 
  and name upon a pedestal so that he will have one more story to tell while he banters 
  to his house’s fawning sons. If only these stupid children would learn that purity of 
  intent is what makes a hero’s feat, not the act itself. 
  When considering the verses of He Who Hath Strewn Much Grass, one could 
  do so on countless, increasingly abstract, levels. There is, however, a simple message 
  that even a wholly uneducated pilgrim from the most remote hamlet could interpret 
  through the most basic experience one could have, whether he is tending the crops 
  of a farmer’s ﬁ eld or strolling the ﬂ agstone paths of the gardens that ornament the 
  Blessed Isle’s Manses. Sometimes, a thing must be cultivated, nurtured, fed. This is 
  done so that which is great and good may grow and prosper in Creation. In the same 
  way, there is a disposition of life, which grows at the expense of such beauty and 
  loveliness, which must be pruned, removed altogether and burned.
  One can not allow one’s garden to be threatened by a greedy weed. 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  6
  CREDITS
  Authors: George Holochwost and Ellen P. Kiley 
  Addition Material: Brett Rebishke-Smith
  Storyteller Game System Design: Mark Rein•Hagen
  Developers: John Chambers and Geoffrey C. Grabowski
  Editor: John Chambers
  Art Direction: Brian Glass
  Artists: Eric Canete, Andrew Hepworth, Aaron Nakahara, 
  Pasi Pitkänen, EJ Su, Melissa Uran and Eva Widermann  
  Cover Art: Kevin Lau with UDON
  Book Design: Brian Glass
  © 2005 White Wolf Publishing, Inc. All rights 
  reserved. Reproduction without the written permission 
  of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the 
  purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, 
  which may be reproduced for personal use only. White 
  Wolf and Exalted are registered trademarks of White 
  Wolf Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Aspect Book 
  Wood, Aspect Book Air, Aspect Book Fire, The Book 
  of Three Circles, Scavenger Sons, Savage Seas, Exalted 
  the Dragon-Blooded, Exalted the Lunars, Exalted the 
  Abyssals, Exalted the Sidereals, Exalted the Fair Folk, 
  Exalted Players Guide, Games of Divinity, Kingdom 
  of Halta, Savant and Sorcerer, the Second Age of Man and the Age of Sorrows are trademarks of White Wolf 
  Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by White Wolf 
  Publishing, Inc.
  The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark 
  or copyright concerned.
  Check out White Wolf online at http://www.white-wolf.com
  PRINTED IN CANADA
  CREDIT WHERE CREDIT’S DUE PART 2
  To Ed Bourelle for his fantastic map in Exalted: The 
  Autochthonians. Once again, I apologize for leaving his 
  name out of the credits.
  
  7
  TABLE OF CONTENTS
  INTRODUCTION 
  8
  CHAPTER ONE: CHILDHOOD AND SELF 
  12
  CHAPTER TWO: A LIFE OF OBLIGATIONS 
  28
  CHAPTER THREE: THE WORLD WE RULE 
  42
  CHAPTER FOUR: VOICES NOT OUR OWN 
  54
  CHAPTER FIVE: RECORDS OF THE BEFORE 
  64
  CHAPTER SIX: MIRACLES OF SEXTES JYLIS 
   
  74
  APPENDIX I: SIGNATURE CHARACTERS 
  82
  APPENDIX II: OTHER NOTABLE WOOD ASPECTS 
  93
  A S P E C T  B O O K
  WOOD
  ™
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  8
  INTRODUCTION
  Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what 
  makes you come alive, and then go and do that. Because what 
  the world needs is people who have come alive.
  —Harold Whitman
  Aspect Book: Wood is the last in the series, the 
  ﬁ nal, up-close glimpse into the hearts and minds of the 
  Dragon-Blooded and their Realm. This is an appropriate 
  position for those who emulate the Wood Dragon, Sextes 
  Jylis: Cycles, the beginnings and endings of things, are an 
  intuitive part of their Exaltations.
  Wood is unique among the ﬁ ve elements that lend 
  their strength to the Dragon-Blooded. Air, earth, water and 
  ﬁ re are eternal, and at their essence, unchanging. Wood 
  grows, drawing the other four elements into itself; wood 
  dies, to make way for more growth. The very essence of 
  wood is change.
  Change is not a concept that is terribly welcome 
  in an empire. Yet, the Emerald Dragons can be found 
  throughout the Realm, at all levels of the Thousand 
  Scales — just like their peers among the other four 
  elements. They are bureaucrats and generals, merchant 
  princes and governors. How do they do it? What keeps 
  their metaphorical roots from breaking through the clay 
  pot of the empire?
  
  9
  INTRODUCTION
  Dragon-Blooded society and culture are the gardener’s 
  tools that keep the Children of Sextes Jylis in their proper 
  places. It is not unnecessarily restrictive or cruel — a rose-
  bush will not blossom properly unless it is pruned, and wild 
  grapes are sour. Wood-aspected parents often fondly speak 
  of raising their children with the same terms they use to 
  discuss topiary. Those who cannot or will not ﬂ ourish within 
  the conﬁ nes of the Realm may ﬁ nd room to grow by joining 
  the legions, adopting the wanderer’s lifestyle permanently 
  or, at the most extreme, becoming outcaste.
  Most Wood Aspects, of course, choose to live and 
  grow within the bounds of Dragon-Blooded society. What 
  do they give back? Wood-aspected Dynasts are without 
  doubt the most skilled survivalists in the Realm. Forag-
  ing and hunting are second nature to them, and they 
  can instinctively avoid (or seek out) natural hazards and 
  fearsome predators. While exploration and gallivanting 
  about the countryside are well-regarded pursuits among 
  the Dynasts, this sort of lifestyle is usually an indulgence 
  granted to the young. Older Wood Aspects make their 
  marks much more subtly, shaping the living beings that 
  make up or surround any society. They breed and train 
  beasts of war and beasts of burden — not just proud horses 
  and sleek hunting cats, but sturdier oxen and intelligent 
  messenger birds. They cultivate exotic plants and vital 
  herbs, whether for purposes of healing or pharmacological 
  indulgence, and become expert in the administration of 
  both sorts. They strengthen their families by speaking 
  eloquently in the Deliberative or by performing evoca-
  tively at festivals. The Children of Sextes Jylis are the 
  heartbeat of the Realm — and in the turbulent days that 
  have followed the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress, 
  that pulse is picking up speed.
  HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
  Aspect Book: Wood contains the thoughts and 
  life stories of ﬁ ve Wood Aspects, related in their own 
  words. Within their stories and those of the individuals 
  who surround them, readers will glean insight into the 
  varied motivations of Wood Aspects, those who stand 
  beside them and those who oppose them. This book also 
  includes new Charms, artifacts and Hearthstones that 
  would be found particularly useful by Aspects of Wood 
  (and therefore those who include them in their games, 
  Storyteller or player), including the items and Charms 
  possessed by the featured Dragon-Bloods.
  Chapter One: Childhood and Self recounts the early 
  lives of ﬁ ve Dragon-Blooded Wood Aspects. These are the 
  roots of their lives, laid bare in their own words. Family, 
  education and experiences from these times shape their 
  lives in sometimes surprising ways.
  Chapter Two: A Life of Obligations continues the 
  accounts of our narrators as they describe their roles in 
  society and empire — both roles they currently ﬁ ll and 
  those they wish or may be forced to assume. This is the 
  trunk of a Wood Aspect’s life, whether solid and sturdy 
  or deceptively slender, which must support and sustain all 
  her endeavors. This chapter will illuminate more than the 
  lives of the ﬁ ve Terrestrial Exalts: Through them, you will 
  see the world of Exalted with a new hue.
  Chapter Three: The World We Rule enfolds the 
  opinions of our ﬁ ve Wood-aspected narrators on a host 
  of subjects: the state of the Realm and their families; the 
  workings of Dragon-Blooded society and the machinations 
  of their peers; and their encounters with others, from lowly 
  peasants to mighty Anathema. Their branching convic-
  tions reach toward the sky and hang low near the ground. 
  What sort of fruit will these strange trees bear?
  Chapter Four: Voices Not Our Own is a cornucopia 
  of sentiments and speculations from those who consider 
  the Children of Sextes Jylis to be peers and those who look 
  on them as if from afar. Storytellers and players are encour-
  aged to use these anecdotes as the seeds of plots, to create 
  antagonists or allies for the characters in their stories.
  Chapter Five: Records of the Before opens a small 
  window into the time before the Great Contagion, allowing 
  the briefest peek of the glories that were once common. 
  The Wood Aspects of the Realm have the least informa-
  tion from that time available to them — few who followed 
  in the footsteps of the Wood Dragon had the foresight or 
  the inclination to record their insights in a manner that 
  would survive the ravages of death and war. What remains 
  is precious and is held in high regard.
  Chapter Six: Miracles of Sextes Jylis details new 
  Charms for use by Wood-aspected characters and other 
  Dragon-Bloods who embrace the surging energy of life. 
  Artifacts and Hearthstones round out the selection, 
  including some favorites owned by the narrators of 
  previous chapters.
  Appendix I: Signature Characters includes ﬁ ve 
  character templates, one for each of the narrators as they 
  are presented in the setting’s modern day. They are, as 
  individuals, of varied power and experience, suitable for 
  both Storyteller and player reference in the crafting of 
  your own stories.
  Appendix II: Other Notable Wood Aspects ﬁ nishes 
  up with ﬁ ve Wood-aspected Dragon-Bloods worthy of 
  notice — through fame or infamy — throughout the 
  world of Exalted.
  SOURCE MATERIAL
  The Exalted are, each and every one of them, heroes 
  of legend. They do not do small things. They are the best 
  (and sometimes the worst) of humanity writ large on the 
  canvas of the heavens. The Wood-aspected are unique 
  among the Terrestrial Exalted. The others are blessed 
  with afﬁ nities for ethereal, impersonal and inanimate 
  forces. In many cases, Exaltation by the other Elemental 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  10
  Dragons renders those chosen distant from the rest of 
  humanity. Those Exalted of the Wood Dragon are ﬁ lled 
  with the glory of life itself. Their bond with humanity, 
  indeed all living things, is strengthened a hundred-fold. 
  Their ﬂ esh is not a hindrance to their enlightenment, it 
  is the chief instrument in their search for it. The pursuit 
  of physical pleasure isn’t just a pastime for them, but a 
  true and sublime expression of their spirituality. They are 
  the great hunters and epic lovers of the Exalted world. 
  They are both wolf and shepherd. They are, to a one, 
  fantastic survivors. Drop the daintiest dandy of a Wood 
  Aspect you can ﬁ nd naked in the jungle, and he’ll not 
  only survive, but thrive. Each is Robin Hood, Natty 
  Bumppo and Tarzan all rolled into one.
  CLASSICS
  The epics are the obvious choices here. Homer’s 
  The Iliad and The Odyssey, while perhaps a touch on the 
  Western side of things, certainly provide great fodder for 
  deﬁ ning “great deeds.” Every Dragon-Blood is an Odysseus 
  or a Hector or an Achilles. Imagine, then, living in a world 
  with 10,000 of them.
  The work of Sun Tzu in The Art of War is as close a 
  match to The Thousand Correct Actions of the Upright Soldier
  as can be found in the real world, and Machiavelli’s The
  Prince is but a primer for those Wood-aspected Exalts who 
  choose the halls of power as their hunting grounds.
  20TH-CENTURY FICTION
  Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series and the related 
  The Phoenix Guards and Five Hundred Years After are 
  excellent resources for how a society populated by epic 
  heroes steeped in magic and awhirl with intrigue might 
  run. George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series 
  is awash in politics, intrigue, war and betrayal in an 
  excellently developed fantasy setting. One could do far 
  worse than to use it as inspiration for the brutal, merci-
  less, and frequently lethal political workings of the Realm 
  and its tributaries.
  The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe has 
  been mentioned time and again, but it bears mentioning 
  at least once more. They are unreservedly excellent and 
  serve well to illustrate the workings of an empire steeped 
  in debauchery and self-involvement.
  20TH-CENTURY CINEMA
  Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and 
  Yimou Zhang’s Hero stand out as excellent examples of 
  epic, non-Western fantasy and wonderful illustrations 
  of what the Exalted might look like if they were put on 
  ﬁ lm. Written by Gore Vidal and directed by Tinto Brass, 
  Caligula remains the chief illustration of decadent empire 
  on ﬁ lm and joins Christophe Gans’ Brotherhood of the Wolf 
  as ﬁ ne examples of the Wood-aspected Dragon-Bloods 
  at their most carnal.
  LEXICON
  It is not the goal of this book to add an entirely new 
  layer of complexity to an already complex world, but rather, 
  to further detail what already exists. To that end, we have 
  not developed a whole new, special, unique jargon for the 
  Wood-aspected Terrestrial Exalts. The terminology used 
  by the Wood Aspects is the same as that used by any other 
  aspect and, so, can be found ﬁ rst and foremost in the two 
  main books of the line: Exalted and Exalted: The Dragon-
  Blooded. There are a few terms that bear repeating, though, 
  for convenience sake if nothing else.
  Perfected Hierarchy, the: The natural order of all 
  things, as preached by the Immaculate Order, in which 
  enlightenment, as measured by one’s mastery of Essence, 
  marks one’s place in the world. The Dragon-Blooded 
  stand at the top of the Perfected Hierarchy as superior, 
  enlightened beings.
  Sextes Jylis, He Who Hath Strewn Much Grass:
  The avatar of the Wood Dragon who came to Creation in 
  the wake of the Great Uprising to repair the damage done 
  to the land. Of all the Immaculate Dragons, he is perhaps 
  the most revered by the common folk for his inﬂ uence 
  over the ﬁ elds and the fruits of the earth.
  
  11
  INTRODUCTION
  ASPECTS OF WOOD AND THE 
  IMMACULATE ORDER
  Wood-aspected Dragon-Blooded are well 
  represented in the Immaculate Order, in numbers pro-
  portional to their peers among the other four elements. 
  But fewer master the Wood Dragon Style than would 
  be expected from their numbers (and only a scant few 
  Air, Earth, Fire or Water Aspects achieve that level of 
  proﬁ ciency with the Wood Dragon Style). 
  There may be several reasons for this discrepancy. 
  First, the Wood Dragon Path is notoriously difﬁ cult, 
  even compared to the rigors of the other Fivefold Paths. 
  The learning and practice of it require asceticism and 
  deprivation, which are certainly not encouraged in any 
  widespread fashion in Dynastic households. Lost eggs 
  taken in by the Order generally have a less difﬁ cult 
  time adapting to the deprivations of training.
  A deeper reason may be that a trained master of 
  the Wooden Path is dangerous — physically, spiritually, 
  philosophically, politically and morally. The highest 
  mystery of the Wood Dragon Style is an attack that 
  rips the soul from a living body (the existence of this 
  technique is practically unknown outside the Immacu-
  late Order). And this is only the most concrete threat 
  posed by the style. Mastering one of the Fivefold Paths 
  requires a monk to open herself more intimately to the 
  ﬂ ow of Wood Essence than any of the most powerful, 
  non-martial art Wood Charms. This Essence idealizes 
  two conﬂ icting concepts: change and the hierarchi-
  cal character of the natural order. Monks embracing 
  the concept of change cause enough headaches (as 
  discussed elsewhere); monks getting fully in touch 
  with the Celestially mandated natural order could be 
  disastrous for the Immaculate Order. More than one 
  Wood-aspected monk has disappeared from the Order 
  after an encounter with an Anathema — whether 
  unfortunately deceased, gone into hermitage or some-
  thing more troubling, the Order does not know (or 
  will not say). Knowing the dangers of Wood training, 
  the Immaculate Order only ofﬁ cially allows strictly 
  indoctrinated monks to study the higher mysteries 
  of the Wood Dragon Path. Unofﬁ cially, instructors 
  may take on promising students who do not meet the 
  Order’s qualiﬁ cations, perhaps directly ﬂ outing the 
  Order’s authority or, more subtly, allowing the student 
  to watch and mimic the training of others.
  CULTS OF SEXTES JYLIS
  The Wood Dragon incarnate, Sextes Jylis, is 
  understandably the subject of great reverence from 
  some of the poorest people in the Realm. While the 
  mighty and wealthy might have to tighten their belts 
  when harvests fail, the poor starve and die. And while 
  Immaculate monks and well-educated Dragon-Bloods 
  have a far better grasp of Immaculate philosophy 
  and the place of Sextes Jylis therein, those who toil 
  in the ﬁ elds have an intimate, up-close knowledge 
  of how things grow. The Dragon-Blooded may tend 
  gorgeous gardens or supervise prize breeding lines, 
  but they rarely have dirt under their ﬁ ngernails from 
  cultivating staple food crops, nor are they called from 
  their comfortable beds in the dark of night during 
  lambing season.
  Occasionally, reverence gives way to worship of 
  Sextes Jylis or local spirits of fertility and plenty. Both 
  the leadership of the Immaculate Order and local satraps 
  prefer to avoid taking punitive measures against such 
  heresy when possible — after all, who wants to report 
  to his superiors that grain production has dropped 
  markedly in the region in the aftermath of rooting out 
  a heretical fertility cult? 
  The Immaculate Order has found it far more ef-
  fective to be proactive. During work-intensive times 
  such as planting, itinerant monks (and even sedentary 
  monks pressed into service) throng the countryside, 
  making an effort to reach every village to offer the 
  Wood Dragon’s blessing over the ﬁ elds and the seeds. 
  After the harvest, when the peasants’ labors lessen, 
  the Order sponsors festivals in honor of Sextes Jylis in 
  communities around the Realm, even loosening its purse 
  strings to provide entertainment and feasting. For most 
  working folk, the trip to the nearest harvest festival is 
  the farthest they will travel in their lifetimes.
  True cultic worship of Sextes Jylis is rare among 
  Dragon-Bloods. Certainly, groups purporting to be cults 
  come and go on a yearly basis, but practically all are 
  hedonistic or orgiastic societies claiming cult status 
  for the added spice of transgression it brings to their 
  revels. The All-Seeing Eye once watched such groups 
  for signs of true philosophical dissent; but now, the 
  wastrels and bons vivants party on without surveillance 
  — perhaps hiding revolutionary ambitious behind their 
  indulgence and rutting.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  12
  
  13
  CHAPTER ONE • CHILDHOOD AND SELF
  CHAPTER ONE 
  CHILDHOOD
  AND SELF
  The seeds of experience that are planted at the be-
  ginning of a Terrestrial Exalt’s life often lay the pattern 
  for the rest of the Dragon-Blooded’s life. What appears as 
  an insigniﬁ cant event in the beginning of life can dictate 
  what sort of person one of these beings becomes. Though 
  certainly there are qualities that are simply nature, the way 
  in which a Dragon-Blooded is nurtured and educated will 
  often train the direction of their growth.
  The following are accounts of the early lives of ﬁ ve 
  Dragon-Blooded of the Wood Aspect. Some of their begin-
  nings are rather simple and humble, while others were raised 
  in the midst of privilege and opportunity unfathomable 
  even to other Exalted.
  RUTANJALI
  The forest is, and will always be, my home. My people 
  took everything they needed from the trees and animals of 
  the wood. In the village of Carya Kos, the men and women 
  would forage through the glades and greens, hunting the wild 
  boars for meat and trapping squirrels, rabbits and foxes for 
  their pelts. They built their houses from oak and pine and 
  erected shrines they ﬁ lled with offerings of ﬂ owers, bone and 
  wooden statues and the massive heads of hunted beasts, so 
  that the gods, who lived about us, would know our thanks. 
  The spirits, most pleased with these rituals of appreciation 
  and respect, would ﬁ ll the forests with their life and power, 
  bringing abundance to every glen and thicket.
  I never knew my father, and my mother, called Shiv-
  astri, was a quiet and shy woman, whom the elders cared 
  for as if she were a child. Her mind had come apart, it was 
  said, and the shamans say that it was my father who made 
  her that way. My father was a god of the forest, a ﬁ erce 
  and terrible hunter with a face as handsome and perfect as 
  that of any fae prince. It is said that, on his hunt, he came 
  upon my mother who was singing a lament by a brook. So 
  passionate he did become, the air glowed green about him 
  and he could not keep himself away from this song that 
  burned as lust about his heart. By that brook, he ravaged 
  her body and spirit, leaving her broken upon the pebbled 
  bank, bloodied and mad. 
  This is how I came to be raised by my Aunt Rinchen, 
  who was a wise and beautiful savant, though many of the 
  village women would call her witch and compare her cun-
  ning to the madness of my mother. Rinchen, a hearty and 
  strong woman, with eyes like darting stars, brown skin and 
  a gracefully curved body, was the subject of much gossip 
  and unwarranted fear until need presented itself. When 
  the shaman could not divine a direction and the elders 
  could not ﬁ nd the way, Rinchen was consulted on every 
  matter from what herbs would be best to sooth the dawn 
  sickness felt by those with child to where to ﬁ nd the great 
  stones on which thrived the blackﬁ nger lichen that is 
  brewed to make the dreaming paste our priests consume 
  to speak to the gods. I remember sitting at Rinchen’s feet, 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  14
  playing with knots of twine, while she catalogued her lore 
  and shared it with the people she loved so that their lives 
  would be good and safe. 
  On sunny days and warm evenings, I would walk by 
  Aunt Rinchen’s side, collecting secret treasures from the 
  forest floor as she educated me in their names and uses, 
  teaching me charms and rhymes that carried the wisdom 
  of her mother and her mother’s mothers. It was during 
  these little adventures that I came to love the forest 
  in a way that a child raised in different circumstances 
  could never have done. The trees, the brooks, the hol-
  lows and the glades were mine. I shared these things 
  only with my aunt, the beasts and the unseen things to 
  which I sang and gave offerings. With all the treasures 
  of the forest as my playthings, I was the happiest little 
  girl in Carya Kos.
  It was on such a walk that I met Bima. 
  Bima was the son of Tharjun and Jadha. Tharjun, 
  his father, was a respected elder with dark eyes who rarely 
  smiled, and Jadha, his mother, was a kind woman who took 
  care of my mother and often spoke to Rinchen about my 
  care. Bima, however, was as wild as the woods themselves. 
  Unlike the boys who competed in games of shunji and 
  dreamed of being warriors, Bima was marked with the 
  shaman’s sight. This concerned his parents, who had seen 
  what can happen when an aspirant is unprepared for such 
  an initiation. So, being wise guardians, Tharjun and Jadha 
  sent Bima to seek out my Aunt Rinchen.
  Rinchen and I were gathering ﬁ rewort from the roots 
  of a great tree when Bima came upon us. He was handsome 
  in his father’s tunic, and he wore his family’s ancestral 
  dagger tucked into his silk sash. His eyes held some fear, 
  as he had surely heard the rumors of my aunt’s guile and 
  wisdom. Nonetheless, he stood before her and presented 
  himself in the traditional way an apprentice offers himself 
  to a master. At ﬁ rst, Rinchen pretended to be insulted that 
  such a boy would assume himself worthy of her teachings. 
  Bima offered every manner of boast and promise in order 
  to convince my aunt, and eventually, Rinchen nodded in 
  acceptance of her new student.
  Rinchen and I both came to love Bima. Rinchen loved 
  him as a son, but I felt a strange and powerful desire for 
  him. Eventually, Bima came to feel the same for me, and 
  although we were too young to marry, we loved each other 
  very much. Whatever time Bima did not spend with my 
  aunt in the forest, he spent with me, talking and laughing 
  beneath the banyan trees or spearing goldﬁ ns in the brook 
  behind my cottage. At the time, I believed I would have 
  this joy forever. 
  EXALTATION
  The rain fell gently during the last day I was to spend 
  in my village. Bima and I had been sent to fetch water 
  from the brook, and on the way, we had stopped to pick 
  wild ginger at the foot of an ancient willow, the trees long 
  
  15
  CHAPTER ONE • CHILDHOOD AND SELF
  green tails creating a private forest chamber for me and 
  my love. It was then that Bima told me that he would 
  make me his wife and that we would spend the rest of our 
  days on walks just like this, living in the arms of the for-
  est and wanting for nothing. It was then that I heard the 
  approach of a great many horses, the shouts and howls of 
  men growing louder and closer.
  At ﬁ rst we hid, clutched together beneath the willow 
  tree, not knowing what it meant, not knowing who these 
  horseman were that came to our village so deep in the wood. 
  I told Bima to stay with me. I told him to wait until the men 
  were gone, but his concern for the safety of the people of 
  Carya Kos drew Bima out of our sanctuary, and I ran after 
  him. I remember him running and shouting to me about 
  how he needed to ﬁ nd his parents and how these men had 
  come to hurt us. As we came close to the village, we saw 
  smoke and ﬁ re and the bloodied, ﬂ eshy heaps of people we 
  loved, hacked and butchered by these dark men on horses. 
  Terriﬁ ed, I stood motionless near the ﬁ re pit at the center 
  of the square, while howling murderers bellowed to one 
  another as their red, wet axes harvested the lives of all I had 
  ever known since I had come to be in this world. 
  Suddenly, I saw Bima, limping toward me at a pained 
  gallop, his leg slick with a grievous wound, as a green-faced 
  brigand on horseback rose up behind him, his horse snort-
  ing steam like an angry demon. As the warrior’s battleaxe 
  struck his back, Bima’s expression was that of awe and 
  surprise — a look of wonderful confusion as he dropped 
  face ﬁ rst into the mud. The rider, so ﬁ erce the moment 
  before, looked upon me with dread as blood and leaves 
  rushed about me in a snapping whirlwind, my expression 
  frozen in all-penetrating despair. The rider ﬂ ed as I felt my 
  aunt’s tight grip on my wrist, pulling me away as gore and 
  forest rushed about me.
  As we ran through the forest, I looked to my aunt for 
  the meaning of what just happened, although she could 
  not explain, her only thought being my safety. After 
  what couldn’t have been less than two hours of running, 
  we cleared a hill and dipped into a depression where a 
  stream ran peacefully, oblivious to the massacre in Carya 
  Kos. With our backs against the muddy wall of the bar-
  row, I looked at my aunt, her arm pressed against her guts 
  as dark red stain spread through the ﬁ bers of her dress. 
  “What am I?” I pleaded, torn between the confusion of 
  my being and fear for the last person I truly loved in the 
  world. “You are as your father, my child.” Rinchen said 
  softly, “As your father.”
  My father? Although her cryptic answer meant noth-
  ing to me at the time, it distracted me long enough to 
  restore my bearings. Hefting my aunt onto my shoulder, 
  we hobbled together along the stream’s edge as I followed 
  her quiet directions, the ﬂ ame of her life slowly dimming. 
  Though it seemed to me that our walk was endless, sure 
  to leave me stranded, with my dying aunt, in such distant 
  reaches of the wood that I would surely die as well, Rinchen 
  assured me that our course was sure. She told me that I 
  would soon be safe.
  When we crested the stream’s bank, we entered a 
  glade where I had never been before. The meadow was 
  ﬁ lled with grasses as high as my waist, and at its center 
  was a poorly made cottage of remarkable size. At the time, 
  it looked much like a pile of sticks built like the kindling 
  stack at the center of the clearing. As we approached, my 
  aunt stumbled, collapsing into the grass. As I knelt to help 
  her, a warm wind began to blow in through the meadow, 
  the great pile of wood rattling against itself as if it would 
  be blown away. From the wood stacks rose a towering 
  man whose head was as high as the trees — a man made 
  of branches and leaves, brandishing a tree-sized club and 
  an expression of undeniable annoyance.
  As I turned to run, Rinchen’s hand latched around 
  my ankle, and I stopped dead. Using me for support, my 
  aunt pulled herself back to her feet and turned to face the 
  forest spirit, pleading in a language I had never heard. After 
  much deliberation, the forest spirit unfolded its arms from 
  its chest and nodded, slowly moving toward my aunt as 
  she turned to face me, a look of longing and love on her 
  face, “Rutanjali. This is the King of Endless Branches. I 
  have made chiminage with what little life I have left. As I 
  have told you many times, the forest can show you all the 
  things that lie within it. The King of Endless Branches is 
  the forest’s greatest teacher and its sovereign lord. May you 
  grow strong to avenge the people of Carya Kos.”
  What came next was beyond my imagining. As 
  a strong wind came rushing from all directions, the 
  creature’s arms unfurled, bursting toward Rinchen. A 
  writhing mass of twigs, roots and runners bored through 
  my aunt’s clothing, digging into her skin as her face fell 
  forward, the sound of her last breath hidden beneath the 
  swarming limbs. There was no screaming or panic as the 
  Wood King devoured my aunt, consuming the very last of 
  Rinchen’s life force, her blood pouring from the convulsing 
  thicket as the long grasses stretched up from the ground 
  to drink it. With a rush of leaves, the arms retracted as 
  quickly as they attacked, my aunts bones rattling in the 
  remains of her dress as they fell into the mud. When 
  it was over, I stood in silence, angry and shaking. As I 
  stared at the Wood King, the rush of leaves and blood 
  burst out once again, lashing at the air around me, my 
  heart screaming out at the trees. Tears burned my cheeks 
  as my fury stirred. As I raged inside, I fell to my knees, 
  crushed beneath the weight of the day’s events. Between 
  the death of my lover, the destruction of my village and 
  the passing of my aunt, I could not consider what I had 
  become. I remember looking at my new guardian, the 
  humanness of my plight being completely alien to his 
  ancient spirit’s heart. 
  Eventually, my sobbing receded, and the King of 
  Endless Branches and I walked out into the green vastness 
  of the wood.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  16
  EDUCATION
  It was during my time at the knee of the Wood King 
  that the secrets of my nature were revealed. I learned of 
  an island, far to the West, where many others of my kind 
  lived and ruled, with great armies. I learned that there 
  hearts and bodies are ruled by the ﬁ ve elements — air, 
  earth, ﬁ re, water and wood — and that each element bore 
  its own unique expression in these god-men of which I was 
  one. Because of the closeness of my Exalted soul to life 
  and death, the element of my center being wood, there 
  could be no mortal who walked the forest that would be 
  my equal. Like the spirits around me, I came to learn the 
  secrets of Essence, although my gifts were different than 
  those of the King of Endless Branches and those of his 
  many and varied subjects. 
  The King of Endless Branches had watched me hunting 
  deer in the alder groves for most of the afternoon but had 
  kept his distance, not wanting the sense of protection he 
  lent to the forest beasts to deceive my quarry, cheapening 
  the hunt and depriving me of valuable experience and 
  training. I had learned to pull the binding Essence of 
  Creation to me, quickening my arrows, sharpening my 
  senses and rendering myself invulnerable to the perils of 
  the wilderness. I was sitting atop a deadfall, refastening the 
  ﬂ etching of an arrow, when the Wood King came to me. 
  He had taken another form, so I did not recognize him at 
  ﬁ rst. The form of a young man came to me now, dressed 
  in verdant leaves and bearing a bundle of furs tied with 
  vines. It was his eyes that were the same, dark and ancient, 
  unmistakable despite his youthful seeming. 
  When the King of Endless Branches kneeled before 
  me, I realized what was occurring. This was a proposal of 
  marriage, in the fashion of the elementals — no court-
  ing, no games — a simple proclamation of intent and the 
  granting of the bride gift. The Wood King laid the bundle 
  at my feet and opened it. A bow of green jade was my 
  wedding gift. I took the ancient weapon into my hands, 
  and I could feel it yearn for me as I became excited to use 
  it. I nodded to the King, in acceptance of both his gift 
  and his proposal.
  At ﬁ rst, I thought I had thought my wedding gift was 
  merely a token, albeit a powerful and deadly one. It was not 
  until I awoke the next morning, when I woke beside my 
  King, that I realized what I had been given — revenge.
  CYNIS BELAR NORREN
  Members of other houses, outcastes and the mortals 
  that I have the — thankfully rare — opportunity to speak 
  with all believe that my life as a member of House Cynis 
  is some never-ending bout of pleasures interrupted only by 
  the occasional need to sleep and shit. They seem to hold 
  us in some sort of awe.
  But, you know… during secondary school I encoun-
  tered V’neef Shar, who’d grown up a lost egg among the 
  barbarians of the Far North. He told absurd stories about 
  migrating across icy plains, carving temporary dwellings 
  out of ice and snow and the like, but it deeply offended 
  him when I referred to his childhood as “barbaric.” He 
  didn’t see his childhood as barbaric, but rather, as perfectly 
  ordinary. Indeed, he saw the whole of the Blessed Isle and 
  the lives of the Great Houses as a gaudy embarrassment 
  on the face of Creation by comparison to his own austere 
  youth. Everyone sees his own childhood as ordinary and 
  measures the rest of his experiences against it.
  Say, therefore, that I ﬁ nd the rest of the Great Houses 
  to be curiously prudish and unnecessarily restrained in 
  their behavior.
  I was born into the height of privilege among House 
  Cynis in Pangu Prefecture, upon the Blessed Isle. My be-
  loved mother, Cynis Belar Mina, was a Dragon-Blooded 
  scion — a Water Aspect. My father, Cynis Wisel Pantos, 
  was not so fortunate. Although he was my mother’s legal 
  husband, he was simply a mortal. Despite my father’s lower 
  rank, my family was held in high esteem in the eyes of my 
  great-grandmother Cynis Belar and, it was whispered, in 
  the eyes of my great-great grandmother as well.
  I had no real concept of my family’s wealth as a boy. 
  As I suggested just a moment ago, everyone thinks his 
  childhood is ordinary. I’m sure that a mortal who reads 
  this account will be struck by the differences between his 
  own childhood and mine. Who’s to say which one is the 
  ordinary one?
  My earliest memory is the sight of one of my father’s 
  stewards fucking my nanny. I couldn’t have been older than 
  three. They showed no particular modesty — I’m led to 
  believe that in other houses this sort of thing is frowned 
  upon, but not in mine. The sight didn’t traumatize me. 
  They were obviously enjoying themselves. When they were 
  done, my nanny made me lunch. Frankly, I remember the 
  sliced sausage and warm bread more clearly than anything 
  else that day.
  My nannies, the stewards and the other servants of 
  my parents’ household had a far greater direct impact on 
  my youth and development than my parents themselves 
  did. Our household owned countless slaves, and managing 
  that property on my mother’s behalf occupied most of my 
  father’s time. I saw him infrequently — perhaps every 10 
  days, at feasts and great parties, and when he was home 
  from his travels as overseer. He was not particularly af-
  fectionate, though he obviously had high hopes and high 
  standards for me.
  I saw my mother daily — most days for half an hour 
  around dinnertime, though during great feasts, I might 
  receive the privilege of spending hours in her presence. 
  Rarely was I the center of her attention at such events. I 
  loved my mother then even more deeply than I do now 
  and was happy for any iota of her time that I might glean. 
  Many nights Mina, my mother, indulged my childish need 
  for physical affection, hugging or kissing me spontaneously 
  
  17
  CHAPTER ONE • CHILDHOOD AND SELF
  when I correctly recited a poem or demonstrated a new 
  dance step.
  I didn’t learn until a few months into primary school 
  that half my classmates had no memory of a mother’s 
  embrace. They seem to feel that this makes them stronger 
  and sterner. Their loss, I suppose.
  My tutor was a mortal and a slave. Ordul was his 
  full name. Other than my parents, he was the only true 
  constant during my childhood. My wetnurse was gone as 
  soon as I weaned, and nannies and stewards swapped in 
  and out like clockwork. 
  I remember quite clearly the nanny I’d had from my 
  weaning until the Calibration in my ﬁ fth year. She was 
  a slave — Dona. Young, in retrospect. Freckled. Smiled 
  more than she scolded. She must have been attractive. 
  Although my memory does not serve me here, my house 
  does not hire unattractive slaves unless they have unusual 
  and valuable talents, and skill as a nanny hardly qualiﬁ es. 
  I loved her dearly.
  She was taken from me just before Calibration, in my 
  ﬁ fth year. I wailed; I ran and hid from the stewards and 
  my parents and spent the ﬁ rst night of that Calibration 
  hidden away in some no-doubt ghost-infested back room 
  of our estate. The steward, Holton, found me. He never 
  struck me — slaves never strike the blood of the Dragons, 
  at least not in House Cynis. Both parents were angry with 
  me – I’d been expected at a party they were hosting the 
  ﬁ rst night of Calibration. My father struck me three times 
  and then turned his attention to other matters. This stuck 
  with me: For an infraction, punish and then move on. I 
  wailed for Dona the next night, but I did not run. The 
  new nanny arrived the ﬁ rst night after Calibration. I do 
  not recall her name.
  This pattern continued thereafter: One servant would 
  leave my family’s service the night before Calibration began, 
  and a new one would arrive the night Calibration ended. 
  For a long time, I gave no thought to what happened to 
  those slaves after they left my family’s service, though my 
  ﬁ rst year of secondary school, I did consider trying to ﬁ nd 
  long-lost Dona. Now that I know what became of many 
  of them, I believe I was happier not knowing. But here 
  I am getting ahead of myself. My childhood had a few 
  surprises yet to come.
  Three cousins were within two years of me in age. 
  Cynis Wisel Myrana was closest in age, just a few months 
  my junior. I couldn’t stand her as a boy. This… changed 
  as we grew older. The other cousins were older than me. 
  Cynis Falen Debos, who has since joined the Immaculate 
  Order, was two years my senior. Cynis Belar Grine was 
  between Debos and myself in age. We were close friends 
  and dire enemies throughout our childhoods. Most of the 
  time, Debos terrorized the rest of us, locking us away in 
  outbuildings far from the center of the palaces in Pangu or 
  beating us on a whim. The girls were close, and at times, 
  Debos and I were quite close as well. 
  Ordul was my tutor. Over the years, I learned that he’d 
  been a wellborn son of the Scavenger Lands, though he 
  never spoke of the circumstances that led to his enslave-
  ment. He was a stout man, bald and strong. He was no 
  eunuch, I realize in retrospect, for his voice was low and 
  strong, and he wore whiskers in the colder months. My 
  mother was quite fond of him; his tutoring services to her 
  were a minor part of his role in Pangu. Ordul taught me 
  the ﬁ ne arts: Poetry, dancing, song. He was stern but fair 
  — a trait I learned to treasure after Exalting and ﬁ nding 
  myself surrounded by sycophants and idiots.
  As I grew, the dancing lessons were supplemented 
  by ﬁ ghting lessons, and the poetry and song were supple-
  mented by histories and lessons in mathematics and simple 
  economics. Ordul taught some of these as well, but more 
  often, another slave scholar arrived for a few months to 
  pass on some important knowledge and then leave.
  I also learned the mechanics and principles of physi-
  cal pleasure, though even in our hedonistic house it was 
  considered improper to begin any serious practice in this 
  regard before primary school. Childish sex play was ac-
  cepted, even encouraged, but we hardly performed upon 
  one another. I attended a few orgies, but I was no more 
  expected to participate in them than I might be expected 
  to participate in a scholarly debate on the symbolism of the 
  poet Trimbeline’s latest ode. I hadn’t the skill or desire.
  Between the shufﬂ ing of stewards and nannies and the 
  iterations of specialist tutors, I must admit that I no longer 
  remember the names of most of those individuals who had 
  the greatest inﬂ uence on me as a boy. Save one: Berk. 
  Berk was a slave brought to teach me the epic poems 
  of The Lay of Emneth Ice-Conqueror. To this day I have no 
  idea who Emneth was, nor why he would choose to conquer 
  a given patch of ice. Berk had been in my family’s service 
  for some six weeks when the attack came, in the middle 
  of the night. I do not know what saved me from him. I 
  ascribe it to the eye of Sextes Jylis herself. I believe that 
  the Wood Dragon wished to test me. It was full dark, and 
  I was in my room, asleep. Berk appeared, knife in hand. 
  Somehow, the knife went through the cushion rather 
  than my eye.
  I rolled away from him and threw everything I had at 
  him. Literally — blankets, pillows, candlesticks, the few 
  toys I was permitted, books. Anything to pile obstacles 
  between Berk and I. The debris stymied him, and my 
  screams brought the house guard. Somehow, they subdued 
  him without killing him. I wasn’t privy to the interrogation 
  that followed, but I did sit in a place of honor for Berk’s 
  execution the next day.
  It took weeks for the family’s spies to trace the path 
  of Berk’s employment back to the hand that truly guided 
  him — a Tepet patrician named Meno, one of my father’s 
  rivals. The attack, I was told, was merely a message. I was 
  expected to understand the political details at the time, but 
  they have faded in the intervening years. I believe that men 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  18
  under my mother’s command had raided a Tepet satrapy 
  for peasants to take as slaves. I know that, in retribution, 
  a Tepet cargo ship was seized by Cynis men and its crew 
  imprisoned or killed.
  All this was back while the Empress was still alive, 
  of course. I shudder to imagine how such a conﬂ ict might 
  resolve itself in these uncertain times.
  Ordul, my tutor, grew sullen and more protective after 
  the attack. He obviously felt it was his fault the attack had 
  happened and was probably concerned about his future in 
  my parents’ service. I promised him that, no matter what 
  happened, I would always want him in my own service — a 
  promise I ended up keeping, to my great surprise.
  A few months after the attack, I was sent to primary 
  school. I’d shown some afﬁ nity for sums and memorization, 
  and my mother was determined that I would attend Ilicar 
  Academy in the Imperial City. She hosted numerous fetes 
  and orgies during my eighth year, all aimed at ensuring my 
  attendance at Ilicar by swaying the school’s directors and 
  the bureaucrats responsible for entry testing to it.
  My mother is very good at that sort of thing. I got in.
  EXALTATION
  I was 13. She was 15 and as devoted an adversary as 
  I have ever known. She mocked me mercilessly all my 
  days at Ilicar. She mocked my clothes, my hair, the way I 
  said certain words. We came to blows on more than one 
  occasion in the early days of my education, and as children 
  of that age always do, matters eventually made their way 
  to discussions of sex.
  Until I left home for school, sex had simply been a 
  fact of life. It happened all the time — not to me of course, 
  as I had little interest, but between the people around 
  me. I learned (at what I now know was a scandalously 
  early age by the standards of any but House Cynis) the 
  mechanics of things long before I had a use for them. At 
  school, it was a different matter. My classmates knew, of 
  course, that I was of House Cynis and knew as well the 
  reputation, deserved or otherwise, of my house as rife with 
  debauchery and assumed immediately that I was a master 
  of all such arts or a else a hopeless eunuch. Surely no one 
  in that family would wait so long to indulge, or so their 
  reasoning went. Mnemon Mora decided on the latter and, 
  in the summer of my 13th year, decided to excoriate me for 
  a eunuch. The harassment went on for a month until, at 
  last, she challenged me to prove myself potent. I’ll leave 
  you to ponder her true motives yourself. Sufﬁ ce it to say 
  she took me to the topiary garden, a lush and secluded 
  yard some way from the main hall of the school, to sort 
  out the truth of things. Things certainly were sorted, but 
  not in the way that she’d expected.
  At ﬁ rst it was wounded pride and a ﬁ re for vindica-
  tion that drove me to the deed, but once begun, another 
  ﬁ re took its place almost immediately. I had learned a 
  great deal from my tutors, it seemed, because soon she 
  
  19
  CHAPTER ONE • CHILDHOOD AND SELF
  was as consumed with lust as I, and as the moment of our 
  passion reached its zenith, something else entirely ﬁ lled 
  me from within and burst. The hedges went mad, ﬂ ower-
  ing with unearthly speed. The grass writhed beneath us, 
  and the earth roiled with life. I could smell everything: 
  myself, Mnemon Mora, the voles nesting under the lilac, 
  a dog on the path half a mile away. I felt everything: my 
  own breath and sweat, Mora’s skin, the beat of her heart, 
  the feat tightening her muscles around me. It all built 
  to a fever pitch before exploding out of me in ﬂ ood of 
  iridescent Essence.
  Mora spent a week recuperating in the inﬁ rmary. I 
  was taken to the dormitory of the Exalted. I was never 
  mocked again in earshot.
  SECONDARY SCHOOL
  Near the end of my ﬁ rst year at the Spiral Academy, 
  I received a scroll from my mother. It seemed that I was 
  not to return to Pangu Prefecture for the summer. Instead, 
  my great-grandmother Cynis Belar had it in her head 
  that I would leave the Blessed Isle entirely and spend the 
  summer as the overseer of a few dozen slaves on an estate 
  outside of Cherak. This enraged me — for I was just 15 
  and a Dragon-Blooded scion of a Great House. For my 
  entire long (long!) life I’d obeyed the dictates of house 
  and family, but I felt it to be quite beneath my prodigious 
  talents to spend the summer shepherding a few dozen idiot 
  laborers and whores.
  I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, but the real 
  reason for my anger was that I had greatly missed my be-
  loved cousin Cynis Wisel Myrana through the year away 
  at school, and I wished to spend as much time as I could 
  with her at the Palace of Trees. 
  I did what any arrogant young immortal would have 
  done: I left the Spiral Academy at the end of the term 
  with no thought given to the ship that would take me 
  to Cherak. I would travel to Pangu Prefecture under my 
  own power.
  The irony of all this is that my distant uncle Cynis 
  Wisel Sitos took Myrana with him to the Imperial City 
  through the summer, as Wisel herself assigned him to see 
  to her family’s affairs at court for the season. I would long 
  for the isolation of Cherak before the summer was over. 
  My great-grandmother made certain that the season was 
  as educational as it was unpleasant. I learned a great deal 
  that summer, not the least of which was never to be so 
  bold in my deﬁ ance again.
  I returned to the Academy a triﬂ e humbler, but with 
  a clearer sense of purpose. I fell under the tutelage of 
  Master Sesus Agranum, the Academy’s Chief of Forensic 
  Accountancy. To say he took me under his wing would be 
  an exaggeration. He did recognize my talents, however, 
  and granted me a rare privilege — study outside the walls 
  of the school. I was assigned to a local customs house with 
  which the Master had a particular relationship. This was 
  hardly unusual, though most are tasked with labors that can 
  be performed within the halls of the Academy. I suspected 
  — no, I knew, though to say so then would have been 
  uncharacteristically foolish of me — that this particular 
  relationship involved details the Master preferred did not 
  reach the ears of the Headmaster. Regardless, the assign-
  ment itself is peripheral to the story. It was on my return 
  from an afternoon of “study” when I heard the news that 
  the Empress had turned over a portion of House Peleps’ 
  shipping to my own Great House as part of the turmoil 
  surrounding the creation of House V’neef.
  As I was returning from my labors, I happened upon 
  considerable hubbub in the central courtyard. Someone 
  had thrown themselves from one of the library windows. 
  Idiocy. It’s certainly not the ﬁ rst time such a thing has 
  happened. Anyone with even the least knowledge of 
  the Academy’s history knows the fall from the library is 
  insufﬁ cient to kill one touched with the Dragons’ blood. 
  You cannot jump from anywhere below the fourth ﬂ oor 
  commissary if you’re serious about ending it all. 
  It didn’t take long to discover that the failed ﬂ ier was 
  Peleps Andronicus, the elder of the Peleps twins attend-
  ing the Academy. He was arrogant, pompous and prone 
  to boasting of his family’s great inﬂ uence. When he heard 
  of the Empress’ decree, he grew despondent (and stupid 
  it seems, though I’ve heard that was a chronic condition 
  with him from long before his plunge to the courtyard). 
  He was sent back to his family estate very quietly. It took 
  nearly an hour for the entire school to know. His sister, 
  though… She was another story.
  It was a month, to the day, after her brother’s dis-
  graceful dive to the pavement when she crept into my 
  room and tried to teach me to breathe through my belly. 
  There were no V’neef at the Academy yet, minor lines 
  and outcaste families were just being grafted onto the 
  newly formed house, but I was the youngest Cynis, and 
  that was almost as good. She discovered quickly enough 
  that I was not so vulnerable as she thought. I took the 
  knife she meant for me and turned it back on her and 
  added a special touch of my own. I’m told her trip home 
  took several days and she was ranting with fever by the 
  time she got there. She lived, but it was a long time before 
  she was pretty again.
  Little did I know that was merely the ﬁ rst Peleps 
  blood I would shed. The next summer, Grandmother put 
  me in the service of Uncle Lemmat, master of our newly 
  acquired shipping interests. The venture had not proven 
  so proﬁ table as had been expected. Lemmat blamed linger-
  ing loyalties to House Peleps among the help. I was tasked 
  with conﬁ rming this — and with eliminating those who 
  hindered our proper employment of those assets.
  I showed some talent in this. By the end of the season, 
  I’d uncovered a dozen Peleps moles, three embezzlers, a 
  small band of smugglers making use of our ships without 
  offering the customary bribes and three Tepet plants on my 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  20
  uncle’s personal staff. What’s more — I enjoyed it. Thus 
  was my career path set.
  I spent a season without obligation — a gift from 
  my great-grandmother for the progress I’d made in the 
  remaining years of my education. When I returned from 
  my sabbatical, I became a Cynis rat-hunter.
  SESUS NAGEZZER
  Though I was never the favorite child, my life was 
  not without privilege. My mother, sister of the house 
  founder Sesus, was a domineering and powerful woman, 
  as radiantly beautiful as any matriarch of the Realm could 
  be. She was the ﬁ ery embodiment of her house ideal, and 
  she had ﬁ ve children onto whom she would force her 
  legacy — a legacy I would never live up to. Although 
  most of the attention went to my ﬁ ercer, more athletic 
  siblings, I still enjoyed the culture and pleasures of my 
  mother’s house. Among my mother’s lovers was my father, 
  an unExalted son of House V’neef and former Senator of 
  the Lesser Deliberative. He too, was a disappointment to 
  his house, having never Exalted. Nonetheless, my father 
  was possessed of a keen and subtle intellect, and being 
  his favorite child, he shared with me his understanding 
  of history, philosophy and literature. Thus, while my 
  sisters and brothers played at Immaculates and Anathema 
  in the courtyard, bouncing about and screaming while 
  bloodying each other’s noses, I would enjoy walnut cook-
  ies with my father in the east library, books and sweets 
  being our shared vices. While the others played and did 
  their best to approximate battles they knew nothing 
  about, I studied strategy, tactics and the annals of every 
  signiﬁ cant war and battle from the tail end of the First 
  Age up until the modern day. They were warriors and 
  soldiers, while I was a general.
  I was never a pretty or particularly ﬁ t child. In addi-
  tion to my formidable grasp of martial lore, I was always 
  unusually focused, undistracted by many of the things that 
  make a child a child. This often resulted in a fair amount 
  of ridicule at the hands of other children and was a cause 
  of expressed worry from my mother and the other Dragon-
  Blooded who visited our home. Nonetheless, there were 
  beneﬁ ts. The ﬁ rst advantage that I noticed was the freedom 
  this granted me. When my mother held feasts at our home, 
  I was never chosen to be the performing monkey. Instead, I 
  was left alone, uninterrupted, with my books and hobbies, 
  the distracted child who existed out of sight and mind. This 
  was far from the greatest beneﬁ t, however. For when, after 
  these galas, my fair-faced brothers and sisters were led to 
  the bedchambers of some visiting Cynis lord or the bath of 
  our dear Uncle Sesus, I was left, dreaming in my very own 
  bed, without a care in the world. Unfortunately, when the 
  next morning came, and we gathered around the table to 
  break our fast, the looks and jabs of resentment from my 
  brothers and sisters were undeniable and lasting.
  So, it was alone or with my father that I spent my 
  youth. Along the paths of the Throne of Roses, my 
  mother’s Manse, I would walk — picking ﬂ owers, reading 
  books on war and power and avoiding the torments of 
  my siblings and their playmates. Despite my increasing 
  knowledge of these things that held my attention, this 
  pattern continued even after the lot of us were sent off 
  to school.
  EXALTATION
  I think for Sesus Agon, one of my two older brothers, 
  I was the focus of all his aggression and cruelty. It was 
  not as if I had ever challenged or competed with him in 
  any direct way, yet Agon felt driven to make my life as 
  difﬁ cult as it could possibly be, using me as his personal 
  efﬁ gy for Mother, Father or some other force that he felt 
  judged him, further stoking the hidden, raging ﬁ res of 
  his inadequacy. It was this disposition for harassment 
  and bullying that placed us in the northwest courtyard 
  of our dormitory on the seventh day of Ascending Wood 
  of that year.
  I was, as usual, minding my own affairs on the edge 
  of the center fountain, hidden, so I thought, by a hedge 
  of white roses. I was eating a candy, blowing the steam 
  off of a cup of tea and reading a copy of Bara’s treatise on 
  ﬂ anking and the use of reserves, when Agon decided to 
  perform for a gaggle of his moronic friends. I didn’t even 
  see it coming. I felt an incredible shove and went toppling 
  backward, my arms ﬂ ailing, as my candy, my book and my 
  entire self splashed down into the fountain pool. 
  At that moment, I felt a painful stab at the center of 
  my brain. My body, so used to softer stimulus, snapped and 
  kicked like that of a wild horse. I stood, my robes sopping 
  wet, and clenched my ﬁ sts till blood trickled from them. 
  Agon and his gang looked terriﬁ ed, turning to run. Only 
  by inches, I caught Agon by the nape of his collar, taking 
  a heavy stone from the edge of the fountain in my other 
  hand. The bully howled in terror as I pushed him onto his 
  face, kicking hard at his ribs so he’d roll to face me. 
  “You are an idiot, Agon. You lack vision and integrity. 
  You deserve this.”
  As I raised the rock with both hands, preparing to 
  pound my brother’s skull to an unrecognizable mash of 
  bone and gore, my wrist was suddenly held fast. I spun on 
  my heel as Agon scrambled to his feet and turned to face 
  the insolent rat who had interfered with a vengeance so 
  long in coming. I was surprised to meet the eyes of the 
  Headmaster, who, despite my Exaltation, maintained his 
  bearing of authority and wisdom. Agon ran and ran, as I 
  threw my arms around the Headmaster’s chest and sobbed 
  for what seemed like forever.
  After the debacle at the fountain’s edge, the Headmas-
  ter summoned my mother to the school. Mnemon Aznam, 
  a friend of my father, took me to the aerie terrace and 
  told me to wait for my mother’s audience. I sat, nervously, 
  
  21
  CHAPTER ONE • CHILDHOOD AND SELF
  mashing the pages of my sopping wet book with a pillow 
  in an attempt to dry them out, when my mother entered 
  through the southern arch. Mnemon Aznam intercepted 
  her, explaining to her what had happened with Agon, in 
  measured bursts of gesture, all of which my mother seemed 
  to ignore as she honed in on me. 
  I will never forget the expression on her face. It wasn’t 
  so much the look on her face but rather the disparity be-
  tween how she reacted and how I expected her to react. 
  Mnemon Aznam had insisted that my mother would be 
  overjoyed, elated, so very proud of the son that she had 
  all but written off as an embarrassment that would ﬂ oat 
  about her court until his sad mortal life expired. I agreed 
  that she would be proud and relieved. Her little Nagezzer 
  had been imbued by the Dragons and would become a lord 
  of Creation. So, you can understand my surprise when my 
  mother came to stand before me, the very image of disap-
  pointment and disgust, as if she had chosen a lottery tile 
  that Exalted the wrong child.
  “Rise Nagezzer” was all she said as she circled me, 
  inspecting me like a newly arrived servant, occasionally 
  placing a thumb against my cheeks and looking into my 
  eyes as if there wasn’t a person behind them. I was petri-
  ﬁ ed. Her response to my gift so different from what I had 
  hoped for that I half expected her to have me executed for 
  some crime I could not fathom having ever committed. 
  When she eventually ceased her scrutiny of every aspect 
  of my physical body, she barked at a servant to fetch 
  me some clean robes and then took my father, who had 
  arrived during the appraisal of my person, to the other 
  side of the terrace and ordered something at him that 
  I could not hear. She then shot me one last discerning 
  look, gave a grunted sigh and then turned on her heel 
  and strode out of sight.
  Once she was gone, my father turned to me with a 
  look that almost asked for my forgiveness, as if he had 
  somehow lead me to believe that my mother wasn’t the 
  callous, loveless creature that she was, that she wasn’t the 
  looming judge that I had known since I was capable of 
  knowing anything. I felt like crying and my father knew 
  it. I said nothing to him, he took my hand as if I were still 
  human, and we left the terrace, making our way down 
  several ﬂ ights of stairs, back to the courtyard where I had 
  Exalted. Little did I know that, on that sad stroll together, 
  my mortal father would provide me with the ﬁ rst key to 
  the actualization of my destiny, which would become the 
  lynchpin of my future life’s philosophy.
  “My dear boy”, he said, “do you think the Dragons 
  fallible?”
  Reﬂ exively, I uttered “No.”
  And it was then that my father, a mortal man, ex-
  plained the sense of my Exaltation. As I was not beautiful, 
  graceful or strong, there must have been something within 
  me that was to be favored by the Five Dragons. I accepted 
  this as truth upon his speaking it. It was then that he told 
  me I would need to pack my things as it was my mother’s 
  wish that I leave for the House of Bells immediately.
  SECONDARY SCHOOL
  For me, the House of Bells was a necessary and hum-
  bling stone on my path to becoming. I say humbling for 
  it was within the walls of that most revered and valorous 
  academy that I would meet with humiliation and judgment 
  the likes of which I would never experience again. It was 
  at the House of Bells that I became even more focused and 
  driven — without even Agon and my other abusive siblings 
  to draw me into frivolous play. Nonetheless, I endured the 
  trials of cruelty, and due to my masterful grasp of military 
  tactics, strategy and martial philosophy, I worked toward 
  becoming an ofﬁ cer.
  Despite some social hardships created by my early ad-
  mission, during my time at the House of Bells, I came into 
  contact with individuals who would one day become the 
  most loved and revered soldiers that the Second Age would 
  know. Tepet Ejava, called the Roseblack, was indeed one of 
  my classmates. In later years, it became interesting to me 
  how we arrived at such similar destinies despite the gross 
  differences between the paths we forged for ourselves.
  After many hard years, I completed my ofﬁ cer’s train-
  ing and graduated into the ranks of the legions. Although 
  my charges most certainly made jokes about my budding 
  ofﬁ cer’s pretense, they were certainly satisﬁ ed with my 
  resourcefulness when providing them with intoxicants 
  and courtesans for any appetite imaginable. Although 
  there were certainly signiﬁ cant problems, my command 
  of my talon was tightly by the book.
  It was on an overcast day in the month of Ascending 
  Earth that my destiny was once again altered beyond my 
  imagining. My troops and I had gathered beyond the rise 
  of a hill a bit to the east of a copse of ancient oaks. We 
  had been called to the place to quell the activity of a 
  particularly hostile spirit of the plains. The creature, called 
  Wind Across the Savanna, had dematerialized after we had 
  spent nearly six days tracking it. My men were exhausted 
  and bored, most of them believing that this entire mission 
  was futile and that it must have been something I had 
  done to offend the higher ranks of command for our lot 
  to be saddled with so useless a chore. So, in an attempt 
  to calm their complaints and fantasies of conspiracy, I 
  took up my breastplate and chopping sword and headed 
  out onto the plain to cow this upstart spirit.
  I never saw it coming.
  My men found me several days later, lying in the 
  ﬁ eld, crippled and broken. If not for my Exalted physiol-
  ogy, I would have most certainly been killed by the series 
  of ﬁ nger-thick, bloodless holes that riddled the right side 
  of my body and the half dozen the width of a human ﬁ st 
  puncturing my right thigh.
  Through my mother’s “grace,” I was discharged with 
  marks of honor and bravery and given refuge at the Cloister 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  22
  of Wisdom. It was my father’s idea that I should attend 
  this most selective of institutions, given my mutilated 
  state, as the teachings of the Immaculate Philosophy 
  would undoubtedly better my self discipline and, because 
  of my Wood Aspect, potentially heal the damage that the 
  plains spirit had done to my body through the Immaculate 
  martial-arts style of Sextes Jylis.
  Although many of the monks at the Cloister found 
  me repugnant because of my zealous soldier’s temper and 
  my broken body, I managed to earn the respect of a senior 
  monk who became my instructor in the Wood Dragon 
  Style. Autumn Spiral viewed my soldier’s drive and ap-
  petites as a practice of my aspect, as brash as the urge to 
  live itself. With this patient and curious monk’s assistance, 
  I learned the fundamentals of my style, albeit with little 
  hope of higher mastery. Unfortunately, despite the healing 
  qualities of the style’s form, I was unable to restore my leg 
  to full functionality.
  Despite my efforts and relatively impressive accom-
  plishments given my injury, my dismissal from the Cloister 
  was much anticipated by its abbots. Nonetheless, my time 
  of contemplation and healing had given me a vision of 
  my future. Though as a child I had reveled in fantasies of 
  leading glorious cavalry charges in the Empress’s name, 
  I knew that the greatness of my future would be known 
  by few, if any. I would have to forge my own army, my 
  own legion — an elite force that would exist unseen and 
  underestimated throughout all of Creation.
  TEPET EJAVA, THE ROSEBLACK
  I was born while my mother was on campaign. 
  Tepet Ellora was a stubborn woman as well as a strong 
  leader. When her unit was delayed in returning home 
  by a protracted siege (the besieged commander being 
  too stupid or proud to see that his refusal to surrender 
  only delayed the inevitable), she refused to retire to the 
  baggage train or accept an escort home. Her armorers 
  rigged the best protection they could for her swollen belly 
  in the last months of her pregnancy, and she continued 
  to lead her troops from the front ranks, as is the Tepet 
  way. I was born between sorties, the quickest and most 
  painless birth of any of my mother’s children thanks to 
  the surging thrill of war. There are no wet nurses of good 
  breeding to be found on the battleﬁ eld, of course, only 
  menials, slaves and whores. So, my mother bound me to 
  her own breast and returned to the command tent. Yes, 
  it was quite scandalous, the subject of gossip for years. 
  But in those few, short months I spent at her breast, I 
  drank in the voice of command with my mother’s milk. I 
  learned the weight of the armor on her broad shoulders. 
  My tiny hand felt the Essence coursing through the haft 
  of her daiklave and the smooth, singing wood of her 
  bow’s stave. Every Dragon-Blood has war in her blood; I 
  have war in my heart.
  
  23
  CHAPTER ONE • CHILDHOOD AND SELF
  It makes me wonder why we raise our children the way 
  we do. Is a wolf’s cub any less a wolf because she suckled it 
  and taught it to hunt? Would she give it to a mare to raise 
  and teach it to stalk? When I consider child-raising as a 
  problem of logistics and supply lines, our traditions make 
  a great deal of sense. But I cannot escape the sense that we 
  are missing something important, something primal.
  The unusual circumstances of my birth also brought 
  me to the attention of my grandfather, Tepet Arada. He 
  had largely retired himself from the affairs of the house, 
  as was his earned right. Granddaughters, great-nephews, 
  relatives of various degrees were born without his input or 
  notice — a grandfather is hardly necessary to the process. 
  But the scandal reached even his ears, and he made the 
  trip to my mother’s home to excoriate her risk-taking with 
  his bloodline. Once confronted with a granddaughter in 
  the ﬂ esh, he could not entirely extricate himself from the 
  process of raising me. I saw him rarely, but a word from 
  Tepet Arada was still potent enough to bring the best tutors 
  to our home and to open the doors to the best militarily 
  oriented primary schools.
  EXALTATION
  Exaltation is a gift from the Dragons — not the power 
  of it, which is our right by blood, but the placement of 
  it in the span of our lives. It is as important as birth or 
  death. Yet, who among us can remember her birth or cares 
  to endure a slow, thoughtful death? The events surround-
  ing the moment may be violent, serene, frantic or ﬁ lled 
  with fear, but the moment of Exaltation stands alone in 
  memory, a prism of Essence that colors all that went before 
  and everything that is to come.
  My own Exaltation came upon me on a hunt in my 
  11th year, mere weeks before Calibration. I had returned 
  to my family’s country home to learn proper hosting man-
  ners. Our visitors were rapacious that year, I recall, and I 
  was sent out into the wild (with a fair number of retainers 
  and household slaves) to bring back fresh meat.
  We found a wooded area that looked likely to have 
  abundant game. The slaves began to work their way around 
  our chosen patch of forest to drive the game before them, 
  while the retainers and I settled quietly in the greenery to 
  wait for some hopefully delectable prey to bound in our 
  direction. Soon, all was quiet but for birdsong and the 
  rustling of the trees.
  I was not alone, of course. Even my mother, as blind to 
  personal risk as she is, is well aware that there are creatures 
  who live beneath the forest’s boughs that would happily 
  make a meal of a young girl, even (or even especially) a 
  Dynast. Less than a pike’s length away on both sides was 
  an armed man, willing to kill or die to protect his charge. 
  But they were hidden beneath a spell of green and brown, 
  and it seemed I was by myself, for the ﬁ rst time in longer 
  than I could remember.
  I was deeply enraptured by the magic of the forest 
  when I became aware that we were not the only hunters 
  THE JOURNAL OF CATHAK GAREL MOLS
  I, too, was unsure of the purpose of my years-long project. If it was merely to blood my pen, it would seem a 
  great imposition on House Tepet for such a small matter. If it was to keep me busy, or perhaps to get me killed, 
  then it succeeded admirably at the former and too near at the latter. Though the woman known as the Roseblack 
  acceded to my presence and my questioning, she did not sit still for it. I have traveled to the Far North and 
  sailed the islands of the Southwest with her, as part of her retinue. I was there when Ejava was ordered to stand 
  down before the fatefully Northward sally that cost Tepet its legions. I watched as she accepted her battleﬁ eld 
  promotion, seizing command of the troops and turning a rout into a retreat that saved those few souls left to 
  ﬂ ee. And I am here now, as the vultures of politics circle over what remains of House Tepet, waiting to hear 
  its last, rattling gasp before swooping to their meal.
  It seems clear now, in the aftermath, that someone in the House of Bells did, in fact, expect Ejava to come 
  to an untimely end. Perhaps there were dark portents or unsavory dealings behind closed doors. My meager 
  writings would then be the only record of her genius.
  Or perhaps I was merely meant to be a spy. If so, I was poorly motivated (and certainly underpaid). I have 
  removed from my account several events and remarks that have no bearing on the Roseblack’s military cam-
  paigns, but would be needlessly inﬂ ammatory in the social or political arenas. In the years I have followed her 
  (during which I have learned how to patch a sail, how to construct a trebuchet and how best to put a mortally 
  wounded man out of his misery — how bloodless the library seems to me now!), Ejava has earned my loyalty, 
  just as she has earned the same from every soldier under her command. Whatever aid an unExalted historian 
  can give is hers for the asking.
  I hope that, one day, my descendants may write a new volume, companion to this one, encompassing the 
  Roseblack’s exploits in the defense of the Realm. But I fear there are dark days ahead before such books may 
  be written, for Tepet Ejava and for the Realm entire.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  24
  afoot that day. A great cat, dappled and tawny, padded 
  silently to the edge of our killing ﬁ eld. I was transﬁ xed by 
  the creature: the soft camouﬂ age of its patterned fur, the 
  muscles rippling beneath its hide, the curved ivory of its 
  teeth — a perfect predator for its environment. The beast 
  sat, still and noiseless, once it assumed its position; were 
  I not enfolded in the forest’s breath that day I might not 
  have seen it. If any of my entourage saw it, they gave no 
  sign; no one rose to chase it away from our hunt.
  Some time later (minutes or perhaps only moments 
  — I had lost all track of time in my contemplation of the 
  lithe killer so close by), the cat tensed, its nostrils ﬂ ared 
  inﬁ nitesimally. A spare second later, I heard the crashing 
  of our quarry through the undergrowth. The instincts of 
  the hunt took over. I stood and pulled my bow in one ﬂ uid 
  motion. But no surprise, the cat was faster. As the deer 
  bounded into our small clearing, the great cat leapt at 
  its ﬂ ank, one massive paw wrenching the deer’s head and 
  neck around while the momentum of the strike carried 
  them both to the ground. The forest was in an uproar 
  — branches breaking, birds screaming, men shouting 
  — but a suffocating silence fell as the cat rose from its 
  kill and turned its amber, slitted eyes on me.
  The cat could have reached the place where I stood 
  with one powerful bound. An arrow from my bow would 
  have only angered it. My protectors rallied themselves, 
  but would they have been able to interpose themselves in 
  time? It does not matter. The cat did not attack. But when 
  its eyes met mine, and locked, it was though a spark was 
  struck, a ﬂ icker of recognition, one predator to another. 
  That spark kindled my soul, and by the light of that ﬁ re, 
  I saw the forest and the creatures around me in a whole 
  new way. I felt the push and pull, the give and take, of 
  life — the demanding hunger of the cat, the ﬂ uttering 
  pulse of the dying deer, the life and death struggle of so 
  many crawling things in the leaf litter below my feet. 
  The rush of power and need and fear was overwhelming. 
  When a second deer blundered into the clearing, driven 
  by the servants, I dropped my bow and bolted after it, 
  maddened by the ﬂ ood of primal urges. They found me, 
  many minutes later after what was apparently quite a 
  chase, curled next to the cooling body of the deer.
  I was terriﬁ ed of my new life at ﬁ rst. In the fog that 
  surrounds the piercing moment of Exaltation, I feared I 
  had become Anathema, one of the animalistic, barbaric 
  killers that roam the edges of the Realm, that I would 
  be hunted by my own family, that my life would be short 
  and brutal. Of course, anyone with any sense could sense 
  the kiss of the Wood Dragon about me or identify the 
  anima that would blaze into being, fueled by virescent 
  Essence, and just as quickly judder out of existence. In 
  the time it took me to come to my senses, and then to 
  bring my anima under control, I did an extraordinary 
  amount of damage to the gardens around my family’s 
  
  25
  CHAPTER ONE • CHILDHOOD AND SELF
  manor and, later, to the Headmistress’s ﬂ oral plantings 
  when I returned to school.
  It was there that I earned the name “Roseblack,” as 
  all her lovely rosebushes withered and died at the root. It 
  was a name bestowed in mockery and jeers by my erstwhile 
  peers, made jealous or afraid by my Exaltation; but I chose 
  to embrace it, and I have never regretted that choice. It 
  is a constant reminder to me of that time in my life, in 
  all its exhilaration and fear. It is also a reminder of the 
  path I have chosen in life: I am a warrior and a general, a 
  defender of the Realm and a scion of House Tepet. I bear 
  a daiklave, not a scribe’s brush, a poet’s lyre or a healer’s 
  pestle. If I act rashly or decide poorly, thousands, or even 
  hundreds of thousands, may die, and all the good I have 
  done will be worth nothing more than a sickly rose on a 
  blackened, withered stem. 
  SECONDARY SCHOOL
  Coming to the House of Bells was like coming home. 
  Most of my immediate family had spent some time in the 
  legions at one point or another. Many had led illustrious 
  careers, and still did, ﬁ ghting for the Scarlet Throne. No 
  matter the occasion, talk at family functions always found 
  its way to military affairs, be it debating strategic philosophy 
  or simply recounting old war stories oft-told and well embel-
  lished. I spent my early years dreaming of going on bivouac 
  and staging mock sieges of the house servants quarters with 
  my cousins. That ﬁ rst week in the House of Bells, for all its 
  hazings and hardship, was joyous to me. It was the ﬁ rst real 
  step I had taken toward a life in the legions.
  RAGARA BHAGWEI
  It has always been that my auspicious lineage has 
  preceded both my person and deeds for as long as I can 
  remember. It was as if I were the most treasured and rare 
  of stars hidden by two bright suns. As a child, I was never 
  bored. The wonders of Creation were mine to behold 
  and know, and it was my father Ragara’s promise that this 
  would always be the case, and my mother, called Cynis, 
  would assure this. 
  It was very important that my birth remain unknown, 
  as each of my parents was the founder of a Great House. 
  If I had been claimed as an heir for either house, my life 
  would likely have been shortened signiﬁ cantly. Thus, I was 
  declared stillborn by the midwives who attended to my 
  birth and given into the care of my father’s oldest human 
  consort to be cared for as a son of his house. The Cynis 
  midwives were drowned shortly thereafter, and the origins 
  of my being were left known only to my mother and father, 
  who would never speak a word of it. 
  So, it was a special care I received, openly praised 
  and protected by my father who, I think, held a place for 
  me in his hard heart, and sent gifts and letters from my 
  mother, who despite her decadence and alleged cruelty, 
  kept a softer part of herself for me, her secret son. 
  During my solitary days as a child, I spent most of 
  my time talking to strangers in my grandmother’s house. 
  Diplomats, courtesans, warlords, merchant princes and 
  every manner of savant visited the Imperial Court, and 
  it was with great zeal that I pursued their knowledge of 
  places far ﬂ ung and the exotic people who lived there. This 
  was all just passing fancy until I made the acquaintance 
  of Oakthorn, a physician from the East of my mother’s 
  house. He had wandered the Far East as an itinerant of the 
  Immaculate Order for the previous 10 years, all the while 
  studying under the shaman of the barbarian tribes, learning 
  the strange cures and medicinal formulae directly from the 
  songs and tales of the people who discovered them. 
  So taken was I by this monk from the East, I begged 
  my father to retain this Oakthorn as my tutor. Ragara, 
  seeing the opportunity for me to receive both a primary 
  education and indoctrination into both medicine and 
  the tenets of the Immaculate Philosophy, allowed me 
  this wish with enthusiasm and his blessings. And so, I 
  spent my childhood at the feet of my ﬁ rst teacher — a 
  man of medicine and philosophy with countless tales 
  and a clarity of wisdom that I would not encounter till 
  much later in my life.
  EXALTATION
  The effect that Oakthorn had on my bearing and 
  mien was apparent to all of those who cared for me. Even 
  my father, who it seemed was perpetually indisposed, 
  managed to notice the distinct detachment that I had 
  developed since my new tutor had assumed direction of 
  my studies, causing him to grin in that sardonic way that 
  expressed his satisfaction. I was overjoyed and could think 
  of no ﬁ ner way to spend my days than learning from this 
  doctor from the East.
  It was a day of clear skies, in the month of Descend-
  ing Wood, when I was called to meet with my father in 
  his council chambers. I assumed he wished to speak to me 
  about the progress of my studies, taking evermore pride in 
  my prodigal grasp of lore of life, disease and death. So, you 
  can imagine my utter surprise when I gleefully ﬂ ung open 
  the door to see my father standing beside his mother, the 
  Empress of Creation. 
  To the Empress’s right was beautiful girl wearing a 
  dark robe and a dour expression. Her eyes followed me, 
  hopefully, as I approached my father and the Empress. I 
  bowed to the Empress and acknowledge my father with 
  a anxious sigh and smile. The nature of this meeting 
  was then made known to me through no less than the 
  Empress herself.
  “My son Ragara has told me that you are the brightest 
  child he has ever known. He has told me that you have 
  outstripped your tutors, even the Immaculate Oakthorn, 
  who is considered to be one of the ﬁ nest physicians in 
  Creation. Because of this, I offer you an opportunity that 
  could announce your mastery or spell your demise.”
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  26
  The opportunity, as the Empress called it, was 
  a riddle of the most dire sort. The young girl, a 
  favorite lover of the Empress, had been poisoned. 
  The poison, both unknown and seemingly incurable, 
  was slow-acting but lethal. The Empress’ physicians 
  had toiled ceaselessly in an attempt to preserve this 
  girl. Through the astrology of the Scarlet Empress’ 
  seers, it had been divined that the girl had no more 
  than ﬁ ve days remaining.
  It was then made known to me that the girl’s 
  life was to be put in my hands. If I did not cure 
  her before she died, my death would follow shortly 
  thereafter. As I had no choice, I accepted the task 
  and rushed off to Oakthorn, who was nowhere to be 
  found, having left, by my father’s orders that same 
  afternoon. I would face this ordeal alone.
  For four nights, I poured over the codices and 
  records of every instance of poisoning I could ﬁ nd in 
  the imperial libraries. Though distraction certainly 
  presented itself, I moved through the books with 
  focus and discipline, only considering the pieces 
  that applied and synthesizing new hypotheses as 
  quickly as they crumbled. Alas, I found no cure.
  Consumed by despair at both my failure and my 
  death, I sat upon the ground as Oakthorn did — my 
  legs folded beneath me with my hands palm-down 
  upon my thighs. I then let my mind relax, as if it 
  were falling into the abyss for which I was destined. 
  It was in this place that I Exalted, the roots of my 
  consciousness expanding inﬁ nitely outward, rolling 
  like ball lightning through the mind of all Creation. 
  It was in this place that my doubt vanished and my 
  solution was found. 
  When I stirred from my meditation, I felt 
  changed on a fundamental level. As I prepared the 
  antidote, I grinned self-appreciatively, knowing that 
  I would have two proud gifts to set before my father 
  and his unfathomable mother. As to be expected, 
  Ragara was pleased at both my success and my Exal-
  tation. His mother, after feeding the tincture to her 
  lover and then summarily slashing the girl’s throat 
  for her troublesome carelessness, nodded and told 
  my father that I was to gather my things. I would be 
  joining her own daughter in the halls of the Versino, 
  where I would continue my medical studies as well 
  as taking up the magical arts.
  SECONDARY SCHOOL
  My experience at the Versino was beyond my 
  imagining. The resources of the ancient institution 
  were seemingly limitless, and the roster of instructors 
  read like a catalog of the greatest minds of the Second 
  Age. In addition to the teachers and masters of the 
  Versino, the college also hosted a large number of 
  Immaculate monks. Between discourses on healing 
  
  27
  CHAPTER ONE • CHILDHOOD AND SELF
  techniques, magical theory and informal chats concerning 
  the sacred teachings of the Five Dragons, I was content as 
  I had never been before.
  The only disturbances I experienced during my school-
  ing were the work of my young aunt, Mnemon. Although 
  the school was designed to possess an atmosphere conducive 
  to the expansion of thought and the contemplation of 
  reality, my father’s ambitious sister was not happy unless 
  she was the very center of attention and concern. While 
  I was diligently working toward a complete understanding 
  of life and death in an attempt to remedy Creation of its 
  most cruel and unforgiving plagues and fevers, using only 
  enough magic to facilitate my research and the processes of 
  healing, Mnemon was binding demon slaves and working 
  the spells of war and glory, all the while devouring both 
  the physical and teaching resources of the school. In some 
  ways, I was pleased that our goals were so disparate, as it 
  gave little reason or occasion for interaction.
  During my time at the Versino, I found the secret pas-
  sion of the rest of my days. Of all poxes, fevers and plagues, 
  there was one that towered over all other ailments. The 
  Great Contagion was a legend, a piece of terrible history, not 
  a disease by the standards of most historians and physicians. 
  Despite the fact that I was attending a school that taught 
  both medicinal lore and sorcery, it was largely agreed on 
  by the staff of the Versino that pursuing the cure of such 
  a thing as the Great Contagion was nothing more than a 
  grand waste of time, unﬁ t for sorcerer and physician alike. 
  Nonetheless, I made that horrible plague the subject of my 
  personal research, always managing to conceal the intent 
  of my many hours spent buried in the stacks.
  As fate would have it, I was interviewing a well-estab-
  lished healer in Chanos when the Versino was consumed 
  in infernal ﬁ re. Although I could not conceive of a way 
  such a thing could happen, the cause of the disaster was 
  made real when I heard of the catastrophe’s only survivor 
  — my aunt, Mnemon.
  I was furious. So much research, so many masters, so 
  many secrets destroyed by the impetuous will of a rash and 
  violent child. I decided, at that moment, that I would build 
  where she destroyed, cultivate where she smothered. That 
  night, while still holding the letter that declared the ruin 
  of my beloved school, I had a vision — a vision of a tower 
  of magic, lore and secrets and the way I would build it.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  28
  
  29
  CHAPTER TWO • A LIFE OF OBLIGATIONS
  The teachings of Sextes Jylis impart a lesson that 
  no Immaculate or Wood Aspect can deny. The Dragon-
  Blooded, divinely mandated by their very nature, must 
  tend to the growth and well-being of the world around 
  them. Such power is envied by many who dwell in the 
  world around them, yet the Terrestrial Exalted bear a 
  load of responsibility that is difﬁ cult for those outside of 
  the structure to fathom. This chapter imparts the sense 
  of meaning and purpose that these ﬁ ve narrators have 
  taken from the experience of that burden. Though the 
  scope of the duty may vary, all of them hold some portion 
  of Creation’s fate in their hands.
  RUTANJALI
  My husband’s forces were awakened at the rise of the 
  morning sun. We gathered in the thickets not far from the 
  village in which I was born. Had it been so long that I did 
  not recognize the place? So wrought with stone houses 
  and wooden walls that it resembled a fortress more than 
  anything I would call a village. I had thought that razing 
  the place of my birth would be unconscionable and cause 
  me a great pain that would echo through my years like a 
  scream in deep caverns. This, however, was no home of 
  mine. And as I waited, as my verdant lover called out to 
  his subjects, rousing them into form with a soft but regal 
  tone, I ﬁ ngered my bow in preparation for the many lives 
  I would take from Creation that day.
  On my husband’s mark, we gathered at the tree line, 
  all manner of beasts, spirits and wild children. This force, 
  a menagerie so beautiful one would ﬁ nd it hard to believe 
  it was meant for war, was seemingly endless to my eyes; 
  a spectrum of color and bestial savagery unlike any this 
  wood had seen before. It was as if a command was bel-
  lowed, though none was, that the assembled creatures 
  began to growl, howl, roar. The air ﬁ lled with the sounds 
  of stomping hooves, beating wings and scraping hooves, 
  tusks and horns. 
  It was then that the village went silent as the guards 
  in their towers despaired at what moved toward them 
  like a seething tide of nature itself. The forest, which 
  they had hacked and burned and sullied with their self-
  ishness, now rose up against them like the fulﬁ llment of 
  an ancient curse.
  The stampede of my husband’s subjects crashed hard 
  against the timber wall and reduced it to splinters in seconds. 
  Once beyond the wall, the wails of women and children 
  shot out into the morning air, and I almost hesitated in 
  memory of my own people’s cries when the founders of this 
  new place so mercilessly killed them to the last woman and 
  child. But as I loosed an arrow into the neck of a panicked 
  man holding his screaming child, the confusion caused by 
  my memories was washed away by animal satisfaction and 
  an all-consuming desire to remove this wretched village 
  from the forest I so dearly loved.
  CHAPTER TWO 
  A LIFE OF 
  OBLIGATIONS
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  30
  As I watched the violence swirl around me, I became 
  a part of it. I was the boar that shook the twitching woman 
  I impaled with my tusks. I was the bear that chewed at 
  the red innards I had rent from the bellies of these terrible 
  men. I was the terrible spirit that drank the Essence from 
  the terror that poured out from this place like the waters 
  of a ﬂ ooded river.
  This was a just war. This was a war that would leave 
  no trace, each and every life consumed by the beasts and 
  spirits of the wood. This was my war, and it was for love 
  that I waged it. It was for the sanctity of my home, my lost 
  people and the subjects of the wood that I had come to rule 
  at the side of my powerful and sacred husband.
  ROMANTIC LIFE 
  When I was ﬁ rst given to my husband, I was terriﬁ ed. 
  I mean, who wouldn’t be? The King of Endless Branches 
  is a terrible thing, indeed. Though he is both my husband 
  and liege, it is hard to call what I feel for him “love.”
  In the beginning, there was no complexity to our rela-
  tionship. He was a god, and I was nothing but a terriﬁ ed child, 
  given unto him in a moment of desperation by the woman 
  I had considered my guardian and mother for all of my life. 
  I would spend most of my time avoiding him, attempting 
  to ﬁ nd peace in this wilderness world of which I was now 
  some strange sort of queen. However, he was always near, 
  watching me, as I hunted for meat or walked through the 
  forest in search of herbs and mushrooms. It was almost as if 
  I were more curious to him than he was to me. 
  It was not until I overcame the King’s presence that I 
  realized the nature of his love. A spirit does not cultivate 
  love like any other being. A spirit understands mutual 
  exchange, but as a trade of commodities, not as a relation-
  ship as other beings do. If you love a spirit, you give the 
  spirit a votive offering, and in turn, the spirit provides 
  a gift. Most often, this gift is safe passage or a bountiful 
  harvest. Sometimes, if the spirit is truly great, it will grant 
  rare gifts or hidden knowledge, though these are far less 
  common. It was a strange thing then, to have been the 
  gift once given to this spirit groom of mine. 
  Our exchanges are genuine, I believe, if a bit alien to 
  my mind. Though I am no less a god than he, his nature 
  is wild where mine is, at its root, bound to the human girl 
  that I once was. In some ways, I am more than he. In oth-
  ers, I am small and limited and weak. It is for this reason, 
  that I seek communion with him. I seek communion as a 
  woman seeks the love of a man, not as a pilgrim seeks to 
  express her love of a god.
  It was while I searched for this human love, that I 
  became the mother of three sons.
  FAMILY LIFE
  The greatest joy in my life has been to watch my three 
  sons grow and become strong. Bearing the blood of two 
  gods, my children are exceptional in every way. Though 
  only one Exalted, all three are magniﬁ cent creatures with 
  unique gifts and rare talents.
  My ﬁ rst son, called Bima after the boy I once loved, is 
  stout and dark of complexion. He is the most like his father 
  of the three. His words are soft, but he is very strong and 
  thick of build. Bima is the strength at the bottom of a massive 
  tree, unﬂ inching and as steady as the great oak itself.
  My second son, who’s name is Emerald Arrow, is a 
  lithe and green child, as fast as the wind and as cunning as 
  any of the forests hunters. It is in this boy that I recognize 
  my own past and also my present place. Emerald Arrow 
  is dearly loved by all the spirits he encounters and speaks 
  the language of birds and beasts.
  However, it is my third son that embodies both my most 
  secret wishes and my darkest fears. It is my third son who 
  Exalted when he was but 12 winters in age, whose anima 
  ﬂ ashed with such intensity that it ﬂ ayed the bark from the 
  trees and the ﬂ esh from the onlooking beasts. It is this son, 
  called Sundraya, who is most strangely familiar to me. 
  So it was my saddest day, when my sons, who I had 
  raised to know the lore of my kingdom, were sent forth into 
  the world to ﬁ nd their fate. Bima was sent north into the 
  cold, Emerald Arrow was sent to the South, and Sundraya 
  was sent to the West to seek the world of civilized men. It 
  was on that day that I bid farewell to the fruit of my life 
  and blessed them in the name of their father’s might.
  FUTURE PLANS
  Years have past since I have seen my children, and it 
  is every day that I wish to seek these children whom I so 
  dearly treasure. If not for the oath once made to the King 
  of Endless Branches, I would not remain in this place. It 
  has crossed my mind, on more than one occasion, to plead 
  for release from the Wood King. How could I think this? 
  Was it not he that saved my life and gave me the sons for 
  which I now yearn? 
  But it is not so strange. My husband, as the years have 
  passed since my sons set out on their journey, has grown 
  distant. It is if our love was but an instant in his inﬁ nite life, 
  not the very pillar of his life as a mortal man might see it.
  It is now that I ﬁ nd the course of my life in my hands 
  for the ﬁ rst time. How I will choose, I do not know.
  CYNIS BELAR NORREN
  These days, I am surrounded by idiots, incompetents 
  and assassins.
  No, I never really learned to swim. Or to sail, for 
  that matter. Why should I? I was 16 years of age when 
  the Empress granted control of a portion of the merchant 
  navy’s ships to my grandmother and this house. Before that 
  date, there was little reason for me to concern myself with 
  such things, and since then, I haven’t really had time. I’m 
  not interested in recreational boating — any ships I take 
  have perfectly capable crews, and I’m happy for things to 
  remain that way.
  
  31
  CHAPTER TWO • A LIFE OF OBLIGATIONS
  I was already at the Spiral Academy when a number 
  of Peleps’ ships became our ships. I thanked the Dragons 
  every hour on the hour for a fortnight for the Scarlet 
  Empress’ timing. Had she been but a few years earlier, 
  I might have found myself relegated to a wretched life 
  aboard some stinking slave scow shuttling chattel from one 
  dreary pier to another. Considering I was ﬁ rmly ensconced 
  in the Academy when the decree was made, a life in the 
  merchant marine was out of the question. I ﬁ nd the ocean 
  air as pleasant as anyone, but I much prefer to taste it with 
  earth under my feet, thank you very much.
  I spend my days quietly observing my house’s business 
  interests, examining ledgers and conducting interrogations 
  that are never recognized as such if I do my job properly (and 
  I do). I hunt the customs houses for cheats and swindlers, 
  spies, smugglers and other agents of our adversaries.
  Along with my duties ferreting out the agents of our 
  enemies, I have begun assembling a portfolio of sensitive 
  and valuable information regarding a great many of my 
  peers. I offer these interesting tidbits to my superiors at 
  opportune moments to mitigate the rare error on my part 
  or to sweeten a lackluster success or to remind them of 
  just what I can ﬁ nd, if I so desire. The choicest I reserve 
  in anticipation of needful times — one must not neglect 
  one’s own surety of place and personal security, and for that 
  very reason, I keep my own set of books. Information is 
  power, in the right hands. The proper words in the proper 
  ear can start wars or kill kings. Certainly, I would never 
  dare do either of those things. I mention them only in the 
  interests of illustrating a point. Really, the question isn’t 
  “Would I?” but “Could I, if I so chose?”
  Aspirations? Certainly! I aspire to be Emperor. What 
  Dynast doesn’t? I do not expect to be Emperor, but it is 
  very nice to dream of it now and then. Realistically, I set 
  my sights just a triﬂ e lower. I aspire to serve the Realm, 
  my house and my family to the best of my ability in what-
  ever role they require. That is what I am supposed to say, 
  isn’t it? I have enjoyed the past few years in my current 
  capacity, but I grow bored with chasing greedy clerks and 
  skimming satraps. Grandmother keeps me busy most of the 
  time, but in the rare moments when I am left to my own 
  devices, I have found the feasting halls and amphitheaters 
  of the Blessed Isle thick with secrets that could prove most 
  proﬁ table were I given the time to properly cultivate and 
  harvest them. I feel like a wolf cub grown too large for the 
  den. I’ve had my ﬁ ll of hunting mice on the doorstep. I’d 
  like to try my teeth on more succulent prey.
  I have considered, from time to time, entering the ser-
  vice of the empire, but the Thousand Scales does not seem 
  particularly enticing. I much prefer acting more directly in 
  the interests of myself and my family. The Realm has a great 
  many eyes looking out for it. It does not need mine. On the 
  other hand, should the matter of succession be resolved in, 
  say, our favor… I would certainly not turn my nose up at a 
  post at the head of one or another of the ministries. 
  While I have the utmost respect for the service they 
  give the Realm, I am clearly not cut out for the legions. 
  I can handle a sword as well as the next man, but my 
  talents lie elsewhere. As for the Immaculate Order, it is 
  simply not for me.
  There is one thing I am completely certain of; one 
  goal I hold in my mind at all times. I mean to marry Cynis 
  Wisel Myrana. I have loved her since we were children, 
  and I love her still. Her father has proven difﬁ cult. It 
  seems he alone among House Cynis stands against mar-
  riage between cousins. Or perhaps he stands only against 
  me, I don’t know. Soon enough, it won’t matter. Uncle 
  Sitos has been a rather naughty man, I’ve found. I’ve 
  an entire ledger devoted to his secrets. I await only the 
  opportune moment to put them to use. Soon enough, he 
  won’t have a choice but to grant me Myrana’s hand, his 
  priggish scruples aside.
  ROMANTIC LIFE
  I certainly don’t suffer the burden of celibacy. In my 
  family, it is near impossible to do so, really. Orgies are 
  a signiﬁ cant part of the social life in House Cynis, and 
  my grandmother is adamant that we attend and play our 
  roles. Even without beneﬁ t of the fertile hunting grounds 
  of the family boudoir, my bedchamber is just as full or 
  as empty on any given night as I wish it to be. There is 
  always a party or a concert or a religious observance to 
  attend. And should I not wish to leave the halls of my 
  home, there are dozens of suitable slaves on staff ready 
  at my slightest word to attend to my pleasure.
  I have more than my ﬁ ll of assignations, dalliances 
  and seductions, but I have only one love, and I will have 
  no other. That summer I spent doing penance for disobey-
  ing my grandmother is when I ﬁ rst realized it. I longed 
  for Myrana so terribly. As children, we were close. By 
  necessity, we grew apart in our adolescence. She went on 
  to the House of Bells, I to the Spiral Academy. Distance 
  did not dampen my affection for her, though. Indeed, it 
  only stoked the ﬁ res higher. I could scarce contain my-
  self on those rare occasions when we could be together 
  through our respective educations. I had the usual gamut 
  of trysts with schoolmates and acquaintances, but they 
  were only ever rehearsals for the day when I would ﬁ nally 
  have Myrana to myself. That day has yet to come, but it 
  grows closer with each passing season.
  Does she love me? Perhaps, I think, though she may 
  not realize it. She is a practical girl, though, and she 
  holds herself to high standards. Once we are married, 
  she will see the right of things, and I’m certain the old 
  affection of our childhood will quicken again and bloom 
  all the brighter. Oh, we will be a glorious pair she and 
  I. The Realm will tremble with our footsteps when at 
  last we are united. I long for that day and hoard my 
  passion in anticipation.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  32
  RELIGIOUS LIFE
  I attend services … religiously, one might say. I ﬁ nd 
  it sheer folly to ignore one’s religious obligations, really. 
  What harm does going to services do? Curry favor where 
  ever you may, I say. And who can honestly say they don’t 
  care to have the favor of a god? It’s like saying, “No, no. 
  Keep your beautifully laden table, strewn with delicacies 
  and offered only for the asking. I would rather eat the rats, 
  beetles and worms I can catch myself.” Who can’t afford 
  the moment or two it takes to pay one’s respects to the 
  spirits of a place? I don’t really see how one can afford not 
  to! It’s just good business, really. 
  I ﬁ nd irreligiosity particularly strange among the 
  Dragon-Blooded. I have actually heard some claim to be 
  atheists. Preposterous! How can this be so? We are living 
  proof of the will of Heaven. The evidence of the Perfected 
  Hierarchy is all around us. The work of the Immaculate 
  Dragons is everywhere. It takes a special sort of mind to 
  deny what a blind man can see. Faith or the lack thereof 
  aside, those who fail to attend services clearly lack the 
  dedication necessary to prosper in the game of politics. 
  Tending to one’s spiritual health is only one reason to 
  be a regular and faithful congregant. Everyone there is 
  looking at everyone else, noting who has come and who 
  has not, who is seated next to whom and who speaks 
  with the ofﬁ ciant or does not. It certainly doesn’t hurt to 
  leave the occasionally exorbitant tithe in the collection 
  box, so long as the Immaculates see it. They are men 
  and women just as we are. They remember. The temple 
  is a place of power like any other, and with power comes 
  intrigue and opportunity. Anyone who does not attend 
  forfeits vital ground in the struggle for power. Really, I 
  ought to thank them for it. All the easier for me to press 
  the advantage when my opponents don’t even bother 
  to offer resistance.
  I am not a studious believer. I do not spend my free 
  time poring over the Immaculate Texts gleaning pearls of 
  wisdom to further my own enlightenment, but I have been 
  known to go on retreat now and then. Pay no mind to 
  those that say I only deign to attend when it is politically 
  advantageous to do so. They are only jealous of my knack 
  for ﬁ nding advantage where they see none. Advancing my 
  own enlightenment is, however, one of my more important 
  pursuits. A Dragon-Blood who does not is a fool. Power 
  comes in many forms, and one of the most blatant is our 
  mastery of Essence. That mastery arises from our spiritual 
  connection to our elemental aspect, which, in turn, arises 
  from our degree of enlightenment. The one area in school 
  where I did excel was mathematics, and this calculation 
  is exceedingly simple. Religious devotion begets spiritual 
  enlightenment. Spiritual enlightenment begets power. If 
  you are Dragon-Blooded and haven’t made this connec-
  tion, shame on you. Get thee to temple, inﬁ del. Or don’t. 
  I will be happy to take your share for you.
  SESUS NAGEZZER 
  Upon my mother’s death, I inherited what was to 
  become the base of all of my future operations. My home 
  as a child, the Throne of Roses, was left to me, as was 
  proper. As much of an embarrassment to my mother as 
  she claimed I was, one does not leave a Manse to mortals 
  when one has an Exalted heir. So, it was in honor of her 
  impeccable character and loving nature that I transformed 
  her sanctuary into a den of hedonistic debauchery the 
  likes of which the Realm had never seen, making the 
  mothers of Cynis and the lords of Nexus blush in fear for 
  their very virtue.
  Through the relationships I established while serving 
  with the legions, I had countless leads on which to actualize 
  my fortune. Between the brothel lords of the Imperial City 
  and my merchant contacts in Chiaroscuro and Thorns, I 
  had access to every nectar or whore that one could fancy 
  or want. From the exchange of these commodities, as 
  well as the sale of my mother’s useless heirlooms, I set up 
  houses throughout the Realm as well as major cities in 
  the River Province, including Lookshy, Nexus, Greatforks 
  and Greyfalls. Once things abroad were set in motion, the 
  jade become nigh uncountable as I directed it to accounts 
  throughout the Blessed Isle. 
  Now that a supply line had been established, I set 
  the third stage of my operation into motion. I contacted 
  two old friends to assist me with this portion of the proj-
  ect. First, I made a handsome donation to the Cloister 
  of Wisdom in exchange for the indeﬁ nite loan of one of 
  its martial-arts masters. It was in this way that Autumn 
  Spiral came to serve me as my personal advisor on matters 
  spiritual and philosophical while also providing me with 
  a personal trainer to reﬁ ne my very basic grasp of Wood 
  Dragon Style. It was next that I contacted my cousin, 
  Sesus Warru, a hot-tempered drunkard of a soldier who 
  successfully toured with the Red-Piss Legion for over 10 
  years, spitting his disgrace back into the faces of those who 
  condemned him even as he won dozens in battles for the 
  greater glory of the Realm. It was Sesus Warru who would 
  enable the true might of my organization.
  Between Sesus Warru and I, we had enough favors 
  to establish barracks, of a sort, in two cities. Chiaroscuro 
  was the obvious ﬁ rst choice, and it was not long before we 
  decided on Pangu as the second. We opted for Pangu over 
  Thorns simply because we wanted our resources to be easily 
  accessible from both the outlying regions and the Blessed 
  Isle itself. It was shortly thereafter that Warru contacted 
  the remnants of his original unit, as well as other soldiers 
  he had had the pleasure of serving with in a less ofﬁ cial 
  capacity, and informed them of our intentions.
  Veterans of campaigns for both country and coin, our 
  new army was based at two optimal points and available 
  to those we deemed worthy. Despite my own indulgences, 
  Warru’s being a drunkard and Autumn Spiral’s less than 
  
  33
  CHAPTER TWO • A LIFE OF OBLIGATIONS
  optimistic outlook, we managed to create an efﬁ cient 
  cell structure that could handle any number of requests 
  and imperatives. 
  The purpose? Although it is certain that each of us had 
  personal motives in all of this, our primary intention was 
  singular. In an atmosphere of political inﬁ ghting where there 
  is such difﬁ culty in commandeering a functional military 
  body, we would protect the Realm. Our military was not as 
  vast as the legions, but it was ours and ours to command at 
  a moments notice for any cause we deemed worthy. 
  However, this would be known only to us. Our “glory” 
  would be a common comfort between us and would not 
  be known to the heads of state and the ministers of the 
  court. Let it be known, however, that we did not create a 
  common criminal syndicate such as those found in Nexus 
  and the South. We serve the Empress’ Realm and noth-
  ing else. Although I most certainly harvest the beneﬁ ts 
  in the short term, it is for Empress and country that my 
  every effort is made. 
  ROMANTIC LIFE
  I have never lacked lovers, only love. I suppose my 
  mother’s rejection of ﬁ rst my father and later me laid the 
  template of my early concepts of affection. As one would 
  expect, I opted to focus on joys other than afﬁ rmation, no 
  matter to what degree I longed for it.
  Eventually, I discovered the joy of prostitutes and 
  courtesans. Without mess or consequence, I whored with 
  the best during my military term, a virtual brothel master 
  when it came to referring the best, the prettiest and the 
  most daring to my men and commanding ofﬁ cers. Why 
  tarry with a single, nagging, noble’s daughter when an 
  entire spectrum of succulent ﬂ esh lay bare before you for 
  no more than a few coins and a smile?
  It was not until the establishment of the new Throne 
  of Roses that I made the acquaintance of the concubines 
  who would be my primary carnal comfort and personal 
  assistants. It was Peleps Grondu of the Coral Archipelago 
  that brought me my dear, dear twins, whose eyes were 
  like the watery land from which they had been taken. 
  To Grondu, they were an offering in payment of services 
  rendered by Sesus Warru’s forces. For me, they were a calm 
  day’s dream and a point of soft fascination.
  Spinda and Echo were born of a tribe of wild men 
  on a small island to the west of Onyx. As is common in 
  such remote places, the twins were deeply affected by 
  the currents of the Wyld. It was said that Spinda and 
  Echo were actually a single girl split between two bod-
  ies, each bound to a shared mind that is as serene and 
  graceful as blossom on the wind. I was warned, when 
  I took them into my charge, to never separate them. 
  Grondu stated that he had once made this mistake and 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  34
  that the savage temper that unfurled from each of the 
  girls was nothing like he had ever seen in a creature 
  that walked on two legs.
  Although I am free with my affections, it is to these 
  twins that my heart answers, albeit to a creature or creatures 
  beyond my understanding. Nonetheless, they are focused 
  only on my desires and well-being and are dedicated, 
  unﬂ inchingly, to my care.
  RELIGIOUS LIFE
  I am a loyal subject of the Realm, and therefore, I 
  abide by the philosophy of the Immaculate Order. These 
  matters are mutually dependent. Although I certainly 
  question and contemplate the paradoxes and axioms of 
  my beliefs, I do not shake the walls in which they dwell. 
  For I am Dragon-Blooded, a child of the Dynastic House 
  of Sesus, and faith in both my heritage and the nation to 
  which I am loyal are set like jade in a mountain — perfect 
  and unshakeable.
  On the matter of my basic grasp of the teachings of 
  Sextes Jylis, I am a man of action, not prayers or long 
  meditations. Although I spend my days in opium dreams 
  or entwined in a mass of courtesans I ﬁ nd myself too 
  high to count, I feel that what I do serves He Who Hath 
  Strewn Much Grass’ greater purpose to as great a degree 
  as the Wood Dragon’s ﬁ nest monks. This is because I am 
  sworn to care for the Realm as others hack at its founda-
  tion with their arrogance and thirst for power. This is 
  because I nourish the Realm as others strip it bare of 
  its fruit, leaves and bark. This is because I create where 
  others would destroy. 
  It is for this reason that Autumn Spiral convinced the 
  abbots of his monastery that I was a worthy expenditure 
  of effort and teachings. Autumn Spiral saw the truth of 
  my actions and vision and has followed me, leaving the 
  Cloister, to pursue the action of his faith as well as his 
  personal convictions.
  FAMILY LIFE 
  My father was the only support or true family I ever 
  had. Although my mother was the very embodiment of 
  what was considered great and mighty in the eyes of House 
  Sesus, it was my father who gave me the guidance that 
  I know has made me great. For my father was possessed 
  of the mind of a general, though he lacked the courage, 
  while my mother wielded the might of a warrior, while 
  her vision was that of animal incapable of escaping its 
  immediate circumstance, chewing off its foot in a rage 
  of no meaning.
  I believe I am living the legacy of the martial 
  House of Sesus. Although it is below the cast gaze of 
  magistrates and ministers, I command one of the most 
  accomplished fighting forces in Creation, making up for 
  its lack of numbers by way of its excellent training and 
  impeccable focus. It is to my father’s honor that such a 
  thing has come to be.
  FUTURE PLANS
  There is no greater hope in my heart than the return 
  of the Scarlet Empress, to whom I am undyingly loyal. 
  For it is by her will that the Realm that I so treasure 
  came to be, and it is by through her person that it shall 
  live forever.
  Upon her return, I shall offer my continued assistance 
  without hesitation, and it is to the glory of her Realm that 
  my every action is dedicated. 
  TEPET EJAVA
  I entered the legions three months after my gradua-
  tion from the House of Bells, much to my grandfather’s 
  consternation. Arada has a difficult time seeing past 
  his own nose some times, at least when it comes to me. 
  “See the world,” he said. “Live a little before you make 
  your decision.” What he didn’t seem to understand 
  was that my decision had been made from the moment 
  I picked up a sword. I would see the world — in the 
  Empress’ service.
  That ﬁ rst commission was a petty one, justly so 
  for one such as I, fresh from the House of Bells with no 
  more real battle experience than a schoolyard scrapper. 
  A peasant uprising in Chanos Prefecture. It was a minor 
  thing, butcher’s work. I was given command over a scale 
  of recruits — a test. We went in green, but we came out 
  well-blooded and eight soldiers short.
  Afterward, the local prefect held a gala in our honor, 
  though I must admit the honor was all his. Dinner was 
  plain, the musicians hadn’t bothered to learn a new song 
  since before my Exaltation, and the company was lackluster 
  at best. There were only two other Dragon-Blooded in the 
  place: a pompous, arrogant boy and his shrew of a mother. 
  I did not dance. The boy made a ridiculous attempt at as-
  signation, treating me as if I were some awestruck milkmaid 
  falling over my skirts to spread my legs at the sound of his 
  voice. I managed to extricate myself without killing him. 
  It would be many years before we would meet again, the 
  fop and I. Fortunately for him, I did not recognize him. 
  Oh, he had not shed the dandy entire, but he had grown a 
  great deal since then. His eyes had sharpened, his tongue 
  had smoothed, and he had found some hidden store of 
  intellect in the years since. We have dinner now and then, 
  Ragara Nova and I, when our paths cross. He is a devil at 
  Gateway, and he sees a great deal more than he lets on. I 
  have few enough friends these days. He is one.
  That ﬁ rst mission had been far from an auspicious 
  victory, but it did teach me one thing: Men and women 
  ﬁ ghting for their homes, their mates or their children 
  are the match of any soldier. Those peasants never had 
  a chance. They knew it, and so did we. And yet, when 
  
  35
  CHAPTER TWO • A LIFE OF OBLIGATIONS
  they went down, they went down hard and took eight 
  of ours with them. 
  From there, I went on to see the world, just as 
  I’d planned. 
  I spent a year in the West chasing pirates, three 
  months in Gem reminding Rankar VI that the Empress 
  had not forgotten their arrangement. I hunted heretics in 
  the North, barbarians and Fair Folk in the East. I spent 
  some time in Lookshy, attached to a diplomatic envoy. 
  I’ve been nearly everywhere at one point or another.
  From time to time I would return to the Blessed Isle 
  for a season, two at most, to keep up appearances and to 
  pay my respects to house and throne. Each time I did, it 
  was with another promotion under my belt.
  OPERATIONAL PLAN, SHARKTOOTH LANDING
  I have some good news to tell all of you, which is that we have discovered the location of the pirate 
  haven of Sharktooth through the use of intelligence assets that I’m not at liberty to discuss. What we have 
  pushed off on isn’t a dress rehearsal for an eventual landing, it is the attack itself. I certainly hope if any of 
  you have been faking up readiness reports, that you can make good on them by the time we hit the beach, 
  because this is the real deal.
  This is a limited forces operation. I haven’t brought the entire ﬁ eld force along because we haven’t 
  the sealift to move them, and in any case, even if we could transport the men, there’s no way we can hold 
  up the logistical tail of our entire battle array on some arbitrarily remote stretch of coastline. I’ll leave it 
  to Abiri to thank me later.
  We’ll be landing in two waves. Our target is a U-shaped harbor facility with wooden quays and no 
  signiﬁ cant breakwater. Maps will be provided shortly. First to hit the beach will be the three heavy dragons 
  of the Red Piss currently aboard the First Squadron (Mixed). Thank the navy for the ships we’re going to 
  wreck, because this will be a combat assault. The First Squadron will operate with our self-powered escorts
  Inestimable Twilight Archer and Resplendent Golden Cuttleﬁ sh to neutralize any harbor defenses. The First 
  Age ships will stay outside the harbor mouth as per swabbie SOP, while the First Squadron will proceed to 
  the beach with all due dispatch. This is going to be an assault landing, so expect to hit a hot beach. We’ve 
  practiced this, and I know we’ve had problems with it before, but the formations we have along are the 
  best in the ﬁ eld force at it, and we’re just going to have to trust in our surprise effect, the thoroughness of 
  our reconnaissance and the love the Dragons have for brave men. 
  The second wave will land 15 minutes after the ﬁ rst, as the tide is starting to slip out, and will consist of 
  our mercenary auxiliaries — the Red Wolf Legion, the Delzahn Volunteers and our landing-support logistics 
  ships. The auxiliaries will land to perform the urban assault and screening duties they are respectively so 
  well-known for, aided by the remains of the three dragons from the initial assault. Ships in the ﬁ rst wave 
  probably aren’t going to be seaworthy after the landing, so after we unload the logistics ships, we’re going 
  to pack back on them to go home. This makes force protection on the second wave our number one prior-
  ity after successfully consolidating our beach head. If things go bad for the ﬁ rst wave, the second wave will 
  combat assault directly to their support, but I have to say, if three dragons of heavy infantry can’t crack this 
  shoreline, I don’t see that we’re likely to do it with mercenary peltasts. 
  The number of people who know our destination is still very small and is going to stay that way until 
  almost the moment we’re ready to strike. Sufﬁ ce it to say that you’ll get speciﬁ c orders when the time comes 
  and that certain things we’ve been practicing for a while will make a lot more sense when you see what 
  we’re doing. Even our pilots will be briefed separately when we’re closer to the big show, so please don’t 
  pester them for more information. Not that I don’t trust any of you individually, but I’d prefer nobody knew 
  anything more than they have to at this point. Even away from shore, I’m sure you all know that there are 
  plenty of ways to get messages out, so to preserve operational security, we’re probably not going to tell you 
  exactly where we’re going.
  My rise through the ranks was not swift, but it was 
  steady. In time, I had risen to the rank of winglord, with 
  250 soldiers under my command. Then came the Battle 
  of Tamrin Plain.
  It began innocently enough. Certain members 
  of House Nellens had invested heavily in beef raised 
  by the plainsmen and, when the inevitable banditry 
  threatened their proﬁ ts, went weeping to the Scarlet 
  Throne for help.
  I don’t begin to understand the subtleties involved in 
  the political maneuverings that went on, but somehow, 
  they managed to convince Her Imperial Majesty of the 
  need for intervention, and so, we went.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  36
  The bandits were bandits. We tracked them down 
  easily enough. Three days march, and we’d laid siege to 
  their encampment. They should have folded in no time, 
  but they weren’t alone. 
  The Anathema came down on us just after night-
  fall, a towering, beastly creature. It had the arms and 
  torso of a man and the head of a great stag with a rack 
  of twisted antlers a spear’s length to either side. At the 
  waist the man-torso joined the body of a great elk with 
  black hooves and a sable pelt. With it came 500 of its 
  howling, twisted thralls.
  I won’t trouble you with the details of a story told 
  far better elsewhere. Sufﬁ ce it to say, we thought we had 
  them beat until the Fair Host came down on us. Ground 
  between the Anathema and the Fair Folk, 900 legionnaires 
  died that night, among them General Sesus Fallot and 
  three of his dragonlords — my own commander among 
  them. I lost half my wing, in total, but managed to turn 
  the blood-maddened barbarians onto the Fair Ones long 
  enough to give us time to make lines and attack. The 
  Anathema escaped that day, but his slaves died to a man. 
  The Fair Folk vanished with the morning mist. As for the 
  bandits, we razed their camp to the ground but left enough 
  of the stockade standing to crucify the survivors.
  My next promotion made me a dragonlord in the 
  service of General Cathak Tilis Mallon. It is poor man-
  ners to speak ill of the dead, so I will say this of Cathak 
  Tilis Mallon: She was a ﬁ ne lutist. I do not know why she 
  sent me away when every soldier in the legion knew we 
  would face a hard ﬁ ght in the Varajtul before the month 
  was out, but send me she did — to petition the Regent for 
  funds and fresh troops.
  Nova believes it was jealousy — my reputation had 
  already grown far larger than myself, and Mallon was surely 
  not deaf to it. If not that, then sheer folly — or perhaps 
  some clandestine plot far subtler than I can conceive? These 
  are the thoughts that plague me in the small hours of the 
  morning. Would I have been able to secure the victory, 
  or would there simply be one less Tepet on the earth and 
  one more in it?
  I arrived in the Imperial City three days after news 
  of the Battle of Futile Blood. I came to beg for jade a 
  dragonlord. I left a beggared general of a tattered legion 
  in the service of a shattered house. They lined the streets 
  as I left the Imperial Manse for the docks and watched 
  me take my leave of the Isle. It was the ﬁ rst and last time 
  I have ever felt ashamed.
  The time since has been hard. There was a great deal 
  of work to do in rebuilding the legion. Their bodies had 
  been battered, and their spirits broken. It was a year before 
  I dared put them in battle again. We won, and then, we 
  won again. We rebuilt our strength. We healed. I took 
  them as far from the place of their wounding as I could 
  ﬁ nd, and we’ve been here ever since — building. I’m told 
  that in the halls of the powerful they speak of me with 
  pity — the great dragonlord, resigned to the command 
  of the Red-Piss Legion. I tell you, I wouldn’t have it any 
  other way. These men are my men. They have each of 
  them been cast off by every other family they had. The 
  legion is their family, their home. They have healed the 
  wounds of the North, and they have grown strong. One 
  day, one day soon, the world will see them for what they 
  are, and the world will tremble.
  RELIGIOUS LIFE
  I have precious little time or inclination for navel 
  gazing, but the men appreciate the comfort faith gives 
  them, and I can do no less than respect that. We observe 
  the holy days and make the proper offerings. At any 
  one time, we have a dozen monks in our ranks tending 
  to the spiritual needs of the rank and ﬁ le. I see no need 
  to keep one on my personal staff. Arada chided me for 
  my secularism, but I have found my place in the world 
  myself, and I mean to keep it that way.
  EXCERPTED FROM TEPET EJAVA’S SPEECH 
  TO HER OFFICER CORPS UPON ASSUMING 
  COMMAND OF THE REMNANTS OF THE 
  TEPET LEGIONS
  …We have been dealt a blow, to be sure, but 
  we live yet and will continue to do so. We will 
  regroup. We will reform. We will rebuild ourselves 
  and our men and be a house made new. We will be 
  stronger than ever before and wiser for the mistakes 
  of the past. We must for the memory of our fallen 
  kin and comrades. We will heal and grow again, and 
  we will remember. We will remember those who 
  left us to disaster and despair. Shattered swords will 
  be reforged. Battered soldiers will be renewed. We 
  will replenish our strength, and then, those who 
  spent our blood so carelessly will tremble for fear 
  that we will repay that debt in kind.
  Know now, each and every one of you, that 
  there is nothing for us outside of these walls. There 
  is nothing beyond the ranks of this legion. We are 
  all that we have. Each man goes as does his brother. 
  None shall have glory lest that glory is shared by 
  all. No one shall have victory unless all do. From 
  this day forward, we are not men or women. We are 
  soldiers. From this day forward, we are not Cathak 
  or Tepet, Cynis or Ragara. We are not outcaste or 
  Dynast, Exalted or mortal. From this day forward, 
  we are but one thing. From this day forward, we 
  are legionnaires, and let all who stand against us 
  tremble and despair.
  
  37
  CHAPTER TWO • A LIFE OF OBLIGATIONS
  THE JOURNAL OF CATHAK GAREL MOLS
  I have thought long and hard on whether or not to 
  speak on this matter. It goes against my better judgment, 
  but I can’t help feeling that my observations on this matter 
  might provide valuable insight into Tepet Ejava’s character. 
  I witnessed two of the General’s three romantic endeavors 
  and found tales easily enough of the third. They are all 
  of them tragic tales I would not wish on anyone. It does 
  cause one to wonder, though, if her reasons for eschew-
  ing the entertainment of romantic overtures isn’t more 
  personal than the lack of time or opportunity she cites. I 
  myself have noted the interest of several visiting eligible 
  potentates in Tepet Ejava in my time with her. I’m quite 
  certain she noticed as well, and yet, she ignored them all 
  in turn. I dare not speculate as to her reasons, but I cannot 
  help but feel some small sorrow on her behalf.
  The ﬁ rst and only Exalted, I’ve discovered, was 
  undoubtedly Sesus Kajak Milada, youngest daughter 
  of Sesus Kajak Marcellus and Talonlord of the Eighth 
  Legion under Cynis Pelath. She was an exceptional 
  ofﬁ cer in her tenure, respected among her subordinates 
  and well liked among her peers. She was slain in battle 
  by barbarians of the East two years into her service.
  The second was a young mortal by the name of 
  Beret Oxbow, a shipwright and sailor in the service of 
  the satrap of Cherak. The pair of them made for many 
  a tale in their months together. He went north with 
  the legions against the Bull and was slain.
  I wrestled long and hard with the decision to in-
  clude the third. I would truly hate to give aid to those 
  who plot against the General, but in the end, it is my 
  mission to chronicle her life in all its particulars and 
  it is not given to me to choose what is and is not too 
  scandalous to include.
  In the early days of her exile, Tepet Ejava pursued 
  a pirate captain who had roamed the seas long years 
  before Ejava’s coming. He was her ﬁ rst great quarry in the 
  Southwest. For three months, she chased him. A dozen 
  times they met in battle and he slipped from her grasp 
  until, at last, she caught him, by luck alone, asleep on 
  his ship. His crew was captured or killed. He was made 
  prisoner that the General might wring the whereabouts of 
  the other two ships in his ﬂ otilla that were not anchored 
  with him. Though her torturers brought him to the brink 
  of death a dozen times, he would not speak. She sent them 
  out and spoke alone with the captain, called Redfoam. 
  She emerged brieﬂ y and ordered her cabin to be undis-
  turbed. For three days, the door remained shut, and she 
  permitted no visitors. On the fourth day, she emerged. 
  Redfoam was tied hand and foot and keelhauled until 
  he was dead. Within a week, the other two ships were 
  found and burned, their crews slain to a man.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  38
  of Sesus Kajak Marcellus and beautiful as a bank of 
  embers on a cold Northern night. She gave me the 
  first beating I’d ever had at the hands of another, and 
  she dressed my wounds and massaged my bruises that 
  night in the dark of the barracks. She graduated a year 
  ahead of me and went into her family’s service. I have 
  not seen her since.
  The second was a young shipwright I met while 
  stationed in Cherak. A great bear of a man, he was. Red-
  bearded and ruddy-skinned. We drank in contest that ﬁ rst 
  night, and he succumbed long before I did. I rode him 
  into the dawn as my prize. We spent three months on the 
  shore there before the legion was called north and I was 
  sent south. I never saw him again either.
  The third I will not speak of but to say our time was 
  short together, and I remember it bitterly.
  I’m certain one day I will be married, if I am not 
  killed on the ﬁ eld of battle before. It is my duty to bear 
  children for the future of the Realm, and I hold duty in 
  high esteem. My only hope is that it be to a man I can 
  stomach and not before I’m ready. My elders have taken 
  to writing suggestive letters, hinting at the beneﬁ ts a good 
  marriage would have for the house. Each letter I receive 
  mentions likely suitors and proﬁ table opportunities, but 
  none have dared openly urging me to matrimony yet. I’ve 
  made it clear that there is a great deal more reaping to be 
  done before I begin sowing, and I’ll not be rushed from 
  one duty to the next without a ﬁ ght.
  RAGARA BHAGWEI
  The construction of the Heptagram and the recruit-
  ment of its administrators and instructors would be the 
  deﬁ ning act of the early part of my life. 
  Through my father, I was given audience by the 
  Scarlet Empress, to whom I proposed the building of this 
  new university, which would later be called the Hepta-
  gram, to honor the seven masters upon whose teachings 
  the school’s traditions would be built. The Empress ac-
  cepted and charged me with the organization of every 
  aspect of the project. Much to my delight, the Empress 
  made special mention that her daughter Mnemon would 
  be busy with matters of the Realm and unable to assist 
  us with our work.
  Insofar as the building of the campus, the Heptagram 
  would be built to the far north of the Versino’s ruin, 
  on the same island. Above the crashing waves of the 
  Great Inland Sea, the tower of the Heptagram would 
  rise like a pillar of wisdom presenting itself to the roll-
  ing blue. Housing for the college’s students would be 
  situated around the tower and along the cliff’s edge, 
  always serving as a reminder of the precarious nature 
  of the path of true knowledge. I believe it was the fail-
  ure of the instructors of the Versino to truly reinforce 
  the importance of this concept that led to my aunt’s 
  destruction of the school.
  What need have we the Dragon-Blooded of priests 
  anyway? I ask you. We are touched, each and every 
  one of us with divinity. We wield the very Essence of 
  Creation with no more than an effort of will. Of what 
  use is the teaching of some mortal priest, who has never 
  once felt the thrill of shaping even the least Charm, 
  to me? Arada, for all his vaunted hermitage, has more 
  opinions on how the world should be than the busiest 
  of busybodies and admonishes me for speaking heresy. 
  I call it practicality… and just good sense, but I do 
  so quietly.
  I am no atheist, nor do I hold myself up as some 
  sort of demigod on loan from Heaven for the beneﬁ t of 
  Creation, but I have never once been inspired by the 
  sermons of the Immaculates. I feel far closer to the divine 
  when I am in the forest hunting boar with nothing but a 
  good spear and the senses of my body. I am far closer to 
  Heaven, literally and ﬁ guratively I suppose, at the head 
  of a column of men I’ve trained, leading them to battle. 
  Life and living inspire me — the dirt and blood and stink 
  of it all. You can keep your cloisters and celibacy and 
  your sacred texts. I read the will of the Dragons in the 
  earth and the sea and the air. I feel them move in me as 
  I ﬁ ght and hunt and fuck and shit. What monk or priest 
  can do better than that for me? None.
  ROMANTIC LIFE
  Romance? If I have no time for spiritual contempla-
  tion, what makes you think I have time for poetry and 
  love play? I have not been wooed since my cousin Tepet 
  Niat proclaimed at my uncle’s, his father’s, funeral that he 
  needed a wife, now that he was the eldest living male of his 
  line, and I would be his spouse. He was all of six years old, 
  and I two years his junior. Now, I have few opportunities 
  and fewer prospects for romance.
  I have had lovers now and again as circumstance and 
  situation permits, but not for some time. My life these days 
  is not entirely my own. My duties require much of my time, 
  and I am forever surrounded by subordinates. Some ofﬁ cers 
  I know take partners from the ranks of their legions, but 
  not me nor any under my command. I ﬁ nd the practice 
  hopelessly disruptive to the proper workings of a unit and 
  frankly abhorrent.
  These days, if I take the pleasures of the ﬂ esh, it is 
  a matter of an evening’s dalliance or perhaps a festival 
  tryst, nothing more. Duty is a poor lover but a devoted 
  one. Ragara Nova has on several occasions attempted to 
  seduce me, but with him, it is more a game we play — a 
  tactical exercise. More like Gateway than love-making. 
  Perhaps that is why I ﬁ nd it so fascinating. Still, that 
  particular game is still in the opening gambits. No point 
  contemplating the endgame just yet.
  Loves? I have had three in my life. The first I met 
  at the House of Bells. We were of a size and were paired 
  for fencing drills and close combat. She was a daughter 
  
  39
  CHAPTER TWO • A LIFE OF OBLIGATIONS
  Locating the instructors, however, would be another 
  matter altogether. With the protection of two monks of 
  the Immaculate Order, an escort managed by my friendly 
  dealings with the members of their order who had served 
  at the former institution before its untimely destruc-
  tion, I left to search the Realm for its ﬁ nest sorcerers 
  and savants, both mortal and Exalted. After 24 years of 
  diligent searching and painstaking research, I assembled 
  the six masters who would join me in laying the pattern 
  for the new school. Two were mortal, versed in history 
  and common thaumaturgy, three were Dragon-Blooded 
  sorcerers who had served the Great Houses and were of-
  fered a chance to become independent of their lines, and 
  one was a strange gentleman whose mastery of astrology 
  demanded that he serve the Heptagram. Beneath these 
  seven masters, another 30 teachers of varying knowledge 
  and skills would form the remainder of the staff. 
  To prevent the dilution of the students’ experience at 
  the academy, I restricted attendance to no more than 80 
  students at a time. In this way, each student would have 
  the special attention and supervision that would assure 
  her optimal development. 
  With everything in order, we opened the doors of 
  the Heptagram for the ﬁ rst time in the month of As-
  cending Wood RY 428, enrolling 20 students. This way, 
  the students of the second year could enter a sponsored 
  relationship with the students of the previous year, estab-
  lishing a tradition and lineage of students that extends 
  into the present day. The senior student would live with 
  the new student throughout the ﬁ rst year, guaranteeing 
  the novice at least one undistracted ear and mind that 
  could provide him with answers concerning the schools 
  operation and policies.
  When I stood in front of those 20 faces who would 
  in time wield the greatest powers to be had in Creation, 
  I smiled a deep inward smile. I had built this. I had 
  made this so.
  ROMANTIC LIFE
  Throughout my life, though it has been long, I have 
  had but a few consorts who I would call lovers. Though 
  it is strange for a prince of House Ragara, let alone a son 
  of Cynis, to be deprived of ﬂ eshly pleasures, my situation 
  demands it. I have no time for intrigue, games and courting 
  or the complications they so quickly invite. No. The life 
  tasks of Ragara Bhagwei have been laid clear, and I will 
  not be diverted from them.
  Nonetheless, my work, by its very nature, is the 
  task of unmasking the patterns of life and death. I have 
  had need, from time to time, for experimental consorts. 
  During one of my much-needed breaks from intense 
  investigations into the Great Contagion, I considered 
  the interplay of male and female polarities and the role 
  that these elements play insofar as the conduction of 
  Essence. I had been considering that, perhaps, the flow 
  of fate that was tracked and delineated through the 
  arts of astrology and the casting of lots could perhaps 
  be microcosmically modeled and deciphered through 
  the analysis of Essence play during the reproductive 
  act itself. I had considered that, perhaps, the potential 
  for Exaltation could be directly affected through the 
  exercise of sexual postures that would lead to the cor-
  rect configuration of Creation’s force, thus assuring 
  the couple the blessing of Exalted offspring. Of the 
  few colleagues that I approached with my theory, all 
  made recommendations that I implemented on one of 
  the school’s captive neomah before experimenting on 
  Dragon-Blooded daughters of the Great Houses.
  For this, I would require excellent subjects, and I could 
  think of no better pool than the Exalted prodigals who 
  attended my beloved Heptagram. Due to the nature of our 
  work at the school, there would be little scandal. Indeed, 
  how could one condemn such methodologies in the face 
  of such things as necromancy and demon summoning? 
  It was through this naïveté and oversight that I created 
  what could potentially have been the largest scandal of 
  the Heptagram’s history, and would have been, if not for 
  some truly adept maneuvering on my part.
  The vessel in question was a daughter of House 
  Tepet; a talented girl by the name of Oshina, versed in 
  numerous Social Charms and an appetite for rich, old 
  Exalts near death from old age. She had bragged to one 
  of her classmates that her intensity had actually sucked 
  THE TANTRIC CATASTROPHE
  There were no Charms developed from 
  Bhagwei’s experiments. Though the Realm’s 
  savants possess extensive knowledge concerning 
  male/female Essence polarities and the nature of 
  Essence exchange during sex, the disaster that oc-
  curred due to the addition of a powerful focusing 
  artifact opens some interesting doorways, though 
  not necessarily into the realm of divination or the 
  prediction of Exalted births.
  Nonetheless, Ragara Bhagwei’s work need 
  not end with his ﬁ nal report. As several Dragon-
  Blooded Charms grow more powerful when several 
  Terrestrial Exalted work together, the use of am-
  pliﬁ cation artifacts during tantric rites (or other 
  such group rituals) could be used to create power-
  ful Charms for a character who chooses to pick 
  up where Ragara Bhagwei left off — though wise 
  characters should opt to begin their experiments 
  with bisclaverets or neomah as guinea pigs instead 
  of the daughter of a powerful Great House!
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  40
  the vital life from her ﬁ rst two lovers, both of which 
  she had before she was 20 years in age, and it was this 
  exaggeration that led me to invite her to participate in 
  my project. 
  In preparation for the primary operation of the work-
  ing, I requested that Tepet Oshina perform an extensive 
  list of preliminary meditations and exercises to prepare 
  her body for an intense experience of raw Essence. This 
  was no arrogance on my part, as I too would be doing the 
  exercises as part of my already full daily regimen as well. 
  This was, in part, due to the intensity of the operation and 
  also because of my implementation of the Sabras Pearl — a 
  volatile Essence-ampliﬁ cation artifact that would intensify 
  our Essence-play tenfold.
  She had sworn to me that she had done the exercises. 
  Although she was not emphatic in her convincing, her 
  casual and conﬁ dent assurance led me to believe that she 
  had prepared both her body and her mind for the rigorous 
  experiments that lay ahead. She had not, and as a result, 
  she was stripped of consciousness and corporeal form.
  We had been sitting entwined, engaged in slow, 
  rhythmic acts of sex when I began to circulate my Essence 
  through her, the Sabras Pearl all the while humming 
  in our lap. She in turn, followed with the proscribed 
  mantra and began to circulate my Essence back into 
  my mouth. With no discursive thought in my mind, I 
  began to experience a similar sensation to when I had 
  Exalted and, based on my sense of her breath and focus, 
  so had Tepet Oshina. As my sense of separate self began 
  to dissipate and my mind merged with the lattice of 
  Essence between us, I felt a horrible clenching around 
  my neck and waist as Oshina’s fingers clawed into my 
  back, through the skin, embedding themselves into the 
  muscle beneath. As my eyes snapped open, the girl was 
  beginning to breakdown, her eyes glowing the purest 
  white as her body began to fluctuate between various 
  levels of solidity, eventually convulsing in a piercing 
  resonance that shattered every window, mirror and glass 
  in my bed chamber as Tepet Oshina dispersed in a rip-
  pling nimbus of Essence and the Sabras Pearl crumbled 
  to dust. It was apparent, once my senses fully returned 
  to me, that she had not prepared as I had asked.
  After a private discussion with my fellow masters, it 
  was decided that Tepet Oshina’s death would be reported 
  to her house as an accident of carelessness on the part 
  of the girl. After all, this was true. It was also decided 
  that I should not continue these experiments within the 
  Heptagram. I agreed and logged my progress up to the 
  point of the Tepet girl’s demise as a third person account 
  that I had witnessed during my travels to Nexus. 
  RELIGIOUS LIFE
  It was my ﬁ rst tutor, Oakthorn, who ﬁ rst conveyed to 
  me the teachings of He Who Hath Strewn Much Grass. 
  During the years of my early learning, I was given a great 
  
  41
  CHAPTER TWO • A LIFE OF OBLIGATIONS
  bit of instruction in the tenets of Immaculate Philosophy 
  so that I would have access to a wisdom equal to my aca-
  demic intellect. I believe that it is the lack of this very 
  thing that leads many Dragon-Blooded to ruin and madness 
  — revelation without realization. 
  During my ﬁ rst formal lesson with Oakthorn, when 
  I was still living in Ragara’s Manse, I believed that I 
  had it all ﬁ gured out. I had memorized countless herbal 
  remedies, codices of anatomy and scroll after scroll of 
  diagnoses and ﬁ rmly believed that, if I held this course, 
  I would achieve total mastery by some duly appointed 
  date. I considered medicine and healing to be disciplines 
  of pure reason, as easily charted, logged and understood 
  as any art or academic specialty. I could not have been 
  more wrong.
  I was working on a short paper that covered the 
  traditional treatments of the Mountain Pox, a highly 
  contagious ailment found primarily in the mountains of 
  the Far South, when I became horribly confused by my 
  own calculations. I had used a method of formulation 
  that had been tested true during the pre-Contagion 
  reign of the Dragon-Blooded Shogunate. This method, 
  considered the correct and irrefutable way to approach 
  all matters of medicine, was frustrating me to no end. 
  It was during this moment of pitched anxiety that 
  Oakthorn walked in behind me.
  He asked me what I was trying to achieve, and I 
  laughed at his idiotic question. What did he think I was 
  doing? Was it not obvious? Patting the ground next to 
  him, he gestured for me to sit as he did.
  Quietly, from the center of the darkened room, 
  Oakthorn told me to breath in empty space and to al-
  low it to expand inside me. Regardless, I didn’t want 
  to perform this idiotic exercise reserved for mortal Im-
  maculate aspirants. That is when my old teacher made 
  clear what was hidden.
  Instantly, my eyes dilated as the radial patterns on 
  the floor erupted around me, annihilating my previous 
  surroundings and replacing them with the labyrinthine 
  walls of a shimmering Essence mandala. In the distant 
  voice of my most perfect teacher, my mind walked 
  along the paths of mandala, my own thoughts and 
  long-forgotten lore rendered upon the golden walls 
  that made up its design. It seemed like days that I was 
  immersed in this maze of my own frustration. Accepting 
  my predicament, I ran my fingers along the raised char-
  acters on the walls as I walked, rapidly sifting through 
  the contents of my head. After what seemed like an 
  eon of trivial thoughts and days of memorized lore, I 
  located that shard of the Immaculate Wood Dragon 
  from which my Exaltation radiated. It’s pulsing green 
  light was not so comforting as it was nauseating, as if 
  those bodily humors that quench pain had suddenly 
  flooded all levels of my being. Taking control of my 
  discomfort, I plunged into my Exalted core.
  Though I awoke with no conscious memory of the 
  experience, I emerged from the pathworking to see 
  Oakthorn leaving the room. As my vision focused, the 
  Mountain Pox’s remedy was scrawled upon the parchment 
  that lay on ﬂ oor in front of me, in the brushstrokes of 
  my own calligraphy.
  FUTURE PLANS
  Though I have spent much time contemplating 
  what the years ahead hold for my old bones, my study of 
  the Great Contagion will most certainly be the subject 
  that commands my passion until my ﬁ nal breath. It is 
  the lack of progress that I have made in this arena that 
  drives me so. Between sorcery and healing, there are few 
  things that I have not researched as either a tangent of 
  my concentration, or as a subject of interest in its own 
  right. Nonetheless, there is a matter concerning this work 
  that has implications I had never considered.
  It was recently that I sent emissary to Sijan to retrieve 
  a tome from it’s great library at the cost of a profound 
  amount of jade. This text, called The Thousand Veils, was 
  reputed to be a Shogunate-era transcription of a manu-
  script penned by Anju Cinnibar, a scribe and scholar of 
  the necropolis at the time of its founding. It has stood 
  since time out of memory. It was my theory that the his-
  tories contained therein held the key to my true work. 
  As one could imagine, I was overjoyed when the book 
  was delivered to me with no complications.
  I had spent the entire night pouring over the text, but 
  though I spent all evening immersed in this endeavor, I 
  found nothing to give my research direction. Exhausted, 
  I retired to my bed.
  It was in the early hours before dawn that Righteous 
  Cloud and Cold Bastion, my Immaculate bodyguards, 
  woke me from my rest. Shortly after I had gone to sleep, 
  the pair had apprehended an assassin who had come 
  for me in the night. The creature, now laying dead on 
  the worktable at the far end of my bedchamber, was a 
  child with black lips and chalk-white skin. Although I 
  suspected the nature of the child immediately, it was not 
  until further examination that I was positive what it was. 
  The coming of a such a harbinger was certainly a grim 
  afﬁ rmation that my true work had begun. 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  42
  
  43
  CHAPTER THREE • THE WORLD WE RULE
  CHAPTER THREE
  THE WORLD 
  WE RULE
  In every Dragon-Blood’s life, there is a decision that is 
  made, whether it is one that arises from the depths of serene 
  meditation or a choice made from the compulsion of one’s 
  very nature. To create or destroy, these are the possibilities. 
  Though some do one with the intention of the other, the life 
  of a Wood Aspect is often deﬁ ned by a passion for creation 
  and cultivation. In the following accounts, the philosophies 
  and views of the narrators are laid plain, expressing the many 
  facets of their goals and destinies.
  RUTANJALI
  THE EAST
  The forest is all I have ever known. When I was 
  mortal, the forest was like a quiet neighbor, a place I could 
  visit when the bustle of the village wore on me, a place 
  to explore and discover when I was in need of entertain-
  ment or a place to simply sit and think upon the world as 
  I stretched my body across mounds of soft moss. It was in 
  this forest that I walked with my aunt and hid with my 
  love Bima before his life was cut away by the swords of 
  evil men. This forest was a forest of pleasant mysteries, 
  bird songs and wildﬂ owers.
  When I was ﬂ eeing for my life, clinging to the arm 
  of my wounded Aunt Rinchen, it was a place of terrifying 
  speed and confusion. As we ran, the entire place became a 
  whirlwind of greens, browns and grays punctuated by the 
  bright crimson blood that covered me and spilled from 
  Aunt Rinchen, the only sounds being our labored breath 
  and the crunching of sandaled feet running over leaves. 
  Upon being given to the King of Endless Branches, 
  the forest became a very still place. My husband, the 
  Wood King, was the center of a place I had known all my 
  life. This being was the sacred guardian of that which has 
  nourished, educated and protected me since the beginning 
  of my years. To be wed to the forest’s heart is truly a strange 
  thing, even for one so tied to the trees and the life that 
  dwells here as myself. 
  But even farther east, there is a place I have been to 
  only once. To get to this eastern place, I had traveled nearly 
  a month on foot. I had heard that beasts of extraordinary 
  size made their home near the region of the northern 
  forest that the spirits call the Bordermarch. A few of my 
  King’s subjects warned me against going, though I was not 
  particularly concerned as spirits impose such strange rules 
  on themselves and others. 
  I had been hunting throughout the better half of the 
  morning, and the ﬁ rst odd thing I noticed was that the 
  sun had not risen to its noontime position, the morning 
  remaining as if moonlit, never brightening for a moment. 
  There were no clouds above the canopy, and the creatures 
  of the nighttime forest continued to chirp and buzz late 
  into the afternoon. It was then that I spotted a glorious 
  bristled boar, one of the largest I had ever seen, scrambling 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  44
  through the thicket, its black tusks shining like obsidian 
  in the moonlight. Slowly, I crept toward it, my steps com-
  pletely silent on the mushroom-covered ground. Suddenly, 
  a screech like none I had ever heard sent me scrambling 
  backward, as a titanic owl dove at the quivering boar, it’s 
  arm-length talons cutting into the beast’s tough hide as if 
  it were made of brittle leaves.
  I slowly rose to my feet, amazed by the glory of this 
  kill, making sure to stay close to the ground as I watched 
  the owl feed. It’s great beak jerked free a dripping bundle 
  of organs when its eyes, quite deliberately, met my own. 
  For a moment, I felt a deep acceptance — a desire to run 
  to the east and live in this place as its child. But it was in 
  the owl’s eyes that I, for one ﬂ eeting but vital moment, 
  saw that this place was not, and could never be, home. I 
  knew that if I stayed in this place, I would become a mad 
  thing, with nothing left to call Rutanjali.
  SPIRITS
  I remember my when my Aunt Rinchen would tell 
  me of the spirits of the forest. She showed me the proper 
  way to make offerings, the correct manner in which one 
  addresses a tree before harvesting its leaves and the proper 
  way to thank an animal’s spirit once you have slain its body. 
  These things, while appealing to a small child walking 
  with her aunt through the woods, will not save you in the 
  presence of true and powerful gods.
  Gods are interested in exchange — a gift for a gift 
  — and nothing else. It is this simple principle that makes 
  them creatures of balance and nature. Nonetheless, it 
  is always far better to give too much than too little. A 
  spirit who is given too much will simply leave what it 
  does not want, and left apples and carcasses will rot on 
  the shrine. However, to give too little? This is surely an 
  unfortunate thing. When a god is not given its fair share, 
  it will surely take what it wants, from where it wants, in 
  any way that it wants. This is the way of gods and the 
  world in which they live.
  MORTALS
  Both my fondest and most terrifying experiences 
  occurred in the company of mortals. As a young, human 
  girl, I knew the love and safety of a human community. 
  Together, the villagers eked out a life in what some would 
  call wilderness while caring for each other and the land 
  around them. Beneath dark branches and the moonlit sky, 
  they would tell stories by the ﬁ re that veiled the feelings of 
  their lives, becoming frightened, amused and illuminated 
  together. During the day, they would mend houses, gather 
  water, work at woodcrafts and hunt together, sharing what 
  was made and found for the betterment of the tribe, divided 
  so that each member of the community would have her 
  share of what they had. And amongst this industry, there 
  was love. Not the cold, strange love of spirits and animals, 
  but a warm, soft love of peace and acceptance, of inclusion 
  and need. It is these people for whom I have made a shrine 
  in the place they once lived.
  And there are bad men. There are men who move 
  through the world like a terrible ﬁ re, burning the life and 
  beauty out of every place they come upon. With greed, 
  wrath and arrogance, they kill one another and the world 
  around them, as if they were the only mouths that needed 
  feeding, the only bodies that needed clothing, and pos-
  sessed of the only desires that needed satisfaction. It is 
  these men who came to Carya Kos when I was but a girl 
  and burned it to the ground, choking the love and peace 
  from the place like a thick smoke ﬂ ushing brightly colored 
  birds from the trees, leaving nothing but a blackened 
  tangle of charred branches. With their weapons of iron 
  and their snorting horses, these men cut down their own 
  kind, raping, murdering and pillaging as they went. It was 
  these men for whom I did not shed one tear as the army 
  of the King of Endless Branches devoured their ﬂ esh and 
  scoured Carya Kos of their taint.
  Now, my only tie to humanity rests with my sons, who 
  themselves are not so human. With their father’s blood in 
  their veins, all of my sons shall live long lives and possess 
  a certain edge over mere humans. Is it a mortal thing that 
  I miss them so? Maybe. I suppose it is also a mortal desire 
  that I feel I will soon follow when I go to seek out my three 
  sons in the vast world into which they have wandered.
  FAIR FOLK
  In the deepest recesses of the terrifying East, there 
  are creatures that hate Creation. These creatures, in their 
  natural state, are formless and mad, but in this world, they 
  ape the forms of men and mock their pastimes with cruel 
  comedy and terrible tricks. Once, while hunting near the 
  edge of the green expanse, I was approached by one of these 
  creatures, so lewd and deranged I thought it a nightmare. 
  He was tall and handsome in a wicked way, with a long 
  emerald cape made from leaves and blossoms. On his face, 
  he wore a mask with a long, rude nose and arching brows 
  that exaggerated his piercing eyes. He had been dancing 
  his way west when he came upon me, and he entreated 
  me to walk with him. 
  His name was Voluwangle, and he claimed he was 
  some kind of a prince among his tribe. He told me he 
  was off to Great Forks in search of a prize promised him 
  by a tale told by a god who lived there. This “Spinner of 
  Glorious Tales” had told a story that assured this strange, 
  long creature a woman meant for another. A trick of fate, 
  this Voluwangle called it.
  Growing tired of the odd thing’s lies and bragging, I 
  bid him farewell and began to walk my own way. In a blink, 
  he appeared before me, nagging and incessant in his bid 
  for my company. For the entirety of the day, I attempted 
  to elude this annoying creature, and for the entire day, I 
  failed. It was not until my husband came that Voluwangle 
  agreed to depart.
  
  45
  CHAPTER THREE • THE WORLD WE RULE
  Although I thought little of it, the King of Endless 
  Branches seemed deeply disturbed by our meeting and 
  warned me never speak to such a creature again.
  CYNIS BELAR NORREN
  THE REALM
  The Realm? What is one to say of one’s mother?
  The Realm has given me everything I have. It nursed 
  me from infancy, fed and clothed me, taught me all that I 
  know and all that I will learn. I love it as I do the woman 
  that birthed me. Frankly, what’s not to love?
  The Empress raised the Realm at a time when chaos and 
  catastrophe threatened to unmake the whole of Creation. 
  There is no overestimating the impact of that act. How can 
  anyone not stand in awe of such an accomplishment? It is 
  beyond my comprehension, and yet, some do. Assuredly, 
  those who do not see the Empress’ actions as they should 
  are, by and large, ignorant barbarians, diabolical Anath-
  ema or their mind-sick cultists, but even some among the 
  Dynasty have their doubts. I do not share them, nor do I 
  understand them. 
  If not for the Empress and the Realm, where would we 
  be now? Ground under the heel of the monstrous Anath-
  ema? Or perhaps in the thrall of the Fair Ones, mired in 
  the boundless chaos of the Wyld, the souls of ourselves and 
  our children no more than meat for their twisted tables, 
  our hopes and dreams distilled to ﬁ ne liquors to quench 
  their thirst as they ride in hunt of those of us who got away. 
  Would that have been a better fate?
  I will grant the doubters this: These are dark times for 
  the Scarlet Empire. The Empress’ absence has left the ship 
  of state rudderless and adrift. We would be in much better 
  straits were she back at the helm guiding us through the 
  waters we now sail. But she is not. The struggle we play out 
  each day, house on house, family on family, is all a part of 
  her plan. She laid the foundations for the Thousand Mazy 
  Paths. She begat the Thousand Scales and the All-Seeing 
  Eye. Who are we to question her wisdom? It is our place to 
  have faith in her plan, to hold true and play our part and, 
  in so doing, strengthen the Realm by cutting weakness 
  from the fold. In ﬁ re is steel forged. What Empress would 
  we want who could not survive the machinations of the 
  Great Houses anyway?
  The Realm is like a well-tended orchard. It grows 
  for a time, blooms, bears fruit. Then, it dies back for a 
  time, branches fall, resources are conserved for the next 
  growing season. The power of the Realm recedes as the 
  energies of the Dynasty are turned to strengthening root. 
  The unfaithful are exposed that they might be excised. 
  Weakness is rooted out. When the spring comes, it will 
  grow again and be all the stronger.
  I hold my duties in particular as sacred and vital to the 
  continuance of the Realm. In service to my house, I seek 
  out those who would weaken the empire with inﬁ rmity, 
  intemperance, incompetence or inﬁ delity. My counterparts 
  in the other houses do the same on behalf of their kin, 
  and I praise them for it. Our struggle cuts the chaff from 
  the wheat, and in the end, should the Empress not return, 
  her one true successor will rise, tempered in the kiln of 
  intrigue, and lead us to a new age of glory.
  HOUSE CYNIS
  Did I say the Realm was my mother? Tsk, tsk. I suppose 
  then that I must have two mothers. How is one to choose? 
  If fortune smiles upon me, I’ll never have to.
  House Cynis has a certain… reputation among the 
  Dynasty. They call us many things: debased, decadent, de-
  bauched. Hypocrisy, pure and simple. Honesty is what they 
  criticize, though they will never admit it. We are honest in 
  our dealings with mortals, honest in our acknowledgement of 
  the urges of the ﬂ esh, honest in our ambition for the Scarlet 
  Throne. They look on our lack of shame and call it loose 
  morals, and yet, they clamor at our doors for invitations to 
  our parties and ﬁ ll our coffers with jade for the slaves we 
  provide. If you ask me, they would beneﬁ t from a little honest 
  self-scrutiny. But given the choice, I’d prefer they go right 
  on fooling themselves and padding our margins.
  My great aunt has even made catering to the more 
  twisted pastimes of the other houses a proﬁ table venture, 
  though, obviously, she doesn’t advertise that fact. Her 
  discretion is a large factor in maintaining her proﬁ ts, and 
  these days, every coin is a treasure, and every favor owed 
  is precious. The struggle for succession is expensive in all 
  ways, and our business interests have been slacking off of 
  late. The lands of the Threshold are our chief suppliers of 
  fresh slaves. Since the Empress’ disappearance, their interest 
  in sending bodies to the Blessed Isle has slackened, their 
  prices have risen, and our supplies have dried up. Some of 
  my more creative kin have managed to staunch the ﬂ ow of 
  jade from our coffers with clever gambits and new sources 
  of revenue, but those are only stopgap measures. A true 
  solution will only come when we have a new Empress on 
  the Scarlet Throne to wield the might of the Realm once 
  again. And maybe it’s overstating the obvious, but my 
  preference would be to have a child of Cynis at the helm 
  of our little ship of state.
  MORTALS
  The Dragon-Blooded are Princes of the Earth. There 
  is no hubris in that title. It is simply the truth. We who 
  have been Exalted by the Dragons were given divine title 
  and lordship over all of Creation. All that walks or crawls 
  on the earth, all that swims in the sea or soars through the 
  sky falls within our bailiwick. It is given to us to protect, 
  preserve, cultivate and manage all these things in such a 
  way as to promulgate the will of Heaven and glorify the 
  Elemental Dragons. I believe it must be obvious to anyone 
  with even a rudimentary education that this of course 
  includes mortal men and women.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  46
  It may be coarse to say, but it is no less true: Mortals 
  are a resource to us like any other. Wait! Wait. Hear me 
  out. It is true they are not animals to be led to the slaughter 
  for a meal or the bounty of their hides. They think and feel 
  and love and hate. These things are not to be ignored. This 
  is precisely why we… we do not grant anyone dominion 
  over them in any sense beyond that necessitated by the 
  most rudimentary governance. Only Heaven’s Exaltation 
  can grant that authority. Thus it is that only the Dragon-
  Blooded are permitted to own slaves. Thus it is that only 
  the Dragon-Blooded are permitted command rank in the 
  legions. The true legions, I mean — not the Vermilion, 
  which has little business claiming the name Legion at all. 
  Our laws and customs reﬂ ect the Perfected Hierarchy, as 
  they should. Thus, only those Exalted by Heaven have the 
  will, the wisdom and the divine authority to rule so fully 
  over the lives of other men and women.
  I know the worth of a mortal life. I see it in the led-
  gers of House Cynis every day. I know further that only a 
  fool throws valuable resources away after whim and folly. 
  Cruelty and brutality in the treatment of those under 
  one’s care are not only distasteful, they are quite simply 
  bad business. Just because we are given dominion over the 
  lives of mortal men and women does not mean we must 
  be careless with them. You do not buy a glass vase just to 
  break it, if you have any measure of sense. No, we must 
  grant them the respect they deserve. Spend their lives 
  wisely, punish them justly, and they will repay you with 
  faith and respect.
  ANATHEMA
  Demons are not consigned only to Malfeas and the 
  sanctums of sorcerers. They walk the earth, in ﬂ esh, and 
  they wield terrible powers ripped from Heaven by means of 
  dark rituals and evil practices. I’ve never seen one, person-
  ally, and I’m grateful for that. They haunt the Threshold 
  exclusively — I’m quite certain Heaven would never permit 
  such a creature to sully the soil of the Blessed Isle with 
  the touch of its feet. It’s convenient, too, if you ask me. 
  Better for all if they stay out there, where the Wyld Hunt 
  can track and kill them without fear of innocent citizens 
  of the Realm getting in the way. Honestly, what matter is 
  it to me if a few Thresholders get scorched alive by some 
  poxy, demon Anathema? None, I say. Perhaps things would 
  be different if they knew their place and offered up more 
  than the obligatory lip service that’s generally given to 
  vows of fealty.
  That business in Thorns, though. That is rather bother-
  some. Once the matter of succession is resolved, I’m quite 
  certain Thorns will be scoured of the ﬁ lth that’s taken up 
  residence soon after. Again, though — it all goes back to 
  the matter of acknowledging the proper authority of the 
  Realm. Satraps and tributary lords who fail to bend knee in 
  good faith to the Scarlet Throne are asking for this sort of 
  madness to be visited upon them. How can we be expected 
  to make the necessary investments in funding forces to pre-
  vent such occurrences? What obligation have we to them 
  when they don’t bother to fulﬁ ll their own obligations to 
  us? We give as we get, as is just. If they would provide the 
  required tribute, honor and obedience, perhaps the Realm 
  would pay a bit more attention to their security. As it is, we 
  have more important things to worry about anyway. The 
  matter of succession must be settled, and the Great Game 
  takes time, money and resources. It would be irresponsible 
  of us to divert attention from matters as important as that 
  to pursue wild adventures half a world away.
  THE FAIR ONES
  They are jackals, and I say that without rancor. They 
  lurk at the edges of the world waiting for some small morsel 
  to slip out from under the watchful eyes of the lion, and 
  when one does, they snatch it up and run away to eat it at 
  their leisure. Certainly, they are more dangerous than true 
  jackals — I don’t mean to say they are harmless — but they 
  haven’t the courage to be a genuine threat to a strong and 
  vigilant Realm. And they can be reasonable.
  Honestly, put yourself in their shoes. They hover out 
  there, exiled to the roiling cauldron of the Wyld, longing 
  to take hold of Creation and carve themselves a piece of 
  it. The only thing preventing them from doing so is us 
  — the Dragon-Blooded of the Blessed Isle. Along comes 
  a terrible war and then a devastating plague, and all of a 
  sudden, there is all this land with no one on it and no one 
  guarding it. Anyone who is honest with themselves at all 
  knows that, if the situations were reversed, they would do 
  the very same thing the Fair Folk did.
  “But they eat people’s souls!” you say? Well, we all 
  have our appetites. What is distasteful to one is a deli-
  cacy to another. Do you begrudge the jackal his dinner 
  of carrion simply because you would not eat it yourself? 
  Of course not. The jackal only acts within his nature. So, 
  too, the Fair Folk.
  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you should invite 
  them to your table and offer your maidservant’s soul as an 
  appetizer. Surely, you should not. I’m just pointing out 
  that they have needs in accordance with their nature. 
  Provide them with what they require, and they will gladly 
  repay you in kind. There is no reason we cannot have an 
  amiably and proﬁ table relationship with them, given the 
  proper precautions.
  SESUS NAGEZZER
  THE REALM
  The Realm has been the most important thing in my 
  life since I was very young. There is nothing I wouldn’t 
  do to protect, expand and perfect the imperial presence, 
  strength and prosperity. The Realm has made me a wealthy 
  and powerful man, yet I have done nothing to harm it. 
  This is a rare thing in our present time.
  
  47
  CHAPTER THREE • THE WORLD WE RULE
  The very young Dragon-Blooded have grown quite 
  different from what we were when I was a child. Exalting 
  during the absence of the Empress, they are nationless 
  bastards without a tie to the only thing that can make 
  them what they truly are. 
  We are the Ten Thousand Dragons, and our duty is 
  clear. To violate the peace and wellness of the Realm is 
  unforgivable and can not be tolerated. If even one of our 
  number forsakes his Immaculately intended destiny, all of 
  us suffer. I am fully loyal because nothing less is acceptable. 
  Therefore, there are those among us, myself being one, 
  who must separate the weak from the strong, throwing 
  the weak to the lions as well as being one of those lions 
  when necessary.
  But there are beneﬁ ts to be sure. I protect the Realm 
  from greedy men because my well-being is best served 
  by its wholeness. With my free companies, which are 
  especially effective as the Realm’s armies no longer have 
  dispositions that match them, I can apply support to 
  the satrapies without taxing the Realm’s core forces. In 
  instances where the Realm’s forces are too tangled by the 
  bickering of my brothers and sisters (meaning at all times 
  right now), I have been known to apply focused resources 
  at vital points to assure stability and the continued ﬂ ow 
  of commerce. Without bureaucratic confusion and the 
  corruption endemic to today’s imperial legions, my men 
  can engage preemptively at a moments notice, sometimes 
  not even making their presence known.
  Loyal Dynasts with integrity and courage may at some 
  point have need of forces that terriﬁ ed politicians are loathe 
  to lend them. In these situations, an interview is arranged, 
  either with Autumn Spiral or myself. During such an 
  interview, I do not have time to evaluate the outcome of 
  the entire campaign being proposed, so I evaluate the man 
  or woman who is proposing it. If their words convince me 
  that their intentions are pure, loyal to the Scarlet Empress, 
  founded in the Immaculate Philosophy or otherwise in 
  the best interest of the Blessed Isle and its satrapies, then 
  arrangements will be made. However, if the intentions, no 
  matter how grand, are engineered for family or personal 
  gain — recognition by the Imperial Court, as a political 
  maneuver to outshine competitors or other such hollow 
  glories — the interview will be drawn to a close, and if 
  all goes as planned, the one who is interviewed will ﬁ nd 
  immovable obstacles on her road to glory. This is my way, 
  and I go about it diligently and without need of recognition. 
  I am a tool of the Realm in the Empress’ absence and will 
  continue to be so upon her much awaited return.
  What about the drugs? What about the courtesans? 
  What about the orgies? It is well known that I possess 
  such appetites. I have always indulged such desires with 
  shameless abandon, and these things, I do for me. However, 
  these things are not without their patriotic applications 
  as well. The Dragon-Blooded are a passionate race, and 
  thus, the objects of passion — opium, wine, whores and 
  decadent social affairs — are often the key to their coop-
  eration. When a Senator of House Ledaal, in the midst of 
  her drunken debate with an emissary from House Ragara, 
  catches the sight of a lovely courtesan from the Northern 
  shores, at that instant, a route to the core of her desire is 
  made known. It is through openings such as this that great 
  victories may be won, though no soldiers have marched, 
  no charges have been sounded, and no blades have been 
  drawn. Since I can no longer triumph on the ﬁ eld of battle, 
  I must ﬁ nd new ﬁ elds on which to win these conﬂ icts.
  Besides, the ﬂ ow of vice binds the weak and keeps 
  them content. Is it cruel to provide a salve to the many 
  who are unable to make a difference? Is it wrong to provide 
  distraction to those who could not bear the truth of their 
  own realizations? Not at all, and I would not judge this 
  gluttonous lot, for I am certainly one of their number.
  HOUSE
  It has been a long time since I have had open and true 
  relations with the leaders of my house. A house divided 
  ﬁ ve ways can only have so much order. Nonetheless, my 
  brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles among the Sesus 
  have done well to gather theirs from the satrapies, keeping 
  fair order among their own. I am sure they are loyal to their 
  house and kin, and that is all that most would ask from a 
  child of the Scarlet Dynasty.
  I must admit, I do not see this familial solidarity as 
  at all adequate. Aside from my cousin Warru, who has 
  been so loyal and true to my cause, I hold strong doubts 
  concerning the loyalty of the Sesus lot. I believe that the 
  Dragon-Blooded of Sesus, as is the case with many of the 
  other Great Houses, are only as patriotic as their own safety 
  and prosperity are concerned. I will not deny that I take 
  full and constant measures to assure my own comfort, but 
  if I were put in so dreadful a position that I was compelled 
  to decide between the Realm and my fortune, there would 
  be no decision. The Realm must always come ﬁ rst.
  It is no rare thing these days that the health of a 
  house supersedes the well-being of the Realm as a whole. 
  On more than one occasion, I have seen what supposedly 
  great men will do at the expense of the Realm on behalf of 
  their houses. For the good of a house, they would sacriﬁ ce 
  the safety in which it rests. Do they not see that one is 
  merely a part of the other? Does one not see that if the 
  Blessed Isle’s head is hacked from its shoulders the limbs 
  called houses will simply wither to their graves? If the 
  Scarlet Throne’s hold is broken, all of the Great Houses 
  are surely damned as well.
  All of my wealth and power rest upon this simple and 
  obvious foresight.
  THE GUILD
  As a man of commerce, I have had my share of deal-
  ings with the Guild. At points, this arrangement has been 
  cooperative, whether it be my mercenaries accompanying 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  48
  envoys between the satrapies and the leaders of the Guild 
  or the wholesale purchase of exotic nectars from the East 
  and South, so difﬁ cult to obtain without the assistance of 
  the merchant princes.
  However, the Guild is also my enemy. As the Great 
  Houses cannibalize the Realm from within, the Guild gnaws 
  at its edges. Through its operations, the Guild creates need 
  for its commodities where there shouldn’t be any, diverting 
  the balance of jade, slaves and drugs to whichever locale 
  will make it the most proﬁ t, unconcerned with the effect 
  that will have on the Realm’s economy as a whole. And 
  why not? To destabilize the ﬁ nances of the Realm would 
  beneﬁ t the Guild unimaginably, as it would become the 
  undisputed pillar of wealth throughout all of Creation. 
  And while this is all well and good for the Guild, these 
  conditions should not be tolerated by any son or daughter 
  of the Dynasty. 
  I am sure that such degenerate and traitorous states as 
  Lookshy would be pleased to see the Guild consume our 
  livelihood, like a dog eating off the plate of its sleeping 
  master. It is exactly this type of treason that I seek to prevent. 
  Though the master is asleep, the dogs will behave.
  MORTALS
  Humans are amazing creatures. From the streets of 
  the Imperial City to the barbarian hordes of the North 
  to the weasel-eyed jade-counters in Nexus, they lead fast 
  industrious lives that leave no trace upon the face of his-
  tory lest they excel beyond their capabilities. Each mortal 
  life strains toward its end, striving for signiﬁ cance at the 
  feet of gods and Exalted. 
  I feel it is our responsibility to protect the mortals. 
  Though many of the Dragon-Blooded use the unExalted 
  to feed their appetites, not caring one way or the other 
  as to how they are treated, I consider it the duty of the 
  strong to care for the weak. This does not hold true for 
  how one treats Dragon-Blooded however. We are greater 
  and, therefore, must be responsible for our own goals and 
  aims, tested by our elders so that we may fully manifest our 
  might and hold the Realm till the end of our time.
  However, far be it from me to underestimate the 
  mortals. To overlook their potential because of their 
  apparent shortcomings and weaknesses would be an 
  offense to a man of my upbringing and faith. If I had a 
  legionnaire for every time a young Dynast considered me 
  a fat cripple not worth his thoughts, the army I would 
  command would not ﬁ t within the conﬁ nes of Creation. 
  No. What those not blessed by the Dragons can achieve 
  simply requires more of them — as armies, generations 
  or as an institution of philosophy spread throughout 
  the world. It is because of their ability to forge their 
  mediocrity into something greater that I retain them by 
  the hundreds for my own purposes. Some of my ﬁ nest 
  servants — merchants, brother lords, alchemists, cour-
  tesans, mercenaries, spies and assassins — are from this 
  herd of lessers that is so often overlooked. It is the fact 
  that they are so underestimated, much like myself, that 
  they are invaluable to my work and to the well-being of 
  the Realm.
  THE IMMACULATE ORDER
  The Cloister of Wisdom was a place of healing for 
  me. Although it was a complicated and involved matter 
  to enroll there, especially in the condition that I was in 
  when I arrived, the serenity and clarity of the Immaculate 
  purpose gave me what I needed to decide my own fate. My 
  gluttony surely repulsed the majority of the monks who 
  were cloistered there, but in their disdain, many gave me 
  hard words to contemplate, providing me with a mirror in 
  which to see the failings of my life. As I cleared the debris 
  from the surface of the mirror, the truth of their worlds 
  helped me realize the full scope of what I would dedicate 
  my life to. For this, I can not thank them enough, despite 
  how cruel they seemed at the time of this lesson.
  Do I regret my failure at the Cloister of Wisdom? 
  More so than any other failing in my life including the 
  poor judgment that rendered me a physical cripple. I feel 
  this way because there were no factors other than my inner 
  weakness and physical degeneracy that I could not make 
  the grade. I was too lazy, too weak, too uncommitted and 
  too distracted to become an Immaculate, and I can blame 
  no being but myself.
  However, I did gain many things from the Immaculates 
  that I have kept with me to this day. The fundamentals 
  of Wood Dragon Style were not completely lost on me. I 
  did achieve the basic levels of initiation, and I did learn 
  the ﬁ rst several techniques. It was merely the form that 
  was beyond my grasp. In addition, I also came by Autumn 
  Spiral, who has been much like my own personal Clois-
  ter of Wisdom, but with a personality and patience that 
  is conducive to my own as well as being tolerant of my 
  lifestyle and methods. 
  I am also quite devoted to the philosophy of the Im-
  maculates and the teachings of He Who Hath Strewn Much 
  Grass. Although I am unﬁ t to serve as one of Sextes Jylis’ 
  elite spiritual warriors, I am devoted nonetheless. It is with 
  this in mind that I bow to the masters of the Immaculate 
  Order and to the clarity of their wisdom.
  ANATHEMA
  The demons who were Creation’s oppressors in the 
  First Age are always a pressing concern. Although they 
  are not something of which I am deeply educated, they 
  are a pox upon the Realm and, therefore, my enemies. 
  Though Sesus Warru feels that they may be the greatest 
  threat to the Realm, I am quite sure that such evils from 
  the past will never again see their former glory. Though 
  word has it that they are once again growing in number, 
  I am quite sure that an increase in Wyld Hunts is all that 
  is truly needed to prevent their menace.
  
  49
  CHAPTER THREE • THE WORLD WE RULE
  TEPET EJAVA
  THE REALM
  The Realm is a hen house. It was not always thus.
  Once, it was strong, powerful. A lion in the world. 
  There was order, law and honor. The Empress built an 
  empire out of ruins, and she did everything she had to 
  do to maintain it. But now, we see the fruits of her labors 
  squandered by the children who have forgotten why the 
  empire was raised. They know only that it is vast and 
  rich and that they want it for themselves. But they are 
  only shadows of what begat them. I see no new Empress 
  or Emperor in the ranks of the Great Houses now. I see 
  schemers and spies, assassins, politicians, despots and 
  worse. How I long for a leader in whom I can have pride 
  and serve joyfully.
  The Realm is a hen house, and 100 foxes wait with 
  mouths open on our doorstep while we squabble and peck, 
  warring amongst ourselves for the high perch. Each pass-
  ing day, the foxes creep closer, snatching up those on the 
  outskirts of the Scarlet Empire. In the Threshold, those 
  who once bowed low before the might of the Empress 
  grow bold in their deﬁ ance. In her absence, they fear no 
  consequence. They can see that the eyes of the Realm 
  are not on them but on itself. The legions are splintered, 
  scattered to the houses, remade as petty personal armies 
  rather than the ﬁ st of a nation. Oh, the transformation is 
  not complete, but the course is clear.
  I am a prisoner to the struggle for primacy. I am held 
  in high esteem, they say. I am an invaluable asset to my 
  house and should be guarded carefully. So, they keep me 
  out here, in the far reaches of the world, hunting bandits, 
  pirates and smugglers, far from any danger. They call it a 
  great service to our house. I call it a sentence undeserved. 
  What use are assets if they go unused? The battles against 
  the Bull of the North robbed us of much of our strength, 
  yes. But the lion that hides in her cave for fear of the hyena 
  starves and feeds the very thing she fears.
  I have not spoken with Arada in months. When I saw 
  him last, I spoke imprudently and honestly, as I am speak-
  ing now. He was unimpressed. He berated me for disloyal 
  talk and warned against loose tongues and listening ears. 
  Against whom might I be committing treason? The Empress 
  is gone, and were she to return, I would be the ﬁ rst to of-
  fer my life in thanks to the Dragons for her guidance. My 
  uncle the Regent? He could not tear himself away from his 
  self-sanctiﬁ cation long enough to muster the steel to level 
  charges. As for disloyalty, I say that my words spring directly 
  from my loyalty to the Realm. I am as great a patriot as any 
  there ever was. It is my loyalty that, when I look upon the 
  shambles that the Realm is becoming, forces me to speak. 
  The Anathema are rising again, and the Deathlords stumble 
  out of whatever hell that birthed them to spread their plague 
  across the land. The tributaries grow fractious and test the 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  50
  will of the empire to punish those that stray. We have seen 
  what happens when the Fair Ones sense weakness. Inaction 
  is unconscionable. We do not have the luxury of ignoring the 
  world across the Inland Sea in favor of our pursuit of power 
  here on the Blessed Isle. There is not time enough to let the 
  subtle wiles of the Great Game winnow the ﬁ eld of aspirants. 
  We need a true scion of the Empress. Someone with the will 
  to yoke a nation, the strength to draw the Great Houses in 
  line and the wisdom to strike soon and swiftly. The tree of 
  empire has grown in on itself. Left to its own devices, it will 
  choke itself to death. A great pruning is on the horizon. I 
  pray that we survive it, for the world’s sake.
  HOUSE TEPET
  Say the word “Tepet” today, and you will certainly 
  hear the words “Battle of Futile Blood” soon after. It was 
  a deﬁ ning moment in the fate of our house. We had little 
  choice in its timing. We do have a choice in what we are 
  to become in its aftermath.
  Our elders counsel patience and passivity. They put 
  me far from the Blessed Isle to collect petty victories 
  with which to rebuild our political strength. This is not 
  my way. We are a military house, or were. Before the war 
  in Halta, there was conﬂ ict, tension. The caution of the 
  elders tempered the willful temper of the soldiers. We were 
  balanced. But the soldiers are gone now. We lost three 
  senior ofﬁ cers out of four and near all of our strength in 
  the counsels of the house. Arada could sway the tide, but 
  he is too busy frowning in his ale and counting his scars. 
  In his place, the others fret over their lost prospects and 
  scrabble for aid among the very houses that left us to die 
  against the Bull. Great House indeed.
  Hope lies in youth and the will to act. The elders 
  have lost the ﬁ re to make great deeds. They have lost the 
  courage to risk everything on a slim chance of glory and 
  a slimmer chance at victory. Like starving men clinging 
  to a scrap of bread while a feast lies a step away, they will 
  not reach for what they could take for fear of losing what 
  they have. I am not them.
  I am not afraid. I know the worth in risking the loss of 
  a village to gain a palace. I see that it is not scraps we still 
  hold, but air and nothing more, and I would gladly risk that 
  to bring glory back to our house, to repay those that betrayed 
  us and the Realm for their petty games of power.
  MORTALS
  It is an old story oft told, but no less true for being 
  familiar. I have fought shoulder to shoulder with Exalted 
  and mortal alike, and I can tell you the Blood of the Dragons 
  is a gift of power but no guarantee of courage or valor. I 
  have seen porters stand against an army with nothing more 
  than a yard of wood in their hands when their Dragon-
  Blooded masters turned and ran. I’ve seen mortal soldiers 
  hold a pass when their commanders deemed it hopelessly 
  lost just to prove them wrong. Courage does not come in 
  the blood, but in the temper of the spirit. What courage 
  is there in facing a mortal man when you know the favor 
  of Heaven is with you? Courage does not lie in any power 
  of magic nor Charm nor enchantment of the bygone Age. 
  No, and let the Eye strike me down for saying it if I am 
  false, true courage lies in facing your foeman with naught 
  but the steel in your hand, the strength in your arm and 
  what luck you can make between you and death. 
  I hear a great deal of ill feeling toward me for my use 
  of mortals in command. My answer to them is that each 
  and every one has earned the rank they hold. Mortals are 
  not ﬁ t to lead, they say. Only the blood of the Dragons 
  can make an ofﬁ cer. I say the blood of the Dragons gives 
  us wings to rise while mortal men are left to climb as best 
  they may without. If a mortal man meets my test of rank 
  without the beneﬁ t of Exaltation, then I say he is at least 
  as ﬁ t as one who does so with it. I’ll not pass him over 
  because his mother and father made the mistake of coming 
  from common stock.
  Others speak of the obligation of Exaltation, but it 
  seems to me that, coming from them, it’s nothing more 
  than a platitude spoken to placate the sorry souls they tread 
  upon. I say mortal men and women deserve our respect, 
  all the more so because we have been lifted above them. 
  When was the last time you walked through the slums of 
  the Imperial City? When was the last time you looked 
  your valet in the eye? Yes, we are above them. We are 
  gifted with powers beyond their imagining. When their 
  children’s children are old and dying, we will have many 
  years yet left to us. By the sweat of their bodies and the toil 
  of their hands are our palaces built, our litters borne and 
  our tables laden. While we dine on succulent fruits from 
  across the sea, they scrabble in the dust for a few roots to 
  stave off death by starvation. Yes, we have been blessed by 
  Heaven, but for what? Our own gloriﬁ cation? No. We are 
  Exalted in the service of the Dragons. We are given power 
  that we might wield it in the preservation of Creation, 
  that we might use it for the good of all humanity. It is our 
  duty to shepherd humanity toward glory, to guide them 
  toward honor and to guard them against the dark hazards 
  that threaten them. We are given power toward that end, 
  but we must not forget why it is granted.
  Exaltation is a promise. It is a promise of what hu-
  manity could be. It is up to those of us who receive it to 
  live up to that promise and live a life worthy of the gifts 
  given to us.
  ANATHEMA
  I don’t know a lot about them, but I do know this: 
  They ﬁ ght like devils and are purest hell to kill.
  Arada seems to think they deserve our pity, some of 
  them anyways. I’ve never seen anything in their eyes but a 
  great hunger for my death. But then again, I can’t imagine 
  my eyes hold much different for them. That’s the way of 
  the battleﬁ eld. When I meet them, it’s over crossed swords 
  
  51
  CHAPTER THREE • THE WORLD WE RULE
  and the corpses of my men. I’m not generally in the mood 
  to assess the quality of their person, nor do I have time. 
  By the time we are within range of a conversation, we’ve 
  already decided matters are going to end with one or the 
  other dead. So far, I’ve always come out the live one.
  The Order says they are irredeemably evil. Maybe 
  so. It says they gain their powers through dark rites and 
  black magics. I have no idea, but I do know the last one 
  I killed looked like nothing more than an urchin boy out 
  of any market in the Realm. He didn’t look much like he 
  knew anything of rituals and rites and magic, but he was 
  quick as quick can be and as hard to catch as a shadow at 
  midnight. I killed him as I did all the others, but I can’t 
  say it made me proud to do it.
  I kill them where I find them, but I take little 
  joy in it. I’ve known many a Dynast to do things as 
  dark as the Anathema are accused of, and we don’t 
  hunt them. I know power 
  begrudges power, and the 
  least of the Anathema holds 
  as much power as the best 
  Dragon-Blooded. I hunt 
  them because it is my duty 
  to do so. I hold no grudges 
  against them but for the 
  blood they spill.
  RAGARA BHAGWEI
  THE REALM
  I have lived a long time, 
  even by the standards of 
  Dragon-Blooded, and it is true, 
  the Realm knew greater glory 
  in days past than it does at 
  present. What is the cause of 
  this? Many would say it is the 
  absence of the Scarlet Empress, 
  so great in her majesty and 
  wisdom that she built a dynasty 
  that could not last without 
  her hand wrapped thick with 
  its strings and reins. Others 
  would say it is the selﬁ shness 
  and recklessness of the Great 
  Houses, each one plotting 
  against the other in a knot of 
  intrigue that could result in no 
  end other than the total crip-
  pling and debasement of the 
  Realm. Either argument has 
  deep-running philosophical 
  implications. My feelings on 
  the matter are manifold.
  Will the Realm be devoured in the absence of the 
  Scarlet Empress? It is certainly possible. The Empress 
  was undeniably the heart of the Blessed Isle and all lands 
  over which it holds dominion. She was, for all intents and 
  purposes, the pattern of all that the Realm currently is. It 
  is from her that all things imperial take their shape and 
  come in and out of existence. Of course, the Empress is 
  the center of her empire, but she is certainly not the only 
  entity who could hold this ofﬁ ce.
  Would the empire change? Certainly. The new 
  Realm would take shape around its new monarch, and 
  many things tailored to the Empress’ whims would fall 
  from being. However, many new things would come to 
  be as well, expressing the shape and form of the new 
  ruler. It is from the Great Houses that such a leader 
  could arise, a bold, new monarch of the Empress’ blood 
  who carries with her a renewing vision that could fill 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  52
  the yawning emptiness left by their mother’s disappear-
  ance. Or one such being could crawl from the pool of 
  bubbling mortality that expands around us, a bastard 
  son or daughter of the Dragon-Blooded, ascending 
  to majesty as the Empress herself did, saving the one 
  and the many from the doom that so many imperial 
  savants foretell. 
  The reality of this? The Great Houses are strong, 
  and the process of infighting is necessary insofar as it 
  weeds out the weak and the unsuitable. Much like ideas 
  fighting for significance in the mind of a wise savant 
  who has given consideration to far too many of them. 
  Many panic and rant about the end merely because their 
  conception of the Realm is threatened by dissenters 
  in Lookshy and other regions of the Scavenger Lands. 
  Perhaps a new Dragon-Blooded Empress, or Emperor, 
  will rise from the common places and seize power. 
  Nonetheless, the nature of the world is cyclical. There 
  is nothing to fear from so natural a thing, though death 
  and change are certainly the sources of many a great 
  man’s darkest nightmares and fears.
  All in all, I am content. I am quite old, and my only 
  concern is the focus of my work. As recent events have 
  revealed new territory in my work, I am sure that, due to 
  the nature of such ominous things, I will continue till the 
  very end, whether the Realm still stands or not.
  HOUSE
  Ah, the matter of house.
  It has been the greatest mercy that my lineage is 
  known to none. Such foresight on the parts of my father, 
  and especially my mother, can not be commended enough. 
  As I have no interest in contesting the wise leadership of 
  my younger half-brother Banoba nor the machinations of 
  the triumvirate of Wisel, Belar and Falen, I bow my head 
  to the clarity of decision on the part of my progenitors.
  Certainly, however, the thought has crossed my mind. 
  What would happen if I, Ragara Bhagwei, were to become 
  a player for the Scarlet Throne? 
  Would I have a rightful claim? Being the eldest son 
  of the heads of two strong houses, as well as the chief 
  administrator of the Blessed Isle’s most elite institution 
  of wisdom and magic, I most deﬁ nitely would. 
  Would I be capable of taking it? This is a more 
  precarious question, but as no less than hundreds of 
  Dragon-Blooded capable of summoning demons from the 
  depths of Malfeas and wielding unimaginable magical 
  powers have called me master at one time or another, 
  owing their power and abilities to me, I feel that a 
  sound backing would be a somewhat simple thing for 
  me to cultivate.
  But that is neither here nor there. Why should I seek a 
  part in so treacherous and wearying a game when my life’s 
  calling is so far from answered? There are many who have 
  power aspirations and have been training and murdering 
  for their standing from the moment they Exalted. Am I 
  so unwise that I would become a part of that?
  THE HEPTAGRAM
  The Blessed Isle’s magical college remains the greatest 
  accomplishment of my long life. If I was to give a name 
  to the center of my pride and esteem, it would most cer-
  tainly be the Heptagram. I ﬁ rmly believe that the staff and 
  students of my school — past, present and future — hold 
  the salvation, destruction and renewal of the Realm in 
  their hands.
  I do not ﬁ nd it vain or daring to say that sorcery, and 
  the ways of hidden lore, are the most powerful forces to 
  be had in Creation. It is because of this fact that so many 
  young Dragon-Blooded have taken up the study of such 
  things. Unfortunately, these students are a pale reﬂ ection 
  of those who attended the Versino — though it is our 
  hope to groom the elite among them into the closest ap-
  proximation of that past excellence.
  Although the vast majority of these students are 
  driven solely by motivations of power, there are also those 
  who understand what magic is for — those who “get it.” 
  The practice allows us to do such things as bind demons, 
  summon elementals and harness the divine elements to 
  hypnotize courtesans, acquire jade or smite enemies. Magic 
  is the instrument of our evolution, the supreme dance of 
  Essence that will unlock all forms that at this time seem 
  beyond us. For it is in the body of the Exalted that Heaven 
  and Creation meet, and it is because of this union within 
  us that all things are within our custodianship. 
  So it to my master’s masters and the Five Immaculate 
  Dragons that I dedicate my work, for the beneﬁ t of all the 
  creatures of Creation, to relieve the suffering of mortals 
  and to actualize the godhood of my own kind.
  MORTALS
  Normal men were once my fascination. For in any 
  matter of anatomy, one ﬁ rst must know the simple, the 
  base, before one aspires to apprehend the complex. From 
  the young lover of the Scarlet Empress to the many who I 
  cured and treated during my many travels, I am indebted 
  to humankind. Though they live short lives and, with 
  few exceptions, are incapable of wielding the Essence of 
  Creation, I bow to the simplicity of humanity, as it is from 
  their stock that the Dragon-Blooded arise.
  The human struggle never ceases to fascinate me, 
  however. In multitudes, they are born, grow, procreate, 
  grow ill and die, so many unnoticed, unrecorded souls run 
  through the cycle like the gossamer swarms of river ﬂ ies 
  that become for merely moments. In my compassion, I once 
  searched after an end to their toil, moving from village 
  to village in an attempt to research, treat and cure their 
  fevers, plagues and poxes. It was a source of some disap-
  pointment for me, as I feel it is my duty to guard over my 
  lessers , for no matter how many I treated and saved, there 
  
  53
  CHAPTER THREE • THE WORLD WE RULE
  were 10 times as many who would die alone in their beds, 
  eaten with boils and simple illnesses that I could not ﬁ nd 
  time to treat. Such is the lot of mortals, though it be my 
  wish that they glean great wisdom from this suffering and 
  ascend to a place of greater fortune amongst the Perfected 
  Hierarchy.
  Regardless, for one who delves so deeply into the mys-
  teries of the life-giving processes and the circumstances of 
  incarnation, it has been many years since I have enjoyed 
  close relations with mortals and have since been unable 
  to draw clear lines of commonality between my self and 
  these less enlightened beings with whom I share Creation. 
  Ah, certainly the servant girl, who many call my mother, 
  tended to my basic needs, but even in the case of this sur-
  rogate parent, I remember little of her nature, although I, 
  at the time, was human as well.
  ANATHEMA
  In the past, unlike most of my siblings and kind, I 
  was not so concerned with the threat of the Anathema, 
  despite the urgings of the Immaculate Order. Though I 
  certainly feared such beings and fully supported the work 
  of the Wyld Hunt, it was never a matter at my back door. 
  It was never an urgent thing by which I felt imminently 
  threatened.
  That has all changed now.
  As I saw the sole copy of The Thousand Veils being 
  hurled into the ocean’s foam, the nature of the Anathema 
  threat became all too immediate for me. Because of a 
  moment’s lack of vigilance, an Anathema demon invaded 
  my sanctuary, snatched the very key to my life’s work and 
  destroyed it before I had a moment to recover my senses. 
  This experience has taught me much about the nature of 
  the Anathema threat, to be sure. 
  However, many endings lead to new beginnings.
  When Righteous Cloud and Cold Bastion recovered 
  the eviscerated body of the Anathema from the rocks of 
  the seawall, I at once recognized the Old Realm inscrip-
  tion on the back of the child’s neck. At the time of the 
  creature’s capture, it was immediately evident to me that 
  this unholy thing had ties to its past, a past that threatened 
  the very existence of the Realm and all that it contained. 
  However, this creature did not quite resemble those I had 
  read about in the Hunt’s accounts. So, I took it upon myself 
  to begin a more thorough investigation. 
  Righteous Cloud and Cold Bastion assisted me in 
  transporting the body to the anatomist’s amphitheater in 
  the western dome of the campus. The demon resembled 
  a human girl, no older than 10 or 11, who’s skin was blu-
  ish white like that of those drowned in cold water. Her 
  body was adorned with pieces of black steel, etched with 
  serpents and the images of predatory beasts. Her head, 
  shaved clean, was adorned with radial circular patterns 
  around the eyes. Aside from her scant clothing, the child 
  carried nothing else. Being very careful to avoid any 
  further damage to the body, the monks spread the child 
  out on the examination stone and prepared to wash it 
  when I noticed a ﬁ lm of bluish-black algae adhered to 
  the Anathema’s boot. 
  I carefully removed the sample and placed it in a 
  porcelain crucible and headed for my private laboratory, 
  leaving the two monks dumfounded as I left without a 
  word. Once I made it to the chamber, I set the sample to 
  ﬂ oat in a bowl of fresh water. Taking up an obsidian scal-
  pel, I made a small incision at the tip of my ﬁ nger, and I 
  watched as a globule of blood formed red in the candlelight. 
  With unbearable anticipation, I dribbled the blood into 
  the water bowl. As the blood plumed in the water, and in 
  accordance with my expectation, the algae began to swell 
  as slow-moving tendrils extended and sucked the red from 
  the water. Leechmoss — an incredibly rare specimen to be 
  sure, as it is only found distantly to the East, in the swamp 
  called the Noss Fens.
  It was then that I requested the assistance of Ledaal 
  Verro, one of the Heptagram’s seven masters who had 
  spent exhaustive efforts compiling First Age treatises on 
  animal and spirit Essence emulation to the end of inducing 
  functional atavism. Although I considered Verro more of a 
  scholastic than a true seeker after the light of wisdom, his 
  essays concerning animal atavism were some of the most 
  fascinating and well-researched of their kind. So, through 
  application of to Verro’s well-proven formulae, one can 
  wrap one’s self in the skin of a slain animal and become 
  that animal, absorbing its soul, senses and memories.
  So it was from the skin of this pale child that I, with 
  the assistance of Ledaal Verro, fashioned the Harrowed 
  Daughter’s Paleskin Cowl, a soft hood made from the skin 
  of a child whose stomach was gorged with human blood 
  at the time of her death. When donning this cowl, which 
  I rarely do in plain sight of the uninformed as its very 
  existence disturbs and frightens those among the living, I 
  can see into the realm of ghosts and dead spirits. It is my 
  belief that this artifact of my own creation will undoubt-
  edly play a key role in future revelations.
  So it has been since the capture of the Anathema’s 
  corpse, a time of fascination, excitement and horror. So, 
  among other horrors, this is what serves in Thorns? Could 
  it be that, as the Dragon-Blooded are the inheritors of 
  the Essence of life, these dark beings are the black mirror 
  of my kind? What are the implications of dark Essence? 
  Is what they wield the same or an altogether different 
  energy yet to be discovered? What is their magic like? 
  Are they afﬂ icted by life as we are afﬂ icted by death? 
  Though ancient records detail the workings of the Un-
  derworld, the existence of these deathknights beg many 
  new questions.
  There is so much to discover, though I have become 
  so old and weary.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  54
  
  55
  CHAPTER FOUR • VOICES NOT OUR OWN
  CHAPTER FOUR
  VOICES NOT 
  OUR OWN
  It is no exaggeration to say that Terrestrial Exalted 
  rule Creation. Though their hold may now be precarious, 
  their roots hold ﬁ rm to the Realm and the lands beyond. 
  As the Dragon-Blooded walk the land, they cultivate 
  structures of power, items of wonder and fables and tales 
  of their struggles and heroism. From these tales, many 
  beings take inspiration and are transformed by the legends 
  of the Five Dragon’s children. It is also common that 
  beings of such power make many enemies. As much as 
  their allies, the Terrestrial Exalted cause amazing events 
  to blossom in the lives of their adversaries as well. What 
  follows are the testimonies and experiences of those who 
  have encountered the Dragon-Blooded narrators, their 
  hearts marked by the lives of these great beings, whether 
  they be mortals, fellow Dragon-Blooded, gods or more 
  mysterious beings.
  MORTALS
  BIMA THE ELDER, FROM A WRITTEN FRAGMENT 
  RECOVERED BY THE RAIDERS OF CARYA KOS
  Today, I was accepted as apprentice by the sage woman 
  of our village. At ﬁ rst, she rejected me, waving her knot-
  ted cane at me as she furrowed her brow, expressing her 
  displeasure with me and my lack of wisdom and conviction. 
  However, I knew she’d use these tricks to test me, so I was 
  relentless in my pursuit. Eventually, she conceded, telling 
  me to travel to my father’s house to gather my things so 
  that I could come and live with her, learning all the while 
  I kept her house and assisted her daughter with her chores 
  and other tasks.
  Her daughter is the most beautiful girl I have ever 
  seen. Her skin is a soft brown, and her body is as supple 
  and free as a doe in the meadow. Like the leaves of the 
  trees during the rainy season, her eyes are green and car-
  ing, knowing little fear or confusion, unlike others of her 
  age. Though I have not yet learned to cast the bones as 
  Rinchen does, I am sure that my fate lies with this forest 
  girl, as I can not imagine my life without her.
  She loves the forest as I do, perhaps more. The other 
  day, she told me that she never wanted to leave this place, 
  and I asked her why, and she would not say. She simply 
  looked at me, over her shoulder, and smiled as if such a 
  reason was unnecessary and absurd. Indeed it was. Seeing her 
  in the forest makes me understand what is to be alive. 
  I love this girl, and one day, we will marry.
  EMERALD ARROW, SON OF RUTANJALI
  Between my mother and father, my mother is the more 
  frightening. Although my father is a god, he is a slow-mov-
  ing spirit with a long and ancient purpose that is not unlike 
  watching the forest grow. He is powerful but predictable, 
  unchanging in his way and purpose. My father is the King 
  of Endless Branches and will always be exactly that.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  56
  My mother, however, is a rash and terrible thing, quick 
  to anger and even faster to slay that which offends her. A 
  spirit in my father’s court once told me that my mother 
  murdered her entire village, so overcome with wrath was 
  she. He told me that she stacked the corpses, wrapped in 
  guts and blood, placing them in a great, red mound at the 
  center of the town. She then called the beasts who fed 
  upon her people as she stood by and smiled. This is why 
  she frightens me.
  But she is also my mother. She taught me the ways 
  of the forest and taught me how to survive. She taught 
  me how to make arrows, wield a bow and track the wild 
  boar through thicket without being gored. She applied 
  poultices to my wounds when I was cut or bitten, and she 
  rescued me from wolves when they came upon me in the 
  glade. She etched glyphs into the earth and taught me 
  their meanings, although I thought I’d never have a use 
  for such things in the forest.
  It was when she sent me off to ﬁ nd my fate that I 
  realized the importance of all she had taught me.
  ISELSI MOAD, AGENT OF THE ALL-SEEING EYE
  If a weasel and a viper were to mate, their progeny 
  would no doubt resemble Cynis Belar Norren in many 
  of the particulars, though I suspect it would not be quite 
  so ruthless as he. He has great potential, that man. His 
  investigative skills are impeccable, his grasp of the ﬁ ner 
  points of accounting excellent. I have seen him interrogate 
  a skilled patrician in the middle of a festival gala while 
  dancing, with nothing more than a glass of wine and his 
  eyes, and his subject never once realized the secrets she 
  was giving up. He is a consummate hunter, and his stalk-
  ing grounds are the courtyards, ballrooms, gardens and 
  counting houses of the Dynasty. Frankly, I’m surprised he 
  hasn’t been recruited into the Eye by now.
  Then again, perhaps he has, and I have simply not 
  been made privy to his membership, though I doubt it. His 
  patriotism is unquestionable, unshakable and unreserved, 
  but it is ﬁ ltered thoroughly through his unwavering loyalty 
  to his house. To his mind, House Cynis is the Realm, and 
  it is his job to reveal this truth to the rest of us. He assumes 
  as well that he has counterparts among the other houses, 
  and he is correct to a certain extent, to be sure. He sees 
  the struggle for power as a sort of winnowing of the Scarlet 
  Empire: The chaff will be shed, weakness purged, and in this 
  crucible of intrigue, a leader will rise to lead the Realm to 
  glory greater than ever known before. It is, in my opinion, 
  an admirable philosophy, if somewhat naïve.
  He is opportunistic. To date, his ofﬁ cial duties reside 
  solely within the purview of the holdings of House Cynis, 
  but given an opportunity to gather intelligence outside of 
  his normal assignment, provided that opportunity presents 
  no undue risk, he will readily, even eagerly, pursue it. He 
  has been instrumental in a number of minor coups on 
  House Cynis’ competitors that have netted several small 
  victories in matters of inﬂ uence. It is my belief that his 
  elders lean toward expanding his assignment in the near 
  future to external intelligence, though I have little hard 
  evidence to support this analysis. Call it a hunch, but I 
  suspect he was put in line for a promotion after the Wind-
  ward League affair.
  I’m quite certain he keeps several sets of books. One, 
  obviously, he keeps for his superiors — the fruits of his la-
  bor, duly submitted. The second, which I have seen, hold a 
  number of minor secrets, typically scandalous and of mixed 
  value in the court of inﬂ uence. A personal cache, you might 
  say. One might surmise that this cache is the one that his 
  personal overseers are intended to ﬁ nd. The third I have 
  not seen, and cannot ﬁ nd, much to my own consternation, 
  but I know that it exists. The third, I submit, contains the 
  choicest secrets that he has harvested, some even from his 
  own kin, and that he harbors against some unforeseen event 
  in the future or toward some end I have not yet deduced.
  If he has a great failing, it is in the conﬂ uence of his 
  extraordinary self-conﬁ dence and a peculiar lack of dis-
  cretion in certain matters. He is absolutely ravenous for 
  intelligence. He is constantly gathering, weighing, calcu-
  lating. He has so far made careful use of the intelligence 
  he acquires, but with each victory, his conﬁ dence grows, 
  and his choice of opponents becomes more dangerous. 
  Soon, I suspect, he will attempt a truly dangerous gambit 
  against a foe far more formidable than he. If he does, I 
  expect he will be in for a rude awakening. If he survives 
  and learns the lesson of his failure, he will become all the 
  more potent a factor. If somehow he manages to triumph, 
  he most certainly should be considered for the Eye. If 
  he is not brought into the fold, he should certainly be 
  eliminated lest we risk fostering our own demise. It is not 
  inconceivable that, should he survive his ascension, his 
  talents and the resources of his house could form the basis 
  of an independent bureau in opposition to our own.
  SEREN, SLAVE OF HOUSE CYNIS
  I came to this household 10 months ago, just after 
  Calibration. I was summoned to the Master’s bedchamber 
  three weeks after my arrival. There were clothes laid upon 
  the dressing table and combs and perfumes. I was com-
  manded to dress, and I did so. Under the Master’s direction, 
  I combed and pinned my hair and put on perfumes and 
  kohl. He assisted me, as I was unable to heed his directions 
  to his satisfaction. He did not strike me, and for that, I 
  was most grateful. 
  I went then to the bed, as I had expected he had busi-
  ness for me there, but my lord bade me sit upon a grand 
  divan, the like of which one such as I has never laid upon. 
  I did so, of course, just as he asked, and he came to me 
  there and kissed my knees and my feet. He washed my feet 
  with precious oils. When he was through, he took a lyre 
  from the cabinet across the room and sat upon the carpet 
  at the foot of the divan. He played and sang the sweetest 
  
  57
  CHAPTER FOUR • VOICES NOT OUR OWN
  songs in tongues I did not know, but one word repeated 
  again and again in all of them: Myrana.
  I would not dare to speculate on who it was he sang of, 
  but I can only guess she was his love — a lost love, perhaps? 
  No, I dared not speak of it with the other servants. I feared 
  for my life should any of them make mention of it to the 
  Master. He must have loved her terribly for he… he wept, 
  my lord. As he sang. And he sang so wonderfully.
  He did not take me into his bed for a fortnight, and 
  when he did, he drank a great deal of wine before. He 
  was most gentle, my lord. I have acted before as a con-
  cubine, for other masters, and none before have been so 
  generous, so kind. He does not simply take his pleasures, 
  I mean. Certainly he does, but he visits those pleasures 
  upon me as well. He is kind and well skilled in the arts of 
  love-making. He is patient. Since that ﬁ rst time, I have 
  been summoned to his chamber three or four nights each 
  week, but for when he is away traveling. Each time, there 
  are new clothes, precious perfumes and oils. Each time, 
  he sings to me or reads poetry before lifting or leading me 
  from the divan to the bed. I do as I am bid happily, only 
  I do not speak. This is his rule. I must never speak a word 
  in his hearing, and I have not. He brings me gifts, but I 
  may not remove them from his chamber. He keeps them 
  there for me, safe from the jealous eyes of the other slaves 
  and servants, in a wardrobe he has set aside.
  I do not sleep in his chamber. Should I fall asleep after 
  he has ﬁ nished with me, he wakes me, bids me undress 
  and return to the servants’ chambers. The cook and the 
  common-ﬂ oor maids whisper about me and cast looks, 
  but they do nothing in my hearing. Certainly, they know 
  what my lord is about with me, but if they suspect the 
  particulars, none have made mention of it.
  Please, my lord, I beg you. Do not speak of this to 
  anyone. I am bound to tell you, this I know, but please! No, 
  if you know who this Myrana is, do not tell me. I would 
  not know. The Master is a good man, a generous and just 
  man. I would not have this harm him. He has been kind 
  to me, and if I can ease his heart in her absence, I am 
  grateful to do it.
  JUNIPER CRANE OF RUBYLAK, SLAVE TRADER
  Yes? Yes. I have many dealings with House Cynis. Yes, 
  I am their principle supplier here in the East. We provide 
  the highest quality Haltan stock to be found. Hardy, strong. 
  Take them south, and I assure you, they can work twice 
  as long as any slave raised on the Isle. They are excellent 
  kennel masters. With whom? Sell to the Fair Ones! By the 
  Five Dragons, no! Of course not! That is strictly illegal. 
  Why? Who sent you? Cynis Norren?! I’ve done nothing 
  wrong. Please. I swear it. I gave that up the last time! By 
  the pillars of Heaven, don’t kill me. I have ﬁ ve daughters 
  and three sons. I have a family to support! I beg you, please. 
  I have heard things. I have not told him everything, it’s 
  true, but I will! Just let me live in peace!
  JERRO HALLAH, MERCENARY LIEUTENANT, TO 
  LEDAAL KES, ON NAGEZZER
  Sesus Nagezzer? You mean the Slug. Ha! Are you 
  serious? What would you want to know of that limping 
  ball of pudding and wine? 
  A hero? Please. Personally, I can’t understand why 
  so many tolerate his ongoing existence. My captain, for 
  one, thinks that the Slug is the salvation of the Blessed 
  Isle. Of course, this be his opinion because Sesus Warru, 
  brave as he may be, is a drunken mess of a man who can 
  barely keep his head on most of the time.
  Met him? Yeah, I’ve met the Slug. It was about a year 
  ago, after we returned from a scrap in the South, that we 
  were given audience at his so-called Throne of Roses. What 
  a den of whores! I mean, I was expecting something like a 
  palace, lots of statues of important people and all sorts of 
  plunder from past conquests and stuff. That, my friend, is 
  not what I saw. What I saw were whores and men so deep 
  in their cups that it would have taken an act of sorcery to 
  sober the place up. I mean, anything you could imagine 
  was happening in that orgy hall though you couldn’t see 
  more than 10 paces because of all the smoke.
  And who would you guess would be at the very center 
  of this perversity? Of course, it was Sesus “The Slug” Nagez-
  zer ﬂ oating atop a heap of pillows while these weird twins 
  oiled his corpulence and ﬁ lled his pipe with hash. So wise 
  was he that he couldn’t even speak a word, just muttering 
  about to the people around him. Some hero!
  SPINDA AND ECHO, THE SLUG’S TWINS
  Nagezzer is a man simultaneously deserving of both 
  respect and pity. Although he is trapped within the body 
  of a fat cripple who feeds daily and nightly on sweetcakes 
  and opium, for those who know this man, there are few 
  wiser, stronger and more devoted to their own vision, with 
  convictions as unwavering as that great mountain that lies 
  at the center of Creation. We, however, know him very 
  well. For this reason, he is our master, lover and father.
  His body is a disguise, not a prison. We have seen 
  many men and women who thought Nagezzer their lesser 
  perish because they thought he was too high, stupid or fat 
  to follow their simple, selﬁ sh plots and schemes. Young 
  toughs of martial houses preen about like moronic birds 
  not knowing that who they mock so surely holds their 
  short lives in his hands. It is a shame, we think, that so 
  many of them pass from this world without knowing that 
  it was our Nagezzer, the “Slug”, who has sent them to the 
  reward they so deserve.
  And love? We know no love but that which Nagezzer 
  gives us. Some look upon us as his possessions, his unthink-
  ing servants, his whores. This is how Peleps Grondu thought 
  of us, how he treated us, and that is why we hated him, 
  and that is why we killed his children. I suspect we were 
  given to the Nagezzer as some sort of a trick, expecting 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  58
  such a thick and decadent man to be inconsiderate and 
  rude. However, Nagezzer treated us as true and desired 
  lovers, though he admits to not understand the truth of 
  “we.” He does not need to, we feel it.
  GULL THE TAILOR
  I have been with my lady for two years now. We spend 
  much of our time aboard ship, chasing these malcontents 
  over the sea. I have learned to shop quickly and to work in 
  very small, oft-tipping quarters — an education unlooked 
  for and not entirely welcome. But duty is not what we ask 
  for. It is what is given to us. So, I try to make the best of 
  it. I might ask for a triﬂ e more duty, though. By the ﬁ ve 
  poles, I have precious little opportunity to make use of 
  my skills out here. The General is not the sort of master 
  I was accustomed to servicing in the past. We make port 
  in a place civilized enough to require proper dress per-
  haps once a season, and even then, it’s a miracle if I can 
  convince her to peel off that wretched armor of hers and 
  wear something ﬂ attering. To make matters worse, fashion 
  here in the Southeast is almost nonexistent. Everything 
  is a sarong or a wrap or some folded loincloth without 
  even the slightest opportunity for style. I would beg her 
  at the price of my life if she would permit me to make her 
  a kimono just once!
  Oh, if this is to be my lot, I can at least take some 
  solace in the fact that it is a pleasure to dress her when 
  I do get the opportunity. She has a grace of which she is 
  entirely unaware, and her ﬁ gure is as close to perfect as I 
  have ever seen. Some women who take up arms wind up 
  shaped more like their swords than the scabbards they keep 
  them in — all lines and hard angles. Not the General. No, 
  she sweeps and curves and swells. Silk hangs on her like 
  a waterfall when I can get her to wear it. Her brown skin 
  might be a bit difﬁ cult to accommodate farther north, 
  but down here, there is precious little that doesn’t look 
  beautiful against her ﬂ esh. But for all that, I would still 
  rather be dressing her for dinners and concerts and read-
  ings among her kin on the Blessed Isle. A friend of mine 
  in Pangu wrote with a morsel of hope that the time of my 
  exile is near ﬁ nished. Rumor has it that Tepet Ejava is to 
  be called back to the Imperial City. Oh, to be back in the 
  heart of Creation again. I do hope it’s true. I’ve been away 
  for so long I’m afraid they may have forgotten me.
  ROOTED ALDER, VILLAGE ELDER OF THE 
  VILLAGE OF SHALE, ON BHAGWEI
  I am an old man. Here in Shale, our town, I am an 
  elder of my people, and we are prosperous and blessed. 
  I, however, am old enough to recall a time when this 
  was not so.
  It was almost 50 years ago, when I was a small boy. 
  A terrible pox fell upon Shale. We had had a prosperous 
  harvest that year, and I had helped my father stack the 
  apples and pumpkins high on out cart and in the cellar as 
  food for the long winter. I had just ﬁ nished up in the barn 
  when I heard my father crying through the window of our 
  cottage. I ran to ﬁ nd see what had caused my father to weep, 
  as he was a hard man and not given to such crying.
  When I opened the wooden door to our stone home, 
  I found my father by my parent’s bed and my sister and 
  mother were laying in it. On their faces were splotches 
  of brown, and they did not look well. My father and I 
  had only been gone since the morning, and it was too 
  much to think that this could have befallen our family 
  in a single day.
  It was later that evening that we found that all of the 
  women of the village had suffered this same blight. My father 
  called a meeting, and all of the menfolk came to the center 
  of town, and we sat around the ﬁ re pit and discussed what 
  had come to Shale. It was decided that we would send a 
  man to Cherak to ﬁ nd a doctor who could help.
  By dawn, three women had died, and many were close 
  to dying. We were without hope.
  Then, through the cold morning air, a man on horse-
  back came over the hill to the west of Shale. He was a tall 
  man, plain of face but much like a king, with eyes that 
  held no fear of anything they saw. When he entered our 
  town, he climbed off his horse, rubbed its ears and then 
  turned to face our gathering with a warm and comforting 
  smile. And for a moment, we felt as if this terrible plague 
  had never come to our village. My father, pale and full 
  of sadness, looked upon the stranger and told him of our 
  horror, of the disease that would surely take our wives, 
  mothers and daughters before the next morning. 
  The stranger placed his hand upon my fathers shoulder 
  and told him not to despair, that he would save our village 
  and that no more pain would come to us. My father looked 
  angry at ﬁ rst, but having no other choice, stepped aside as 
  the stranger moved toward our home. My father ran after 
  him, and I did as well. 
  When we entered our cottage, the stranger had re-
  moved the blankets from my mother and sister. Warming 
  his hands before he touched their skin, the stranger felt 
  each of their heads for fever as he spoke softly to comfort 
  them. My father and I looked on in wonder at this being 
  who showed such compassion to those he had never met. 
  However, it was with amazement that we witnessed what 
  came next.
  While singing softly, the strangers hands began to glow as 
  wonderful symbols of light appeared upon my mother’s body. 
  Each moved like a leaf falling to the ground, and one by one, 
  the boils disappeared, and her pallor vanished. My sister was 
  next, and in moments, both stood well and smiling. 
  One by one, this saint from another land healed each 
  and every one of our women. After Abros’ daughter was 
  healed, the very last, the stranger called to his horse, spoke 
  a blessing we did not understand and rode off beyond the 
  hills. A million prayers to the Five Immaculate Dragons 
  
  59
  CHAPTER FOUR • VOICES NOT OUR OWN
  for sending into our midst the most benevolent and com-
  passionate of their children.
  OTHER DRAGON-BLOODED
  SUNDRAYA, SON OF RUTANJALI
  My mother is deeply devoted to the forest and my 
  father, the King of Endless Branches. My brothers, Emer-
  ald Arrow and Bima, will surely return to the forest one 
  day and live out their half-god lives among the trees and 
  birds. My father is eternal, and to say much else of him is 
  presumptuous and potentially a lie for my own comfort.
  My mother, however, does not belong in the forest. 
  I traveled far to the west, and now, I know what we are. I 
  have learned that there is an Island called the Blessed Isle, 
  the Realm by others, and it is a place that is ruled by our 
  kind. She does not need to be the bride of the Wood King 
  to be a goddess. For on this island, she would be revered 
  and worshiped by the common man for the Essence that 
  she commands.
  My mother once told me that I reminded her of her 
  father, though she claimed never to have met him. She 
  told me that he savaged her mother and left her mad on 
  the banks of a stream in the woods. Though I do not see 
  myself as this sort of man, I can relate to this magnitude 
  of passion. Sometimes, I feel such passion will burn me 
  and leave me mad as well. That is why it is good that 
  my mother sent me West and why I have now, I believe, 
  discovered the place of my ancestors.
  I wish to ﬁ nd my grandfather and learn from him the 
  ways of our people. If I do not ﬁ nd him, I will be no worse 
  off. Besides, wandering the vast reaches of Creation is a 
  far better way to spend one’s days than talking to trees and 
  sitting on your hands in the woods.
  CYNIS WISEL MYRANA, 
  TALONLORD OF THE THIRD LEGION
  Norren? He’s my cousin. Of course I know him. Since 
  childhood, yes. We are of an age, or nearly so. Why are you 
  asking me these things? Yes, I know of his feelings for me. No, 
  I do not share them. Why not? Because I do not. There is no 
  why. We played as children play. Must there be more? We 
  were close as children near in age and proximity are close. 
  As we grew older, things changed, as they do. He went to 
  the Academy, while I attended the House of Bells. He is 
  in our house’s service now, verifying revenue and rooting 
  out embezzlers. I have taken ofﬁ ce in the legion. His is a 
  useful occupation, certainly. Blessed little glory, but there 
  you have it. Not all of us are destined for such things, after 
  all. That’s right. It was little surprise to anyone, really. As a 
  child, he wasn’t precisely extraordinary. He wasn’t terribly 
  interested in achieving anything. He was a quiet boy, always 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  60
  watching things. He was not a remarkable student, either. 
  We shared tutors occasionally. There was precious little he 
  pursued with any great fervor except, perhaps, spending 
  time with me. He had a knack with mathematics, as I recall. 
  And he helped me in economics, etiquette and language, 
  but that was the extent of his scholarly talents. He was a 
  passing fair musician.
  At the moment, I have no intention of marrying 
  anyone, let alone him. I am an ofﬁ cer of the legions. My 
  father receives numerous invitations to my betrothal ev-
  ery season. I’m quite certain I will have ample prospects 
  from which to choose when the time is right. If Norren 
  is serious about his wish to marry me, he can prove his 
  case just as any other suitor would. Right now? Ha! No. 
  He is a terrier hunting rats in his grandmother’s garden. 
  He will have to rise high indeed before I or my father 
  will seriously consider such a match. If he does so before 
  I choose a husband, then certainly I would entertain the 
  offer. Until then, to think of it is folly.
  Love? In what way does love come into it? Love is for 
  poets and peasants. Norren is a romantic. I am a realist. 
  Marriage is an alliance like any other and must be made 
  with the proper consideration for the beneﬁ ts to be had 
  by both parties. It is our duty to marry in such a way as 
  to further the goals of our house. If marriage within the 
  house is deemed the most advantageous course, then it 
  will be so. If not, woe to he who dares thwart it. I will not 
  disgrace my blood and future progeny for so petty a thing 
  as love. I am far above such ridiculous notions.
  AUTUMN SPIRAL
  There are many who mock me for taking on a hedonist 
  as my primary student and charge. Why take a disciple who 
  refuses to follow the most basic tenets concerning sexual 
  misconduct, diet and the consumption of mind-affecting 
  drugs? Why aid a man so fat that he becomes short of breath 
  after a single ﬂ ight of stairs to learn the techniques of the 
  sacred Wood Dragon Style?
  Perhaps it is because this man understands the soul of 
  Sextes Jylis far better than I ever will. Maybe it is because Sesus 
  Nagezzer actually does what He Who Hath Strewn Much Grass 
  has prescribed in every letter of his perfect teachings.
  Nagezzer tends to the Realm like no other man I 
  know. He is no king who sits upon a throne, barking 
  edicts and mandates at his court. Nor is he a cataphract 
  who sits upon a horse while the footmen around him 
  charge to their deaths. No, Nagezzer is like a brilliant 
  artisan, whose face is rarely seen or associated with his 
  work, but whose inﬂ uence can been seen in everything 
  he has touched. He does the work himself, albeit with 
  the assistance of his friends and their men. Nagezzer 
  considers himself inseparable from the Realm. I hope 
  there never comes a day when the Realm abandons him, 
  as abandoning his support of the Scarlet Throne would 
  never occur to him.
  Yes. Nagezzer is my friend and student. But in matters 
  of the Immaculate Philosophy, it his actions that give heart 
  to the words that I teach.
  TEPET ARADA
  My granddaughter suffers from an extreme lack of self-
  doubt. Ejava is entirely too sure of herself for anyone’s good. 
  She is stubborn, willful and irreverent. She also happens to 
  be a damn ﬁ ne commander. The problem is, she hasn’t got 
  the sense for politics it takes to be a successful general.
  Oh, I don’t mean winning battles and killing your 
  enemies. There hasn’t been her like in those areas in all 
  my years, and that’s a fact. I’m talking about success off the 
  battleﬁ eld, in the Realm and among the Great Houses. It 
  takes a different hand to manage those ﬁ ghts. A different 
  mind. And I’m not saying she’s dim. Not at all. Takes brains 
  a-plenty to do what she’s done with the sad-sack scraps of 
  a legion she has to work with. But the Blessed Isle is an 
  entirely different sort of battleground, one that she’s seen 
  precious little of in her years.
  We talk about it, on the rare occasions when we’re 
  on the same landmass together. Usually, it’s the last thing 
  we talk about — I tell her to sit tight and let the sea carry 
  her to safer shores, and she goes off on her anti-passivity 
  lecture. I call her an insolent upstart bitch, she lays into 
  me with “tired old dog who gave away his own teeth.” 
  Then, of course, there’s stomping and spitting, and we go 
  back to wherever it was we came from.
  The thing is, I’ve been where she is. I came to it 
  later in life than she did, and so, I could afford to stick 
  my ﬁ nger in the eyes of the mewling bastards and their 
  barbed tongues and subtle knives. Ejava’s got more than 
  half her life ahead of her, and that’s a long time to be a 
  pariah among your own people. But she just can’t stand 
  to be in the traces, harnessed to the cart of house politics. 
  She can’t help but kick.
  The last time we talked, I got the feeling she’d come 
  to some sort of decision. Since then, I’ve started to think I 
  might know what sort of decision it was, too. The scariest 
  thing about it is that I think she just might be able to pull 
  it off — the battle, anyways. I said she’s a damn ﬁ ne com-
  mander, but that really doesn’t do her justice. I’m a fucking 
  genius in the realm of fast-attack tactics and execution. 
  I’m better at it than she is, in fact, but only just. In every 
  other arena, she out-shoots my abilities by a bow shot, easy. 
  Same is true for just about any other general you can name. 
  They might best her in one or two areas, but there’s no 
  one better than Tepet Ejava when it comes to the whole 
  gamut of war. But I’m getting off the subject…
  She could do it. I think she could. She’s made those 
  Red-Piss boys and her mercenaries into a force to match 
  her skills as a leader. Those are some of the best soldiers 
  I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few. If she did decide to do 
  what I think she’s considering, the ﬁ ghting would be the 
  easy part. It’s what comes after that worries me.
  
  61
  CHAPTER FOUR • VOICES NOT OUR OWN
  Then again, the Empress started life as a soldier, too. 
  Ejava’s always been full of surprises. Maybe she’s got the 
  grandmother of them all up her sleeve right now.
  MNEMON SELAKA
  The Roseblack? That woman is threat to the Realm, 
  her house and the world. Why? Why, a blind man could 
  see it a league away. She has not the smallest inkling of 
  where her place is. She’s spent far too long out in the 
  Threshold. She’s forgotten what it is to be a proper citizen 
  of the Realm. No surprise really, given her bloodline. 
  Where has the great Tepet Arada gone but into hermit-
  age (as they call it) to thumb his nose at the empire 
  that lifted him to high station and draped him in honor 
  and glory all the days of his life? Tepet Ejava pays only 
  the most perfunctory lip service to the wishes of her 
  reputable elders. My cousin Mnemon Ruel, an auditor 
  with the August and Generous Bureau of Provisioners 
  and Cartwrights, went south last spring to review the 
  General’s most recent requisitions for validity. When she 
  came back, she said the Roseblack dined with her only 
  once the entire time she was there and was dismissive 
  to the point of contemptuousness throughout the meal. 
  Preposterous! These are not the qualities one expects 
  from a general of the legions. Especially one at the head 
  of the Vermilion Legion.
  And that’s another thing — it wouldn’t be nearly so 
  bad if she were at the helm of a legion of loyal soldiers 
  who could be trusted to thwart any mutinies she cooked 
  up in her bitter, Tepet mind. But no, she stands at the 
  head of a vicious assemblage of cutthroats, mercenaries 
  and thieves. Reprobates and traitors in the making, and 
  every single one of them is loyal only to her. On top of 
  that, she’s made them some of the most effective and 
  deadly cutthroats, mercenaries and thieves this side of 
  Bluehaven itself. That, I’m not ashamed to say, fright-
  ens me terribly. That she, a woman who clearly has no 
  respect for the proper authorities of the Realm, nor even 
  her own kin, has at her disposal a full legion of brutal, 
  heavily armed men of questionable conscience and 
  suspect loyalties is an invitation to rebellion. Certainly, 
  were she to attempt anything of the sort, she would be 
  immediately put down, but she could certainly cause a 
  great deal of chaos at a time when the Realm least needs 
  additional complications.
  Really, the woman is just far too proud for anyone’s 
  good. She must be made to bend the knee, or be broken, 
  for the good of the Realm. One would think the debacle 
  in the North would have taught her a lesson, but I begin 
  to think she is incapable of learning the least measure of 
  humility. The test of that will come soon, I think. I’ve heard 
  that she’s to be called back to the Isle soon to answer for 
  her actions. We shall see then if the Roseblack is indeed 
  a good and faithful servant of the Realm or if she lives up 
  to her name as a blight upon the bloom of empire.
  OAKTHORN
  In all my years as tutor and physician in service to the 
  Dynasty, there have been no other children as astute and 
  perceptive as your son Bhagwei. That is to say, I have met 
  no father more blessed than yourself, Lord Ragara. 
  The boy demonstrates an acute concern for the well-
  being of life. When I say concern, I do not mean that 
  he cares for it or studies it as some sort of philosophical 
  abstraction. It appears as if the boy has some strange con-
  nection to the currents of living Essence that connect all 
  things, as if he can see the lines of Essence though he has 
  not, and may never, Exalt. 
  This is both a blessing and a curse. For it seems that 
  Bhagwei experiences a constant and irrational anxiety aris-
  ing from this connection. He feels, in his own words, that 
  he must tend to the imperfections of this pattern and make 
  them well for the sake of all beings. Surely this could be seen 
  as base and childish arrogance as other boys his age make 
  megalomaniacal boasts about being generals or emperors. 
  However, your son seems willing to do the work.
  Last evening, I found him, your boy of 11 years, reading 
  from the classic Of Blood & Marrow, taking copious notes 
  all the while. My Lord, the book in question is written 
  in three different languages, large sections of which are 
  written in the script of the First Age.
  I have never taught your boy Old Realm.
  I recommend that you spare no expense on the boy’s 
  education. I am quite sure, whether he Exalts or not, that 
  he will make you proud, placing honor after honor upon 
  the House of Ragara. 
  CYNIS FALEN ON BHAGWEI
  Albeit unfounded, I am concerned about our brother 
  Ragara Bhagwei. Though mother’s chamberlain bid me not 
  speak of it, just as I have bound you both to secrecy, I feel 
  that there are possibilities that cannot be left in silence.
  It has always been my mind, since I was very small, that 
  Bhagwei was barely a creature of the Realm. He does not 
  engage in politics, he does not visit court, and he expresses 
  no claim to the leadership of House Ragara, though he is 
  its eldest son. His wisdom, though penetrating and clear, 
  is the sort of scholars, not kings, and he seems content 
  to mull about in his own head while the world of power 
  moves around him.
  Nonetheless, sisters, he is a looming threat and will 
  remain so. Though he favors our house as he does his 
  own, he is careful to express it only in action rather than 
  anything of an ofﬁ cial nature for fear of being pulled into 
  a position of responsibility. I am not afraid that he would 
  play for our administration of House Cynis. I am afraid that 
  he could, if so moved, make our position irrelevant if he 
  were to present himself in grand enough fashion.
  But think of it, he is the son of Ragara and Cynis, his 
  claim to the throne would exceed all but those made by 
  the Empress’ children themselves. Surely even Mnemon 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  62
  would fear the coming of a sorcerer, though only slightly 
  her senior, that possessed the secrets that Bhagwei, Lord 
  of the Heptagram, would hold.
  RAGARA BANOBA ON BHAGWEI
  Save for Heral, there is no man in Creation who is 
  closer to my heart than my brother. His mind is like no 
  other I have encountered; at once a perfectly still and 
  unwavering pillar and, simultaneously, a darting ﬂ ight 
  of raptors, far-reaching and inescapable. I remember on 
  one occasion when Heral and I had called our council to 
  chambers in order to decide the allocation of resources 
  for 11 distant satrapy holdings of House Ragara. This 
  was something I thought impossible at the time, and the 
  entirety of my council felt so as well. 
  Along comes my brother, an old man even then. He 
  was eating a peach at the time, rivulets of juice dripping 
  from his chin and moustache. Doddering and humble, 
  he made his way to the planning table and casually 
  greeted the satraps and heads of lines that surrounded 
  him as his eyes darted over the piles of charts and figures, 
  even being so bold as to seize personal records from 
  the hands of those still reading over them. He turned 
  to me, smiled like a madman and then took my chair, 
  scribbling in a frenzy while talking to himself. After 
  no more than a quarter of an hour, Bhagwei sighed and 
  handed me the culmination of his dabbling. A major 
  crisis of the Realm’s economy had been resolved in less 
  than a half an hour by a doddering old man with peach 
  juice on his face.
  My brother is a deeply compassionate being with 
  an undying love for all life and life in and of itself. He is 
  considerate, sensitive, patient and wise. For this reason, 
  Ragara Bhagwei should never rule the Realm.
  ABYSSAL EXALTED
  SHOAT OF THE MIRE’S LETTER TO THE 
  DOWAGER OF THE IRREVERENT VULGATE IN 
  UNRENT VEILS
  As your most loyal servant, I beckon you, my liege, 
  called Untamed Kethet of the Swarm, to hear tell of what 
  I have discovered.
  It had been a fortnight since I departed from the Noss 
  Fens, and I arrived in Sijan at twilight, taking refuge in 
  the crypt of Marius Widowmaker of the First Age. His 
  sepulcher had been well scavenged and his sarcophagus 
  was bare. I took my rest and recovered my Essence before 
  making my way to the necropolis proper.
  The Thousand Veils was removed by an emissary of the 
  Dragon-Blooded. A man called Seragul Wince, human 
  but canny enough to convince the Sijanese librarians 
  that they should sell him the book. He simply stated that 
  
  63
  CHAPTER FOUR • VOICES NOT OUR OWN
  Ragara Bhagwei of the Heptagram wished to have the 
  book and would pay whatever was necessary. He traveled 
  with an envoy of Dragon-Blooded monks, and I did not 
  wish to test their martial capabilities. I stowed away on 
  their ship that evening, wrapping my anima around myself 
  as I was sealed in their cargo hold. 
  By the time we made landfall, my Essence was 
  dangerously low, too low to ﬁ ght, but just enough left to 
  achieve my objective.
  Tomorrow morning, we will arrive on the shores of 
  this Heptagram, and I will have the book in my possession. 
  This is my ﬁ nal report. In one month’s time, The Thousand 
  Veils shall be cast into the Well of Udr never to trouble 
  you again. I, the Shoat of the Mire, swear this.
  SPIRITS
  BRAMBLEWRATH ON RUTANJALI
  I speak on behalf of my lord’s court when I say that 
  Rutanjali is dearly loved. Though few of us understand her, 
  we would protect her, unquestioningly, with or without 
  our king’s command. 
  There have been times when even the gods of the 
  forest have forgotten the balance when Rutanjali has not. 
  She is a child of the forest and always will be, though I 
  do not think her place is here for long.
  It does not take a god to see that she is alone. Even 
  while surrounded by a teeming number of creatures 
  who all consider her their queen, she walks without 
  companionship in the forest. Yes, there are any num-
  ber of wondrous beings who live within these glades 
  and thickets. Everywhere, there are birds and beasts 
  of every color and shape. But all are mere novelty to 
  Rutanjali, who I think, longs for the companionship 
  of her own kind.
  Her sons, Half-Spirits themselves, were her true 
  companionship; each one was a facet of what she truly 
  wants. Bima is her past, named for the lover who died 
  when the raiders from the west brought her village low. 
  Emerald Arrow is the joy of her present, for Rutanjali 
  feels most alive when she is dashing through the green 
  and shooing arrows after darting prey. Sundraya, though 
  he is quick to anger and cold in his affections, I feel is her 
  future. It is only Sundraya who bears his mother’s gifts, 
  as lean and as beautiful as the queen herself.
  Although it shall break the heart of my dear king, I 
  do not think it long before Rutanjali wanders after her 
  brood. On the day they left, the Wood King and Rutanjali 
  stood on the mound at the edge of the wood and watched 
  as they left. When the three boys disappeared into the 
  distance, the King turned and left, untouched by the 
  departure of his three sons. Rutanjali, however, stood 
  and stared off into the distance. It was not until the next 
  dawn that she turned to walk away. The ground where 
  she stood was made mud by the tears she cried, so many 
  they were and for so long she cried them.
  No. Though Rutanjali be a forest child, I think her 
  destiny lies far, far from this place.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  64
  
  65
  CHAPTER FIVE • RECORDS OF THE BEFORE
  CHAPTER FIVE
  RECORDS OF 
  THE BEFORE
  Though the visions of the Solar Exalted convey a 
  personally relevant glimpse of a world they once ruled, it 
  is the extensive endeavors of the Shogunate period scribes 
  and savants that facilitate a knowledge of the past for the 
  Terrestrial Exalted. This pre-Contagion Shogunate period 
  is widely held to be the golden era of Dragon-Blooded his-
  tory. In these annals, meticulously recorded fragments of 
  the days when Terrestrial Exalted daimyos clashed upon 
  the ﬁ eld of battle exist right alongside handwritten instruc-
  tions concerning the special method a mortal craftsman 
  used to weave baskets from the reeds found near the edge 
  of the Meander River. What follows is a selection of these 
  records provided so that your Dragon-Blooded characters 
  and stories can include pieces of what once was.
  AN ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF POPLAR REEF
  Some damned fool had improperly calibrated the 
  surge inhibitors on the vitality cannon. One by one, the 
  lines of the Gilt Tiger Confederates swelled and burst, 
  their ﬂ esh unable to contain the massive inﬂ ux of Es-
  sence. The battleﬁ eld instantly became a bog of blood and 
  bone and ﬂ esh. Hode cursed the technicians for dogs and 
  swore vengeance on them. The Rose saw her opportunity 
  and surged. Gossamer marauders ﬂ ooded the gap gliding 
  across the gore as if it were a carpet of silk over a stone 
  ﬂ oor. They were four ranks deep in the middle of our 
  formation before they actually met any resistance. The 
  Tiger Confederates, what was left of them, had routed in 
  the face of a full-on Fair Folk charge and left a corridor 
  60 yards wide straight through to our rear. From where I 
  was on the ridge, it looked like we’d manage to lose the 
  war before the battle even started. Keelhind and her twin 
  brothers saved us the ignominy of defeat, though. The 
  three warstriders met the charge with a wall of scorching 
  Essence, and the scent of cooked dream-ﬂ esh rose in a 
  column of blue-white smoke. A roar went up from the 
  men to either side of the now-ﬂ anked host of the Rose. 
  The appearance of the striders had shaken them out of 
  their paralysis. Their commanders ﬁ nished the job. The 
  order was given and each wing of the formation turned 
  in on the other. They collapsed on the overextended 
  Fair Folk and cut deep into their ﬂ anks. The corpse-bog 
  was the only thing that saved the enemy column from 
  complete decimation. Our men just couldn’t get through 
  it to kill them before they’d ﬂ ed back the way they came. 
  Even so, they left three out of ﬁ ve on the ﬁ eld dead or 
  dying. Another cheer rose from the men as the last of 
  the Rose’s column died or departed, but the howl of the 
  Sparrow sky-skiffs ﬂ ying over reminded us that the day 
  was just beginning. As they sped across the morning sky 
  trailing streamers of glittering Essence, something came 
  toward us through the forest. Something very, very big. 
  It was going to be a long day, and many more would die 
  before the day was through.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  66
  NOTES ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF LIFE
  From the patrician textbook Wonders of the Lost Age,
  excerpted from the limited edition including commentary for 
  Heptagram students.
  During the First Age, the Anathema created many 
  kinds of life by abusing Essence to construct aberrations 
  — beings that had parts of various different animals com-
  bined together in them. These terrible creatures were often 
  able to breed true, and many of the terrible beasts that are 
  scourges of the Threshold in the Second Age are a result 
  of these terrible experiments. From the eight-tailed mole 
  hounds to the simhata lion-horses, these ﬁ erce beasts blight 
  Creation to this day.
  Obviously, this is laying a great deal that came afterward 
  at the feet of the Anathema. It is certain that the Shogunate 
  conducted many experiments in the creation of life, some suc-
  cessful, especially in the early period after the destruction of 
  the Solar Deliberative, but the Shogunate-era Dragon-Blooded 
  never proved the equal of the Anathema in the modiﬁ cation 
  of living things to suit their wills.
  Clearly, the destruction of Solar-created life was a major 
  priority for the early Shogunate, but it had nothing to do with 
  the immoral nature of creating life (though such artiﬁ cial life is 
  currently taught to be offensive to the Immaculate Order).
  The problem, which led to many purges, was that it quickly 
  became evident under close scrutiny that it was not only the 
  mechanical wonders of the Solars that were so dangerous. 
  Many of their prodigies were found to possess programming 
  on a fundamental level that rendered them hereditarily loyal 
  to the Twilights, the Deliberative and the Solar Anathema. 
  As a result, it was considered necessary to destroy them as 
  a form of prophylaxis. 
  This is often considered to be one of the worst “sins” 
  of the Shogunate. The fact of the matter is that this decision 
  was undertaken after a number of uprisings and sabotage 
  events rendered it evident that the issue was not related to 
  individuals and would not be settled even by mass behavioral 
  modification. In addition, while many of these beings were 
  sentient or nearly so, most demonstrated a profound lack 
  of spiritual components. They were not reincarnated, did 
  not descend into the Underworld — they were, in fact, 
  merely fleshy automatons, cut off forever from the cycle 
  of reincarnation and from ultimate communion with the 
  Dragons. These unnatural beings were better off extinct, 
  rather than living a tortured, soulless existence with no 
  hope of an afterlife.
  The means by which these beings were created was 
  constant and explains why so many of them can breed 
  — parts of various animals were disjointed by black 
  sorcery and knitted together again by similar magics. 
  During the process, other sorts of sorcery would sustain 
  the pieces and the donor beasts, so that the portions 
  of animal were sustained as if they were still attached 
  to the original animal. After the magic knitted these 
  animal portions together, the creatures produced were, 
  of course, often confused and sick, as they were the 
  independent, still-living parts of the various animals 
  that had provided the tissue. Then, the various donor 
  animals would be kept alive through sorcery until the 
  composite creature could be bred with another such 
  creature of the opposite sex and offspring carried 
  successfully to term. Then, when true creatures were 
  created, the sorcery supporting the original hybrids 
  would be terminated, and they — and all the donor 
  animals — would die, and the offspring would be bred 
  as the progenitors of the race. To provide variety, the 
  Anathema breeders might do this hundreds or thou-
  sands of times to populate a new species. In other cases, 
  host organisms would have specially prepared artificial 
  genitals grafted on in the place of their own. These 
  practices were exceedingly inhumane, revolting and 
  offensive to the Dragons, and it is because of them that 
  the Immaculate Order forbids such experiments.
  Again, obviously, the reality was somewhat different. The 
  processes described for creating patchwork creatures was in fact 
  used, but it obviously is not efﬁ cient and required powerful 
  sorcery that not even all of the Anathema could muster. It 
  was used by a few eccentrics. The process of grafting artiﬁ -
  cially pre-prepared genitals onto beasts that are to be used as 
  incubators for the young of other beasts is still practiced by 
  some agricultural sorcerers in the Realm today.
  FROM THE JOURNALS OF VERSHAK DIEN
  Another setback today. We lost Xiao in an uncon-
  trolled Essence eruption.
  I think we are going to need to make signiﬁ cant prog-
  ress on the vim inhibitor and Essence feed designs before 
  we can make this damnable thing work. If I had a talent 
  of jade for every test subject that’s burst on the platform 
  like a tick I would simply buy my immortality.
  All jollity aside, I have reached the limits of the 
  current system and they are simply insufficient. The 
  deveneration chambers require a certain amount of 
  power just to start the humeric oscillators turning. Below 
  that level, the bloody thing is just a big stone bed with 
  some unusually pointy accoutrements. The problem 
  arises in the move from active status to functional. At 
  8 motes per second, the dais is active but dormant. It 
  has power, but not enough to generate the fields nec-
  essary to engage the revivification coils and begin the 
  wear-reversal process. At 9 motes, there is vim-field 
  bleed-through of catastrophic proportions. Given that, 
  our recourse is either to discover some means of harness-
  ing Essence at the submote level, thereby allowing us 
  to calibrate the total vim feed much more accurately 
  (strictly impossible given our understanding of the 
  nature of Essence), or to increase the sensitivity of the 
  vim inhibitors by an order of magnitude or more. Our 
  choice is clear. We must redevelop the vim inhibitors 
  
  67
  CHAPTER FIVE • RECORDS OF THE BEFORE
  to function at a much finer degree of sensitivity. My 
  will to do so, however, flags.
  I have been at this project for almost nine years now, 
  and I am not convinced mastery of such things is possible. 
  Furthermore, I am less and less convinced that it is right. 
  Three hundred years is not so bad, really. We certainly 
  have it far better than the mortals. Do we really need to 
  have more if it means thwarting the will of the Dragons 
  themselves? I don’t know. The others will no doubt curse 
  me for a superstitions fool, and no doubt, I will laugh with 
  them and fold. Duty is duty, and this pays the bills better 
  than lancing boils in an apothecary.
  Whatever happens, I’m going to need more slaves. We 
  wasted eight of them on that last test, and Xiao besides. 
  And I’ll be damned if I’m cleaning up the lab myself.
  LOCAL GODS
  Braze —
  We have successfully encouraged the local god to ac-
  cept our proffered consort. The price wasn’t inconsiderable 
  — the speciﬁ cations were quite complex — but the slave 
  appears to be an excellent mate for the beast. I had previ-
  ously never considered it to be a sexual creature — it is a 
  mass of pipes and hoses after all — but it certainly appears 
  virile enough. I hope that if she doesn’t survive whatever 
  sort of union the thing contemplates, it is realistic about the 
  difﬁ culty and expense of procuring women of such speciﬁ c 
  appearance and character. The god’s cooperation with our 
  rule of the neighborhood is deﬁ nitely worthwhile, but not 
  if it’s going to entail making such outlays repeatedly.
  In any case, I just wanted to let you know how things 
  are going on our little project. I’ve been trying to com-
  municate with you all along the way — I don’t want to get 
  you into any expenses that you didn’t agree to in advance. 
  However, things are running up to the wire. I know we 
  can’t communicate via sorcery — it’s much too easy to 
  listen in — so by the time you receive this, matters may 
  well have reached a crisis. This god of ducts and piping 
  apparently cannot keep itself free of this diversion, and if 
  there can be a fruitful union, we’ll soon see it. Given how 
  inhuman it is, I think that if it’s going to kill her, it will 
  quickly do that as well.
  I’m going to drive a hard bargain if it kills her and 
  demands an immediate replacement — it isn’t getting 
  any sacriﬁ cial maidens any other way, and if it wants to 
  cost us a fortune, it’s going to do a lot more than pump 
  water in the Manse. We’re going to get some help in the 
  agricultural works department as well, and any other place 
  in the area we want to see water moved. I remember the 
  negotiation parameters we talked about before I came 
  here and intend to follow them, I’m just keeping you up 
  to date and making sure that some assumption hasn’t 
  changed between then and now. Please contact me with 
  your reply as soon as possible through our regular means 
  of private communication.
  INSURGENTS UNLEASH SHEEP PLAGUE 
  ON THE STEPPE, MILLIONS DEAD. 
  WOOL MARKET CRASHES!
  Excerpted from the agricultural journal Husbandry 
  Weekly
  “How am I to feed my children? My whole ﬂ ock is 
  dead! These Sisters, do they have any idea what they do? 
  They have destroyed our lives! Winter is not far away, and 
  there will be no wool for blankets. No wool for coats or hats 
  or stockings. What are we to do? Even if we do not starve, 
  we will freeze! And for what? Liberate the sheep? What has 
  the world come to?!” Weft of Highholm, shepherd.
  A terrible shock went through the wool market today 
  as the Sisters of the Tetrapodal Masses claimed responsi-
  bility for unleashing a devastating attack on the ﬂ ocks of 
  the North. Another 130,000 animals were reported dead 
  today, pushing the total number of sheep lost to just over 
  two million. The wool markets dropped precipitously as a 
  result, and there were hints of growing panic in the populace 
  at large as the ramiﬁ cations of a devastated wool harvest 
  become clear. As the astrologers forecast a bitter winter, 
  the price of wool has soared as high as three koku for a 
  single bale of wool. Petitions for price relief made to the 
  Bureau of Trade and Commerce have fallen on deaf ears, 
  and rumors of cooperation between the Bureau and the 
  Furriers Guild grow louder with each passing day.
  The Shogun himself has come forth to condemn these 
  acts of sabotage and to call for the assignment of a special 
  magistrate council to investigate. He went on to say that 
  anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of 
  the Sisters of the Tetrapodal Masses or their associates 
  would be granted three years amnesty from taxation if 
  their information proves fruitful. Leads have ﬂ ooded the 
  ofﬁ ce of the Minister of Just Inquiry since, and our sources 
  report that the magistracy is conﬁ dent the culprits will be 
  apprehended soon and brought up for execution.
  Though it is not yet clear that the plague has run its 
  course, this incident has already been named the single 
  worst act of sabotage to strike the agricultural sector in 
  several decades, and the worst act of sabotage of any kind 
  to strike the North in over a century. Before this that honor 
  was held by the Great Ratcatcher Massacre of Morenhiel, 
  when the Skintail Liberation Front managed to kill over 
  30,000 ferrets and terriers in a single month. The resul-
  tant surge in the rat population caused the evacuation of 
  over 900,000 inhabitants of Morenhiel and the eventual 
  destruction of the city.
  PRUNING THE TREE
  We of the Right and Faithful Society of Axes tell you 
  now. We have marked you, and the Night of Hooks and 
  Bills will be upon you soon. We have seen your abomina-
  tion, and on our oath, we will cut it from the world as you 
  might cut a worm from an apple. You who would yoke the 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  68
  life urge with foul sorcery, we know you. You who would 
  halt the proper course of the seasons that you need not 
  know the winter, we know you. We know you, and we have 
  marked you. Soon, you will be cut out that the tapestry of 
  all life will no longer be sullied by your presence in it.
  To all things is given a season. All that lives must die. 
  All that begins must end. You have taken from the world 
  without giving back. Your gluttony will be chastised a hun-
  dredfold. A Great Pruning draws near. You who would deny 
  the proper turning of the years will be called to account. 
  You who would harness dark powers to stave off death and 
  live beyond your season, we know you. We are as the grass 
  on the plains. We are all about you, but you cannot tell one 
  of us from another. Our knives will end your abomination, 
  and you will not know it until your blood has been let out 
  to replenish the earth you owe so much. 
  ON THE SEALING OF THE GREEN PAGODA AND 
  THE DESTRUCTION OF SEMIOT REEV
  Master, it is over, and we have prevailed.
  Surely you know this by now. News of it spread be-
  fore us like a ﬁ re on the savanna. Not surprising, really 
  — the Anathema’s death curse sent a pillar of silver ﬁ re 
  a mile into the sky, and blood rained down three leagues 
  in every direction.
  When ﬁ rst we approached the Anathema’s lair, I 
  thought perhaps it had foreseen our coming and ﬂ ed in fear 
  of its life. All was quiet and still. There were no sentries 
  to be seen upon the ramparts nor pickets in the trees. My 
  ofﬁ cers and I approached the structure cautiously and tried 
  the door. It swung easily and opened on an empty corridor. 
  We called our squads and ordered the warstriders to hold 
  the outer court.
  The silence was unnerving as we entered the Manse. 
  The air was thick and cloying, like a stable or barn that’s 
  been shut up through the heat of the day, but there was 
  no sign of the Anathema to be seen. We pressed onward, 
  moving with care, every nerve alert for ambush.
  It came as we crested the stair to the third tier of the 
  Manse. What we had taken for sculpted grotesques placed 
  as horriﬁ c decoration came to monstrous life and began 
  killing us with a fury. Our mortal cohorts died almost 
  immediately, torn to pieces by the sorceror’s abominable 
  creations. We of the Dragon’s Blood replied in kind, Es-
  sence scorching the air, daiklaves cleaving through vile 
  ﬂ esh at every turn. Those that survived ﬂ ed the halls with 
  pieces of our dead in their teeth, gnawing.
  The second wave came down from above, demon 
  killers summoned from Malfeas to serve Semiot Reev’s 
  twisted will. They came, hooded and in shadow, wielding 
  ﬂ ame and raking our ﬂ esh with envenomed claws. Two of 
  us fell before we drove them back. We were near to the top 
  of the pagoda, but the Anathema had yet to show himself. 
  We would not have to wait long.
  As we climbed the ﬁ nal stair, the ﬂ oor shook beneath 
  our feet. Some new menace, come now from below? We 
  were not certain, but since no enemy appeared to harass 
  us, we continued our climb. The pinnacle of the tower 
  consisted of a single chamber that occupied the entire 
  length and breadth of the structure’s footprint. There at 
  the center, shaping some vile spell, stood our quarry. Fain 
  loosed a barrage of arrows to no avail, each one burst into 
  ﬂ ame a yard from Reev and was ash before it reached him. 
  He laughed at us and brought his hands together with 
  the sound of a hundred thunderclaps. Something burst 
  up through the center of the pagoda. Something vast and 
  reeking, the color of pig ﬂ esh but moist and hairless. It 
  split the structure in two, sending one wall and a third of 
  the building to the ground in a heap. The roof exploded 
  upward and outward, and the Anathema attacked.
  The ﬁ ght itself was a riot of blood and Essence. The 
  worm of infernal terror’s thrashing crushed one of the 
  warstriders before the other two roasted it to death. Reev 
  squeezed Fain’s head clean off and swept Mot over the 
  edge to his death with the corpse. While the Anathema 
  laughed, the rest of us struck. My axe cut him a glancing 
  blow, but Farhat had better luck. Her daiklave bit deep 
  into Reev’s shoulder and spun him around. Eyes blazing 
  with rage and power, he began an incantation, a killing 
  spell, no doubt. I summoned all the strength I had and 
  struck again and struck well.
  I wish I had done better by my tutors in the ﬁ eld of 
  sorcery. Perhaps I would have thought better of striking 
  when I did. But then again, perhaps not. There was little 
  time for thought. The jade of my daiklave bit deep into 
  his side. Blood ﬂ owed out in a torrent, and the Essence 
  gathered between his hands that had been meant for Farhat 
  blew the top three levels off the pagoda in an instant.
  I was fortunate. A kindly old ﬁ r tree broke my fall, 
  along with both my legs, a wrist and three ribs. I lived. 
  Farhat was not so fortunate. I trust she died quickly, but I 
  cannot say for sure. She landed beneath the dying worm. 
  I imagine she was crushed, but there was not enough left 
  after the monster’s vile blood had its way to tell.
  Reev had survived as well and stood atop the ruin of 
  his Manse gathering his wits for another attack. By now, the 
  ’striders had done with the worm and, ﬁ nding the sorcerer 
  in reach, pounced. It was over a moment later, as Meena did 
  unto Reev as he’d done to Fain. As the Anathema expired, 
  his lair trembled and fell, collapsing in on itself. As the 
  last stones tumbled to the ground, the earth erupted in a 
  pillar of argent ﬂ ame a mile high. It burned that way for 
  nearly an hour before vanishing as if it had never been. All 
  that remained of the Manse was a scorched and smoking 
  crater and the smell of smoldering ﬂ esh.
  I am healing now. The chirurgeon says it will be three 
  weeks before I can travel under my own power. I hope to 
  prove him wrong, but I do so at the risk of my legs, he says. 
  I have considered my future, Master. I do believe I am 
  
  69
  CHAPTER FIVE • RECORDS OF THE BEFORE
  ready to take you up on that offer of a place in the ministry, 
  provided it remains open. I’ve had my ﬁ ll of blood.
  WOOD WISDOM AND THE MANY MONKS TALE
  From The Forty Willow Sutra by Sozei Hirohatai, 
  Advisor to Daimyo Nazuru Kamkai
  Long ago, a powerful and cruel demon queen, called 
  Poison Eye of Discord, lived in a forest near Rathess. One 
  hundred Immaculate monks meditated in the a sacred 
  grove nearby. By means of her terrible spells of dark and 
  corrupting Essence, the demon queen took on the forms 
  of myriad creatures, forms as countless as the leaves of 
  the wood, so that she could distract these holy men and 
  women who had come to ﬁ nd clarity and achieve a greater 
  mastery of their Essence. Some, she seduced in the forms 
  of beautiful men and women. Others, she frightened to 
  the brink of insanity through the evocation of terrible Yozi 
  specters and scenes of dreadful horror.
  The ﬁ rst of the Immaculates, called Wind of Hol-
  lows, lost his thoughts, all memory washed from his mind. 
  Another monk, called Coruscating Flame, became drunk 
  and reveled about like a fool who had drank too much 
  wine. A third devotee of the Immaculate teachings, called 
  Stonehand Guardian, fell fast asleep, his senses unable to 
  be roused to awareness. And a fourth, called Merciless 
  Wave, became consumed with an immeasurable grief, so 
  consumed with unbearable sadness, that he ran off into 
  the wilderness. In this way, the demon queen triumphed 
  over the goodness of the monks, and evil spread through-
  out the forest.
  Until an abbot of the Order called Unmoving Root 
  remembered the teachings of He Who Hath Strewn Much 
  Grass and the advice his own master had long ago given him 
  to understand this teaching. Remembering the mantras of 
  his patron Dragon, he meditated upon the deeds and words 
  of Sextes Jylis, who brings life and peace where there is 
  destruction and evil, and in a vision of transcendent bliss, 
  He Who Hath Strewn Much Grass revealed his inﬁ nite 
  body of leaves and ﬂ owers and instructed Unmoving Root 
  in what he would have to do.
  Illuminated by the words of his Supreme and Perfect 
  Teacher, the monk took sharp nails of green jade and, 
  meditating on the essence of Wood, drove them into the 
  many trees that surrounded the sanctuary in which his 
  brothers and sisters meditated. From that moment on, 
  whatever deceptive and corrupting specters Poison Eye 
  of Discord created, the Immaculates would spontaneously 
  envision as nothing other than the Supreme and Perfect 
  Form of the Lifegiver Sextes Jylis, He Who Hath Strewn 
  Much Grass. In this way, Unmoving Root made safe the 
  meditation grove, and Poison Eye of Discord was never 
  to be seen again.
  By way of the glory and serenity of the Immaculate 
  Wood Dragon, the faith of the Immaculate Order spread 
  throughout the region near Rathess.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  70
  LETTER FROM MASTER ARTISAN KENSHI KAWA 
  NORBU TO DAIMYO O-SHI RENZU 
  ...concerning the restless territories of Panja, Chan-Ji and 
  Xipe Kadoll
  Most Honored and Revered Master of the Many 
  Groves of Willows, 
  I hope this letter ﬁ nds you well and that your holdings 
  prosper. Last evening, I made use of a magniﬁ cent treasure 
  given as a gift by a longtime friend and advisor from the 
  East. This instrument of prophecy, crafted in accordance 
  with principles of the First Age, bestowed upon me a vi-
  sion that I must share with you, for you own sake and for 
  the sake of those who rely on your guardianship in these 
  times of war.
  In my vision, I was sitting in a single tower of the 
  purest white jade, from which I could see for leagues in all 
  directions. Before me, there was a table on which sat four 
  crystal bowls, each ﬁ lled with blood. From the balcony of 
  this high tower, I could see four great armies each resplen-
  dent in their heraldry, standards ﬂ ying boldly.
  Three of the armies ﬂ ew banners marked with the 
  icons of snakes, one red, one black, one green. The third, 
  My Lord, was marked with the symbol of a diamond locked 
  in the jaws of jungle cat. The three serpent armies moved 
  onto the ﬁ eld and, as if they were ﬁ ghting, shifted through 
  each other’s ranks, a frenzy of green, red and black. They 
  moved so quickly that their forms dissolved, becoming 
  a vast, teaming pool of metal and darkness. Once the 
  movement ended, the mass congealed into the form of 
  an enormous viper, as long as a river.
  At once, the fourth army rallied its troops and set 
  to charge the terrible serpent that was black as pitch and 
  covered in shields like scales. As the noble soldiers of the 
  diamond cat galloped toward the monster, it fell upon 
  them like a great wave of venom and fear. The serpent’s 
  body sent the brave warriors tumbling to and fro, the army 
  scattered and defeated.
  Great Lord O-Shi Renzu, Sovereign Protector of the 
  Jaguar Gates, I know that this standard is none other than 
  your own, and given current tensions with Panja, Chan-Ji 
  and Xipe Kadoll, I fear for the worst. Please consider this 
  warning, however cryptic it may be, and slay this serpent 
  before it comes to pass.
  JOURNAL OF A SIMHATA BREEDER
  by Shiki-Ran, Stablemaster of the Daimyo Gouw-Wo of 
  the Third Province of the Southern Prefecture
  It has been nearly two years since we’ve been able to 
  breed anything close to the steed that we located in the 
  Far South almost 12 years ago. Though we have struggled 
  with the specimen, we fear that the traits most desired will 
  no longer manifest in future foals. 
  Initially, Taizei Henshu’s unit was sent not far to the 
  south to request the assistance of the Southern agrarian 
  states, hoping that at least one among them would be 
  able to provide the location for where our current speci-
  men was recovered. The Horselords, who had grown rich 
  from the fruits of their incomparable stables, was initially 
  uncooperative for a reason that was shortly revealed to 
  us. I believe that a Dragon-Blooded diplomat may fair 
  better, but I would not be willing to bet anything of value 
  on the outcome. Nonetheless, Henshu’s men returned 
  empty-handed but for a few strange suggestions made by 
  one of their most renowned trainers. The trainer revealed 
  that the simhata specimen was not, in fact, bred by the 
  Horselords. Rather, this man believed that there is, or 
  was, a temple of some signiﬁ cance, where sacriﬁ ce could 
  be made in order to earn the favor of spirits who would 
  then reward the tribe with the secret of the simhata. 
  Taizei Henshu, being a devout adherent of the Immacu-
  late Philosophy, set out to demand a stable of simhata 
  from this insolent spirit. However, upon arriving at the 
  isolated temple, there was no spirit to be found.
  Our initial attempts began with an effort to breed 
  the simhata with mares taken from the finest stock of 
  the Southern Horselords. The Horselords required an 
  inordinate amount of convincing to provide such a 
  beast, but a mead-sworn oath to provide them with 
  written record of any potentially beneficial findings 
  resulted in a mutually satisfying arrangement. Thus, 
  we procured two mares with which the simhata stallion 
  could breed. Unfortunately, this stage of the project did 
  not turn out as we wished. When we first introduced 
  the thoroughbred mares, we placed them in a pen next 
  to the simhata, but the simhata all but ignoring the 
  mares. We thought, initially, that this would mean the 
  difficulty would be in urging the simhata to go anywhere 
  near these inferior specimens, though they be the fin-
  est horses the Second Age has to offer. When the first 
  mare was introduced to the simhata’s significantly sized 
  pen, the simhata fell upon the mare in seconds, tearing 
  out her throat with his fangs as his claws eviscerated 
  her stomach, spilling a steaming heap of offal out onto 
  the stable floor at which it fed peacefully as if nothing 
  dreadful had occurred. The second mare was introduced 
  after the simhata was heavily drugged with a mixture 
  of green hay and opium gum. Again, the experiment 
  failed as the reproductive habits of the simhata seem to 
  be tied directly to its aggressive behaviors.
  Sorcery facilitated our next attempt as we called upon 
  the shamans and savants of tribes and cities that were 
  known for working with the unusual breeding of livestock 
  or horses speciﬁ cally. Yet again, we contacted specialists 
  from the bountiful towns of the South as well as breeders 
  from the East who specialized in breeding livestock to 
  endure a colder range of climates than would be accept-
  able for any given breed. Using incantations typically 
  used to weave one or more creatures together, a handful 
  of terrifying and fascinating outcomes were achieved. 
  
  71
  CHAPTER FIVE • RECORDS OF THE BEFORE
  The ﬁ rst beast born live was more avian than equine, 
  bearing a feathered coat and a sort of useless patagia that 
  webbed the back legs to the front, making it difﬁ cult for 
  the creature to move about. The animal also possessed 
  a coat of thin quills, a failed manifestation of feathers. 
  The beast was put down as it seemed to possess a skeleton 
  that was too weak to hold its signiﬁ cant mass. 
  The second live-born outcome was born without 
  sex. Although this creature possessed the size and power 
  of the simhata, it does not possess any other offensive 
  or defensive traits of the original steed. We decided to 
  give this beast to the Horselords as payment for their 
  cooperation with the breeding endeavor and decided to 
  have no further contact with them. The third creature, 
  I am pleased to tell you, was magnificent. Not only was 
  the creature simhata, but it was far superior in size, 
  strength and resistance. This animal, which we have 
  named Five Tempest Stallion withstood the punishment 
  of both spell and blade as well as my own lashing anima 
  and the burning anima of Shudana Kreese. However, it 
  is this same Dragon-Blooded who was thrown from the 
  beast’s back and disemboweled in one ferocious bite. 
  The creature then slew both stablehands and, using 
  its massive talons, ripped through the wooden stable 
  wall and then, using the top of its enormous head, 
  smashed through the stone outer wall and escaped 
  its paddock. The creature then bolted out over the 
  perimeter fence and vanished off into the distance. 
  It is for this reason that I believe such methods will 
  resort only in these insane and feral specimens. We 
  will attempt this experiment again, and I expect that 
  we prevail as there are still several potent methods 
  that we have not yet implemented.
  Insofar as my formal report, I believe the simhata as we 
  once knew them are forever vanished. Without a female 
  of the breed, we will not have reliable methods to produce 
  healthy simhata offspring. Though the insane superior breed 
  is certainly possible, it would take a Dragon-Blooded of 
  superior will and empathy concerning such sorts of beasts 
  to control one. Though we have considered the possibility 
  of Marukan horses being given some sort of artifact-based 
  protection from the ﬂ aring of our animas, I think the cost 
  to create such magics in large enough numbers may also 
  be prohibitive.
  I apologize for my failing, Daimyo Gouw-Wo, but 
  without a miracle of sorcery or the recovery of a simhata 
  mare, the breeding of the true simhata has met its end. But 
  for the wonders of the First Age that this were not true.
  ESSENCE’S EFFECT ON CELLULAR 
  TRANSPORT MECHANISMS
  Excerpted From Introductory Organic Mechanisms 
  and Essence Flows, Third Edition
  …Key to understanding the speciﬁ cs of Essence’s 
  effect on cellular transport is the fact that at no point 
  do actual Essence interference effects take place. One of 
  the most common misapprehensions of the beginning 
  student is that, in order to enhance activity, Essence 
  motes will be bound into the cellular transport chain at 
  some point, usually during three-sugar synthesis, in the 
  place of bound sugars.
  Of course, nothing could be further from the case. 
  Motes are an indivisible unit, and, like all Essence, they 
  interfere with the physical world only rarely. However, 
  the effects engendered by the release of bound Essence 
  motes from the Exaltation or sorcerous construct provides 
  potential physical energy, which, when directed by the arms 
  of Essence-channeling forms or constructs, ﬂ ows through 
  and enhances various physical processes.
  The archetypal effect is the provision of regenera-
  tion through the form of the war-optimized Lunar Exalt. 
  While the roots of this process are poorly understood, 
  taking place as it does inside the black box of the Ex-
  altation, it sets the benchmark of efficiency for such 
  effects. During the war-transformation, the Exaltation 
  cycles Essence internally, with the effect of increas-
  ing the energy released by the disunion of three-sugar 
  transport modules, but not altering the mechanism 
  — in this as in many other mechanisms, Essence fol-
  lows the path of least resistance, performing the most 
  subtle miracles possible under the constraints. This 
  accounts for the supernatural character of the Lunar’s 
  war-form capabilities in general, and the Exaltation 
  can clearly be seen to demonstrate adaptations to the 
  various demands of the war-form, most specifically in 
  the healing process.
  Obviously, the process extended by the Deadly Beast-
  man Transformation is incomparably efﬁ cient — even 
  against the other salutary effects on health provided even 
  by the Lunar Exaltation, nothing can compare to its rela-
  tive costlessness. More extreme forms of healing, which 
  bypass the cellular process, typically require much more 
  Essence to ﬂ ow through the designs…
  ON THE DESTRUCTION OF THE 
  HUNDRED WATERFALLS MANSE
  Imperial Intelligence Service Monthly Regional 
  Force Summary
  During our campaign throughout the Eastern ter-
  ritories, our primary adversaries have been the Wyld 
  barbarians who make their homes throughout the 
  seemingly endless forests. Our primary tactics in this 
  instance involved standard skirmishing formations 
  and the use of energy lances and the warstriders called 
  Beckoning Heaven and Pillar of the East. Supported 
  by heavily armored infantry equipped with fine war 
  gear selected from Boshi Kenfo’s armory, there were no 
  doubts concerning our speedy victory. Ultimately, all 
  our conflicts with the barbarians were effortless but for 
  a small handful of true challenges.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  72
  her feet, a spear of unnaturally bright silver sparkling 
  in the moonlight. 
  When it became apparent that we were confronting 
  a detachment of Anathema, the mortal troops broke, 
  leaving only the 12 Dragon-Blooded elites to defend 
  the ﬂ ank. The elites met the Anathema head-on, anima 
  banners blazing in the darkness of night. After the ﬁ ght, 
  ﬁ ve of the elite soldiers laid dead. However, the head of 
  the Anathema hung from the belt of Shiru Gamme, a 
  victory that will forever honor his family.
  Three evenings later, we arrived at the Hundred 
  Waterfalls Manse at the very northern tip of the Rock 
  River near Kajeth. After several nights of unsheltered 
  patrol, our men were very thankful to be treated to a 
  hot meal and warm, dry beds. We had just hunkered 
  down for wine and talk when an explosion like lightning 
  rippled through the Manse as if its very foundation had 
  been compromised.
  The Shogun’s forces gathered in the central turret and 
  at the four radial gates. Shiru Gamme, having remained 
  sober, gathered the others of his unit and took to the ﬁ eld 
  in heavy armor with powerbow marksmen taking up the 
  rear and the savant Nanda Pushpa providing support. 
  When they broke the base perimeter and established 
  a spearpoint on the northern drawbridge, they saw the 
  lean and terrible image of a Fair Folk warrior equipped 
  with the largest silver axe that any of the men had seen. 
  Talons were set up on both sides of the hill where 
  we made camp. Patrols were established, and the two 
  warstriders were at the ready. Central to both ﬂ anks, 
  Boshi Kenfo’s Dragon-Blooded heavy infantry made 
  camp. That way, the elites could support either ﬂ ank 
  if we suffered an ambush. Despite forward thinking on 
  behalf of our commanding ofﬁ cers, we failed to deﬂ ect 
  the brutal assault we suffered that evening.
  The sun had just set when we heard the ﬁ rst howl. 
  As is the procedure, we lit torches and marked out the 
  perimeter, setting lookouts at every ﬁ fth torch. We then 
  lit four additional ﬁ res around the center campﬁ re so that 
  we’d have maximum visibility within the base camp. 
  We didn’t even hear a second howl. It was the alarm 
  issued by the detachment on the northwest corner of 
  camp that alerted us. A third of Kenfo’s elites took 
  up their daiklaves and darted for the contact point, 
  followed by Pillar of the East, arriving in time to see 
  no less than a dozen beastmen clashing with what 
  was left of the detachment. The elite unit engaged 
  the beastmen and made short work of them. I don’t 
  know what it was that gave them the idea, but one of 
  Kenfo’s officers let out a shout that sent the other two 
  thirds of their unit dashing for the opposite corner of 
  the camp. When they made their destination, wait-
  ing for them, with silver fangs bared, was a massive 
  she-wolf whose front legs became arms as she rose to 
  
  73
  CHAPTER FIVE • RECORDS OF THE BEFORE
  Before Shiru Gamme could engage, the Fair Folk let 
  out a terrible laugh and brought the axe to bear on the 
  grounding pylon of Hundred Waterfalls Manse, severing 
  its geomantic link and shattering its integrity. As the 
  elites rushed forward, the Manse collapsed behind them, 
  leaving all within either wounded or dead.
  Nanda Pushpa made the ﬁ rst attack on the Fair One. 
  Using mantras of the First Age, the sorcerer summoned a 
  torrent of cold iron spikes, which gathered like a tornado 
  around him. Upon uttering the last syllable, the whirlwind 
  bucked and whipped, sending a barrage of lethal darts at 
  the creature. With not so much as an expression of effort, 
  the Fair Folk adversary raised his axe, which crackled 
  and snapped with a deafening boom, causing the wave 
  of darts to dissipate as if they were no more substantial 
  than breath on a winter day.
  Despite this awful display of power, the actual conﬂ ict 
  was over after a short burst of combat. The Fair Folk lord, 
  it seems, was not so much the threat as his weapon, which 
  did decapitate two of the elites before Shiru Gamme, 
  again, impaled the fae upon his daiklave, taking the fae’s 
  terrible weapon as a trophy.
  The loss of Hundred Waterfalls Manse was a ter-
  rible blow to the Eastern territories, namely its guardian, 
  Daimyo Nawari, who was killed in the collapse. Based 
  on the translation of the strange, scratch-like glyphs on 
  the weapon’s head, it is called “Death at the Root.” We 
  can only hope that there are no more such weapons in 
  the faerie arsenal.
  FROM THE DRONE OF THE SOWERS
  We are those who walk behind the fruit wagon, seeing 
  that the harvest is not wasted. We are those who waste 
  not, so that we might give to those who have nothing. 
  We are those who do not rest, so that our children might. 
  For every three mouths, there is only one bushel of rice. 
  For every family, there is only one growing child’s por-
  tion of meat, and the meat is not good meat. This is the 
  truth of the world as it is, but not the way of the world 
  that must be.
  Sextes Jylis strew grass after the war against the 
  Anathema, that the world might be verdant and refreshed. 
  So shall we plant green things after sickness, making 
  gardens in the boneyards and parks among the fallen 
  houses of the time before. Not for us is mourning — we 
  who have lost all are sprightly and travel light. To us is 
  given the renewal of the world.
  We are the sowers, the strewers of grass, and through 
  our hands are sown the seeds of tomorrow. Give to the 
  sowers, brother men, that we might go sowing our seeds 
  among you. Who has that which they do not need, that 
  they can give over to the garden of the Dragons? Who 
  will sacriﬁ ce to us that the provender of the land might 
  be multiplied? Come out from your houses, sample our 
  fruits, and give us seeds for sowing boneyards!
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  74
  
  75
  CHAPTER SIX • MIRACLES OF SEXTES JYLIS
  CHAPTER SIX
  MIRACLES
  OF SEXTES JYLIS
  The scope and power of Wood Essence, many Wood-
  aspected Dragon-Bloods believe, is yet to be revealed. 
  As the very mysteries of life and death reside within the 
  currents of the Wood Dragon’s energy, the possibilities 
  of application are seemingly without limit. Aside from 
  the symbolic facets of Wood Essence, there are also quite 
  literal uses of the element that enable to user to become 
  the deadliest of predators or canniest of prey in a woodland 
  environment. What follows are a handful of well-known 
  and less common Charms, Hearthstones and artifacts 
  designed to empower, amuse and terrify any series using 
  Wood-aspected characters. As always, which of these 
  items or Charms makes an appearance in your series is 
  completely up to the Storyteller, as some of the Charms 
  and artifacts are particularly powerful.
  NEW CHARMS 
  ARCHERY
  UNOBSTRUCTED HUNTER’S AIM
  Cost: 2 motes
  Duration: Instant 
  Type: Reﬂ exive
  Minimum Archery: 3
  Minimum Essence: 2
  Prerequisite Charms: Harvest of the Hunter
  Using this Charm, the archer infuses an arrow with 
  her Essence, harmonizing it to the element of wood. An 
  arrow so imbued will pass through obstacles of wood or plant 
  unimpeded. With Unobstructed Hunter’s Aim, the arrow 
  soars through densely wooded and overgrown terrain as if 
  it were being launched across an empty, open plain. 
  An attack made with the use of this Charm ignores 
  ranged cover modiﬁ ers granted by any obstacle consisting 
  of wood or other plant matter. This Charm is even capable 
  of bypassing the defense provided by wooden shields and 
  timber fortiﬁ cations, regardless of their thickness. This 
  effect does not work on enchanted items containing the 
  Five Magical Materials.
  RAVENOUS THORN TECHNIQUE
  Cost: 3 motes
  Duration: Instant
  Type: Supplemental
  Minimum Archery: 5
  Minimum Essence: 3
  Prerequisite Charms: Life-Swelling Sap Strike
  Feared by those who know of it, this lethal at-
  tack awakens the Essence currents in a wooden arrow, 
  transforming its pattern into that of a root seeking the 
  nourishment of rich soil. Through the use of this Charm, 
  the Dragon-Blooded turns his projectile into a growing, 
  twisting missile, alive with runners and hungry roots that 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  76
  bore through the archer’s victim.
  If the initial archery attack causes damage, the arrow 
  sprouts roots and creepers which bore into the target’s body, 
  inﬂ icting the base damage of an arrow (minimum of 1) of 
  the appropriate type at the beginning of each subsequent 
  turn. This damage ignores armor and may only be soaked 
  with Stamina and other natural soak. This effect persists 
  for a number of turns equal to the archer’s permanent 
  Essence or until it is removed. Successfully removing the 
  arrow requires a Dexterity + Medicine roll with a difﬁ culty 
  equal to the permanent Essence of the archer.
  MEDICINE
  VERDANT CURTAINS OF SERENITY 
  Cost: 5 motes, 1 Willpower
  Duration: One scene
  Type: Simple
  Minimum Medicine: 5
  Minimum Essence: 3
  Prerequisite Charms: Purity of Mind Method
  Through extended insight meditation and the reining 
  of the mind’s wandering tendencies, a Dragon-Blooded who 
  has mastered this technique way wrap his consciousness in 
  bands of resilient Essence, affording his sanity a fortresslike 
  protection through which only the most persistent psychic 
  effects may penetrate. 
  A character using this Charm may add her permanent 
  Essence to the difﬁ culty of any supernatural effect that seeks 
  to sway her emotions, control her mind or induce madness. 
  This Charm has no effect upon the Great Curse.
  JADE CRUCIBLE METHOD
  Cost: Special, 1 Willpower
  Duration: Instant
  Type: Simple
  Minimum Medicine: 5
  Minimum Essence: 4
  Prerequisite Charms: Dread Infection Strike, Griev-
  ous Wound Alteration Energy, Purity of Mind Method
  As one of the most dangerous and powerful of the 
  internal medicine techniques devised by Dragon-Blooded 
  savants, the secrets of this Charm are closely guarded and 
  known to very few. Wise use of this technique will allow 
  a truly adept practitioner to access a hidden wellspring of 
  Essence within himself. By sacriﬁ cing the integrity of his 
  physical form, he releases a portion of the Essence that gives 
  him life, liberating it for other more direct uses. Despite 
  the power of this Charm, it’s manifestation is quite subtle, 
  as its effects are invisible to the casual onlooker.
  The player of the character using this Charm chooses 
  how many health levels he wishes to convert into Essence 
  and then rolls his character’s permanent Essence + Medi-
  cine. Each success on this roll grant 1 mote of Peripheral 
  Essence per health level expended. These health levels 
  are not lost until after the roll is made, and therefore, any 
  wound penalties accrued from their loss do not affect this 
  roll. Essence gained in this way may cause the characters 
  Peripheral Essence pool to exceed its normal maximum 
  levels, but any such excess Peripheral Essence is lost at 
  the end of the scene, returning to the natural essence 
  ﬂ ows of Creation. 
  MOST BENEFICENT SEED OF THE FIVE DRAGONS
  Cost: 8 motes, 1 Willpower
  Duration: One scene
  Type: Simple
  Minimum Medicine: 5
  Minimum Essence: 5
  Prerequisite Charms: Jade Crucible Method
  As the ﬁ ve elements intertwine to form all things 
  within Creation, so too does each Dragon-Blooded con-
  tain a piece of all ﬁ ve elements within his Essence. As a 
  master of life and death, a Dragon-Blood wielding this 
  Charm may cause the seed of another element to blossom 
  within himself, providing him with some of the beneﬁ ts 
  of that aspect.
  The Dragon-Blood must select which type of elemental 
  Essence he wishes to emulate when this Charm is invoked. 
  For the duration of the Charm’s effect, the character’s 
  aspect is considered to be of that type for purposes of 
  Charm activation costs, anima effects and immunities 
  or resistances speciﬁ c to beings of that elemental aspect. 
  The character loses access to his Wood-aspected anima 
  power while this effect persists and must pay the out-of-
  element mote surcharge on any Wood-aspected Charms. 
  The character may opt to end this effect at any time, as a 
  reﬂ exive action, but ending the Charm’s effect will cause 
  any beneﬁ ts from non-Wood-aspected anima powers to 
  end as well. This Charm does not effect which skills are 
  considered favored by the character for experience cost 
  or training time purposes.
  PERFORMANCE
  HIDDEN PETAL ARIA METHOD
  Cost: 2 motes per subject
  Duration: Special
  Type: Reﬂ exive
  Minimum Performance: 3 
  Minimum Essence: 2
  Prerequisite Charms: Memorable Performance 
  Technique
  In the courts of the Dragon-Blooded, the love of 
  musical and theatrical performances is commonplace. A 
  character skilled in the use of this Charm can manipulate 
  the nuance and subtext of his performance to communicate 
  secretly with audience members of his choice.
  During the course of a performance, a Dragon-Blood 
  may use this Charm, expending 2 motes for each audience 
  
  77
  CHAPTER SIX • MIRACLES OF SEXTES JYLIS
  member he wishes to communicate with secretly. For the 
  duration of the performance, he may pass information to 
  these audience members as if he was delivering a slowly 
  spoken monologue. Some types of specialized or technical 
  information may not be communicated through the use of 
  this Charm, but general topics of conversation can be trans-
  mitted. The Charm only facilitates communication from 
  the performer to the audience member or members.
  BLOSSOM HIDES THORNS
  Cost: 3 motes
  Duration: Instant
  Type: Reﬂ exive
  Minimum Performance: 4 
  Minimum Essence: 2
  Prerequisite Charms: Dance of Flashing Swords
  The Dragon-Blooded are social creatures, enamored 
  with culture and art, but they are also creatures of violence, 
  passion and cunning artiﬁ ce. It is upon the ground where 
  these two spheres of interest meet that this Charm is most 
  useful. With a graceful dance step or an artful ﬂ ourish, 
  a Dragon-Blood skilled in this technique may mask an 
  attack as part of a performance, taking her foe unawares. 
  Treat this attack as an ambush attempt (see Exalted, p. 
  238) unless the ambushed character employs a Charm that 
  makes him aware of attacks against his person. Players of 
  such ambushed characters must make the normal Wits + 
  Awareness roll for their characters to react to the ambush, 
  but they must add the permanent Essence of the character 
  using Blossom Hides Thorns to their difﬁ culty. This Charm 
  may not be used once combat has begun.
  RIDE
  ELEMENTAL HALO’S MERCY
  Cost: 3 motes
  Duration: One scene
  Type: Simple
  Minimum Ride: 4
  Minimum Essence: 3
  Prerequisite Charms: Great Heart Companion
  The powerful elemental anima of a Dragon-Blood 
  often injures all those nearby. This is especially problematic 
  for Dragon-Blooded who employ mounts. By way of this 
  Charm, a Dragon-Blood may protect his steed from the 
  damaging effects of his anima ﬂ ux. With but a moments 
  concentration and a touch, the Dragon-Blood may infuse 
  his mount with a portion of his own Essence, shielding it 
  from the damaging of effects of his elemental banner.
  For the duration of the scene, a mount affected by 
  this Charm will suffer no damage from the Dragon-Blood’s 
  anima ﬂ ux.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  78
  SURVIVAL
  NATURE’S HEALING BOUNTY
  Cost: 1 mote per two dice
  Duration: Instant
  Type: Reﬂ exive
  Minimum Survival: 3
  Minimum Essence: 2
  Prerequisite Charms: Wild-Wandering Forester 
  Charm
  Wood-aspected Dragon-Blooded are known for their 
  great expertise in herbalism and natural healing lore. With 
  the use of this Charm, a Terrestrial Exalt may supplement 
  his healing skills through the use of medicinal plants and 
  wild herbs. The Dragon-Blood can improve his Medicine 
  dice pools by two dice for every mote of Essence spent 
  but can add no more dice than his Survival Ability (plus 
  any relevant specialty). The character must spend a full 
  mote of Essence even if his player wishes to add just a 
  single die (as might be the case if the character had an 
  odd Survival score).
  HEARTHSTONES
  GODSPEAKING TRILLION (AIR ••)
  Trigger: None, constant
  A godspeaking trillion resembles a square-cut piece of 
  milky blue topaz. This Hearthstone causes its bearer’s voice 
  to ring and resonate in the ritual tones of the Council of 
  Winds, granting him the attention and a measure of respect 
  from spirits and elementals. A godspeaking trillion grants 
  two bonus dice to all Social rolls when dealing with spirits 
  and elementals (not including ghosts or demons). When 
  Dealing with air elementals or spirits belonging to a court 
  speciﬁ cally concerned with the element of air, this bonus is 
  increased by an additional die, for a total of three dice.
  COLD IRON BAUBLE (EARTH ••)
  Trigger: None, constant
  Beads of black iron, these Hearthstones are relatively 
  common on the Blessed Isle, springing forth from the 
  ordered Earth Essence that ﬂ ows around the Imperial 
  Mountain, but they are most needed and greatly treasured 
  in the hinterlands of the Threshold. Any weapon ﬁ tted 
  with a cold iron bauble inﬂ icts aggravated damage to Fair 
  Folk, just as if the weapon were constructed of cold iron. 
  Furthermore, the cold iron bauble adds 1 to the difﬁ culty 
  of any Fair Folk powers used against its bearer.
  OPAL OF THE HUNTED (WOOD ••)
  Trigger: None, always on
  The opal of the hunted is a glistening orb of scintil-
  lating green and violet, with ﬂ ecks of gold that move like 
  light shining through the forest’s canopy. This Hearthstone 
  adds three dice to all rolls made by the bearer’s player to 
  detect ambush and, should the character still be success-
  fully ambushed, adds three dice to the roll to act during 
  the combat (see Exalted, p. 238). In addition, the stone 
  adds three dice to all rolls to evade tracking and pursuit 
  (see Exalted, p. 245).
  TREE-STRIDING EMERALD (WOOD ••)
  Trigger: None, constant
  The tree-striding emerald makes it bearer totally at 
  home in the heights of a towering canopy. While under 
  its effects, the characters weight will be borne by even 
  the smallest branches, and his feet will ﬁ nd easy purchase 
  even among the most twisting boughs. The character can 
  move through tress as easily as if he were walking on ﬂ at 
  ground and may even dash up the vertical trunks of trees 
  at his normal movement rate (with a successful Dexterity 
  + Athletics roll made by his player). The bearer of the 
  stone may also add two dice to any rolls to resist being 
  knocked down or knocked back while standing or perched 
  in a living tree or plant of signiﬁ cant size, typically the 
  characters height or greater.
  ADDER’S EYE (WOOD •••)
  Trigger: None, constant
  This gold and black veined wedge of serpent stone was 
  highly desired by the Night Caste Solars of the First Age. 
  In current times, Dragon-Blooded assassins and huntsmen 
  insert these stones into their artifact weapons to give them 
  the advantage over powerful prey.
  The adder’s eye envenoms any weapon it is set into 
  with a coat of deadly poison. This poison acts as poison 
  snake venom (see Exalted, p. 243) and must be resisted 
  any time a wound is inﬂ icted with the weapon. This 
  Hearthstone is only effective when set into weapons that 
  draw blood, and weapons ﬁ tted with it are easily detected 
  as being envenomed.
  DRAGON WILLOW AGATE (WOOD •••)
  Trigger: None, constant
  The dragon willow agate is a faceted half-sphere of agate, 
  shot through with veins of green and dark umber. This stone 
  enhances the anima power of Wood-aspected Terrestrials. A 
  Wood-aspected character possessing this Hearthstone may use 
  his anima power twice in any given turn. Exalted who do not 
  possess the Wood-aspected anima power and Wood-aspected 
  Dragon-Blooded whose anima powers are not activated add 
  two dice to Dodge and Athletics checks while they possess a 
  dragon willow agate, although these bonus dice may not be 
  used to grant the character reﬂ exive Dodge or Athletics actions 
  in the way that the Wood Aspect anima power can.
  GLADESTALKER’S STONE (WOOD •••)
  Trigger: None, constant
  This deep red cabochon of garnet pulses, quick and 
  shallow, like the heart of a terriﬁ ed beast. This Hearthstone 
  
  79
  CHAPTER SIX • MIRACLES OF SEXTES JYLIS
  empowers the character’s arrows, making them ﬂ y swift 
  and true like hunting falcons. Any Archery attacks made 
  using a powerbow in which this stone is housed add three 
  dice to their attack pool and a +1 bonus to the arrows 
  damage modiﬁ er.
  ROSE OF MILLIONS (WOOD ••••)
  Trigger: None, constant
  This Hearthstone takes the form of an eight-sided pink 
  and black tourmaline cross section, with eight facets around 
  the edge with perfectly smooth faces. This Hearthstone 
  weaves beauty and grace around its owner. In addition to 
  adding ﬁ ve dice to all Presence and Performance pools, 
  with a successful Wits + Performance check (difﬁ culty 3) 
  by her player, the bearer may seamlessly avoid embarrassing 
  or humiliating accidents or social errors. The stone does 
  not protect the bearer from ridicule, though it does make 
  such attacks seem grossly inappropriate and cruel to those 
  who witness the exchange.
  ARTIFACTS
  CHALCEDONY CHAMBERLAIN’S FLUTES
  (ARTIFACT • FOR THE PAIR)
  Fashioned from a single piece of green serpent chal-
  cedony, these drinking glasses are indistinguishable from 
  one another. Originally crafted during the Shogunate 
  Era, these items are highly desired within the halls of the 
  Dragon-Blooded courts. Aside from the exquisite artistry 
  invested in their crafting, the ﬂ utes do not appear to have 
  any magical properties, and don’t, until an Exalted attunes 
  to their subtle power. Once attuned to the glasses, the 
  Exalt is unaffected by any poison or drug that ﬁ lls them, 
  including the recreational and pleasurable effects derived 
  from alcohol or hallucinogenic elixirs. The applications 
  of these glasses, though not as immediately grand as many 
  of the artifacts of the First Age, are incredibly versatile 
  — allowing the attuned character to remain sober during 
  drunken negotiations or to poison an enemy with no great 
  effort. Chalcedony chamberlain’s ﬂ utes require a commit-
  ment of 1 mote of Essence for the pair.
  HARROWED DAUGHTER’S PALESKIN COWL
  (ARTIFACT ••) 
  This morbid garment was crafted by Ledaal Verro under 
  the eye of Ragara Bhagwei as a tool for Ragara Bhagwei’s 
  use. Using shamanic principles adapted from barbarian 
  tribes, the ﬂ esh of the previous Shoat of the Mire was 
  ﬂ ensed from her carcass and cured in an preserving elixir 
  that strengthened the physical substance of the skin and 
  awakened its latent magical properties.
  The Cowl enables it’s wearer to pass unnoticed 
  by ghosts, the walking dead and other denizens of the 
  Underworld. While wearing the cowl, its owner will be 
  treated as if he were one of the dead by creatures of the 
  Underworld. Any attempt to detect the character as being 
  anything other than a common ghost or walking dead by 
  such beings has its difﬁ culty increased by 3, and any at-
  tempts by the character to disguise himself as a creature of 
  the Underworld gain three automatics successes. The mask 
  also grants the character’s player a three-die bonus to all 
  Social rolls pertaining to inhabitants of the Underworld. 
  Neither of these bonuses apply to Abyssals or Deathlords. 
  Furthermore, while the Cowl is worn, the character may 
  perceive unmanifested ghosts. The terrifying and morbid 
  mien of the Cowl is unsettling to the living, however, and 
  the character suffers a 3 dice penalty to all Social rolls not 
  related to intimidation while dealing with the living. The 
  Cowl requires a commitment of 4 motes to use.
  BLACK WIDOW RAZORS
  (ARTIFACT ••• FOR THE PAIR)
  Prized by assassins and believed to have ﬁ rst been 
  created by the same artisan who conceived the automa-
  ton assassin, these razor claws always come in pairs and 
  appear to be a set of ﬁ st-sized spider statuettes, wrought 
  in exquisite detail. Once attuned, however, they animate, 
  crawling across the wielder’s skin at her mental command. 
  When “active” the wrap their hind legs around the owner’s 
  wrists and extend their four razor sharp forelegs into a set 
  of deadly claws. When not in use, they will climb up the 
  owners arms, secreting themselves on her person. What 
  makes the black widow razors truly terrifying, however, 
  is the potent venom that they may deliver. The wielder 
  of the claws may spend 2 motes of Essence on any attack 
  made with the razors, before the attack roll is made, to 
  envenom the strike. If the attack succeeds in inﬂ icting 
  damage then the target’s player must make a Stamina + 
  Resistance roll, difﬁ culty 3. If the roll succeeds, the target 
  suffers an additional level of lethal damage that may not 
  be soaked. If the roll fails, the target suffers an additional 
  effect, based on the Magical Material the black widow 
  razor is constructed from:
  Orichalcum: Orichalcum black widow razors carry a 
  venom that causes the victim’s ﬂ esh to ignite in golden 
  ﬂ ames, which wash across her body, immolating her. If 
  the Stamina + Resistance Roll fails, the ﬂ ames cause four 
  dice of lethal damage to the victim at the beginning of 
  every subsequent turn, for a total of three turns. Against 
  demons, the dead or creatures of darkness, this damage is 
  aggravated. Multiple applications of this venom does not 
  increase the damage caused by the ﬂ ames but will increase 
  the duration of their effect.
  Moonsilver: Venom from moonsilver black widow 
  razors causes the victim’s ﬂ esh and bone to shift with 
  liquid ﬂ uidity, rendering him very susceptible to injury. If 
  the Stamina + Resistance roll fails, the character suffers 
  an additional die of post-soak damage from any successful 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  80
  attack for the duration of the scene. Multiple applications 
  of this are cumulative.
  Jade: The poison of jade black widow razors induces 
  fatigue and lethargy in its victims. If the Stamina + Resis-
  tance roll fails, the victim suffers a two-die penalty to all 
  actions for the duration of the scene. If this penalty ever 
  exceeds twice the victim’s Stamina, he collapses into a 
  comatose slumber for a full day. 
  Starmetal: Starmetal black widow razors deliver a 
  venom that attacks its victim’s sight, blinding her. The 
  eyes of those poisoned by this venom take on a shining 
  grayish black metallic sheen. If the Stamina + Resistance 
  roll fails, the victim is blinded and subtracts two successes 
  from all attacks and treats all attacks as being made from 
  behind (see Exalted, p. 238). This venom has no effect 
  on creatures that do not see. The effects are permanent, 
  except on beings of magic, who suffer blindness for only 
  three scenes.
  Soulsteel: The venom of soulsteel black widow razors 
  taints the victim’s soul with the Essence of Oblivion, en-
  veloping him in a spiritual miasma of sorrow and despair. 
  If the Stamina + Resistance roll fails, the victim may 
  not regain lost or spent Willpower, nor can he channel 
  Willpower through his Virtues. (Exalted may still channel 
  Willpower through the Virtue associated with their Virtue 
  Flaw.) Players of mortals struck by this venom must also 
  make an immediate Willpower roll against a difﬁ culty of 
  3. Those whose players fail are struck with suicidal despair, 
  either collapsing to await their inevitable end or seeking 
  to kill themselves by the most expedient means available, 
  depending on their nature and temperament. 
  Rumors exist of other, more powerful versions of the 
  black widow razors that may function independently of 
  their wielder. Black widow razors require a commitment 
  of 6 motes of Essence for the pair.
  SARAM SARU’S ORACULAR HOOKAH
  (ARTIFACT •••)
  Assumed to be of the Shogunate era, this Southern-
  style water pipe stands about a yard tall. Although awkward 
  to transport when assembled, the jade and starmetal body 
  of this apparatus separates into seven pieces to be stored in 
  its ironwood-and-jade-inlay box. According to its Sidereal 
  creator, Saram Saru, the water chamber of the device was 
  fashioned according to First Age talismanic principles and 
  acts as a prism of sorts. Effectively, the “prism,” when ﬁ lled 
  with pure water, grants its user dreamlike visions that can 
  provide a small measure of insight into the workings of 
  fate. When the Hookah is ﬁ lled with any smoking mixture 
  — tobacco, marijuana, etc. — the inhalation of the fumes 
  induce strong and detailed visions of importance to the 
  smoker. The visions, however, never reveal the identities 
  of the people in the vision, nor does the experience reveal 
  whether the vision is from the past or future. The player 
  
  81
  CHAPTER SIX • MIRACLES OF SEXTES JYLIS
  of the character using the Hookah must make a success-
  ful Occult + Essence roll (difﬁ culty 3) to experience a 
  genuine vision. A roll of ﬁ ve or more successes results in 
  a staggering vision of great signiﬁ cance to the character. 
  A failed roll results in a normal experience of whatever 
  was smoked through the Hookah. Saram Saru’s Oracular 
  Hookah requires a commitment of 4 motes of Essence.
  DEATH AT THE ROOT (ARTIFACT ••••)
  This moonsilver grand grimcleaver was crafted in 
  the aftermath of the Usurpation, by the mad Lunar Suki 
  Yommi. Tales say that the Lunar was driven mad by the 
  death of his mate at the hands of the Dragon-Blooded 
  Host. Deprived of victory by the righteous might of the 
  Dragons and deprived of his honor by his ﬂ ight in the 
  face of their onslaught, he ended his own life in a ritual 
  suicide rather than face an existence of shame and defeat. 
  Death at the Root is the child of this ritual, a weapon 
  ﬁ lled with all the rage and despair of a defeated demigod, 
  bent to the destruction of the very bastions of Essence 
  that shore the walls of the real from the frothing chaos 
  of the endless Wyld. Suki Yommi bequeathed the axe 
  to a mighty lord of the Fair Folk, in return for which he 
  extracted an oath that the lord would never turn the 
  grimcleaver against a Chosen of Luna. It is said that 
  Death at the Root was later reclaimed during a Wyld 
  Hunt that ranged deep into the forests of the East and 
  brought to the Blessed Isle.
  In addition to being a fearsome weapon in the con-
  ventional sense, Death at the Root is able to deform and 
  break the very ﬂ ow of Essence through Creation. A char-
  acter wielding Death at the Root may attempt to disrupt 
  a Demesne or Manse (requiring a successful Essence roll 
  against a difﬁ culty of the Manse’s level + 1 or the level 
  of the Demesne). Success indicates that the Manse or 
  Demesne is disrupted, severing all attunement to it and 
  neutralizing any Hearthstones generated by it. Every suc-
  cess on this roll beyond the ﬁ rst reduces the level of the 
  Manse or Demesne by 1. Reducing a Manse to level 0 in 
  this way destroys the Manse and may cause a backlash of 
  Essence stunning anyone attuned to the site or causing its 
  Hearthstones to explode catastrophically.
  The wielder of Death at the Root may also use it to 
  attack the very threads of Essence sustaining a sorcerous 
  effect. Doing so requires that the character be able to make 
  contact with the area of the effect using the axe and is 
  the character’s diced action for the turn although no roll 
  is necessary. This attack disrupts any ongoing Terrestrial 
  or Celestial Circle effect and can also disrupt spells in the 
  midst of being cast. Spells disrupted using this ability always 
  cause an Essence backlash, as if they had been countered 
  by countermagic of the spell’s own circle.
  The wielder of Death at the Root may always channel 
  Willpower through his Conviction Virtue while using it. 
  Death at the Root requires the commitment of 10 motes 
  of Essence to attune it.
  THE PREY STALKING BOW (ARTIFACT ••••)
  This short green jade powerbow is said to have been 
  carried out of the forests of the Far East by the King of 
  Endless Branches at the end of the Shogunate Era. It is 
  delicately wrought from almost translucent green and 
  blue jade. The ﬁ rst arrow ﬁ red from the Prey Stalking 
  Bow in combat emits a piercing shriek, announcing the 
  impending doom of its target. The subject of this attack 
  is transﬁ xed by the sound, unable to move. This attack 
  may not be dodged, though it can be parried normally. 
  Any target wounded by an attack from the Prey Stalking 
  Bow is attached to it by almost insubstantial thread of air 
  Essence, which allow its bearer to track him more easily. 
  For the remainder of the day, or until such time as the 
  wounded character immerses himself completely in an 
  element other than air, add three successes to all attempts 
  to track and pursue the wounded character made by the 
  bearer of the Prey Stalking Bow. The Prey Stalking Bow 
  requires a commitment of 8 motes of Essence.
  EXALTED
  Name 
  Speed 
  Accuracy 
  Damage 
  Defense 
  Minimums
  Black Widow Razors 
  +1 
  +1 
  +4L (+ poison) 
  +2 
  D••
  Grand Grimcleaver 
  -6 
  +1 
  +13L 
  -1 
  S••••
  Death at the Root 
  -5 
  +2 
  +13L 
  -0 
  S•••
  EXALTED POWER COMBAT
  Name 
  Speed 
  Accuracy 
  Damage 
  Defense 
  Rate 
  Minimums
  Black Widow Razors 
  +0 
  +1 
  +5L (+ poison) 
  +1 
  6 
  S•, D••
  Grand Grimcleaver 
  +8 
  +1 
  +14L 
  -3 
  3 
  S••••
  Death at the Root 
  +9 
  +2 
  +14L 
  -2 
  4 
  S••••
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  82
  APPENDIX I 
  SIGNATURE
  CHARACTERS
  Aspects of Wood are the nurturers, healers, huntsmen 
  and performers of Dragon-Blooded society. Though their 
  intents manifest in strange and unpredictable ways, each 
  reﬂ ects a facet of the wood element’s gifts.
  What follow are the game statistic’s for the book’s 
  ﬁ ve central narrators. Each is an experienced Terrestrial 
  Exalt, presented for the beneﬁ t of Storytellers running 
  Dragon-Blooded games so that they might see how ad-
  vanced Terrestrial Exalted characters may develop over 
  the period of an extended series.
  For the purposes of determining power level, Sesus 
  “The Slug” Nagezzer and Tepet “The Roseblack” Ajava are 
  middle-aged Terrestrial Exalted, with Tepet Ajava being 
  far better outﬁ tted for games involving intense combats. 
  Ragara Bhagwei is the embodiment of the Heptagram’s 
  ideal, a master among masters. Although Bhagwei’s pow-
  ers are certainly extraordinary, his story is near its end, 
  though its ending could certainly form the basis for an 
  entire Dragon-Blooded (or other Exalted) series.
  
  83
  APPENDIX I • SIGNATURE CHARACTERS
  you like, and in all cases, you do what you like when you 
  like. You are a beautiful woman, and the spirits of the forest 
  love you like a queen. Though by most standards you are 
  on the verge of being feral, there is a grace and beauty to 
  the predator you have become.
  Image: The object of desire for fae and gods alike, you 
  are a beautiful woman with no wrinkles or blemishes upon 
  your brown skin. You dress in loose silks that 
  ﬂ ow about you as you walk through 
  the wilderness. When hunting, 
  you discard your silks and smear 
  your body with ochres and clay; 
  a terrifying presence with 
  bow in hand.
  Equipment: The 
  Prey Stalking Bow & 
  arrows, gladestalker’s 
  stone, silk sari, 
  sandals
  RUTANJALI
  Quote: I am the bride of this forest, stranger. From my 
  womb the sons of this place were born. You have violated 
  the boundaries of my sanctuary and this I can not bear. 
  Now run!
  Prelude: When you were born, your mother was 
  already insane. The other villagers told you how she 
  had been raped by a spirit of the forest and left 
  to die on the bank of a brook. Raised by your 
  wise Aunt Rinchen, you learned everything 
  you know from the forest and have learned to 
  depend on it. What you lacked in formal educa-
  tion, you made up for with 
  your natural cunning 
  and incredible grasp 
  of the forest’s lore. 
  You fell in love with 
  her apprentice, an 
  aspiring shaman 
  named Bima.
  E v e r y t h i n g 
  you treasured was 
  destroyed when the 
  raiders came. They 
  pillaged and looted and 
  killed everyone you had 
  ever cared for, including your 
  love, Bima, to whom you were 
  oathed to wed. Upon your lover’s 
  death, you Exalted and were rushed 
  away by your aunt. Your aunt, torn and 
  bleeding from the raid and exhausted from 
  your ﬂ ight, brought you to a hidden grove deep 
  in the forest. There, she died and left you as 
  bride to the Wood King. 
  As a wedding gift, your husband gave you two 
  things. The ﬁ rst was your bow of green and blue 
  jade, and the second was a promise of revenge on 
  the men who wronged you. On the following day, 
  your husband’s army of beasts and spirits gathered 
  by the forest’s edge and laid waste to the town built 
  on the wreckage of the village of Carya Kos.
  Since that time, you have had three sons, 
  one of whom Exalted. You raised them and edu-
  cated them with all you knew, and then, you sent 
  them to off, each in a different direction, to ﬁ nd 
  their fate.
  Now, you are alone with the spirits and the 
  beasts, and a part of you longs to go in search of 
  your sons and your destiny. 
  Roleplaying Hints: You are the bride of 
  the forest, and you understand and honor 
  the sacredness of all the things within it. 
  You hunt where you like, you kill what 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  84
  RUTANJALI
  Element: Wood
  Concept: Bride of the Forest
  Nature: Survivor
  ATTRIBUTES
  Strength 3, Dexterity 5, Stamina 3, Charisma 3, Ma-
  nipulation 2, Appearance 5, Perception 3, Intelligence 
  2, Wits 4
  VIRTUES
  Compassion 2, Conviction 3, Temperance 2, Valor 3
  ABILITIES
  *Archery 5 (Woodland Environments +2), Athletics 
  2, *Awareness 3, Brawl 2, Dodge 3, Endurance 1, Lore 
  1, *Medicine 1, Occult 2, *Performance 2, *Presence 
  4, Resistance 2, *Ride 1, *Stealth 4, *Survival 5 (Hunt 
  +2), Thrown 1
  * Aspect or Favored Ability
  BACKGROUNDS
  Artifact 5, Backing (Woodland Army) 5, Breeding 2, Manse 
  3, Reputation (Queen of the Wood King) 4
  CHARMS
  Archery: Harvest of the Hunter, Life-Swelling Sap Strike, 
  Ravenous Thorn Technique, Spring Follows Winter, Un-
  obstructed Hunter’s Aim
  Awareness: Precision Observation Method
  Dodge: Flickering Candle Meditation
  Endurance: Ox-Body Technique
  Occult: Spirit-Detecting Mirror Technique
  Presence: Aura of Invulnerability, Glowing Coal Radi-
  ance
  Stealth: Feeling-the-Air Technique, Soundless Action 
  Prana
  Survival: Forgiveness-of-Nature Invoking Prana, Nature’s 
  Healing Bounty, Wild-Wandering Forest Charm
  COMBAT STATISTICS
  Base Initiative: 9
  Attack:
  Punch: Speed 9 Accuracy 7 Damage 3B Defense 7 
  Kick: Speed 6 Accuracy 6 Damage 5B Defense 6
  Knife Speed 12 Accuracy 5 Damage 4L Defense 3
  The Prey Stalking Bow: Speed 9 Accuracy 15 Damage 7L 
  (Rate 3, Range 300)
  Dodge Pool: 8 
  Soak: 1L/3B
  Willpower: 6 
  Health Levels: -0/-1/-1/-1/-2/-2/-2/-
  4/Incap
  Essence: 3
  Personal Essence: 11 
  Peripheral Essence: 19 (27) 
  Committed Essence: 8
  EXALTED POWER COMBAT
  Attack:
  Punch: Speed 9 Accuracy 8 Damage 3B Defense 9 Rate 5 
  Kick: Speed 6 Accuracy 8 Damage 6B Defense 4 Rate 3
  Knife: Speed 9 Accuracy 6 Damage 5L Defense 3 Rate 4
  Dodge Pool: 11
  
  85
  APPENDIX I • SIGNATURE CHARACTERS
  CYNIS BELAR NORREN
  Quote: You can get what you want if you really want it. 
  Believe me. You just need to apply yourself.
  Prelude: You were born the privileged son of a deca-
  dent and wealthy house, son to an Exalted mother and a 
  mortal father. Your childhood was relatively unremarkable 
  short of one assassination attempt you obviously survived. 
  You attended a prestigious primary school as much 
  by dint of your Exalted mother’s inﬂ uence as any 
  perceived talents on your part. You Exalted in 
  the midst of your ﬁ rst true experience with the 
  pleasures of the ﬂ esh at the tender age of 13 with 
  a classmate two years your senior.
  It wasn’t until well into your tenure at the Spiral 
  Academy that your true talents came to light. You had 
  a peculiar knack for drawing and thwarting attempts on 
  your life and for snifﬁ ng out those who might consider 
  such a thing. With schooling 
  and experience, you became a 
  skilled spy and counterspy. You 
  operate ofﬁ cially as an auditor in 
  your family’s service. Unofﬁ cially, you 
  guard your family’s secrets from those who 
  would seek them and collect the secrets of 
  both friend and foe, and you use all the 
  wiles the Wood Dragon granted you, and 
  a few he did not, to meet that end.
  You know a great many secrets, em-
  barrassing ones, shameful ones and dangerous 
  ones. You offer most up to your elders, but not 
  all. Some, you keep for yourself against that 
  inevitable rainy day down the road. Until 
  that day, secrets are as rich a coin as jade in 
  the hands of those who know how to spend 
  them, and you most certainly do.
  Roleplaying Hints: Serpentine. Your com-
  posure is matched only by your powerful sense of 
  purpose. You are a gardener plucking weeds from 
  the fertile ﬁ elds of House Cynis’ holdings. You 
  are a snake hunting rats. You are very good at 
  what you do, and you know it. If you weren’t, 
  you would already be dead.
  You have an unshakable faith in the Realm 
  and the Perfected Hierarchy. All is as it should 
  be. You know your place, and you love oc-
  cupying it. You are patient and ruthless. There 
  is no advantage you would not press, no weapon 
  you would not wield, should necessity 
  demand it. Assassination, seduction, 
  ridicule and scandal: These are the 
  tools of your trade. The right words 
  in the right ear are as deadly as any knife. You wield both 
  with great expertise.
  Image: Not too tall, not too short. The Dragons 
  blessed you with the perfect physique: unobtrusive when 
  you wish it, but not so much that you are invisible in 
  public. With the proper attire and grooming, you draw 
  as many eyes as you wish, and as the situation warrants. 
  Hair of chestnut, copper-colored skin just touched with a 
  patina of iridescent green and eyes like black jade. You tend 
  toward classic fashion, eschewing the seasonal trends in 
  favor of a timeless aesthetic. You employ a small army 
  of body servants, valets, tailors and masseurs to 
  maintain your appearance in all regards. Your 
  countenance is a treasured weapon, and no 
  sword can be too sharp.
  Equipment: Jade daiklave, ﬁ re pearl(see 
  Aspect Book: Fire, p. 79), cord of winds 
  (see Savage Seas, pp. 125-126), 
  nonmagical court mask, silk 
  courtier’s clothes bought on 
  credit, schemes
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  86
  CYNIS BELAR NORREN
  Element: Wood
  Concept: Spy
  Nature: Survivor
  ATTRIBUTES
  Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3, Charisma 3, Ma-
  nipulation 3, Appearance 4, Perception 3, Intelligence 
  2, Wits 4
  VIRTUES
  Compassion 2, Conviction 2, Temperance 3, Valor 2
  ABILITIES
  *Archery 1, Athletics 1, Awareness 3, *Bureaucracy 4, 
  Dodge 3, Endurance 1, *Investigation 3, Larceny 2, Lin-
  guistics (Native: High Realm; Low Realm, Riverspeak) 
  2, Lore 3, Martial Arts 1, *Medicine 1, Melee 2, Occult 
  2, *Performance 2, Presence 1, Resistance 2, *Ride 1, 
  *Socialize 3, Stealth 3, Thrown 1
  * Aspect or Favored Ability
  BACKGROUNDS
  Artifact 2, Backing (House Cynis) 2, Breeding 3, Con-
  nections (The Houses) 2, Connections (The Thousand 
  Scales) 2, Reputation 1, Resources 3
  CHARMS
  Awareness: Precision Observation Method
  Bureaucracy: Benevolent Master’s Blessing, Conﬂ uence 
  of Savant Thought, Thrashing Carp Serenade
  Endurance: Ox-Body Technique
  Investigation: Indisputable Physical Analysis Technique, 
  Scent-of-Crime Method
  Larceny: Observer Awareness Method
  Lore: Elemental Concentration Trance
  Performance: Memorable Performance Technique
  Socialize: Loquacious Courtier Technique
  Stealth: Distracting Breeze Meditation
  COMBAT STATISTICS
  Base Initiative: 7
  Attack:
  Punch: Speed 7 Accuracy 4 Damage 2B Defense 4
  Kick: Speed 4 Accuracy 3 Damage 4B Defense 3
  Jade Daiklave (The Confessor): Speed 13 Accuracy 7 
  Damage 7L Defense 7
  Knife: Speed 10 Accuracy 5 Damage 3L Defense 3
  Dodge Pool: 6 
  Soak: 1L/3B
  Willpower: 6 
  Health Levels: -0/-1/-1/-1/-2/-2/-2/-
  4/Incap
  Essence: 3
  Personal Essence: 12 
  Peripheral Essence: 23 (28) 
  Committed Essence: 5
  EXALTED POWER COMBAT
  Attack:
  Punch: Speed 7 Accuracy 5 Damage 2B Defense 6 Rate 5 
  Kick: Speed 4 Accuracy 5 Damage 5B Defense 1 Rate 3
  Jade Daiklave (The Confessor): Speed 17 Accuracy 8 
  Damage 8L Defense 7 Rate 5
  Knife: Speed 7 Accuracy 6 Damage 4L Defense 3 Rate 4
  Dodge Pool: 9
  
  87
  APPENDIX I • SIGNATURE CHARACTERS
  SESUS NAGEZZER
  Quote: I am the Realm’s humble servant, my Lord, and 
  I do not doubt that you are as well. Let us now consider the 
  repercussions of what you ask, and whether or not I will be 
  able to assist in the matter.
  Prelude: Even as a child, you were underestimated. 
  While other boys ran about, preoccupied by physical 
  contests and trite competition, you ﬁ lled your head 
  with the works of strategists and the philosophies of the 
  savants. Even after you Exalted in a show of force, you 
  were considered the least of your kind by your des-
  potic mother. Encouraged by your father, you 
  attended the House of Bells and graduated 
  with high marks.
  Once stationed, you had a terrible acci-
  dent while attempting to apprehend a powerful 
  spirit as your unit failed to back you up. Hor-
  ribly crippled by the confrontation, your 
  family arranged for you to heal at the 
  Cloister of Wisdom, where you earned 
  the name “The Slug” from your fel-
  low aspirants. Though you failed 
  to complete the basic mastery of 
  Wood Dragon Style and earned 
  the disgust of many of the 
  ranking monks, your teacher 
  afﬁ rmed your personal take on 
  the Immaculate Philosophy 
  and the truth you had realized 
  during your meditations at 
  the Cloister.
  Accompanied by your 
  teacher, you left the Cloister 
  of Wisdom to actualize your 
  plan for the safety and 
  security of the Realm. 
  Drawing on numer-
  ous favors 
  and the as-
  sistance of 
  your cousin, 
  you have 
  established 
  a hidden 
  empire over 
  which you 
  hold undis-
  puted control. 
  Your personal 
  wealth is now 
  comparable 
  to a minor 
  Great House, 
  and your dead 
  mother’s Manse serves as your base of operations.
  At the center of the orgy hall, you recline upon silk 
  cushions, ﬂ anked by your twin lovers, while your Im-
  maculate bodyguard closely watches all who approach 
  you. Though you may be deep in the recesses of an opium 
  dream, you are unﬂ inching in your guardianship and care 
  of the Realm.
  Roleplaying Hints: You are a devout and loyal servant 
  of the Realm. Though you are a hedonistic drug 
  addict with a penchant for overeating, you 
  are never to be underestimated. Your 
  grasp of both diplomacy and social 
  dynamics are prodigal, to say the 
  least, and any who enter your web 
  had best mind her words and 
  actions. Despite your success, 
  you are often consumed 
  by feelings of failure 
  and self-pity, no 
  matter how 
  supportive 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  88
  your courtiers may be. Regardless, you are a force to be 
  reckoned with, and the frequency with which your fellow 
  Dragon-Blooded overlook this fact is an endless source of 
  amusement for you and those who are close to you.
  Image: You are an enormously fat man dressed in brown 
  robes and layered silk kimonos. A scholar of history and 
  strategy, you wear your hair and moustache in the style 
  of the Shogunate era. When you walk, you do so with a 
  noticeable limp, using a walking stick of banyan wood to 
  assist you as you move about. 
  Equipment: Short jade daiklave, rose of millions, jade 
  reinforced buff jacket, Saram Saru’s Oracular Hookah, 
  extensive array of drugs and associated utensils, robes, 
  enormous Manse estate populated by courtesans and 
  personal elite guard
  SESUS NAGEZZER
  Element: Wood
  Concept: Patriotic Schemer 
  Nature: Hedonist
  ATTRIBUTES
  Strength 2, Dexterity 1, Stamina 4, Charisma 4, Ma-
  nipulation 5, Appearance 1, Perception 4, Intelligence 
  3, Wits 3
  VIRTUES
  Compassion 2, Conviction 4, Temperance 1, Valor 3
  ABILITIES
  *Archery 2, Awareness 3, Bureaucracy 4, Endurance 3, 
  *Investigation 4, Larceny 3 (Drugs & Vice +2), Linguistics 
  (Native: High Realm; Guild Cant, Riverspeak) 2, Lore 
  3, Martial Arts 3, *Medicine 2, Melee 2, *Performance 
  3, *Presence 4 (Command +1), Resistance 4, *Ride 2, 
  *Socialize 5
  * Aspect or Favored Ability
  BACKGROUNDS
  Allies 3, Artifact 3, Breeding 3, Command 5, Connections 
  (The Guild) 2, Connections (The Merchant Marine) 2, 
  Connections (Outlaw) 4, Connections (The Threshold) 
  3, Henchman 2 (The Twins), Manse 4, Resources 5
  CHARMS
  Archery: Spring Follows Winter
  Bureaucracy: Benevolent Master’s Blessing, Conﬂ uence of 
  Savant Thought, Geese-Flying-South Administration
  Endurance: Ox-Body Technique
  Investigation: Falsehood Unearthing Attitude, Indisput-
  able Physical Analysis Technique, Revelation of Associates 
  Hunch, Scent-of-Crime Method
  Larceny: Observer Awareness Method
  Martial Arts: Eyes of the Wood Dragon, Mind-Over-Body 
  Meditation, Spirit Walking, Spirit Sight, Wood Dragon 
  Vitality
  Presence: Glowing Coal Radiance, Phantom Fire-War-
  rior Horde
  Socialize: Brother-Against-Brother Insinuation, Loqua-
  cious Courtier Technique, Seizing-the-Tongue Technique, 
  Smoothing-Over-the-Past Technique, Sweeten-the-Tap 
  Method, Warm-Faced Seduction Style, Wary Yellow Dog 
  Attitude
  COMBAT STATISTICS
  Base Initiative: 4
  Attack:
  Punch: Speed 4 Accuracy 4 Damage 2B Defense 4 
  Kick: Speed 1 Accuracy 3 Damage 4B Defense 3
  Jade Short Daiklave (Dragon’s Fang): Speed 8 Accuracy 
  5 Damage 6L Defense 6
  Dodge Pool: 0 
  Soak: 9L/14B (Jade reinforced buff 
  jacket, +7L /+10B, -1 mobility penalty)
  Willpower: 8 
  Health Levels -0/-1/-1/-1/-2/-2/-2/-
  4/Incap
  Essence: 4
  Personal Essence: 15 
  Peripheral Essence: 26 (36)
  Committed Essence: 10
  EXALTED POWER COMBAT
  Attack:
  Punch: Speed 4 Accuracy 5 Damage 2B Defense 6 Rate 5 
  Kick: Speed 1 Accuracy 5 Damage 5B Defense 1 Rate 3
  Jade Short Daiklave (Dragon’s Fang): Speed 10 Accuracy 
  7 Damage 6L Defense 4 Rate 6
  Dodge Pool: 4
  
  89
  APPENDIX I • SIGNATURE CHARACTERS
  TEPET EJAVA
  Quote: It isn’t how you talk that sets your place in his-
  tory. It’s what you accomplish. Show me how you’ll earn your 
  page in the books.
  Prelude: You were, quite literally, born into battle. 
  You are the product of a military household in a mili-
  tary house. Your mother was a storied commander, your 
  grandfather one of the most famous generals in recent 
  memory. Your course was set long before you had any 
  inkling of it. War is as mother’s milk to you, and nothing 
  brings back fond memories of childhood like the smell 
  of blood on the air and the crackle and boom of war-
  worked Essence.
  The House of Bells was home to you, and 
  though your lack of tact in the face of wrong-
  headed mentors brought more grief upon you 
  than most, none could deny your talent or the 
  fact that, when you corrected your teachers, 
  they needed correcting. You went directly to 
  the legions and distinguished yourself at every 
  turn. You did not win every battle, but you never 
  lost to the same enemy twice. And yet, when 
  your Great House faced its greatest 
  ﬁ ght, you were not there. The 
  “what ifs” haunt you day 
  and night. Could you 
  have turned the tide 
  and prevented the 
  cataclysmic defeat 
  that came to your 
  family, or would you 
  have been just another grave tale 
  of gallantry?
  In the aftermath of the 
  Battle of Five Fangs and 
  the death of so many 
  of your elders, you 
  were given command 
  of the Vermilion 
  Legion, an ironic 
  turn of events if 
  ever there was 
  one. In the years 
  since, you have 
  taken that band 
  of cutthroats, 
  rightly re-
  viled by the 
  rest of the em-
  pire, and turned 
  it into a fight-
  ing force to be 
  feared. Your 
  house keeps 
  you in reserve, waiting for the right moment. You keep 
  your men from being idle by hunting brigands and 
  pirates, knowing that when the time comes to act, you 
  and your soldiers will be ready.
  Roleplaying Hints: Some may be better at certain 
  aspects of war, but none surpass you in the all-around. 
  You are direct (some would say intemperate) and honest. 
  You have little time for the subtleties of Dynastic politics, 
  though you can rise to the occasion given 
  no other choice. Everyone knows you 
  can kill as easily as breathing, 
  including you. You 
  feel no need to prove 
  yourself. Your 
  loyalty to your 
  men, your 
  house and 
  your empire 
  is nigh unshake-
  able, but the last 
  few years have 
  tried even your 
  patience. You 
  long for the 
  chance to 
  take ac-
  tions that 
  m e a n 
  something 
  rather than 
  biding your 
  time hunt-
  ing smugglers 
  and sea rats in 
  order to “build 
  political capital.” 
  There are things you could 
  do, and if your elders do 
  not put you in the field 
  to do them, you may 
  very well take it upon 
  yourself to do so.
  Image: Beautiful 
  and terrible. Ejava goes 
  armed and armored 
  nearly every moment of 
  the day, as is just for a 
  general of the legions. 
  Her features are stern, 
  sharp some have said, 
  and her ﬁ gure lush. She 
  takes few pains to sweeten 
  her seeming, but little is 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  90
  needed. Her one vanity is a head of luxurious red hair that 
  falls about her face and strikes an alluring contrast with 
  the emerald tint of her skin.
  Equipment:The freedom stone, salt-gem of the spirit’s 
  eye, stone of healing, jade mask (see Savant & Sorcerer,
  p. 41), green jade daiklave, green jade articulated plate, 
  army of elite troops
  TEPET EJAVA
  Element: Wood
  Concept: General
  Nature: Architect
  ATTRIBUTES
  Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3, Charisma 3, Ma-
  nipulation 2, Appearance 4, Perception 3, Intelligence 
  4, Wits 3
  VIRTUES
  Compassion 2, Conviction 2, Temperance 3, Valor 2
  ABILITIES
  Archery 2*, Athletics 3, Awareness 4, *Bureaucracy 4, 
  Dodge 2, Endurance 3, Investigation 2, Linguistics (Na-
  tive: High Realm; Low Realm, Old Realm, Riverspeak) 
  3, Lore 3, Martial Arts 2, *Medicine 1, *Melee 4 (Duels 
  +2), Occult 2, *Performance 4, *Presence 4 (Command 
  Presence +3), Resistance 2, *Ride 1, Sail 1, Socialize 2, 
  Stealth 3, *Survival 2, Thrown 4
  * Aspect or Favored Ability
  BACKGROUNDS
  Allies 2, Artifact 4, Backing (House Tepet) 1, Breeding 3, 
  Command 5, Connections (The All-Seeing Eye) 3, Con-
  nections (The Houses) 3, Connections (The Legions) 3, 
  Henchmen 2, Manse 3, Mentor (Tepet Arada) 2, Reputa-
  tion (Hero of the Realm) 3, Resources 4
  CHARMS
  Archery: Spring Follows Winter
  Athletics: Effortlessly Rising Flame, Fiery Prowess
  Awareness: All-Encompassing Earth Sense, Precision 
  Observation Method
  Dodge: Flickering Candle Meditation
  Endurance: Ox-Body Technique (x2), Unsleeping Earth 
  Meditation
  Investigation: Indisputable Physical Analysis Technique
  Linguistics: Wind-Carried Words Technique
  Lore: Elemental Bolt Attack
  Melee: Dragon-Graced Weapon, Stoking Bonﬁ re Style
  Performance: Memorable Performance Technique
  Presence: Aura of Invulnerability, Blazing Courageous 
  Swordsmen Inspiration, Glowing Coal Radiance, Phantom 
  Fire-Warrior Horde
  Resistance: Impervious Skin of Stone Meditation, Strength 
  of Stone Technique
  Socialize: Loquacious Courtier Technique
  Stealth: Distracting Breeze Meditation, Trackless Passage 
  Style
  Survival: Wild-Wandering Forester Charm
  Thrown: Vengeful Gust Counterattack, Whirlwind 
  Shield Form
  COMBAT STATISTICS
  Base Initiative: 6
  Attack:
  Punch: Speed 6 Accuracy 5 Damage 3B Defense 5
  Kick: Speed 3 Accuracy 4 Damage 5B Defense 4
  Jade Daiklave (Thorn): Speed 12 Accuracy 9 Damage 
  8L Defense 9 
  Knife: Speed 9 Accuracy 7 Damage 4L Defense 5
  Dodge Pool: 5/3 
  Soak: 13L/17B (Jade articulated 
  plate and target shield, 12L/14B, -2 mobility penalty, +1 
  difﬁ culty to hit)
  Willpower: 7 
  Health Levels: -0/-1/-1/-1/-1/-2/-2/-
  2/-2/-4/Incap
  Essence: 4
  Personal Essence: 14 
  Peripheral Essence: 17 (33) 
  Committed Essence: 16
  EXALTED POWER COMBAT
  Attack:
  Punch: Speed 6 Accuracy 6 Damage 3B Defense 7 Rate 5 
  Kick: Speed 3 Accuracy 6 Damage 6B Defense 2 Rate 3
  Jade Daiklave (Thorn): Speed 16 Accuracy 10 Damage 
  9L Defense 9 Rate 5
  Knife: Speed 6 Accuracy 8 Damage 5L Defense 5 Rate 4
  Dodge Pool: 9/7
  Hardness: 3
  
  91
  APPENDIX I • SIGNATURE CHARACTERS
  RAGARA BHAGWEI
  Quote: Oh, child of the noble family of the Immaculate 
  Dragons. Do not despair. Though your mind is fevered and 
  your senses are not with you, know that you will be made 
  whole. For many years I have plumbed the mysteries of life 
  and death. For all my life I have meditated upon the mysteries 
  of the healing hearts. Now, let go of your fear.
  Prelude: You are the son of Cynis and Ragara, 
  children of the Scarlet Empress herself. At an age 
  where most children are still playing games in 
  the courtyard, you were researching the cures 
  to Creation’s rare diseases. Under the 
  tutelage of your Immaculate instruc-
  tor, you quickly acquired the skills 
  and knowledge of a profoundly 
  accomplished physician.
  On your father’s sugges-
  tion, you were tested by a trial 
  devised by the Empress herself. 
  You would die if you failed. In 
  the midst of the ordeal, you 
  Exalted peacefully, realizing 
  the answer to the Empress’s 
  conundrum and winning 
  yourself a place within the 
  Versino, the premiere school 
  of lore and magic of that time. 
  During your time at the Versino, 
  you studied the magical and heal-
  ing arts. While studying these 
  disciplines, you realized what 
  would become your life’s work, 
  the quest for the source and cure 
  of the Great Contagion.
  The unexpected and untimely 
  destruction of the Versino motivated you 
  to seek the Empress’ sponsorship in a 
  project that would result in the found-
  ing the Heptagram. After gathering 
  its seven masters, you opened the 
  doors to what is now the premiere 
  magical academy in Creation.
  Though many ordeals have 
  presented themselves, you have 
  grown ever wiser throughout the 
  years. Not long ago, a clue to the 
  source of the Contagion presented 
  itself in the form of a book, which 
  was unfortunately taken from you by 
  an Anathema. However, the corpse 
  of the Anathema provided clues 
  that you would have otherwise 
  never discovered, and 
  these have placed you in 
  danger you would not have otherwise encountered.
  Now, near the end of your years, you stand at the 
  threshold of the ﬁ nal answer. If you can avoid becoming 
  embroiled in the plots of your brothers and sisters, you 
  just may accomplish the destiny you imagined 
  for yourself.
  Roleplaying Hints: You are wise and per-
  ceptive, though your raw intelligence is beyond 
  the imagining of even other Dragon-Blooded. 
  Compassionate and patient, you envision yourself 
  as the savior of Creation. You have no political 
  aspirations; not because you have no desire for 
  power, but rather, because you don’t have any 
  interest in temporal might, preferring tran-
  scendental treasures to the ﬂ eeting rewards of 
  the material world. In your own way, you are 
  a megalomaniac without equal, a demigod 
  with a messiah complex that you feel is 
  fully justiﬁ ed.
  Image: You stand tall and thin, with 
  waist length salt and pepper hair and a 
  moustache and goatee worn thin and 
  equally as long. You wear yellow robes 
  with green brocade intricately worked 
  with a motif of leaves and ﬂ owers. 
  Though you radiate serenity, there is 
  always an agitated ambition beneath the 
  surface of you gestures, an urgency that 
  belies your sense of little time left.
  Equipment: Stone of easy breath 
  (see Savant & Sorcerer, p. 68), 
  dragon willow agate, Harrowed 
  Daughter’s Paleskin Cowl, green 
  jade walking stick (with two 
  Hearthstone sockets), ﬁ re 
  pearl (see Aspect Book: 
  Fire, p. 79), scholar’s 
  robe, acupuncture 
  needles, assorted 
  pills and medicines 
  and assorted arti-
  facts, as Bhagwei 
  sees ﬁ t
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  92
  RAGARA BHAGWEI
  Element: Wood
  Concept: Sorcerer-Physician
  Nature: Architect
  ATTRIBUTES
  Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 4, Charisma 3, Ma-
  nipulation 3, Appearance 2, Perception 4, Intelligence 
  6, Wits 4
  VIRTUES
  Compassion 4, Conviction 3, Temperance 4, Valor 2
  ABILITIES
  *Archery 3, Athletics 2, Awareness 3, Bureaucracy 4, Dodge 
  3, Endurance 2, *Investigation 5 (Research +2), Linguistics 
  (Native: High Realm; Old Realm, Riverspeak, Skytongue) 
  3, *Lore 5 (History +2), Martial Arts 4, *Medicine 6 
  (Plague +3), Melee 1, *Occult 5, *Performance 3, Presence 
  3, Resistance 3, *Ride 3, Socialize 3, Survival 3
  * Aspect or Favored Ability
  BACKGROUNDS
  Artifact 4, Backing (The Heptagram) 5, Breeding 4, 
  Connections (The Heptagram) 5, Manse 4, Reputation 
  (Savant) 4, Resources 5
  CHARMS
  Archery: Spring Follows Winter
  Awareness: Precision Observation Method
  Dodge: Flickering Candle Meditation
  Endurance: Ox-Body Technique (x2)
  Investigation: Falsehood Unearthing Attitude, Indisputable 
  Physical Analysis Technique, Scent-of-Crime Method
  Lore: Elemental Bolt Attack, Elemental Concentration 
  Trance, Elemental Empowerment Technique
  Medicine: Disease-Banishing Technique, Dread Infection 
  Strike, Grievous Wound Alteration Energy, Infection-Ban-
  ishing Prana, Jade Crucible Method, Madness-Analyzing 
  Stare, Most Beneﬁ cent Seed of the Five Dragons, Purity 
  of Mind Method, Verdant Curtains of Serenity, Wound-
  Closing Touch
  Occult: Spirit-Detecting Mirror Technique, Spirit-
  Grounding Shout, Terrestrial Circle Sorcery
  Spells: Becoming the Wood Friend, Burning Eyes of the 
  Offender, Death of the Obsidian Butterﬂ ies, Demon of 
  the First Circle, Emerald Circle Banishment, Emerald 
  Countermagic, Incantation of Spiritual Discretion, 
  Paralyzing Contradiction, Stormwind Rider, Summon 
  Elemental, others
  COMBAT STATISTICS
  Base Initiative: 7
  Attack:
  Punch: Speed 7 Accuracy 7 Damage 2B Defense 7
  Kick: Speed 4 Accuracy 6 Damage 4B Defense 6
  Dodge Pool: 6 
  Soak: 2L/4B
  Willpower: 8 
  Health Levels: -0/-1/-1/-1/-1/-2/-2/-
  2/-2/-4/Incap
  Essence: 6
  Personal Essence: 18 
  Peripheral Essence: 41 (47)
  Committed Essence: 6
  EXALTED POWER COMBAT
  Attack:
  Punch: Speed 7 Accuracy 8 Damage 2B Defense 9 Rate 5 
  Kick: Speed 4 Accuracy 8 Damage 5B Defense 4 Rate 3
  Dodge Pool: 12
  
  93
  APPENDIX II • OTHER NOTABLE WOOD ASPECTS 
  APPENDIX II
  OTHER NOTABLE 
  WOOD ASPECTS
  V’NEEF CELTIS
  A rebel son of a rebel house, V’neef Celtis spared no 
  time in making a name for himself. He was Exalted in the 
  midst of an impromptu performance of original songs, each 
  one written as a biting mockery of the faculty of his primary 
  school. The performance inspired a near riot that resulted 
  in the expulsion of no less than three students (himself 
  included) and the destruction of the institution’s prized 
  fountain on which were depicted the ﬁ gures of notable 
  faculty and alumni. From there, he went on to several 
  other primary schools, earning himself an invitation to seek 
  other means of education from each. He ﬁ nally graduated 
  from the Scarlet Institute in Bright Obelisk, having at last 
  found teachers and lessons to suit his interests. His time at 
  the House of Bells was short, despite considerable talents 
  in personal combat. The Cloister would not have him, 
  nor the Academy. It is said that when his mother’s envoy 
  took ship for the Heptagram, the sea and winds themselves 
  rose up and drove the vessel back. For good or ill, Celtis’ 
  formal education was over.
  Since then, Celtis has lived a life of merriment, by 
  all accounts. His exploits in the North are legendary, not 
  for their valor, but their excess. As rumor has it, it is not 
  uncommon for his binges to last a month or more. In and 
  of itself, this would not be remarkable but for his singular 
  talent for satire and the great abundance of music that is 
  created in the midst of these sessions of debauchery. It has 
  become a game of sorts among the powerful to wager on 
  which of the Dynasty’s prominent ﬁ gures are best skewered 
  on V’neef Celtis’ pen when news of another of his parties 
  reaches the Isle.
  His choice of targets obviously does not endear him 
  to his fellow Dynasts, but it does bear fruit in the halls of 
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  94
  the common man. Among those not blessed with high 
  station, he has become something of a folk hero. For the 
  time being at least, V’neef Celtis appears to be content 
  to lob darts at the powerful from the relative security of 
  the North, drinking and hunting and singing. Wagering 
  on when he will step too far against the wrong people 
  and wind up on the wrong end of a knife is almost as 
  popular among the Dynasts as singing his songs is among 
  the common folk.
  CATHAK CACEK MARN
  Cathak Cacek Marn earned her initial fame at the 
  House of Bells by being the ﬁ rst ﬁ rst-year student to go 
  an entire term without being defeated in Gateway. By the 
  end of her tenure there, she had authored a new gambit 
  — the Marn Deceit — and was entered into the ofﬁ cial 
  rolls of the Masters of the Field.
  Immediately upon graduating, Cathak Marn was 
  commissioned into the legions with a scalelord’s rank. Her 
  grasp of small-unit tactics and wilderness survival earned 
  her great respect from her superiors and a never-ending 
  ﬂ ow of dangerous, deep-penetration assaults. She earned 
  lasting notoriety at the Battle of Three-Stones Tower. 
  A hunting party of Fair Folk nobles rode out of the 
  forest of the East on the morning of a winter’s day. They 
  overran an old, lightly manned outpost, took the legion-
  naires stationed there captive and carried them off into the 
  forest. Marn, temporarily assigned to deep-woods training 
  duty in command of a scale of green recruits, caught wind 
  of the assault and made chase. Under her command, these 
  recruits tracked, overtook and ambushed the hunting party. 
  Cathak Cacek Marn herself met the leader of the Fair Folk 
  party in combat and put him down at the cost of an eye. 
  Marn was decorated for valor and excellence immediately 
  after, her shirt still bloody from the fray.
  She continues to serve with distinction, now as a 
  winglord, in the forests of the East. It is rumored that she 
  is penning a manuscript on mobile-force tactics that will 
  no doubt be very well received in the halls of military 
  learning on the Isle. It is further rumored that they have 
  already reserved quarters at the House of Bells for her in 
  anticipation of her return as an instructor.
  V’NEEF KEERSA KALLA
  Among the Dragon-Blooded, the ability to create 
  intense and lasting experiences of beauty is, in some cases, 
  as desirable as skill with a daiklave. Within the highest 
  courts, such beauty must be perfect in its execution and 
  form, impeccable in its transcendental expression. V’neef 
  Keersa Kalla is an performer who has gracefully overstepped 
  this standard.
  Keersa Kalla was born in Lookshy, the daughter of a 
  two humans. Her ﬁ rst words took the form of song as she 
  imitated the lullaby her mother would warble to her as she 
  slept in her cradle. As a young girl, Kalla’s father would 
  take her to drinking halls to perform for onlookers. Upon 
  stacks of wine crates, she would sing to the onlookers, who 
  would ﬁ ll her father’s hat with bits and coins.
  There came a day when one such onlooker was Willful 
  Diamond, a wealthy patron of the arts from Nexus. Upon 
  hearing the young Keersa sing, Willful Diamond made an 
  offer to her father that would allow he and his wife to live 
  comfortably for the rest of their days.
  
  95
  APPENDIX II • OTHER NOTABLE WOOD ASPECTS 
  After the jade changed hands, Keersa Kalla and Willful 
  Diamond made their way to the great river city of Nexus. 
  Her new benefactor’s theater was like nothing she had 
  ever dreamed of, and she reveled in the reality that she 
  would soon be performing upon its stage, though not as 
  soon as she thought, as her voice was still raw and mostly 
  untrained. Willful Diamond’s coffers assured her the best 
  coaching possible.
  It was during the her ﬁ rst performance of “The Desert 
  God’s Lover” that she Exalted, sending ﬂ owered ribbons 
  of Essence out over the hypnotized onlookers during the 
  opera’s aria climax. Now that Keersa Kalla was one of the 
  Dragon-Blooded, she was invited to perform in their courts, 
  where she has entertained the Dynasts for years.
  Since coming to the Blessed Isle, she has taken three 
  husbands, the ﬁ rst of which was the Wood Fleet Trierarch 
  V’neef Gallus, standing as his sole inheritor after his heroic 
  death in battle, taking his name in honor of his noble 
  sacriﬁ ce. Her other husbands were of House Nellens and 
  House Tepet, neither of whom held her heart for long. 
  Many say that there is no man to which such a goddess of 
  the stage could be completely loyal.
  They would be wrong. 
  Since her childhood, Keersa Kalla has been absolutely 
  loyal to one man, and that man is her uncle, Danshi 
  Koton, a high-ranking ofﬁ cer of Lookshy’s military intel-
  ligence division. It is in his service that she has performed 
  throughout the Realm, conveying what she learns on her 
  tours to her number one fan.
  AUTUMN SPIRAL
  The monk known as Autumn Spiral was born to House 
  Ledaal and was given the name Ansharu after the Shogu-
  nate hero of the same name. From an early age, Ansharu 
  demonstrated an incredible capacity for both physical and 
  mental strength, excelling at both academics and athletics 
  with an ease uncommon for young men several years his 
  senior. Seeing the child’s natural potential for the martial 
  arts and academic excellence, Ledaal Porem and his wife 
  donated countless jade obols to the Immaculate Order 
  in an attempt to draw the favor of the Five Elemental 
  Dragons. During the 14th year of their son’s life, their 
  prayers were granted as Ledaal Ansharu Exalted by the 
  grace of Sextes Jylis.
  Upon his becoming one of the Dragon-Blooded, 
  Ledaal Ansharu dedicated himself completely to the study 
  of unarmed ﬁ ghting, even shunning the gift of his father’s 
  daiklave. While his cousins played at court and aspired to 
  positions of power throughout the Blessed Isle, Ansharu 
  honed his power, offering every effort to perfecting his body 
  and mind. Because of this asceticism, Ledaal Ansharu was 
  a cause of concern among the members of his household. 
  Seeing this as a potentially serious problem, Ledaal Porem 
  took his son to the Cloister of Wisdom, where he was tested 
  by the abbots both mentally and physically. Needless to 
  say, the prodigal son of Ledaal Porem was accepted on the 
  basis of a unanimously perfect review.
  As if it were his only function, Ledaal Porem embraced 
  the teachings of He Who Hath Strewn Much Grass and 
  rapidly acquired mastery of the Wood Dragon Style, ap-
  prehending the ﬁ nal technique of Soul Mastery before his 
  40th year. Upon reaching this unthinkable level of excel-
  lence, Ledaal Ansharu abandoned his birth name, taking 
  on the title Autumn Spiral. Accepting the responsibility 
  of his deeply actualized power, Autumn Spiral took up his 
  bow and awaited assignment to the Wyld Hunt.
  It is likely that Autumn Spiral would have met his 
  death at the hands of the Anathema if it had not been for 
  the unexpected arrival of a crippled Sesus who was called 
  “Slug” by his companions. The man had been injured in 
  service to the Realm during an attempt to subdue a powerful 
  spirit. Although his superiors did not wish to accept this 
  putrid glutton into their school, Autumn Spiral accepted 
  the challenge and tutored Nagezzer in his mastered style in 
  an attempt to help the man unlock the healing powers of 
  his own Essence. Though the training eventually reached 
  a dead end due to physical weakness and hopeless lack of 
  discipline on the part of Nagezzer, the two realized a shared 
  philosophy that would bind their destinies together.
  Still in service to the Immaculate Order, Autumn 
  Spiral serves as the personal councilor of Sesus Nagezzar, 
  living with him at the Manse called the Throne of Roses. 
  Here, Autumn Spiral spreads the teachings of Sextes Jylis to 
  visitors and residents alike, protecting the Slug from harm 
  as the Nagezzer insures the survival of the Realm.
  
  EXALTED • ASPECT BOOK: WOOD
  96
  CYNIS ANBOR
  Cynis Anbor was always the favorite child of his 
  mother, the Lady Gripana. From the moment of his ﬁ rst 
  breath, his mother obsessed over him and gave him any-
  thing he wished, no matter how unthinkable. It was when 
  the baby Anbor marveled at the eyes of his wetnurse that 
  the ﬁ rst life was taken for his passing pleasure. It would 
  not be the last.
  It was on Anbor’s 11th birthday that Cynis Gripana 
  took her son as her lover, assuring the boy unconditionally, 
  as a loving parent does, but through means that any parent 
  should shudder to think of. Dressed in the ﬁ nest clothing 
  — always green for Anbor, always red for Griapana — they 
  would travel from court to court, the doting mother with 
  her angel-faced child, preening and ﬂ aunting the wealth 
  of their family.
  The Exaltation of Cynis Anbor was no less dreadful 
  than any other aspect of his existence. While entwined 
  with her son and two mute boys from Gem, Cynis Gripana 
  inhaled the pit of a Haltan plum, choking to death, blue 
  and awful, before her son and the two slaves. The real-
  ization of his mother’s death was too much for Anbor to 
  bear, and as his mind shattered from the weight of it, he 
  Exalted. His Anima, a lashing black mass of thorns and 
  sharp vines, eviscerated the two slaves as he wept on his 
  mother’s twisted corpse.
  Sent to the River Province on permanent assignment 
  to manage the slave trade for his house, Cynis Anbor now 
  runs the largest drug and slave cartel in the city of Great 
  Forks. As insane and cruel as he was as a child, Anbor feasts 
  on the depravities of others just as he indulges his own. 
  From Lookshy to Greyfalls, Cynis Anbor travels from gala 
  event to festival, from salon to brothel, making backroom 
  and bedside deals with the powers that be of the Scavenger 
  Lands. Though he is ﬂ amboyant and mad, he is as cunning 
  and ruthless as any Dynast upon the Blessed Isle, capable 
  of dealing with obstacles through either honeyed tongue 
  or through the edge of Beckoned Harvest, his green jade 
  reaver daiklave. 
  Nonetheless, Anbor does possess one pastime that has, 
  from time to time, been the subject of scandal, regardless 
  of how desperately his servants struggle to hide the ugly 
  truth. When he is so moved, Cynis Anbor arranges for 
  several children to be brought to his Manse in Great Forks, 
  where they are greeted by a strangely muscular woman 
  dressed in red silks and wearing a red veil. In his mother’s 
  long ﬂ owing gowns, Anbor entertains the children, giving 
  them candy, toys and anything else their unwary hearts 
  could desire. Upon the earning of their hard-won trust, 
  Anbor entreats the unsuspecting boys and girls to his bed 
  chambers. It is here that unspeakable things are unleashed 
  on innocent minds and bodies. It is always in the early 
  hours of the morning that his servants ﬁ nd him, in a room 
  strewn with small, strangled bodies, weeping hysterically 
  for his long-dead mother.
  
  The Verdant Children of Sextes Jylis
  Performers and physicians without compare, the Aspects of Wood
  are the naturalists and beast-tamers of the Dragon-Blooded Host.
  Yet, these ever-growing Exalts are far more than mere healers and
  hunters. With their expressive mastery and their devotion to the
  Dragon of Growth, Aspects of Wood are the roots of the Dragon-
  Blooded and the renewing fountain of their people.
  The Ashen Bows of the Wood
  Aspect Book: Wood is the final Aspect Book for Exalted
  Exalted — books
  detailing the differing aspects of the Terrestrial Exalted. Within it
  lie the stories of five members of the aspect, from those who have
  just graduated secondary school to the messianic ambitions of the
  Heptagram’s Ragara Bhagwei himself. This book also contains the
  new magical powers, rules and artifacts that Wood-aspected
  characters will need to claim their role among their people as
  hunters and healers without compare.
  ISBN 1•58846•683•3  WW8844  US $19.99
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Deduped  Shit/Exalted 1E/Exalted 1E - Aspect Book - Wood.pdf