[1] The setting is strongly influenced by Tanith Lee's Tales from the Flat Earth, Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon, Lord Dunsany's The Gods of Pegana and Yoshiaki Kawajiri's Ninja Scroll.

Other influences include Glen Cook's The Black Company; Sean Stewart's Resurrection Man, The Night Watch, and Galveston; Homer's Odyssey, the Bible, and Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West.

While normally their Essence recovered slowly through rest, in the first two editions they could also regain it more quickly by performing stunts, actions given special description and embellishment by the players.

Exalted has mechanical and thematic similarities to White Wolf's previous game series, the old World of Darkness, but exists in its own product line, called the Age of Sorrows.

Per the commentary of multiple developers, the connections are deliberately tenuous, allowing players to be free to treat it as a prehistory or as its own world as it may suit their individual game.

The Solar Exalted—those empowered by the Unconquered Sun and mightiest among the Exalted—eventually grew decadent and corrupt from this influence, and were slaughtered in a massive insurrection known as the Usurpation by their servants and advisors.

After the Great Contagion (a plague originating from the lands of the dead) and the Balorian Crusade (an invasion by the Fair Folk) wrought devastation across Creation, a young captain of the Dragon-Blooded armies gained access to powerful weapons of the First Age.

Centuries of Terrestrial hegemony and propaganda play a part in this: the Dragon-Blooded and their world-spanning empire are often seen as demigods and heroes, for instance, while the Lunar Exalted are often seen as monstrous and dangerous.

[11] There are five castes of Solar Exalted: Dawn (warriors and generals), Zenith (priest-kings of the Unconquered Sun), Twilight (scholars and sorcerers), Night (spies and assassins) and Eclipse (ambassadors and diplomats).

The nature of Solar Charms tends to express itself instead through human excellence taken to superhuman extremes, and as such their raw prowess in most skills easily exceeds any of the others.

While many stood and died beside their Solar friends and spouses in the Usurpation, others fled to the edges of Creation and remade themselves to fight a long war against the Dragon-Blooded.

The conflict was ended with negotiated peace and mutual cooperation instead, sealed with ritualized marriages that linked most Solar and Lunar Exalted together into supernatural bonds.

When the First Age ended, the Lunars turned their attention to the Terrestrial Shogunate by fighting a long term insurgency against the Dragon-Blooded and Sidereal hegemony.

[13] They are often presented as secret agents of the Bureau of Fate of the Celestial City of Yu-Shan, the home of the gods, directing events in the mortal world from behind the scenes.

Seeking to save the world, the Sidereals looked into the future and saw two options: attempt to reform of their maddening kings, or destroy the Solar Exalted and raise up the Dragon-Blooded in their place.

The Sidereals, possibly under the effects of the Great Curse laid upon them by the Neverborn, elected the path that offered a guaranteed future for Creation.

There is no longer a mention of a Great Prophecy, and instead the Sidereals who conspired to perform the Solar Purge did so under presumption it was the best option based on what information they had.

This is reframed in 3e to be more the officers and champions of the armies comprising most of humanity during the Divine Revolution, and later allies to the Celestial Exalted and local nobility throughout the First Age.

The state-sanctioned faith known as the Immaculate Order paints the Solar and Lunar Exalted as dangerous Anathema who will bring ruin to the world if allowed to exist.

Loyal servants of the Deathlords,[16] the Abyssal castes are a dark reflection of their Solar counterparts; Dusk (soldiers, generals, and martial champions), Midnight (priests and leaders), Daybreak (scholars and artisans), Day (assassins and spies), and Moonshadow (bureaucrats and diplomats).

The source materials, primarily the second-edition sourcebook The Manual of Exalted Power: Abyssals, present the Deathlords as the vengeful ghosts of First Age Solars slaughtered in the Usurpation.

They have varied goals, but most strive not to conquer or corrupt Creation, save as a path to the Neverborn's desire: the complete destruction of existence.

They field vast undead armies, bolstered by ancient knowledge long since lost to the living but still readily available among the lingering dead, and a powerful form of magic known as necromancy.

The Champions are infused with the souls of dead Autochthonian heroes, serving as protectors of a parallel world made up of the body of Autochthon himself, and enforce the will of its theocratic government.

As Alchemical Exalted grow in power, they also increase in size, eventually physically joining with Autochthon and forming living, sapient cities.

It is implied that despite currently reveling in their power, the vast majority of Infernal Exalted will grow disillusioned with the alien Yozis and ultimately go rogue.

With the Yozis forever trapped in Hell, they hope that by corrupting the Chosen of the gods to their power they can inflict revenge on a Creation that has rejected them.

Their Castes are named for the positions of celestial bodies and roughly correspond to the Solar Castes, though focused on how the Exalt was put down by the world: Azimuth from vicitms of violence and war, Ascendants by those considered expendable or impure, Horizons from those denied knowledge, Nadirs from those subject to imprisonment either literally or metaphorically, and Penumbra by those subjected to the caprice of those in power.

[19] Akuma have not come up in context of Third Edition yet, but developer statements imply it is no longer a singular mechanical implmentation and instead a descriptor for Exalted infernalists as a whole.

A deity in great need can petition to the Unconquered Sun to grant them a portion of the Flame of Exigence — a wonder obtained by him and the other Incarna in the early days of the Divine Revolution — which acts as a catalyst allowing a god to create a Chosen.