Creation

Introduction

The First Age has come and gone with everything that happened during that tumultous time. The Solar Exaltations were sealed away, the Great Contagion and the Fair Folk invasion occurred, the Dragon-Blooded made their empire, and so on and so forth.

However, instead of the about 1,500 years between the end of the First Age and the present, some 2,500 years have passed. It is the year RY 1768. While Essence usage never recovered to First Age levels of mastery, another kind of power rose up in its place: science. Creation is still a dangerous place, with all the societies and lands that are listed in the books; however, skyscrapers rise
beside Chiaroscuro's glass towers, the Lintha pirates cruise the Western Sea in steel ships, and advances in firewand technology have made them significantly easier to use, leading to their rise as the predominant weapon in use.

Beside this, however, Essence users are still around. The Dragon-Blooded still maintain their Imperial Realm, despite the absence of the Scarlet Empress, which remains the most powerful nation in existence. There are, however, a number of other nations around, some of which have remained with the old monarchies, others of which have come up with democratic or socialist or fascist governments.

General education level has risen, as has communications and transportation speed; trains and planes and paved roads link the nations together, computers and the Internet are around, and so on and so forth. Essence-users are still around, as are the networks of gods and spirits—though many of those have changed, and new ones risen up. Ancestor worship and prayer are still common features. Magic and technology coexist side-by-side, but magic's use has declined; while thaumaturgy is still widespread, especially those arts that deal with spirits (which technology has completely failed to manage to deal with, as it can only address the physical world), only among the Exalted are higher levels of thaumaturgy, sorcery, and artifacts still in heavy use, as mortals find technology easier to master and use. Slavery is still endemic, depending on the nation, but diseases have become less of a problem, and sanitation more widespread. The wilderness is not so tamed, however, as it has a nasty habit of fighting back, and succeeding; although there is less of it than there was 2,000 years ago, there is still a fairly large amount, where the barbarian tribes live with their Lunar masters and lost civilizations lurk, and the edges of the Wyld creep in.

In short: modern-day Exalted.

Some Additional Notes

Slavery

The status of slavery varies from place to place. For the vast majority of the world, though, it's legal; whether it's looked on as ubiquitous, or only for the very rich, a shameful thing or a good thing, and so on depends on the place. In Charal it's legal, and the homeless tend to be picked up as slaves—generally a good deterrent to running away, for many. They're generally marked with a tattoo on the back of the neck.

The Guild

The Guild is not so huge a concern. They are probably the largest corporate conglomerate in the world, but they don't exercise exclusive monopolies over any one trade; they do control large portions of the slave, pharmaceutical, and electronics trade, however, as well as one of the larger international private banks. Kind of like a Microsoft with more fingers in more pies. Because their interests are so broad, they tend to have different branches that take care of different aspects, but they're all unified under the President of the company, who runs by autocratic decree.

Electronics and Technology

Technology is somewhere around the late nineties, early 2000s or so, with some caveats. There's a flight program, but no space program. The sky extends infinitely high up, and the sun and moon are unreachable by simple physical means. Nuclear power is nonexistent; most of its everyday applications are taken care of by thaumaturgy. To be continued.

Government and War

There's a wider array of government models now than seen in the Creation of the books, but general philosophy has not spread as far or changed as much; it's harder to argue the equality of all people and that everyone should have a say when there are clearly godlike beings of super-capability in existence. While there are democratic nations in the world, along with republics, it's far from the main form of government; monarchies, theocracies, oligarchies, and many forms of autocracies abound, and probably form the majority of governmental structures. Might still makes right, in much of Creation, so war and unstable nations are not uncommon, either, especially in the fractious Hundred Kingdoms. Most of the time, however, these tend to amount to little more than skirmishes and a constant low-level unrest in the more troubled areas of Creation, involving just one or two nations; wide-spread, total states of war are rare.

Current Events

The rise of the Bull of the North and his decimation of the Tepet legions has happened. To be continued.

Time

Assume a seven-day week, four weeks a month, 15 months a year + 5 days of Calibration, as per normal. Each day is named as such, basically following modern parlance with Celestial Incarnae roots instead of Norse roots:

Sunday
Monday
Marsday
Mercsday
Juerday
Vienday
Saturday

Anathema

Anathema are not so feared or as hated as they are in the sourcebooks. Granted, proclaiming yourself a Solar in the middle of the Imperial City is still going to be a really, really stupid idea with a lifespan of about five minutes. In the Threshold and other areas where the Immaculate Cult does not hold sway, however, Anathema are simply another kind of spirit — more powerful than most, and thus to be feared and respected for that, but the sight of one does not immediately evoke terror (unless they're doing something worthy of being terrified of). While tales and horror stories have been spread, it's been a long time since the Solars were striding the world, and memories have faded. In addition, none of the sourcebook characters have yet made their mark in the world; while it's possible that they're out there, the first recent Exaltation was too recent to have given time to accomplish anything. Besides, most people once alive during the First Age has died, save for some ancient Lunars and Sidereals, and even the Scarlet Empress has vanished, now — and many generations have passed for the Dragon-Blooded. They're taken aback by the reappearance of the Solars and the appearance of the Abyssals, and the Wyld Hunt is still in existence, but now it tends to be a lazier and more bureaucratically-ridden organization, content to send forays into Realm-obeying lands. The more ambitious and fervent Immaculates might well penetrate into further away lands, but they do so at their own risk.

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