Introduction

“A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark.” — Dante

Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
The Exigents are many and myriad, but also utterly
unique. They’re not a single kind of Exalted, but the
manifold Chosen of Creation’s countless little gods. In
times of dire need, gods can petition the Unconquered
Sun for a spark of the Exigence — a bonfire of pure,
creative power — to raise up their own Exalted
champions. To do so is always a risk; no god can know
what it will cost them. Many are consumed by the process
entirely.
Exigents have left their mark on Creation’s history as
individual heroes, tipping the scales of power across
countless wars, revolutions, and dynasties. Most — like
Wun Ja’s Architects, the Sovereigns of Uluiru, the
enigmatic Puppeteer — are the Dragon-Blooded’s equals
in power, but a rare handful, like Strawmaiden Janest,
rival the power of the Solar Exalted.
Exigents give players and Storytellers the opportunity to
flex their creativity, inventing unique Exalted as player
characters, allies, or enemies. This book presents four
example types of Exigents with everything you’ll need to
play them, descriptions of other Exigents for readers to
flesh out with their own designs, and guidelines for
creating new Exigents and Charms.
Exigents also offer players and Storytellers the chance to
explore Creation’s little gods: their histories, passions,
and plans. An Exigent’s relationship with the god who
chose them can be far more personal than those of other
Exalted with their distant patrons. Even an Exigent whose
patron god didn’t survive her Exaltation might still find
herself entangled with his priesthood, cult, allies, and
enemies.
This Book at a Glance
Chapter One: Chosen of the Little Gods presents the
Exigents and their history, describes how gods create
them, and provides examples both of Exigents and patron
gods as a starting point for your own designs.
Chapter Two: Great Forks presents the City of Ten
Thousand Temples, one of the Scavenger Lands’ greatest
and most prosperous cities. Spirits dwell here en masse,
seeking worship, influence, and earthly delights. It’s also
home to countless Exigents, including champions chosen
by the city’s gods and wandering heroes seeking purpose
or companions.
Chapter Three: Beyond Mortality provides guidance
for Exigent character creation, advancement, and
traits.
Chapter Four: Power of the Exalted provides
guidance for designing your own custom Charms,
whether for Exigents or other Exalted.
Chapter Five: Strawmaiden Janest presents Janest,
Chosen by a humble field god but with power to equal the
mightiest of Exalted.
Chapter Six: The Puppeteer offers presents Pakpao,
the Puppeteer, a master of intrigue who pulls strings both
figurative and literal.
Chapter Seven: The Architects presents the
Architects, Chosen of Cities, each a living incarnation of
one of Creation’s many cities.
Chapter Eight: The Sovereigns of Uluiru presents the
Sovereigns of Uluiru, Exigent god-kings empowered by a
gem-god’s sacrifice and the blood of a dead Incarna.
Appendix: Creating New Exalted explores adding
entirely new kinds of Exalted to your game, with three
examples of optional Exalted: the Dream-Souled, masters
of illusion and transformation; the Hearteaters, monstrous
Exalted who feed on free will; and the Umbral Exalted,
wracked by inner turmoil and a darkness that both
corrupts and empowers them.
Lexicon
god: A type of spirit, typically serving as the divine
steward of a place, thing, or concept as part of Heaven’s
Celestial Bureaucracy. Among all spirits, only gods can
use the Exigence. Exigence, the: The divine flame that
is the font of Exigent Exaltation. Little gods may petition
the Unconquered Sun for a spark of this flame, allowing
them to create Exalted champions.
Exigent: Unique Exalted chosen by Creation’s little gods
using the power of the Exigence.
illicit Exigent: Any Exigent created by a god who didn’t
receive the spark of Exigence by petitioning the
Unconquered Sun. Such sparks are instead obtained from
other gods whose petitions were answered through theft,
bargaining, extortion, and other means.
little god: All gods other than the Celestial Incarnae.
patchwork Exigent: An Exigent created by multiple
deities, tormented or warped by the irreconcilable
Essences that rage within them.
spark of Exigence: A portion of the Exigence bestowed
by the Unconquered Sun upon a god, which can be used
to create an Exigent — or can be given, traded, or lost to
other gods seeking to create illicit Exigents.
Unconquered Sun, the: The God of the Sun, King of
Heaven, God of the Sun, and custodian of the Exigence,
apportioning sparks of the divine flame to gods whose
pleas he deems worthy.
Springtide’s Promise was burning. The city’s banished
admiral-prince had returned for revenge, and she didn’t
care who stood between her and the steward that had
usurped her. Her foreign soldiers stalked the streets while
native families huddled in their homes or donned scraps
of armor to bolster the steward’s guard. People choked in
smoke and fled into the streets half-blind, resulting in a
terrible confusion of violence.
For a clever young thief like Twice-Errant Savannah, the
city-wide panic was unfortunate. The admiralprince’s long
siege had given the Chosen of Grifters many
opportunities to exploit wealthy families’ fear, right up
until her navy broke through the city’s blockade. The
sudden violence put an end to his plans; now he sprinted
through hazy streets with a satchel-full of stolen jewelry,
hunted by a gang of the admiral’s marines.
As he looked for a hiding place that wasn’t on fire,
Savannah reflected that this whole situation would make
for an entertaining tale of misadventure if he survived. A
part of his mind estimated the odds: threeto-one against.
He willed that part of his mind to shut up.
He turned a blind corner and slammed into an old
woman, sending them both sprawling and scattering
Savannah’s collection of jewelry. “Sorry!” said Savannah.
He rolled to his feet and desperately searched for his
treasures through the smoky haze. “So sorry!”
To Savannah’s surprise, the wiry old woman found her
feet almost as quickly as he had. She held up a lantern to
help his search. It was absurd — his problem was smoke,
not darkness — yet somehow the lantern’s light glinted
off the most valuable piece of his collection, a necklace of
translucent Underworld obsidian. Savannah snatched it
up and breathed a quick sigh of relief.
“That must be worth much to you,” the old woman said.
Savannah’s cheeks burned. In his hurry, he’d thought
only of his treasures. He’d forgotten about escape, and he
certainly hadn’t thought to help an old woman to her feet
in a burning city. Savannah knew just how much he could
sell the necklace for…but what was that worth just now?
Savannah cleared his throat. “Do…do you need help
getting somewhere safe, ma’am?”
The woman chuckled and supplied her name: “Nozifo.”
Then her eyes widened, and Savannah realized that
someone had snuck up behind him. He leaped forward,
and the blackjack that would have bashed his skull in
merely struck his back, very hard. Savannah tumbled
away from his attacker, satchel held close to his body.
Though pain and smoke blurred his vision, Savannah
could make out half a dozen imposing figures — the
admiral’s troops had found him. He opened his mouth to
negotiate, to plead, but Nozifo stepped forward to defend
him. Light sprang from her, a pale, clear brilliance that
cut through the haze. Savannah watched in awe as she
fought the soldiers bare-handed, blocks and strikes
precise as Varangian clockwork.
“Run!” she shouted.
It was the only sensible thing to do, but Savannah didn’t
budge. He’d found someone like him, a rare and unique
wonder…and if he left her now, he likely wouldn’t find her
again, even if she did survive. He needed a distraction, a
chance for Nozifo and him to escape together.
Savannah wasn’t much of a fighter, but he had been
chosen by a god of grifters, a patron of debtors and
cheats. He breathed a promise of wealth into the obsidian
necklace and threw it into the fray.
“Eyes up, everyone!” he crowed. “First to reach it gets
the prize!”
Chapter O

In a farming village in a fertile valley, in the shadow of

two mighty mountains, the faerie army amassed. Dawn’s
golden rays lit their princely leader’s brow. Jewels flashed
on his beringed fingers as he raised a slender hand to
order the advance. Eager as his fae warriors were to
march, his movement was almost bored. All the other
villages had fallen easily as the horde swept down the
passes. This one would surely be no different.
Except.
A lone young woman strode across the field to meet
them. Wheat whickered at her ankles as she passed, the
sound loud in the horde’s sudden quiet. In her calloused
hands, she held a scythe half-again as tall as she was,
with green jade twisting through its haft. Sunlight sparked
off its black blade. The morning breeze blew her auburn
hair from her neck.
At first the raksha prince laughed with delight, to see the
solitary farmhand standing against his horde. How quaint
her defiance. How futile the gesture. How exquisite her
folly would taste.
Then the Strawmaiden swung her grimscythe in a
whistling arc, and the raksha’s good humor crumbled like
dry autumn leaves. At his command, silverwights and
hobgoblins rushed in to overpower her. They fell like so
many stalks of grass as they came within reach of the
farmer’s scythe, deadly as cold iron.
The faerie army’s jubilant war-songs became dirges; their
dirges became wails of terror. •••••
Three days, the battle raged. The fae swarmed locust-like
over the fields, intent on Janest and the village of Kolisz
behind her. Hobgoblin blood soaked the ground, stalks of
wheat springing from the ground as they fell. A raksha
cataphract’s lance impaled her, yet she did not fall; the
fields sustained her, crops turning gray and leaves wilting
so that Ten Sheaves’ Chosen might fight on.
When the second day dawned, Janest’s fellow field-
maidens formed a line at the village’s edge. Armed with
staves and pitchforks and scythes of their own, they
fought to drive back any fae that slipped past their
Exalted sister. By the time the sun reached its peak, the
line had advanced, field-maidens fighting at Janest’s side.
Their presence bolstered her resolve: many of them had
been with her for as long as she could remember. They’d
held her chubby hands as she learned to walk. They’d
taught her how to sow, how to reap, how to fight, or
learned those things alongside her.
The rest were the babes Janest had helped raise. She’d
held their tiny hands during those first wobbly steps.
She’d shown them how to tell sprout from weed, and
when the corn was at its sweetest. The fieldmaidens were
part of nature’s cycle, in a way the lords of chaos should
never — could never — be.
Brave as they were, her sisters had trained to fight off
bandits and wild boars, not the shambolic hordes of the
Wyld. Nothing could prepare them for the this — for
teeming hobgoblins that feasted on their fear and pain,
for faceless soldiers spun from their nightmares, for
baying faerie war-hounds who spoke in stolen voices.
One by one, Janest’s sisters began to fall.
With a roar like summer thunder, she carved a path to the
army’s leader. •••••
The third day dawned bloody. The clash of jade and iron
against gossamer metal echoed throughout the valley as
the faerie host paused to watch their prince and his honor
guard of cataphracts battle the farmhand. How they
stamped and shrieked when a spindly blade sliced into
her belly... and yet the Strawmaiden fought on.
Rust crept along that general’s sword like blight through a
crop. It shattered in his grip. He had no time to reach for
his dagger or demand a weapon from a cataphract. Janest
ended his life with a mighty swing of her scythe, and the
general’s golden-haired head fell to the ground like a
gourd knocked from a fencepost.
The faerie horde’s joy vanished. They fought valiantly,
but their leader’s death had dealt a fatal blow to their
morale. Cataphracts either felt Final Harvest’s sting or
fled from it, and, leaderless, the rest of the invading force
fell into chaos. Janest and her sisters scattered them,
driving them out of the valley.
As she turned back toward Kolisz, Janest stumbled at last.
Her sisters caught her, held her up as the pain and
exhaustion crested over her. They would have carried her
home, but Janest demurred. She leaned on them, though,
as she had all her life.
•••••
Villagers lined the streets as Janest and her sisters
returned. They cheered and they wept, for while Kolisz
was saved, they’d suffered many losses. As the field-
maidens headed for the village’s great hall, the people
followed, part parade, part funeral procession. The air
rang with songs usually only sung in the winter, when the
warriors returned victorious from their raiding. Janest
heard harvest hymns, too, songs for reaping and
threshing, with new words to commemorate her victory
over the fae.
The villagers sang Janest and the field-maidens all the
way to the hall, and even when the doors closed behind
Janest and two of her sisters, their voices still echoed.
Inside, the High Reavers argued. Ten Sheaves’ priests
stood in agitated clusters, some whispering fiercely
amongst themselves, others raising voices hoarse from
days of shouting. Most looked as ragged as Janest felt.
Their clothing was rumpled; dark smudges beneath their
eyes spoke to their exhaustion.
Heads swiveled to view the newcomers. Janest was
suddenly keenly aware of how she must look: dirty,
clothes torn and soaked with both her blood and her
foes’, sweat matting her hair. For an absurd moment, she
was a little girl again, bracing to be chastised for not
scrubbing the dirt from beneath her fingernails after a
day in the fields. The High Reavers had always loomed so
large to her.
But now, she saw they were just people, as frightened
and tired as anyone else. She gently prised her sisters
Amalon and Marieke’s hands from her arms and stood
straight. If she leaned — just a little bit — on her scythe,
no one seemed to notice. “They’re gone,” Janest said.
“The army fled back into the mountains.”
“For how long?” asked one of the priests. Tomasz was a
man in his middle years, who taught fieldmaidens and
farmhands to read tomorrow’s weather in the winds and
clouds.
“I don’t know,” she said. “A long time. Years, I hope. We
proved we’re not worth their while.” She knew this the
way she knew how deep to plant a seed or when the corn
was at its sweetest. The raksha would be licking their
wounds for a long time; if they returned, it wouldn’t be to
Kolisz, not when their were other villages they could prey
on.
And who will protect those other villages?
The thought startled her.
Ten Sheaves had given his life so Janest might protect
Kolisz. Had any other gods in the valley done the same?
Could any of them have? Word had trickled in all season
of the faerie warband’s implacable march, of the
communities lost to their hunger: sleepy little Senjek;
Poljna, whose orchards had the sweetest apples; Zreta,
which clung to the mountainside like a stubborn goat. All
fallen to faerie gluttony. No other champions had risen.
She remembered how Ten Sheaves had shown her a
vision of Yu-Shan, the city that is Heaven, on the last day
of his immortal life. “I have never walked its streets, and
now I never will. Perhaps you might, one day.” How many
cities were there, between here and Heaven? How many
people in need of help?
The High Reavers were all watching her, expectantly.
Janest realized she’d missed a question. “I’m sorry. What
did you ask?”
Iron-haired Henryka hid a scowl. “We said, what do we do
now?” In all the years Janest had known Henryka, she’d
never asked questions, only orders and instructions. She
told you what needed to be done and expected it to be
done promptly.
“She’s tired,” said Marieke. “And wounded. We need to let
her rest. Tomorrow can be for answers.” Janest held up a
hand for her sister to wait. To her astonishment, everyone
in the room went still. It felt like the moment at the start
of the spring festival, when all Kolisz waited for Tomasz to
proclaim how the planting season had fared. But Janest
was no High Reaver. “Why are you asking me these
questions?”
Henryka glanced at the grimscythe gleaming in Janest’s
hands, at the faerie blood staining her clothes. “Ten
Sheaves chose you above all others. Surely, he gave you
his wisdom to deliver to us.”
Another priest spoke up. “Janest carries Ten Sheaves’
blessing, not his words. He chose her to be our guardian,
not some messenger. Can’t you see that?”
They fell to bickering again, this time about the harvest
god’s intentions. About her.
Ten Sheaves had said nothing about the High Reavers.
He’d offered no advice for what Kolisz should do after he
was gone or even what Janest should do.
No. That wasn’t entirely true.
You are to become Exalted — my champion, my Chosen
— and the salvation of your people. If you live, perhaps
the salvation of much more.
What did that mean? The salvation of much more? She
thought again of the vast valley, so much of which she’d
never seen, and the world beyond that. She thought of
Heaven’s shining grander and the regret in Ten Sheaves’
voice as he spoke of it.
But for now, Kolisz remained her greatest concern. “Tend
the wounded,” she said. “Gather the dead. Be sure
everyone has food and shelter. Tomorrow, we’ll consider
how to rebuild.” They were the same tasks the High
Reavers always oversaw when raiders came riding in
winter’s heart, yet it was as if none of them had ever
considered them.
Their arguments stopped, Now, and they set about their
duties with renewed conviction. Taking advantage of this
flurry of activity, Marieke and Amalon ushered Janest out
of the great hall.
•••••
In the following days, after her wounds had closed, Janest
tended to her people. She comforted the grieving and sat
with the wounded. She returned to the fields to survey
ruined crops and churned-up earth, renewing the soil with
her newfound blessings. She tried to take up a hammer
and joined in repairing a house, despite Amalon’s
chidings about reopening the gash in her side. Her fellow
field-maiden didn’t yet understand the power of the
Exalted.
Where her sisters treated her much as they always had,
however, the High Reavers very much did not.
They sent runners to ask her advice on reconstruction.
Tomasz kept her up late reviewing what could be
harvested, and whether they’d have enough for winter.
Even Henryka waited for Janest’s subtle nod before
announcing a plan.
They looked to her for guidance, not as Ten Sheaves’
replacement, but as his appointed emissary. Janest felt
that responsibility tightening around her like baling twine.
She loved Kolisz, but at night she dreamed of far-away
places. During her few idle moments, she wondered if
there were others in need of her help. She wondered
what Kolisz might become if she stayed, whether she’d be
the climbing vine that stole the villagers’ sunlight and left
them unable to grow on their own.
She spent one last night among her sisters. Amalon
promised to tell the High Reavers she’d gone. Marieke
wept as they kissed one another goodbye.
Then, as dawn rose golden over the fields, Strawmaiden
Janest set off into the world.