Farewell Exalted!

[ Mood: Very Sad ]
I just finished reading what appears to be the final big Exalted book, Return of the Scarlet Empress, in which (you guessed it) the Scarlet Empress Returns…with her new husband. It’s a huge end-of-the-world campaign, with demons invading Creation, Deathlords fighting the demons, Fair Folk invading and unraveling reality, the Autochthonians, the Gods, and of course all the usual Exalted getting caught up in it all.

Darned good stuff! It takes in all corners of the compass, allowing a GM to focus on whatever she wants to, or to tackle the whole darned thing, either through giving characters the ability to travel vast distances quickly (with say a magitech aerial conveyance), or even let them make several different bands of characters, each of which struggles to save their own corner of the world. It is as truly epic in scale as a good Exalted campaign ought to be.

Sadly, though, it really does seem to be the final book. To paraphrase the closing lines, once you’ve defeated the demon hordes, replaced the gods, brokered peace with the Fair Folk, revived the Dragon King culture, sealed away the Neverborn, freed the Deathknights, built a new order in the Underworld, reestablished a just world government, and rebuilt from the devastation of war to give everyone a chance to live in peace and hope, it’s time to play another game.

This brings me to the utopian theme here: Utopia is kinda boring. Once you have it, what are you going to do with it? And how long will it remain a utopia? The Exalted box set, Dreams of the First Age, presented the Exalted world during its utopia, and with the ever-more-insane Solars in charge, it was rapidly turning into a nightmare.

There’s also just the fact that, once you have utopia, you’re going to long for something better. You’ll probably take what you have for granted. Utopia just becomes "normal."

More later…must do some class prep.

superdave