Maybe you leave the $5 in if you feel like this one's not a scam. I dunno, man, they explicitly endorse just pledging the $5 if you want to check out the manuscript, so you don't have to feel like you're pulling one over on anyone if you check it out because you want to be informed. You still hate them on principle? Fine, do the thing and just pull your pledge. "I don't want to give them my money" isn't a barrier to entry here.
Citizen of Heaven: Not ready to commit, or just looking to offer general support? This pledge tier is for you.
The Solar Purge
The First Age was a time of unimaginable splendor, but it also saw horrors such as Creation had never seen. Cities were annihilated over petty insults. Sorcerers called upon great and baleful powers to slake their ambition and lust. Tyrannical god-kings forged impossible engines to erase free will itself. In time, it grew clear that if nothing were done, the First Age would fall to its own masters.
First in hypotheticals, then gradually in earnest, a group Sidereals that would come to be known as the Bronze Faction planned what would come to be known as both the Solar Purge and the Usurpation. While they could not stop every atrocity perpetrated by the Exalted, they could remove the Lawgivers who brought the greatest of Exalted power to bear in their hubris. With the aid of Dragon-Blooded gentes and other allies, the Solars would be assassinated in a single fell swoop, and their power sealed away. The Sidereals would rule for a time until Creation settled back into order, but the First Age would continue, freed from the worst of its horrors. The collateral damage would be unimaginable, but a necessary sacrifice for the sake of Creation.
The Solar Purge did not go as planned.
While many Lawgivers fell in a single stroke, too many survived. Legendary Solar warriors slew the assassins sent against them, while others escaped their pursuers. Some had uncovered the conspirators' schemes and prepared against them, or been warned by Sidereal opposed to the Purge. Some were vigilant or paranoid enough to have already planned for just such a contingency. What was meant to be a surgical strike became a years-long war — a war that the nascent Bronze Faction and its allies won.
The slain Solars' Exaltations were sealed within the Jade Prison, a singular wonder that prevented their reincarnation. The Bronze Faction hid it away within the constellation of the Mask, the sign of secret wisdom, but they misjudged the Prison's power. The Mask shattered under its weight, cursing the Sidereal with the arcane fate that leaves Creation unable to remember them. This was the deathblow to the Bronze Faction's plans, ending any prospect of Sidereal rule or a return to the First Age's status quo. Instead, the Sidereals entrusted rulership to their Dragon-Blooded allies, marking the Shogunate's dawn and the First Age's end.
I don't know if maybe the setting info brings up the their Great Curse because I haven't read that far yet, but we don't have any mechanics yet, so anything concrete will have to wait regardless. Next week is character creation and traits, I think, which would have the details on it.
, or just reframed from earlier editions is that part of the reason that Heaven creates and fulfils Destinies is that their completion reinforces the fabric of Creation against the Wyld, and conversely when Destinies are thwarted that actually damages Creation's reality. I like it as giving a reason for the whole destiny business outside of just heavenly entities meddling just to meddle.
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