The Solars of the Old Realm? Dear god yes, they were completely loony by the end, all their virtues twisted into insanity by the Great Curse, but you do not know that because the state you descend from were all loyalists
Really Super Compressed History of Exalted
TIME NOT
Primordials awaken in the Wyld
After some time they think 'you know having fixed form and a material world would be rad'
Even more indeterminate time later they think of making the Games of Divinity, playing against each other in some weird incomprehensible to mortals divine game
RULE OF THE PRIMORDIALS
Primordials make Creation as a foundation for the Games of Divinity and they make humans so that their prayers can fuel the whole thing, they make humans scared of death and mortal so they will have reason to pray. Because the Primordials were lazy SoBs they make the gods, including the mightiest of them, the Incarna to tend creation in their place, but one of them must have been drinking the smart juice that not-day because they thought to bind the gods with a mighty geas that they could not act against the Primordials.
When the were not playing the Games the Primordials come down into Creation to break things until the gods in a fit of janitorial rage decide to overthrow them.
Unfortunately for the Primodials they bully the Great Maker, their most skilled craftsmen one time too many oh and Luna seduces Gaia who is both a Primordial and the spirit of Creation itself so these two decide to defect and help the Gods beat the rest of the Primordials
The Great Maker creates a vessels of perfect indestructible power which are then
infused by the gods, with their power, but in not way
bound to the will of the Gods
As the Exaltations are made to be perfect they cannot be destroyed and they are designed to grow with their bearers to match any task
Their bearers... it's humans, humans which the Primordials never bothered to extract a vow from. The mightiest Exaltations are invested by the Unconquered Sun, your main god in this quest, to become the Solars. Their companions and guardians were invested by Luna to become the Lunars and their armies invested by the sub-souls of Gaia became the Dragonblooded, that is what Gus and others like him are.
Then the war started, the primordials asked the gods on their vows to draw back these strange humans that were literally glowing with the power of the gods, to which the gods said 'not our power anymore we gave that to them to use as they please aaaand it looks like they please to kick your ass'
After much hardship and trials the Exalted killed a Primordial and then another, beings so vast an previously eternal they could not properly die and they became the Neverborn, undead titans that hate all existence and want it to end so they can cease to be. The remaining primordials surrendered so as not to be killed, were mutilated and bound, becoming the Yozi
THE OLD REALM (High First Age)
The Incarna flake off and go play the Games of Divinity leaving dominion of Creation to the Exalted as a whole and above them all the Solars
Meanwhile in their pit Neverborn were very pissed and cast the Great Curse, which is basically 'your virtues will turn to vices growing ever more extreme and decadent with every passing ear.' The Solars were hit the worst, the Lunars middling and the Dragonblooded least, it might have been a power thing, it might have been simply that the Neverborn hated the generals more than the soldiers
The Dragonborn seeing that the Solars were going insane in many, varied and horrific ways rebelled (with the aid of the Sidereals, but those are
really not relevant to this quest)
Being that this was a war some drgaonbloods did not betray their masters and as it happened some of those took refuge in an obscure northern city called Sazakan. You are descended of that lot. your history says the Solars were Glorious and Perfect Lawgivers... which you know they
had been before going insane
The Solars are mostly killed and most of their Exaltations are bound away so they would not just make more Solars with a past life grudge
THE SHOGUNATE (Low First Age)
For a while the Dragonblooded managed to keep this going, though some of the wonders of the First Age required the aid of the Solars to maintain so much like you and your Reality Engine things get slowly worse
Then things get worse very fast as one of the Deathlords, the ghosts of First Age Solars made a plague that killed 9 in 10 of everyone
Then the Fair Folk invaded seeking to unmake Creation into the Wyld and there was hardly anyone to stop them on account of most of them being dead to the plague
One of the surviving dragonblooded plays the 'adventurer saves the world' story-line straight, enters Ye Olde Weapons complex on the Blessed Island, finds and somehow manages to command the Realm Defense Grid which blasts the fey out of Creation, or what was left of it at this point, all those areas that are not Bordermarches, Middlemarches etc... those were all Creation back in the day but the Fey Invasion swallowed them up as the ocean swallows up the coastal plains and turns mountains into islands
THE AGE OF SORROWS (The Second Age)
She becomes the Scarlet Empress and reigns for seven hundred years because life extenuation is another thing she found in those ruins
The Neverborn manage to break into the prison with Solar Exaltation, stealing some of them for themselves which they make into Abyssals, some for the Yozi who become the Infernals and some just get away as Solars
The Empress vanishes (possibility kidnapped by a Primordial)
This is the set up for the game Exalted which is not really that relevant to Sazakan at the moment because you are not in that world anymore
