TERMINOLOGY OF EXALTATION
First Age savants recognized two degrees of Exaltation: Celestial and Terrestrial. Celestial Exaltation, of
course, referred to the power infusing the Chosen of the mighty Incarnae. In practice, more attention tended to be
accorded to the enormous personal power of the Celestial Exalted and the way their Exaltation passed on to new
bearers through a process similar to reincarnation. In the Second Age, savants whose scholarship remains untainted
by Immaculate doctrine are presented with a classification conundrum by the advent of the Abyssal and Infernal
Exalted. Those Exalts' power does not entirely derive from the Incarnae, but they possess all other characteristics
of Celestial Exaltation. For now, that is how they have been categorized.
Despite their aspect diversity and separate patronage, the Dragon-Blooded have always been categorized as a
single variety of Terrestrial Exalted. In the First Age, as with Celestials, savants tended to focus on the character-
istics of this form of Exaltation rather than on the Dragons after whom they had been named. In the Second Age,
this trend has reversed itself.
Moreover, while both varieties of Chosen are Exalted, only Celestials have what the God of Exaltation,
Lytek (see The Compass of Celestial Directions, Vol. III—Yu-Shan, pp. 143-145), refers to as "an Exaltation."
(Scholars of Exaltation have suggested several pieces of clarifying terminology over the centuries to refer to the
element of the Celestial Exalted that carries their power from hero to hero, including "heavenly shard," "spark of
divinity" and "transmigratory Essence." Yet, Lytek's Division of Exaltation has refused all of these appellations on
the grounds of inaccuracy and lack of proper grandeur, and Heavenly paperwork continues to recognize only the
term "Exaltation.")
Alchemicals do not fit into either model. They are, properly speaking, Primordial Exalted—but they do not
function in the same manner as the appropriated Exalts of the Neverborn or the Yozis, or the Chosen of Gaia's
draconic souls. They possess a physical Exaltation, like the Dragon-Blooded, but with no capacity to pass their
power on to another bearer either through death or reproduction. In the end, should they ever integrate themselves
into Creation, their raw power will classify them as Celestial Exalts. Yet, this is unlikely to stop Lytek and his rival
Parad, the God of Inherited Might (see The Compass of Celestial Directions, Vol. III—Yu-Shan, pp. 148–149),
from coming to open conflict over the matter of how to classify their unique industrial Exaltation.
