I think it's more connected in our case with the fact that Reality is extremely thin and made of papier-mâché compared to previous iterations. Like, there are two explanations here. Either the archangels are hundreds of times stronger or reality is simply extremely fragile.
Thats true for canon ExWoD. I dont think thats true here.
Or it might just be how Reality has always been, and Molly is just powerful enough to see under the surface. Like a physicist first realizing that the atoms that make up solid matter are mostly empty space.
Holden had two potential explanations for any crossover involving Demon The Fallen:
p261 said:
Demon is one of the trickier World of Darkness games when it comes to crossover, mostly because of cosmology. Demon plays well with Vampire, okay with Mage and Wraith, and not worth much of a damn with anything else. The problem generally comes down to this: the Elohim were personally present for the creation of the universe up through human prehistory, and none of that involved werewolves, faeries, or anything from the Werewolf cosmology.
And it damned sure didn't involve Exalted.
Now, you can work your way past that. You can say the Age of Legends happened while the fallen angels were bound into Hell. You can do the usual handwave about reality having layers. But it is at least a minor headache that you'll have to deal with if you include demons in Exalted vs World of Darkness.
The other issue, of course, is that Demon springs directly out of the Reckoning metaplot. So if you want demons, you either have to make the trade-off of a destroyed Underworld, or figure out another reason why demons are now escaping from Hell.
Assuming you're willing and able to juggle all of that, here's how it works.
Since we've gone with the Wheel analogy, and given the background of Nemesis as we saw it via Crown, Option A appears to be in effect here: (Most of, if not all of)The Fallen of Lucifer's Host were bound in Hell for the previous ages, and only got access to Earth fairly recently by immortal standards.
EDIT
Also of relevance:
p280 said:
General Considerations
The power scaling across the board for Exalted vs
World of Darkness was executed with the intention
of making the Exalted feel unreasonably powerful by
World of Darkness standards, but not necessarily of
faithfully porting them directly in from Exalted. The
conceit that this is the far future of Exalted and that re-
ality has badly decayed on a structural level provided a
good excuse for reducing the complexity level of certain
parts of the Exalted, or removing bits that wouldn't
play well with the World of Darkness. I wanted the
Exalted to be disruptive, but only in certain ways.
A lot of the power calibrations on Charms were
done with the intention of funneling stories into "Ex-
alts vs monsters" instead of "Exalts immediately take
over all human societies and try to rebuild the First
Age in Toronto." It's designed so that you can be really
unstoppable for short periods, but you can't just fight
the entire US Army on the White House lawn from
sunrise to sunset. If none of the supernatural powers
are willing to throw down with an entire modern army,
the Exalted should at least need to play hit and run if
they want to try it. This limitation also pushed things
toward the genre models I wanted to emulate, in the
form of late-90s action-fantasy films like Blade and The
Matrix, where the protagonists show up, wreak havoc,
and then go to ground for a while to recover.
A small gift costs us nothing. As to the focus - it's only valuable if it's used.
Spirits are not humans, and do not necessarily value the same things.
What they consider a small gift is not necessarily what we consider a small gift; you may be thinking a bottle of Hennessy, while the spirit is thinking a child's voice at midsummer or something similarly esoteric. Giving a new spirit a blank check for gifts might surprise you unpleasantly. Ask Dresden about the time Bob started an orgy in a college dorm.
Worse, it sets a precedent for interaction.
I do not want to be obliged to prepare gifts everytime we have to talk to some smalltime spirit faction or risk them being offended that they dont rate that sort of consideration. Wizards have to do that sort of shit when they summon or talk to spirits, and I'd rather avoid it.
As for the focus, that argument is a lot like justifying not saving parts of your paycheck
This place has been pretty thoroughly signposted as narratively significant.
We are going to be back here.
Burning the only omnicompatible focus regarding to this subject on information we can try to get by other means is just criminal mismanagement.
There have been several ages since the primordials where there and canon Exalted already contains one instance of Creation being severely weakened.
It makes more sense for reality to be breaking because it is far weaker now (which is corroborated by the exaltations being weaker due to lack of Essence) than for the angels to be that much more powerful.
What did God do? Create a world? Primordials did it too, it's not actually really impressive all things considered, every mythology and their mother have that one.
Narratively?
This is an Exalted cross where the Exalted are inserting into another setting, and Exalted does not get primacy here.
They're guests, not hosts.
No, I dont particularly agree.
The Exaltations being weaker pretty much requires that someone else (or Someone Else) having changed the rules in a pretty fundamental way that even Exaltations could not gainsay. Which by Exalted paradigm would be impossible.
Exalted 2E Celestial Exaltations respires and generates Essence at the same rate regardless of whether they are in Creation, Yu-Shan, the Underworld, or the Wyld. Yet they are over here respiring less Essence per day at E1 than any Ex2 Exalt in combat would be regenerating per turn.
Given as Exaltations are Essence generators, that speaks to fundamental internal changes.
The Primordials, a bunch of them working together, created A world.
God created Reality with all the worlds and possibilities within it. Thats the background thesis of the Dresden Files. Thats the thesis further advanced by Yog's vision quest for alien life.
Significant difference.
