A Vision in Bronze; A Sidereal quest

My intent is for A Vision in Bronze to be something you can pick up and follow without super dense pre-existing knowledge about Sidereals, but especially with serialised fiction like this, it's useful to have a source of basic information to call back to.

For more in-depth information, the most relevant primary source for this quest is Sidereals: Charting Fate's Course from Exalted Third Edition. I also draw heavily from other 3e books, such as Across the Eight Directions, The Realm, and others.

The Sidereal Exalted and the Maidens of Fate

The Sidereal Exalted are the collective Chosen of the five Maidens of Fate, sister Incarnae whose natures are intertwined enough for their Exalted to be grouped together as one Sidereal Host with five Castes. The Maidens are as follows:

- Mercury, the Maiden of Journeys, governing fate and destinies relating to journeys mundane and supernatural, and to travel of all kinds. Her colour is yellow, and her Sidereals are known as Harbingers.

- Venus, the Maiden of Serenity, governing fate and destinies relating to interpersonal relationships of all kinds, love, and sex. Her colour is blue, and her Sidereals are known as Joybringers.

- Mars, the Maiden of Battles, governing fate and destinies relating to warfare, battles, and conflicts of all kinds. Her colour is red, and her Sidereals are known as Shieldbearers.

- Jupiter, the Maiden of Secrets, governing fate and destinies relating to information being obscured or revealed, and to secrets of all kinds. Her colour is green, and her Sidereals are also known as Oracles.

- Saturn, the Maiden of Endings, governing fate and destinies relating to death and other endings of all kinds. Her colour is purple, and her Sidereals are also known as Reckoners.

Together, the maidens hold primacy over the stars, fate, and destiny, each within her respective purview. They are strange, distant, and inhuman in their outlook even compared to the other surviving Celestial Incarnae, and have long since ceded the day to day workings of destiny and preservation of fate to their Chosen and to the Bureau of Destiny.

There are never more than one-hundred Sidereals alive at any time, twenty for each Division, although each Division is always short-handed due to deaths, extended absences and permanent departures from heaven, disappearances, or even outright betrayals. These one-hundred Exaltations are passed down from one Sidereal to the next, each Chosen from birth, but only coming into their power later in life. From the moment of their Exaltation, each Sidereal can sense the will of destiny within their Maiden's purview, and are immediately afflicted by arcane fate, a baleful curse that causes them to be forgotten by most of the people around them. If not killed earlier through accident or malice, a Sidereal's lifespan is fixed from the moment of their Exaltation, ranging between 3000 and 5000 years. Unlike that of other Exalts, it may never be extended by any means.

The Sidereal Exalted possess an array of strange and mighty powers, governed by the themes, purviews, and trappings of twenty-five constellations, five for each maiden. They are also famously powerful martial artists, and the greatest of their sorcerers are matched or exceeded only by other Celestial Exalts such as the Lunar and Solar Exalted.

In Yu-Shan, Sidereals working for the Bureau of Destiny work alongside the gods of the Bureau to plan destinies, and are sent to Creation in the event that their direct intervention is required to see one fulfilled.

The twenty-five Constellations are as follows:

- The House of Journeys: The Captain, the Gull, the Mast, the Messenger, the Ship's Wheel
- The House of Serenity: The Ewer, the Lovers, the Musician, the Peacock, the Pillar
- The House of Battles: The Banner, the Gauntlet, the Quiver, the Shield, the Spear
- The House of Secrets: The Guardians, the Key, the Mask, the Sorcerer, the Treasure Trove
- The House of Endings: The Corpse, the Crow, the Haywain, the Rising Smoke, the Sword

Each Sidereal has a birth and Exaltation sign from among the constellations, the latter of which always come from one of their Maidens' five.

Fate and Destiny

Fate and destiny are distinct, but related concepts. Fate refers to the causal laws of Creation, dictating what is possible within its parameters, and what possible futures may come to pass.

These possible futures are destinies. The Bureau of Destiny uses the Loom of Fate to assess which of the possible futures are most feasible and desirable due to any number of factors ranging from the practical to the nakedly political. The selected destiny is then woven into the Loom of Fate by the pattern spiders, and it coming to pass reinforces fate and the integrity of Creation. Destinies going unfulfilled can cause a snarl in the Loom, which can result in the creation of paradox spirits and other malignant phenomenon.

The Bureau of Destiny has numerous ways to ensure that destinies come to pass, from the simple probabilistic nudges that the Loom itself provide, to the intervention of the Bureau's numerous gods, all the way up to one or more of the Sidereal Exalted being dispatched as troubleshooters when matters are truly dire.

All beings have some capacity to defy their own destiny and that of others, from the lowliest mortal slave to the greatest of the Exalted. Mortals and other mundane creatures have a much more limited capacity to disrupt the workings of destiny than gods, Exalted or other supernatural beings, however. The Bureau of Destiny preferentially avoids writing destinies that hinge on such beings, although this is not always possible, especially within societies like the Scarlet Realm, which are ruled over by the Dragon-Blooded Exalted. Disruptive actions taken by these beings are among the most common reasons why Sidereals are called upon to intervene in matters of destiny.

Certain supernatural beings have their origins outside of the bounds of Creation, are not directly tied into the workings of fate, and are only perceived and affected loosely by destiny. These beings are collectively known as the enemies of fate, and they can have dramatic and unpredictable effects on destinies that they interfere with, even compared to other potent supernatural beings. Enemies of fate include demons, fae of all kinds, ghosts and other undead, paradox spirits, and the Abyssal, Getimian, and Infernal Exalted. While enemies of fate are often more vulnerable to the powers of the Sidereal Exalted, they are very difficult to track through scrying and divination, and very powerful or Exalted enemies of fate are unaffected by arcane fate or resplendent destinies.

The Divisions of the Bureau of Destiny and the Fivescore Fellowship

The Bureau of Destiny has five Divisions, one for each Maiden. Each Division focuses on a particular kind of destiny, working with the other Divisions and the other Bureaus of the Celestial Bureaucracy to design and steer destiny across Creation. Each Division has a number of gods in its employ, as well as, at most, twenty Sidereal Exalted.

The Divisions are also often referred to interchangeably with the respective headquarters, located amid a large campus centred on the Loom of Fate itself called the Most Perfect Lotus of Heavenly Design. The headquarters are as follows:

- The Division of Journeys: The Golden Barque of the Heavens
- The Division of Serenity: The Cerulean Lute of Harmony
- The Division of Battles: The Crimson Panoply of Victory
- The Division of Secrets: The Forbidding Manse of Ivy
- The Division of Endings: The Violet Bier of Sorrows

Because of their small numbers and the close conditions that they work under, the Sidereal Host as a whole is often referred to as the Fivescore Fellowship, or simply "the Fellowship" for short.

The Bureau of Destiny also forms conventions, temporary or permanent bodies that cross Divisional lines in order to track and manage important areas of destiny. These include the Directional conventions: the Convention on the Centre, the Convention on the North, the Convention on the East, the Convention on the South, and the Convention on the West. Other long term conventions include the Convention on the Underworld, the Convention on the Wyld, and the Convention on Commerce. Others are created on a short-term basis to address a specific problem, and disbanded after this ceases to be relevant. Most Sidereals sit on one or more convention.

Sidereal Factions

In the Second Age, the Sidereal Host has been internally divided between two significant political cliques, known as the Bronze Faction and the Gold Faction. The factions have their origins in the Solar Purge that ended the First Age, but today are more concerned with the material conditions on Creation and the factions' differing visions for how best to safeguard destiny and Creation as a whole.

The Bronze Faction has been the largest and most dominant political faction within the Fivescore Fellowship for the entire history of the Second Age, making up a plurality of the Sidereal Host and possessing many divine allies throughout the Celestial Bureaucracy. Led by the First Age elder, Chejop Kejak and a trusted inner circle of other old and powerful Sidereals, the Bronze Faction enforces a status quo that they believe renders Creation safer and easier to manage. This status quo primarily concerns itself with a strong, Dragon-Blooded ruled Realm at the centre of Creation, influenced and guided by the Immaculate Philosophy and the Immaculate Order as its state religion. Through their influence over these institutions, the Bronze Faction wields vast power over the fate of the world, and along with their allies dominate all the major bodies of the Bureau of Destiny. However, with the disappearance of the Scarlet Empress, the Realm's undying monarch and the Bronze Faction's uneasy partner for centuries, along with the return of the Solar Exalted, their grip on Creation has been shaken in a way it hasn't been since the days of the Great Contagion.

The Gold Faction defines itself in opposition to the Bronze Faction, a broad coalition of Sidereals and their divine allies who seek to change or disrupt the Bronze Faction's status quo. As opposed to the Bronze Faction, it has no strong central rulership, and the beliefs and long-term goals of its membership vary. The Gold Faction has been newly energised and expanded by the Bronze Faction's recent setbacks. The largest group within the Gold Faction centres around the Harbinger Ayesha Ura and her allies, who seek to use the Cult of the Illuminated to protect, train, and guide the newly returned Solar Exalted toward their ends and the creation of a better world. This group is nonetheless challenged for leadership by the ruthless accelerationist Sings-in-Tongues-of-Steel as well as the Empty Thrones, who reject all centralised authority over the Gold Faction on ideological grounds.

Independant Sidereals, who profess to reject both the Bronze and the Gold Faction's agenda, make up a minority of the Fellowship. In practice, as the Bronze Faction so powerfully influences the default guiding agenda for the Bureau of Destiny, independent Sidereals offer them passive support and are well liked by the Bronze, although some may occasionally support the Gold Faction on certain key issues.

While the Factions are at odds in terms of their visions for Creation, historically they have still lived and worked closely together in Yu-Shan. With the few other Sidereal Exalted being among the only being in the world who can reliably remember one another's existence, friendships, rivalries, romances, and other powerful lasting bonds frequently form across factional lines. Many Sidereals are far closer to individual members of the opposing faction than they are to certain members of their own. Recent years have strained this relationship considerably, most significantly the death of the Gold-aligned Joybringer, Red Osprey during a Wyld Hunt, involving her friend, Sad Ivory, a Bronze-aligned Reckoner. Wrongdoing has never been proven on Sad Ivroy's part, but she has been left desolate by the incident, all but disowned by many on the Bronze. Neither of the Factions wish to see the issue come to blows again, but things may reach a breaking point eventually.

Sidereals and the Exalted Host

The Sidereals and the Bureau of Destiny have a varied relationship with the rest of the Exalted Host as a whole.

Most of Creation's tens of thousands of Dragon-Blooded, Chosen of the Elemental Dragons and the individually weakest of the Exalted, do not know of the existence of the Sidereal Exalted, but they have been the Bronze Faction's favoured partners and catspaws on Creation since the fall of the Second Age. Certain highly placed or knowledgeable Dragon-Blooded in the Realm and elsewhere know of the Sidereal Exalted, and may knowingly aid them. Others come into contact with Sidereals as mysterious mentors or allies and never come to understand their true natures.

Since the Solar Purge perpetrated by the earliest version of the Bronze Faction which targeted them for death alongside their Solar bondmates and allies, the majority of the Lunar Exalted, the Chosen of Luna, have come together to form the Silver Pact. The Silver Pact is a mutual aid society and the sworn enemy of the Realm and other Dragon-Blooded Shogunate successor states, as well as of their Bronze Faction backers, considering itself to be at war with all of them. Individual Lunars can be wildly individualistic, but relations between the Lunar and Sidereal Hosts as a whole have been deadly for centuries. The Silver Pact's shahan-yas — elders and other respected teachers — teach their adherents of the existence of the Sidereal Exalted, and to be wary of them. All attempts to broker a lasting peace between the two Hosts have ended in death and disaster, and there is no appetite for reconciliation and much antipathy from the leadership of both sides.

Nearly two millennia previous, the largest portion of the Fivescore Fellowship came to the grim decision that the excesses of the Solar Exalted, Chosen of the Unconquered Sun, greatest and most powerful of the Exalted Host, had become a threat to Creation as a whole. They orchestrated the Solar Purge, which over the course of a long and bloody war saw the majority of the Solars killed and their Exaltations trapped within a powerful artifact known as the Jade Prison. These events shattered the society of the First Age forever, and inadvertently laid the curse of arcane fate on all the Sidereal Host when the Constellation of the Mask shattered in the process. Seven years before the start of A Vision in Bronze, the Jade Prison opened, releasing the bulk of the trapped Solar Exaltations for the first time in many centuries. Although most Solars are young, they are driven to impose themselves on the world, and to wield their terrible power to do so.

The Bronze Faction routinely works with the Realm and other Dragon-Blooded powers to organise Wyld Hunts in order to kill Lunars, Solars, and other troublesome Exalted whenever they make themselves a problem. This practice keeps the old animosities of the Exalted Host alive, but in a vicious cycle, it cannot be easily halted now without serious consequence even if the Bronze Faction had the power to entirely do so. Stretched thin and pulled in every direction at once, this work has fallen by the wayside slightly in recent years, but has never entirely ceased.

The Exigent Exalted are the Chosen of various lesser gods, the power of Exaltation handed out to their patrons by the Unconquered Sun. While the Exigents and their relationships to other Exalted are individualised by nature, the Bureau of Destiny is on paper responsible for tracking and policing those Exigents who are created with black market sparks of Exigence, a task thrust upon them by the rest of the Celestial Bureaucracy. Sidereals tend to carry out this duty inconsistently and with some resentment for the imposition.

The Getimian Exalted are enemies of fate that emerged less than a century previous, many known to be working with the rogue Sidereal elder, Rakan Thulio to undermine and bring down the Bureau of Destiny. Strange paradox Exalts from unrealised destinies that never were, the Getimians are powerful and unpredictable. Other recent Exalted enemies of fate include the Abyssal and the Infernal Exalted[/b], bearing Solar Exaltations corrupted by the darkest powers of the Underworld and the princes of Hell respectively. Their actions are all frequently destructive to destiny and the ordinary functions of Creation, by design or inadvertently, and this often leads them into violent conflict with the Sidereal Exalted.

Other stranger individual Exalts, such as the Liminal Exalted, are not prominent or unified enough to have a relationship to the Exalted Host as a whole, and are treated with as individuals.