The Exalted are the Chosen of the Gods.
You know what? I never liked that term. The Exalted are, explicitly,
not the Chosen of anyone. In fact, The Unconquered Sun had
no choice at all over who did or did not get picked for an Exaltation. The only way the Exalted were chosen is that their species was chosen becomes it did not have the gaes. Further, the Exalted, once they are empowered, are not beholden to the Gods in any way shape or form.
The Unconquered Sun does not pick who gets to Exalt, ever. Nor does Luna or the Maidens or Gaia or the Elemental Dragons. They are
not chosen. They are champions, in that they represent the gods, but they are not chosen by those gods and their powers are given to them by the Exalt individual deeds or Destiny.
Even the Alchemicals are not Chosen. The Tripartite may choose which human souls to attempt to catalyze into an Alchemical Exalt but the being which comes out the other side of that process is no more that person than your reincarnation is you, they share no continuity of character with the person that came before the Exaltation and as such every Alchemical is a crap shoot because you don't even know the things gender until they step out of the vats much less whether they will look at all those combat Charms you installed in them and say "I would much rather be an artist, thanks."
The only actually
chosen Exalts are Abyssals and Infernals and in both cases the one who ultimately makes the choice is the Exalt, not the Deathlord or Yozi. So even then calling them the Chosen of the Gods (for a given definition of gods which includes 'not at all gods') is a misnomer because they're Faustian bargain Exalts, not 'chosen by god' Exalts.
Which is another reason I hate Exigents. They subvert a major theme of Exalted. That you
can't close Pandora's box. When the Unconquered Sun released the Solars he created a new class of being that may, potentially, be greater than him (as the sum of their parts). He can't put them away anymore. They exist and will continue to exist and if they give him the middle finger and walk off to help their Fair Folk lover destroy everything old Sol wants to protect, well, fuck him then he can't do shit about it.
By making Exaltation something you can curate you undermine the entire point. A god could just carefully pre-select a champion worthy of them (and by worthy, I mean fanatically loyal) and that's terrible. Exalted's entire point is that it give you powers and
no guidance on how to use those powers. Your moral choices are your own. Having God around to give you quests is poison to this concept.
Besides, as I have said before we already
had a 'what happens when you give mortals a gods power' since, like the book about Rathess where it established that gods can merge with mortals (or even Exalts) and boost their power considerably. We didn't need Vague Handwavey Mystic Name for a thing that has been around since, like the fourth or fifth book in the game.
