Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Okay, I'm sorry, it's just that 'double exalt' has a particular meaning to me due to fandom history, referring to the occasionally-recurring notion of a character who holds multiple kinds of Exaltation at once, like the template stacking of Samuel Haight over in WoD. That assumption has turned up in this discussion before already, so I read the words and was primed to interpret them in one specific way as re-treading old ground. Mea culpa.
This... Also feels like an assumption that nobody has actually suggested, though. Like, Terrestrials are a pretty different kind of Exaltation to the others, they do have some key differences to Celestials as suggested by how there's, y'know, a Celestial/Terrestrial distinction in the first place, and as far back as the inciting question this has pretty much been an Abyssal concept, so I don't see that anybody has been suggesting it as a way of 'upgrading'.
Again, the notion of a Terrestrial Exalt who basically parallels the origin of the Deathlords by bleeding out their Dragon's Blood into the soil before receiving the Last Breath does suggest some character hooks, to me. You can do a lot with someone who was so wrapped up in being a Prince of the Earth that they couldn't bear to die and become nothing, and were willing to accept what has historically been a pretty malevolent bargain in Abyssal Exaltation (and it's not yet altogether clear how 3e will handle Abyssals, but going by Essence the 'harbinger of the world's end' framing is likely to hang around in at least some form) in order to cling on to the power and grandeur and status that they see as their rightful due.
Notably, a) it's pretty easy to see why someone might jump first to the transition of Dragonblooded > Abyssal for this, since Exalted is a game about, y'know, the Exalted, so they tend to be pretty prominent, and b) it provides a qualitatively distinct dynamic that's hard to get otherwise. Like, doing this with a non-Dragonblooded Dynast or someone out of Lookshy would feel different, because mortals from there tend to grow up dealing with the pressure of the expectation of Exaltation, which casts Exalting as an Abyssal in the end in a different light. You get a similar deal with a Threshold noble, I feel, both backgrounds lend themselves to more of an "ominous bargain for a mockery of the power you killed yourself on the wheel of striving for" kind of deal, where going from an actual no-shit Prince of the Earth to an Abyssal is more of a, "clinging on to the glory of your birthright so tightly that you hardly even notice how you've strangled the life from it."
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