What makes you think they have that much of a choice in the first place? Sol can't make his Exaltations choose a simpering, unambitious and unremarkable coward. The Dragons can't make their Exaltations awaken in someone without Dragon's Blood. The Maidens are mysterious, but they don't appear to direct Exaltations to someone not fated to bear them. Even with an Abyssal Exaltation tied fully to a monstrance and bound by necromancy, a Deathlord can't force their dark shard to Exalt someone who's not on the very verge of death.
It would make sense if the emerald shards of the broken gods could only "choose" those mortals who turned back at the very edge of heroism.
The Yozis place all their failings at the feet of traitors and incompetents. They're not honest in doing so.
That is a good point! Simply by being tied
to them, the nature of failure and misery might bleed off into the Exaltation! It's an interesting thought, actually,
really interesting, that Hell's Titans are so doomed to failure that it has become as metaphysically their nature as perfection is the Sun's. I think, though, my preference would be to apply this particular flawed fate separately, by Caste. Tainted by the Dragon's love of doomed things, it seeks those who make the
wrong choice. Malfeas' Exaltations appear when, in a fit of rage, you bring ruin to your life, perhaps striking someone with power over you, or slaying your beloved wife. Cecelyne's might appear to someone who once held faith in the rule of law, but witness to its failure, and has embraced corruption rather than fight it. She Who Lives In Her Name then appears to someone utterly betrayed by the natural order, perhaps, someone who feels
wronged by those beneath them, and finds themselves on the bottom run. And Adorjan's bloody kiss comes in a moment of pure, absolute loss, the loss of
everything, the kind of loss
no one can come back from. When your family is dead, your lands burned, and you look upon the ashes of all your hopes and dreams and everything tying you to this world...you find Exaltation, and through it, enlightenment.
...that went off on more a wild tangeant than I meant it to.
