Exalted 2E - Glories of the Most High - The Maidens of Destiny [WW80004c].pdf

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T
HE
M
AIDENS OF
D
ESTINY
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G
LORIES OF THE
M
OST
H
IGH
T
HE
M
AIDENS OF
D
ESTINY
Written by Michael Goodwin, John Mørke, Holden Shearer
oodwin,
Additional Material by Neall Raemonn Price
Developed by Eddy Webb
Edited by Carl Bowen
Layout and Design by Brian Glass
Art by Groundbreakers Studio, Imaginary Friends Studio, Saana ‘Kiyo’ Lappalainen, UDON and Melissa
Uran
Cover Art by Adam Warren
© 2009 CCP hf. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbid-
den, except for the purposes of reviews, and one printed copy, which may be reproduced for personal use only. White Wolf
and Exalted are registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. Glories of the Most High the Unconquered Sun, Luna,
the Maidens of Destiny, the Manual of Exalted Power the Lunars, the Manual of Exalted Power the Sidereals, the Manual of
Exalted Power the Abyssals, Graceful Wicked Masques the Fair Folk, the Books of Sorcery, the White Treatise, the Compass
of Terrestrial Directions, the Scavenger Lands, the West, the East, the South, the Compass of Celestial Directions, Yu-Shan,
Scroll of the Monk, Scroll of Heroes and Dreams of the First Age, Lords of Creation are trademarks of CCP hf. All rights
reserved. All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by CCP hf. CCP North America Inc. is a wholly
owned subsidiary of CCP hf. The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the
trademark or copyright concerned. This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements
are fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature content. Reader discretion is advised.
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2
THE MAIDENS OF
DESTINY
A mystery even unto the makers of the universe,
the Maidens were a known quantity before Creation
existed. Because of this, it has been said that the
Maidens are without origin. This is not entirely true.
The Maidens
are
the handiwork of the Primordials,
but they are omnitemporal, created in a future the
Primordials could not foresee and a past they do
not remember.
Long before Creation existed, Primordials were
the sole things of substance and definition within
the meaninglessness of the Wyld. As the Primordials
began to encounter one another in the depths of the
Wyld, their close proximity created a confluence of
factual existence and the earliest tenets of natural
law. It was through this reality-shaping interface
that concepts like time, space, matter and gravity
appeared, carried on the backs of five tiny sisters
calling themselves the Fates.
P
ERSONAGE AND
P
ANOPLY
Although the Fates came about as a result of
immaculate superinduction, it was plain to the Pri-
mordials that the sisters were not a cosmic accident
but the evidence of intelligent design they had yet
to undertake. Most of the Primordials were merely
amused by the appearance of the Fates, but otherwise
ignored them as they continued with their plans for
eternity. Some Primordials, however, were filled
with dread at what the sisters portended, finding
their sudden appearance ominous, and the Dragon’s
Shadow—who would become the Ebon Dragon—
hated them because their very emergence shattered
his designs on the architecture of fate.
Regardless of their dubious source, by the time
of the building of Creation, the Primordials had
fully incorporated the Fates into their plans for its
construction. When Luna split day into night, she
created a backdrop through which the Fates could
approach Creation and called out to them, awaken-
ing them from their slumber. At that very instant,
3
T
HE
M
AIDENS OF
D
ESTINY
the omnitemporal sisters merged at a single point
in time and reached the fullness of their evolution,
shedding their cryptic identity as the Fates to become
the Maidens.
At this point, the Primordials believed their
work to be complete. They saw the Maidens as the
product of their genius, designed solely to service
the Loom of Fate. But the Maidens had other ideas,
for the Maidens had known the Primordials in the
time before Creation and despised them for their
shortsightedness. Looking back/forward across the
ages, the then-Fates encountered Luna and the
Unconquered Sun, and seeing their dreams and
tragedies, fell in love with them from afar.
The Maidens set out on the perilous journey
through time to meet Luna on Creation’s first night,
knowing they would be bound to act (mostly) im-
partially for the benefit of Creation but believing
they could steer the course of events in their favor
anyway. In the other Incarna, they saw kindred spirits
in an otherwise lonely existence comprised of dismal
titans and insane unshaped. They also saw in them
the potential to be rid of their noxious makers.
They could not, however, be certain of the
outcome. Where the Unconquered Sun was con-
cerned, oracular vision had a way of becoming
distorted as time spun itself in an orbit around his
crushing gravity. More importantly, the Maidens did
not foresee the Exalted, who formed an existential
hole in their vision. Most alarmingly, they failed
to foresee their own enslavement to the Games of
Divinity, proving that not even they could account
for everything that would happen. Even so, they
risked everything to stand beside the Unconquered
Sun in his revolution, and when the Exalted brought
an end to the Primordials, the Maidens saw the last
obstacle to their absolute control over Creation’s
destiny removed.
Five millennia have passed since then, and
unlike any other era in their existence, those 5,000
years have had a significant effect on the Maidens.
For most of their existence, the Maidens were with-
drawn, dispassionate, robotic, inhuman; a cold and
decisive collective moved only by necessity. But
the Exalted, and the Sidereal Exalted in particular,
have had an amazing effect on them. By observing
4
and interacting with their Sidereals and the other
Incarnae, the Maidens have begun to take on hu-
man traits, feelings and motives. They have even
gone against their own natures to break the laws of
destiny in order to follow their hearts—hearts being
something they very much didn’t have previously.
T
WINKLE
, T
WINKLE
…
N
EVER
M
IND
.
When the Maidens officially came into
being, they represented the fullness of Pri-
mordial vision for Creation. No longer were
they a culmination of unrealized miracles
being beamed to the Primordials across
time, but five full-fledged Celestial Incarnae
bearing the hallmark of Primordial design.
Yet none could say who engineered them!
Some looked to Autochthon in suspicion
that they were his, but while Autochthon
agreed that he could have been their designer,
he could not confirm it. Others thought
Oramus might have had a hand in it, but
he was unable to answer, for the Maidens
were a known thing and thus beyond his
sight. The Dragon’s Shadow rankled at the
sight of them, while secretly suspicious that
they might have been his own masterworks
gone awry and moving the course of things
independent of his control. As for the Maid-
ens themselves, when questioned on their
parentage, they always fielded the query to
Jupiter, and Jupiter wasn’t telling.
The Maidens of Destiny are often thought of and
spoken of as a unit. This is a convenient practice.
Together, they govern a common dominion, in the
form of destiny; together, they endowed a singular
variety of Exalted, in the form of the Sidereals. But
the Maidens are not one, and to think such is to
oversimplify. While they share a collective existence,
each Maiden retains an individual identity, to form
five distinct faces of an indivisible whole.
T
HE
F
IVE
M
AIDENS
Rooted in the future and always moving forward,
even through time, Mercury is also the Maiden who
is least attached to the Games of Divinity. Although
she is still stricken by a crippling addiction, Mercury
is able to distance herself from the Games because
she plans most of her moves far in advance and
spends even less time taking her turns than the
Unconquered Sun does.
When playing the Games of Divinity, Mercury
is given to wearing saffron-colored robes tied with
deeper saffron sashes and ribbons. Her garments are
generously cut, but never to such an extent as to
invite scandal. In fact, of all the Maidens, Mercury
seems to take the least interest in her appearance.
Nevertheless, although her robes are smudged with
dust from hard travel, her bare shoulders and the
swell of her bosom carrying the faintest tinge of
perspiration, Mercury effortlessly commands the
gallery with her every smile, anecdote and tale
from the road.
Mercury appears as an athletic young woman
with hair the color of spun straw, which she always
makes some perfunctory attempt at dressing, usually
pulling it into a tail or pinning it up. She has been
famously known to carry with her a ladder of infinite
extension, which she can throw into a gap to form a
bridge or from the ground to a ledge to form a stair.
Her preferred method of climbing this ladder is to
hike up her skirts with both hands and run up it in
defiance of the laws of gravity. Needless to say, the
sight of the Maiden of Journeys using her ladder can
be quite disconcerting. She has even been said to
use it to leave Creation, using it to climb straight up
into the stars or to board the passing moon.
Arguably the most well known and personable
of her sisters, the Maiden of Serenity is a legend in
her own time, beloved and hallowed by her divine
contemporaries as much as her countless worshipers.
Composed of a peace that surpasses understanding
with a gravity of magnetic calm so intense it pulls
one in and invites drowning, Venus is said to be
the most fascinating, intensely beautiful being in all
existence, but such words fall short of her truth.
M
ERCURY
Yet she is not an utterly pacific being. Her gusts
of laughter can be raucous, her alleluias can set fire
to the coldest hearts, and her passions can burn
brighter than the stars. Hers is the peace after the
rage of the storm. She is the release of tension, the
end of frustration, she who conspires toward the
bliss of all things. Venus is the maker and breaker
of hearts, she who gives love and takes it away.
When her serenity is broken, her defense of love is
so fierce that it has, at one point, even given the
Unconquered Sun pause.
Venus appears as a woman at the height of
nubility, clad in cerulean gowns that mold to her
every perfect curve, swoop and line. Her hair, equally
blue, cascades down her body, to blend with her
gowns in a rise-and-fall onrush of blue on blue that
simulates the crushing hypnotism of the Elemental
Pole of Water. Her natural scent is a perfume that
is both aphrodisiac and hallucinogenic, and she is
given to interact with those illusions that spring up
in the minds of those intoxicated by her presence.
Fantasies involving her sisters are among her most
common offerings.
Venus is commonly attended by a number of
floating, shifting azure wisps, like both ribbons and
prayer strips. When she shirks her garments to wander
in the nude, these bands follow her, conveniently
providing the barest modicum of decency. On the
occasions she’s been observed to do battle, she uses
these ribbons as weapons.
It has been said that the Maiden of Battles is the
most terrifying of the Maidens—ruthlessly pragmatic,
quick to take offense and caring little for those mortals
questionably blessed by her presence. Nothing could
be further from the truth. It is because the Maiden
of Battles cares so much for the lives she is affecting
that she is so terse. Any business not having to do
with battles, contests or war distracts her from her
careful planning and causes her savage irritation. In
truth, the destinies she weaves depict the death of
millions, and the gravity of this burden is not lost on
her. Only Jupiter knows that Mars holds the lives of
soldiers sacred and honors in her heart those fighters
she commends to the tender mercies of Saturn.
M
ARS
V
ENUS
T
HE
M
AIDENS OF
D
ESTINY
5

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