Abyssal Exalted

List of all Abyssal Exalted Charms

As twisted mockeries of the Solar Exalted, Abyssals use most of the same basic rules and traits as their cousins. What follows are the ways in which deathknights deviate from their original templates, including modified and new Backgrounds as well as the Dark Fate that replaces the Great Curse.

Cheating Death and Eternal Life

The Black Exaltation of an Abyssal shields her body from the injury that should have killed her and further heals her body of all damage. Like all Exalted, deathknights surge to full motes, full Willpower points and full Virtue channels in the moment of their Exaltation.

Other Exalted have their lives extended to a greater or lesser degree, but the Chosen of the Neverborn can live forever—if they are not slain. The cold stasis of death forever traps their bodies at the age of Exaltation, making deathknights the only "immortal" type of Exalted. In addition, Abyssals suffer no dice penalties or other negative side effects from non-magical diseases or wound infections, although they can become inadvertent (or deliberate) carriers of pestilence. By design, they are completely immune to the Great Contagion, just in case.

Eternal Death

Slain Abyssals face a fouler fate than other Exalted. A deathknight's Exaltation returns to its Monstrance of Celestial Portion as quickly as possible (a matter of weeks if the Abyssal died in Creation, and mere days from a shadowland or anywhere in the Underworld). The Abyssal's higher soul cannot naturally pass into Lethe and automatically falls into Oblivion unless the character's player succeeds at a reflexive Willpower roll against a difficulty equal to the character's own Essence. Success enables the Abyssal to resist the pull of annihilation and linger as a ghost. (Magic that determines the destination of a character's soul trumps these rules.) Unless magic prevents it from doing so, an Abyssal's lower soul invariably rises as a mindless hungry ghost with an Essence equal to the character's at death.

Damned

As the champions of Oblivion, Abyssals are considered creatures of darkness and vulnerable to Holy effects. Although they are not entirely outside fate (at least without Charms), Abyssals have no place in the Tapestry of Creation. Their damned nature imposes automatic botches on all mortal astrological divinations of their fate using the stars of Creation. (Astrologers whose players roll five or more threshold successes recognize the murky darkness of the Underworld clouding the reading, though.) Readings into the stars of the Underworld provide the usual insight.

Thaumaturgical prognostication using probabilistic modeling or consulting the Design of Autochthon is no more effective at determining an Abyssal's future than reading the stars of Creation, though rolling five or more successes reveals the taint of the Void marring the reading.

Rejected by Creation

The living Essence of Creation pains and sickens the Abyssal Exalted. While in Creation, an Abyssal character suffers a -2 internal penalty to her player's rolls for non-reflexive actions. Deathknights can resist this debilitation if they garb or otherwise surround themselves in the ritual and symbolic trappings of death. Otherwise, an Abyssal can spend five motes to suffuse herself with a protective aura of necrotic Essence that counters the internal penalty for one day.

As said, the -2 internal penalty for being in areas of living Essence applies only to non-reflexive actions. The penalty is a Crippling effect and may be defended against as such. Abyssals suffer in all realms of existence suffused with living Essence, which is to say all places save the realms of the dead, shadowlands, and blight zones of Autochthonia. Areas the Storyteller deems closely associated with death like graveyards provide their own trappings of death to keep the penalty at bay. Committing motes to block the discomfort is a reflexive action.

Recovering Essence

Abyssal Exalted respire the deathly Essence of the Underworld. In the Underworld or a shadowland, a deathknight respires Essence at the same rate a Solar does in Creation, depending on the Abyssal's activity (see Essence in Shadowlands and the Underworld). An Abyssal cannot respire Essence in Creation, Yu-Shan, Malfeas or other realms. The Chosen of the Neverborn can, however, work around this limitation.

Feeding

As a reflexive action, Abyssal Exalted can magically extend any or all of their teeth into sharp fangs with which to rend motes from the flesh and blood of sentient beings. Biting an opponent in combat with these fangs requires winning control of a grapple and inflicting damage, though the modifier is +0L instead of +0B. Characters may inflict less damage than the number of levels rolled but cannot inflict more levels with one bite than their Stamina.

For every level of lethal damage inflicted, the Abyssal regains one mote of Essence. This includes the Dying levels of non-extras, increasing the maximum motes gained by eating a healthy adult human to (7 + Stamina) instead of three for extras. Unintelligent animals and bodies that have been dead more than one minute offer no Essence (without Charms), though the ephemera of gods and elementals and the gossamer tissue of the Fair Folk offer an exotic banquet to Abyssals who can get hold of them.

An Abyssal who feeds in this manner doesn't have to consume large quantities of blood or flesh (though some of them enjoy to do so). The damage can come from nothing more than the metaphysical loss of Essence, with only small punctures showing where the deathknight pierced the victim's skin and soul.

Abyssals can feed on Alchemical Exalted to regain motes, though not past the moment of death (i.e. no minute long postmortem window of opportunity due to immediate physical dissolution). Though no Abyssals yet realize it, Primordial jouten are succulent beyond imagining, yielding five motes per health level consumed.

Demesne, Manse and Hearthstone

Abyssal Exalted can absorb the superabundant Essence from demesnes or manses located outside the Underworld or shadowlands, but they find the experience intensely unpleasant. Each time an Abyssal channels Essence from Creation's manses or demesnes, the character suffers a -2 internal penalty to all actions for the rest of the day. The trappings of the dead or spending five motes for a necrotic suffusion do not prevent this penalty, since the character deliberately imbibed an Essence contrary to her own nature. Deathknights respire Essence in Abyssal manses and demesnes as if they were in the Underworld.

An Abyssal Exalt can also use any sort of hearthstone— even a Solar hearthstone—as long as she mounts it in soulsteel. Otherwise, drawing Essence and exploiting the innate power of a Terrestrial or Celestial hearthstone causes the same penalty as directly channeling power from the demesne and manse that produced the stone.

Castes

Like the Solar Exalted, the Chosen of the Void have five castes: five ways to lead, to rule... and to destroy. Each caste carries the same aptitude for certain Abilities as the Solar caste from which it derived, as well as a special anima power that twists or inverts the corresponding Solar anima power. The Abyssal Exalted are truly dark suns, lighting Creation's way to Oblivion.

Anima Banner

As an Abyssal expends Peripheral Essence, her aura blooms into a terrible, dark majesty. The levels of anima banner display for Abyssal Exalted mirror those of the Solar Exalted (see Anima Effects).

When an Abyssal's aura turns fully totemic, any mortal character who sees it feels both the terror and the lure of the Void. Merely mortal minds can break when subjected to such horror. When a mortal character first witnesses the doom-filled iconic aura, her player rolls the character's Valor. Failure means the mortal faints, runs away, grovels in worship or is otherwise overcome for the rest of the scene. Heroic mortals can spend a Willpower point to resist this unnatural terror, while the Exalted and other supernatural creatures are immune (not that they will enjoy the experience).

Mortals who botch a Morale roll in the same scene as they witnessed that Abyssal Exalt's iconic anima not only flee, but must spend 1 Willpower point not to gouge out their own eyes in a maddened attempt to remove the horrors etched behind their lids (or do something similarly self-destructive). The unnatural Compulsion expressly overrides a mortal's basic survival instinct to impose this unacceptable order.

Anima Powers

Abyssals can spend one mote to do either of the following:

• Cause their anima to flare to any level of display up to the 8–10 mote level. This display lasts for a scene or until reflexively dismissed, after which the character's anima dims to its actual level.
• Attune her Essence to the emanations of the Underworld for a scene, extending this sixth sense to a radius of (Essence x 100) yards. Within this zone, she can feel shadowlands clearly enough to map their exact border. She immediately recognizes creatures and objects infused with the Essence of the Underworld for what they are (including other Abyssals). This sense does not reveal hidden characters or objects, but it does reveal the presence of necrotic Essence sources within the zone, even if the Abyssal cannot pinpoint the source of these energies. Characters can differentiate subtle differences in the source of Essence (Abyssal, ghost, zombie, etc.), but not the strength of the source.

Castes (Short)

• Dusk: The Dusk Caste wields the arts of murder in all their forms and leads the armies of the Deathlords, spreading carnage across Creation.

Caste Abilities: Archery, Martial Arts, Melee, Thrown, and War

Anima Powers: May use their animas to appear dreadful and terrifying for a scene.

• Midnight: As priests of Oblivion, the Midnight Caste spreads the Whispers of the Neverborn to the dead and the worship of the ancestor cults to the living.

Caste Abilities: Integrity, Performance, Presence, Resistance, and Survival

Anima Powers: May use their animas to slay mortals or to animate corpses.

• Daybreak: As the savants of the Underworld, Daybreak Caste deathknights wield the powers of necromancy and the secrets of the dead to further either the aims of their masters or their own ambitions.

Caste Abilities: Craft, Investigation, Lore, Medicine, and Occult

Anima Powers: May use their animas as shields.

• Day: As the unseen spies of the Deathlords, Day Caste deathknights mingle with the living, destroying their enemies' resolve with assassination and treachery.

Caste Abilities: Athletics, Awareness, Dodge, Larceny, and Stealth

Anima Powers: May use their animas as cloaks against detection and/or mute their anima banners when using Essence.

• Moonshadow: As the emissaries of the dead, Moonshadow Caste deathknights wield the powers of ghosts and Exalted alike, traveling from nation to nation to forge dark contracts at the behest of the Deathlords.

Caste Abilities: Bureaucracy, Linguistics, Ride, Sail, and Socialize

Anima Powers: May use their animas to bind oaths and contracts.

Dark Fate

Storyteller's Note: Keeping it Fun

Storytelling Dark Fate is tricky. On one hand, the system is designed to make it painful and difficult to play a deathknight who acts as a true hero. It further assumes that the Neverborn are cruel and hateful masters who strike down disobedience with little warning or mercy. On the other hand, the game is supposed to be fun. Good communication goes a long way to achieving the latter. Level with your players about the tone of the game you plan to run, and walk them through the kinds of things that will earn their characters Resonance. Make sure that the tone you have in mind is the tone they want to play. If Resonance accumulates faster than players can deal with it, it might be time to slow down and give them some breathing room. At the very least, this should be a warning sign that the players might want a different sort of play experience. Seek player feedback. Just because the Abyssals serve evil masters doesn't mean you have to run your game like one.

With their last spiteful gasps, the Neverborn cursed their murderers to an endless spiral of madness and betrayal. As the chosen weapons of the slain Primordials, the Abyssal Exalted no longer bear this curse. The slaves of Oblivion merely trade one burden for another, though, without even temporary insanity to excuse the atrocities their very presence inflicts upon the world. In the long term, Abyssals cannot make Creation a better place, for the unholy power of their Exaltation reaches out to poison and destroy the people they defend.

Instead of the Limit trait of the Great Curse, Abyssal characters possess a trait called Resonance. This trait tracks the displeasure of their malign masters and the accumulating force of death and destruction in their animas. Although Resonance resembles Limit in some ways, it functions quite differently in others. The most important difference is that Abyssal characters can reduce their Resonance at will... though not without cost.

Gaining Resonance

The Abyssal Exalted gain Resonance in three ways:

Assertion of Exalted Will: A deathknight gains a point of Resonance if she spends Willpower to resist unnatural mental influence, just as other Exalted gain Limit. In asserting their sovereign will against mind-controlling influences, deathknights implicitly assert the ultimate triumph of Oblivion, and draw a bit more of the Void into themselves. Abyssal Exalted do not normally gain more than one Resonance per scene in this manner, even if the character resists unnatural mental influence more than once.

Flawed Virtue: The Black Exaltation damages a deathknight's soul so severely that she has difficulty using one of her Virtues. Each time her player rolls a dice pool involving that Virtue (which includes channeling Willpower through the Virtue), the character gains one point of Resonance. The forsaken Virtue need not be the character's primary Virtue and rarely is.

Abyssals do not gain Resonance for rolling a flawed Virtue solely to regain Willpower (usually a Conviction roll following sleep) or from channeling a Virtue in defense or direct support of their Lunar mates as explained below.

Transgressions Against the Void: The Neverborn created the Abyssal Exalted as champions of Oblivion, and they punish deathknights who act against their nihilistic crusade. (An Abyssal can gain Resonance for his sins — or maybe the taint of the Void in the Abyssal does this automatically — even in Malfeas, the deepest Wyld or any other place that might seem beyond the sight of the Neverborn.) Any deed that actively promotes or defends life counts as a transgression. In practice, Abyssals who refuse to play the part of dutiful world-killing weapons will probably gain some Resonance each scene, while those who embrace their purpose accumulate points only occasionally.

The first time in a scene that an Abyssal transgresses against his fate as a servant of Oblivion, he gains points of Resonance equal to the successes of an Essence roll. The more powerful a deathknight becomes, the more closely the Neverborn scrutinize his actions and punish offenses. This progression extends to its ultimate form in the Deathlords, who deal very carefully with their masters for fear of appropriately high-Essence punishments—such as the First and Forsaken Lion's eternal imprisonment within his armor.

Sins of Life

Abyssal Exalted can sin against the Neverborn and the Void through inappropriate contact with the living world.

• They must not promote or defend life. Actively protecting a living being from harm is always a sin. (Fortunately the Neverborn do not consider deathknights living beings, so they can defend one another.) So is creating new life, whether by mundane conception or magical genesis. Birthing such offspring is an additional sin.
• Deathknights must never use or answer to their pre- Exaltation name, except to reject all claim to it. • Reverence to any divine power other than the Neverborn or Oblivion is strictly banned, though some Moonshadows make an art of composing threatening prayer strips to bully local deities.
• Building or maintaining positive Intimacies with the living attracts the Neverborn's wrath, especially when an Abyssal benevolently interacts with individuals she knew before her Exaltation. Indeed, simply living a normal, mortal life transgresses against the Abyss, unless the deathknight is doing so as a ruse or at the direct behest of a greater servant of the Neverborn.

Storytellers can use these examples to identify other liferelated sins. Keep in mind that Abyssals can atone for certain sins, explaining how their questionable actions actually serve the greater interest of Oblivion as a stunt. Doing so gives them a small margin of grace as long as their loyalty does not falter.

Sins of Death

The only thing the Neverborn punish more severely than supporting life is opposing Oblivion.

• Abyssals can torment and annihilate "normal" ghosts with impunity. Yet they may fight against nephwracks, spectres and other servants of Oblivion only as commanded by the Neverborn or their greater servants (including Deathlords, powerful hekatonkhires and the worst chthonic horrors of the Labyrinth).
• Merely disobeying a greater servant of the Neverborn arouses their ire, to say nothing of disobeying a direct command from the deepest horrors of the Void. Unfortunately, it is hard to predict how the Neverborn will react when their servants turn on each other. The slain Primordials do not always object when their servants fight. Maybe they see the contest as winnowing out weaker minions. Maybe they just don't notice. The Neverborn do recognize, however, that such infighting detracts from the greater war against light and life. Skirmishes between rival groups of deathknights sometimes break up the moment one or both sides manifest a Resonance warning shot. Some Deathlords even stage such skirmishes as a way of testing their masters' stance on issues.

Atonement

Abyssals can rid themselves of Resonance without a calamitous outburst—unlike other Exalts, who cannot mitigate their own Limit. Deathknights do this by reaffirming their loyalty to the Neverborn.

Atonement involves ritual prayers begun at sundown and ending at midnight, spoken in disturbing glossolalia. Magic cannot translate these words, though would-be translators can sense the malevolence beneath the inflections. When multiple deathknights gather in penance, their voices seamlessly join in eerie, spontaneous polyphony, though they do not understand their words any more together than alone. The deathknights also flagellate themselves and engage in other self-tortures.

At the conclusion of the ritual, the Abyssal's player attempts a prayer roll to the Neverborn. The difficulty decreases by one for each level of lethal damage the Abyssal inflicted on himself. The Neverborn also accept human sacrifices or the senseless destruction of irreplaceable treasures whose loss diminishes Creation. If the prayer succeeds, the deathknight feels the Whispers of the Neverborn clawing through her soul. If the penance is sincere, the deathknight loses one point of Resonance per level of self-inflicted lethal damage. In case it even needs to be said, the Neverborn cannot be fooled, and attempting to trick them is a Resonance-worthy sin.

Venting Resonance

Resonance Eruptions Made Easy

Step One: Player Controlled: Roll Essence. Count successes. Storyteller Controlled: Skip this step.
Step Two: Player Controlled: Compare successes to current Resonance points. Use lowest number. Storyteller Controlled: The number is automatically 10.
Step Three: Player Controlled: The player allocates the determined number of Resonance points among Blight, Branding, Conduit or Stigmata. Up to (Essence) points of Resonance may be spent on Blight or Branding. Up to (greater of Essence or Whispers) can be spent on Conduit. Stigmata has no limit. The Storyteller may veto any part of this selection that confers no real drawback, requiring reallocation of points until he approves the selection. Storyteller Controlled: The Storyteller allocates spent Resonance among effects as described.
Step Four: Player and Storyteller Controlled: The selected effects occur immediately, including all lesser effects associated with spending fewer Resonance points on each type of eruption.

Cheating

The rules for gaining Resonance make it extremely difficult and arduous for an Abyssal to directly challenge his Dark Fate. Careful renegades can mimimize the wrath of the Neverborn, however, by opposing them indirectly. Fighting the forces of death is a no-no, but the dead Primordials have no problem with their deathknights slaying demons, Fair Folk, violent criminals and other monsters. Indeed, such deaths often glorify Oblivion more than spilling helpless mortal blood does. Staying in one place and building relationships as the local defender causes Resonance buildup, but renegades who roam from place to place as vigilante antiheroes can fulfill their purpose as lonely death-dealers without building up more than occasional Resonance.

Players might wonder if their character can harm enemies by deliberately venting Resonance in massive blights. Why, yes, they can. If an Abyssal wants to poison the very Essence of Creation for the sake of victory in battle, that suits the Neverborn just fine. Keep in mind that invoking such powerful Blight effects necessarily involves killing someone the Abyssal likes (or at least values in some way). Any Storyteller worth her dice can easily turn this "power" against the Abyssal: a village destroyed in the course of saving it, irreplaceable allies slain (or captives the character's Deathlord wanted alive, damn it!), a Wyld Hunt called against this highly visible Anathema, and so on.

The simplest way for an Abyssal to reduce Resonance, however, is to suffer the punishment of the Neverborn. A deathknight can do so at any time with a reflexive Essence roll. Each success spends one Resonance point on black miracles such as Blight, Branding, Conduit or Stigmata. (Obviously, a player cannot spend more points than the character has accumulated.) Failing the roll, however, means the character suffers a Resonance effect with severity equal to the character's Essence but gains another point of Resonance rather than losing any.

Although the character has no say in how or when a Resonance eruption occurs, his player spends these points and chooses their manifestation. The Storyteller can veto choices that don't impose any actual drawbacks for the character or situation. Resonance effects are generally unpleasant enough, however, to make the selection an exercise in picking one's poison. In addition, whenever a transgression raises a deathknight's Resonance to 10+, the Storyteller spends 10 points on an eruption without needing a roll, choosing the most cruelly appropriate punishment(s) for the Exalt’s recent sins.

Whether under player or Storyteller control, a Resonance eruption cannot spend more points on Blight or Branding than the Abyssal’s Essence rating. A Resonance burst cannot allocate more Resonance on Conduit than the higher of the character's Essence or Whispers. Stigmata is not limited in this way, so Abyssals who fail to provide loved ones or other buffers in the path of the Neverborn's wrath run the risk of suffering terrible wounds if they displease their gods. A Resonance eruption can divide points among multiple effects, though, as long as each effect provides a disadvantage.

The Resonance effects listed here are cumulative, so spending three Resonance points on Stigmata makes all Essence peripheral for a scene and inflicts three levels of damage on the character. If the character already suffers from a particular Resonance effect, the same type of effect stacks to increase severity, resetting the duration from that point onward. The Storyteller can extrapolate higher-level Resonance effects for each of these categories to scourge wayward Deathlords or powerful Abyssals.

Blight

Any of these effects might occur as the power of Oblivion streams through the Abyssal into Creation:

1 Resonance: One natural animal toward which the Abyssal feels positively dies wherever it is, cut down by its brush with the Oblivion-tainted deathknight. The method of execution varies, but is always painful and rarely mistaken for natural causes. If no such target exists, this particular effect doesn’t apply, although other pertinent Blight effects resolve normally.

For the rest of the day, the Abyssal's presence also puts out all natural fires of candle size or smaller and wilts natural vegetation. This effect has a radius in yards equal to the character’s Essence. Seeds are sterilized; cut flowers wilt. Plants larger than the Abyssal survive, but their foliage does not. Any recognizable, personal symbols of gods within the radius darken with a patina of soot, tarnish or mildew. Besides being unsettling and revealing the character as a supernatural being, this effect makes it easier to follow a deathknight through environments containing plant-life. The effect imposes a -2 internal penalty to evade trackers (or -4 through forests, fertile grasslands or similarly dense vegetation).

2 Resonance: The zone of destruction extends to (Essence x 10) yards. In addition, it puts out natural fires up to torch size, freezes standing water, spoils all food in the area and twists divine symbols into scrap. Together, these effects double the penalties to evade trackers through appropriate terrain. Natural animals exposed to the energies may develop a gruesome wasting sickness. (Check for leprosy, with a Virulence equal to the Abyssal's Essence.) Thankfully, this disease is not contagious.

3 Resonance: One mortal the Abyssal cares about dies. Mortals who share a reciprocal Intimacy with the deathknight are the most-favored target. Next come mortals who do not return the Abyssal's Intimacy to them, followed by mortals whom the deathknight merely likes a bit, if only because he finds them useful.

The Abyssal's zone of entropy—still (Essence x 10) yards—puts out natural fires smaller than a bonfire, burns divine symbols to cinders or slag and instantly kills natural animals of mouse size or smaller, carving a swath of dead insects and vermin. The energy also terminates all pregnancies and eggs, though miscarriages might not occur until days later. Mirrors that catch the Abyssal’s reflection crack.

4 Resonance: The Abyssal's zone of destruction extends to (Essence x 100) yards, quenching all natural fires. The deathknight suffers a -4 internal penalty to evade tracking through barren terrain and automatically fails to evade trackers through areas with any vegetation.

The weather around the Resonance epicenter grows unnaturally turbulent, with dense storm clouds, chill gales and sporadic rain that smells faintly of rot, blood or ash. Mushrooms and mildew grow wherever this rain collects, decreasing the output of farmland by half for the coming year. The clouds extend over a radius in miles equal to the Abyssal's Essence, dissipating one day later.

5 Resonance: The aforementioned zone of entropy lasts for a number of days equal to the Abyssal's Essence, traveling with the Abyssal wherever she goes. Furthermore, mortals who come within (Essence x 10) yards of the Abyssal suffer one level of lethal damage per scene, causing them to bleed a thin trickle from the eyes, ears and mouth. These unfortunates also suffer a lingering -1 wound penalty while in the area from the agony of the Abyssal's malignant presence.

A shadowland with a radius of (Essence x 10) yards opens around the Abyssal at the moment of Resonance eruption, halting any nocturnal travel through Creation until morning. Its radius contracts by 10 yards per day until it closes. While it lasts, it serves as a beachhead for hungry ghosts and spectres to rampage into the stormwracked Creation. Sensors in the Realm Defense Grid as well as instruments in the Bureaus of Seasons and Fate register such incursions of Abyssal Essence into Creation, though Yu-Shan lacks the resources to follow up on every incident.

Branding

1 Resonance: The Abyssal's mien assumes any number of minor spectral qualities for a scene, such as an inhuman rasping voice, glowing red eyes, deathly cold skin, audibly creaking bones or a noticeable scent of decay. The unnerving effect reveals the Exalt as a supernatural being and imposes a -2 internal penalty to all disguise-based Larceny rolls, Stealth rolls and social rolls not based on intimidation.

2 Resonance: Spectral effects last for a full day and can manifest anywhere within (Essence x 100) yards. While unnerving, these effects have no real power to affect the world. Typical effects include animating people’s shadows as monstrous phantasms, creating chill winds that follow in the character's wake or mirrors showing no living being's reflection. Relevant internal penalties increase to a value equal to the character's Essence.

3 Resonance: For one day, the Abyssal's unnatural presence upsets all natural animals within (Essence x 100) yards. Wild animals flee from the character and attack anyone who prevents them from doing so. Handlers can keep domesticated animals from bolting with a (Charisma + [Ride or Survival]) roll—Ride for mounts, Survival for other animals—at a difficulty equal to the deathknight's Essence. Friendly animals are not exempt from this panic. The disturbance makes the character much easier to follow, applying spectral-effect internal penalties to evade tracking.

4 Resonance: For one day, mortals find the Exalt's presence unbearable. In this time, mortals must spend one Willpower per scene of interaction not to instantly develop an Intimacy of hatred and/or fear toward the Abyssal. Only those with existing positive Intimacies toward the character automatically resist this aversion, but each scene of interaction counts as a scene of weakening such Intimacies, regardless of what the deathknight does.

5 Resonance: The preceding Branding effects follow the character for a number of days equal to his Essence.

Conduit

1 Resonance: The Abyssal forfeits one Intimacy that the Neverborn find objectionable. He remembers the severed attachment clinically like a half-forgotten dream, unable to understand why he felt attached to anything (or anyone) so irrelevant.

2 Resonance: Rather than simply excising love, the Neverborn poison it, converting an offending positive Intimacy to an equally strong hatred.

3 Resonance: For the rest of the day, the Abyssal must spend one Willpower to take an action that would offend the Neverborn enough to add to his Resonance. This compulsion applies even if the character already received Resonance from sinning earlier in the same scene. If the Exalt runs out of Willpower, he must submit to his Dark Fate and cannot take the offending action.

4 Resonance: Once per scene for the rest of the day, the Neverborn can actively force the character to take any one action they wish unless the character pays one Willpower point to resist the compulsion. In conjunction with the Willpower drain associated with fighting Dark Fate in general, this effect often creates situations in which the Abyssal cannot stop himself from becoming the instrument of his own punishment. It is small comfort that an Abyssal who resists to the last cannot be made to use powerful Charms that require Willpower against his own will.

5 Resonance: The Abyssal is fully possessed by the Neverborn for a scene, displacing and blocking any other forms of competing unnatural mental influence. The character might remain conscious but helpless during this time like a ghost in his own flesh, or he might black out and enter a fugue state, awakening later with no memory or explanation for the gore on his hands.

Stigmata

1 Resonance: All motes the Abyssal spends for the rest of the scene are considered peripheral Essence for anima display.

2+ Resonance: The Abyssal suffers levels of unsoakable lethal damage equal to the Resonance spent, experiencing this injury in a blatantly supernatural and horrific manner. This damage will not reduce a character below Incapacitated, though falling unconscious at the brink of death in the middle of a battle usually results in a de facto death sentence.

4 Resonance: Some part of the deathknight's body withers and becomes as useless as if it were amputated. This Crippling effect lasts until the Abyssal heals all lethal damage.

The Monstrance of Celestial Portion

(This information is for Storyteller only and omitted from this wiki.)

Resonance and Lunar Mates

The mystical ties that bind Lunar Exalted to their Solar mates offer Abyssal Exalted a tiny sliver of hope. Resonance is never gained from sins of life directly associated with the appropriate Lunar. If the deathknight's mate calls her by her forsaken name, she may answer to it. She can protect her mate from harm and love her with a positive Intimacy. The two can even have children together safely, for all that the Neverborn impotently roar in fury. If the Abyssal actually does hold a positive Intimacy for her mate, the protection goes even farther, shielding her from sins of death so long as her actions are in direct support or defense of the Lunar. Thus, an Abyssal with no positive Intimacy could safely protect her mate from demons, but not a horde of specters (since the sin of death for opposing creatures of death still applies even though defending the specific life is permitted). With a positive Intimacy, the deathknight can safely ignore her Liege's command to murder her mate and can even fight the Deathlord in defense of that one precious life.

Champions of the Dead: Independent Abyssals

A Matter of Memories

The Celestial Exalted have excess memories pruned back between lives by Lytek, the god of Exaltation. Abyssal Exaltations never return to Heaven and are never handled by Lytek. Instead, the dross of their memories is torn free as the Exaltation enters and leaves its Monstrance of Celestial Portion, squeezing through the artifact's jagged bars and roosting in its barbed trap.

But a free Abyssal Exaltation does not return to a Monstrance between lives. It is still subject to burning by the sun, and this may serve to sufficiently cleanse residual memories; but it is possible the Exaltation may travel primarily through the Underworld, or may be exceptionally successful in avoiding the light of the sun. If the Storyteller wishes, she may permit the players of free Abyssals to purchase the Past Lives Background to represent this lack of memory-cleans¬ing, though certainly to no higher than one dot; the Abyssals are very new, and only the mightiest among them have had the opportunity to leave strong impressions on their Exaltations.

(From The Ink Monkeys)

The Deathlords gain their servants from two sources. Most are hand-picked for Exaltation at the moment of death. A few are converted Solars, tortured or duped into becoming agents of the Neverborn.

There is a third origin for the Abyssal Exalted. There shouldn't be. The Deathlords and the Neverborn never in­tended for it to happen. But it does.

Abyssals have been abroad in Creation and the Underworld for five years. Some of them have already broken faith with the Deathlords, and these renegades sometimes let the shat­tered wreckage of their Monstrance announce their departure. Sometimes these wayward deathknights perish. Their erstwhile master's rebuke may prove fatal, or the renegade Abyssal may meet his end in an unrelated manner. In other cases, Death­lords attempt to sabotage the Monstrances of their rivals' deathknights, so that they might seduce the Abyssals into their own service without fear of necromantic reprisal.

In any event, Abyssals have died without a Monstrance for their Exaltation to return to. Recapturing a loose Exaltation is difficult, expensive and time-consuming (see The Manual of Exalted Power—The Abyssals, p. 117)—and Deathlords do not always have the luxury of time. A loose Exaltation hurries across Creation on a dogleg course, attempting to act according to its original nature, yet hampered by the modifications the Deathlords have inflicted upon it. The sun's clean light sears the Exaltation, burning off the dross of Abyssal memories, and so it hides away in corpses through the day. By night it seeks a host, a hero, a character worthy of Solar Exaltation… but it may not bond with her. The Abyssal Exaltation is a thing of death, and only at death's doorway may it bestow its dark blessing.

And yet many Solar Exalts draw the Second Breath in life-threatening or even impossible circumstances: making a sui­cide charge to protect their village, in the midst of a pirate raid, or while navigating the death-traps of a First Age ruin. Without Exaltation's sudden might to help them carry the day, they may instead arrive at a heroic but untimely death.

This is when the Abyssal Exaltation acts. Inarticulate com­pared to a Deathlord, it makes no elegant speeches, presents no phantasmal visions. It communicates its offer urgently, sub­liminally: cast aside name and destiny, embrace death as its im­mortal champion, and gain the power of Exaltation.

To save those they love, to destroy those they hate, many would accept.

To Walk Alone in Darkness

An Abyssal who draws the Last Breath courtesy of a free Exaltation does so without any guidance. The Deathlords are unable to sense her Exaltation; the Neverborn may howl si­lently in their tombs, but if she can hear them at all, it's only as whispers at the back of her mind, or in her dreams. She knows only that she can feel the living Essence of the world reject her, that she senses the Essence of death and craves its trap­pings. Her path may eventually lead her to the shadowlands, and from there into the Underworld.

The Deathlords may learn of her at this point. If they take her to be the agent of another Deathlord, they are likely to react with guarded or open hostility. If they realize what she is, their first priority will be to try to recruit her.

For converted Solars, the Deathlords are figures of tremen­dous power and authority—either the Solar was a willing ser­vant of one of those ancient ghosts, or their will was broken utterly by a Deathlord's necromantic torture. Traditional Abys­sals all owe their continued existence to a Deathlord—their first meeting is likely the moment when the Deathlord steps in and prevents the Exalt's certain death. Deathlords loom large in the minds of both sorts of Abyssals. They are sources of power and authority, the cause for the deathknight's present condition.

Independent deathknights may feel differently. For an in­dependent Abyssal who grew up in a shadowland, the local Deathlord is a probably distant figure of dread and terror (un­less they have taken some pains to cultivate good relations with the living, as the Silver Prince has). Or an independent may walk into the Underworld with no knowledge of the Death­lords, encountering them first as whispered rumors and dire tales.

In general, ghosts have little good to say about the Death­lords. The necromantic kings and queens of the Underworld are cruel and terrifying. They deal with the mad things of the Labyrinth. They enslave and destroy ancient ghostly kingdoms at will. They forge ghosts into soulsteel and corrupt the an­cestor cult for their own twisted purposes. They are, in short, regarded as terrible villains. An independent Abyssal may be on guard by the time a Deathlord discovers her, prepared for tempting lies and nihilistic sermons.

If she will not bend knee, an expedient Deathlord may try to slay the young rogue and capture her Exaltation. This is, of course, easier said than done. Trained or not, the independent is Exalted.

Things to Do in the Underworld When You're Not Dead

While the Deathlords are forces to be reckoned with, they are no more central to an independent Abyssal's life than, say, the Wyld Hunt is to an independent Solar. Independents pursue their own motivations, in Creation and the land of the dead.

Creation feels wrong to an independent Abyssal. The sun is too bright, the air thin. She must surround herself with the trappings of death or feel the constant weight of the living world's rejection. She cannot easily replenish her Essence in Creation without victimizing the living, and her rapidly chang­ing appearance—into an alabaster beauty or rotten horror— makes her stand out. The shadowlands are better, but many are already claimed by the Deathlords and their agents. The Underworld beckons to independent Abyssals: vast, open, al­luring. It feels disturbingly like home.

The Underworld is not as Creation is. It is a place of ex­tremes: dark and bright, still and swift, elegant and terrible. It has little room for the median or the mediocre. The waters of the Underworld are a flat and perfect black, or an eerie silver. Its sands are the white of bone or chalk. Its sky is a leaden curtain by day; by night the clouds roll back, exposing a jet sheet adorned with scattered diamonds. The ornaments of the dead are spectacular: glittering blood-rubies shout out their color, demanding the eye's attention; silver crowns gleam in the pale blue light of torches that never consume themselves; ivory masks show only what their owners wish to display. Fine food weighs down the banquet tables of the dead. Grain grows straight and high like rows of spears in the Underworld's fields.

Exploration reveals that the Underworld contains countless cultures forgotten by the living world, the echoes of ancient treasures of the First Age, and the blasphemous secrets of the slain Primordials.

And in some ways, the Underworld is kinder than Creation. An Abyssal may observe an old man creaking his way down the streets of Nexus, frail of body, weak of constitution, squinting at the world through gathering cataract-clouds. A year later, the deathknight encounters the same man in the Underworld as a ghost. The ghost wears an elder's snowy beard and his eyes gleam with years of accumulated wisdom, but his step is swift and sure, his limbs strong, his gaze keen with the clarity of the dead. He will keep this visage and this strength forever. He may be reunited with his own father, and with his father's father. These are the blessings of death.

But the Underworld is a troubled place. Mortwights and Nephwracks gather in the mad tunnels of the Labyrinth. Heka­tonkhires stalk remote wastes. The empires of the dead war upon one another, each demanding eternal authority over the same small patch of land. Immaculate monks and greedy gods attack the ancestor cult, cutting the dead off from living rela­tives. Necromancers enslave or destroy unlucky ghosts. The Deathlords spread their nihilistic dogma across the Under­world's kingdoms, corrupt its cultures, and soulforge its people.

The Underworld is beautiful. It is a place of deep passions, of cherished memories, of worship and veneration. It is a place where love and hate hold sway. It labors under the tread of tyrants and the schemes of dead titans. The dead cry out for heroes. The Abyssal Exalted may be the ones to answer.

Resonance

Independent Abyssals have never made a personal covenant with the Neverborn. Regardless, they quickly discover that the dead Primordials consider all Abyssals beholden to them, and are disinterested in the independent's opinion. Worse, they have some capability to express this would-be ownership.

This marks the Neverborn as an independent's enemies, not his masters. If he is to stay free and alive for long, he must dis­cover some way to deal with the doom that comes along with his Exaltation.

Some independents learn through painful trial and error how to exercise their dark power without rousing the ire of the Neverborn. This pleases the dead and dreaming titans, to the extent that they may be pleased; so long as the independent blazes a path of murder across Creation, he serves their pur­pose, whether he slays the righteous or the wicked.

But the Neverborn are distant, mad, slumbering things. They communicate only in sudden manifestations of Dark Fate, and in incoherent whispers. Their vision of the world beyond their tombs is myopic, at best. Playing their game is unsatisfying, and so some independents learn to change the rules. Using Charms such as Faithful Killer's Reprieve and Keeper of the Old Laws, these deathknights find ways to fool or placate the Neverborn without directly advancing their agenda. This al­lows them to oppose the Deathlords, avoid the chains that bind their brethren, and act as champions of the dead.

Charms

Mortals, Living and Dead

In case it's not clear, soulsteel weapons (when used by an Abyssal) and all Abyssal Charms that mentally or socially affect living mortals also affect ghosts. Charms that affect animals also affect animal ghosts and the plasmic entities of the Underworld that exhibit animal behavior. Deathknight need special, dedicated Charms only to deal with the walking dead, hungry ghosts and other deathly creatures who lack true minds. Maybe this point should be obvious, but many Abyssal Charms mirror Solar Charms that are defined as affecting mortals. For Abyssals, the term "mortal" includes the deceased.

• List of all Abyssal Exalted Charms

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