4/12/21:

-Exalted for roughly a month now, we're based out of Nexus.

-Nexus is the 2nd largest city in the world, with 2/3rds of a million
residents.
-It's a strange city.
-It's most serious laws are enforced by the Emissary, a creature
that has served The
Council of Nexus since the founding of the city. The penalty is
always an inventively
gruesome death.
-That "dogma" says (eh, see pg. 63 of Core rules for exact
text):
No taxes shall be raised except by the council.
No one shall interfere with trade.
No one will bring an army into Nexus.
-Mercenary companies carefully circumvent this,
only going about in small groups.
None shall commit wanton violence.
-Obstruction of trade is a heavy component of
what makes it "wanton".
-Boxing and serial killers have both managed to
eveade that qualifier.
None shall falsely claim the the council's name or
sanction.
None shall harbor a a fugitive from the council.
-There are also the far more minor "civilities". They can and do
change.
-Longstanding ones include:
You can't drink alone after nightfall.
The solar known as Harmonious Jade is not allowed
within the walls of Nexus.
-We're each either in the service of Silver-Tongued Rishi or the mercenary
captain Hawk who
is under contract to Rishi.
-Silver-Tongued Rishi is a Scavenger Lord, one who seeks out wonders
from The First Age.
-He makes his home near the Wyld Zone of the Firewander district.
-Hawk is well-famed and thought to be blessed by the gods, having never
lost a battle.
-He leads Hawks Chargers, who are based out of a compound in the
NW of the Cinnabar
district.
-I sought out Silver-Tongued Rishi for his knowledge of The First Age
and it's works, with
designs on learning the trade and taking it up myself.
-I've kept the fact that I'm a Solar Exalted from him thus far.
-We remember that we were a circle in our past lives, and can feel that the
others are somehow
special when in their presence.

-https://discord.com/channels/785604556934742036/785604557518405654/831607582702567
454
-(We never actually played, just established background details.)

-Sort out background questions:

https://discord.com/channels/785604556934742036/785604557518405654/8316125068120555
62
 Questions for @everyone to consider;

How did you exalt?

------------------
(I'd originally had in mind having Exalted quite a bit longer than a
month ago, in part owing to the training time involved in sorcery, but having spent
all of that time cloistered and studying until, yeah, roughly a month ago I left
the monastery for the first time since childhood. What I've written below reflects
that, but we can certainly adjust it if need be.)
. Your Exaltation came when you were 15, amidst a very particular
sparring match. As a rite of passage, you were to face one of the full monks of the
order, and to defeat your opponent (on the first attempt or the 17th) was required
to earn your place among them. To your dismay, when the day came, you found
yourself facing Brother Jin, well known for his martial prowess, who you were to
face again and again until you defeated him, a seemingly impossible task.
. Your fears were realized as, from the moment the match started,
Brother Jin began delivering a savage beating. It wasn't right! How could you be
expected to defeat a seasoned warrior who still stood nearly a foot taller than
you? You weren't sure you could be expected _to walk away from this_.
. You know now that you weren't expected to ever win. Your skill in
martial arts was your pride, but this was as much a lesson in humility as a test of
your abilities, and you were overmatched. Had your greatest talents lain in some
other direction, perhaps something more scholarly, the trial would have been
different, but you would still have been setup to fail at something at which you
excelled. Full admission to the order was to come with the admission of defeat, and
the martial version of the trial was thought to be an especially effective and. . .
visceral version of the lesson.
. Instead of learning your lesson, something altogether more dramatic
occurred. You managed to keep your feet, if not your ground, for a few moments into
the match, though you were hurting badly and not likely to last much longer.
Brother Jin threw a punch meant to end the fight, but, though it struck your face,
your flesh was as unyielding stone, and your anima flared for the first time. Quick
as lightening, before those watching the bout had fallen to their knees, you were
on Brother Jin, stiking him again and again. It took you a moment to realize Jin
was no longer resisting, and a longer one to grasp what had happened just happened
and why everyone in the room lay prostrate on the floor. Brother Jin walked away
with serious injuries, and as one of your most fervent followers.

What brought you to nexus?

--------------------------
. You were charged by your past incarnations with restoring yourself
and the world around you to glory beneath The Unconquered Sun, and raised from a
young age to believe in that mission. When you left the monastery, you did so in
search of the lore and other remnants of The First Age that could enable you to
actually accomplish so immense a goal.
. Seeing the outside world for the first time since early childhood,
your conviction in your mission was redoubled. You had thought your upbringing and
training in the monastery harsh, even brutal, and all for (originally) the station
of a humble servant, but you had never experienced real _deprivation_, the needs of
the monks being tended to by the manse itself. Outside your hidden valley, you
first witnessed lives far worse than that of a well fed servant. The world had
fallen far, and something had to be done.
. Your monastery being in the mountains of the Marukan Alliance, and
Lookshy being a dangerous place for your kind, you headed straight to the nearby
city of Nexus. Marked on the maps in your library as the old city of Hollow, those
few members of your order who traveled (peddling charms for absent necessities and
keeping an eye on the surrounding countryside) warned you it was a far different
place today, but also confirmed that you might be able to find First Age artifacts
or lore sold there.
 How/why did you meet rishi/hawk?
--------------------------------
. Once in Nexus, you sought out places where First Age remnants were
bought and sold. Naive where the outside world is concerned, you encountered many
frauds and other scams. More familiar than most with The First Age and well capable
of defending yourself, you managed to avoid being taken in by any of them (or
worse).
. As you learned to recognize more reputable shops and merchants, you
found yourself one afternoon perusing a shop's collection of books and scrolls
while the shopkeeper spoke with another patron. A book caught your eye, the fifth
in a series of guidebooks to The Old Realm, written in it's tongue. The _fifth_, in
fact, in a supposedly complete series of _four_, all four of which your monastery
had retained copies of.
. You called to the shopkeep, asking him what this covered, if it's
author had claimed to have set down all he knew of the world in his previous four
volumes. It was the other figure that responded, though, saying that it was an
_update_, and very useful in his work. He introduced himself as Silver-Tongued
Rishi and explained that the author had lived to see the end of The First Age,
publishing another volume discussing the changes he had since witnessed in the
world.
. You confessed you had read the first four, but had been not been
aware there was a fifth. It was far less widely published, Rishi explained, in the
chaos that closed out the age. Rishi insisted on making a gift of the volume to
you, asking only that you meet with him at a later date, after reading it, to
discuss certain sections he suspected were later fabrications. Walking you out of
the shop, he also seemed to take note of your reaction to his bodyguards, when they
fell in around Rishi as he walked out into the street, how you took a defensive
stance and how you looked them over.
. After your second meeting with Rishi, where you discussed the book
and evaded questions about your education, he offered you a job, explaining that he
was a scavenger lord and could alway use more scholars who could read the tongue of
The Old Realm, especially ones willing to work out in the field. You were delighted
to accept, given your mission. When he introduced you to the first of a particular
four others in his employ, people somehow both very strange and very familiar to
you, you knew you were indeed where you were supposed to be, and at the true
beginning of your journey.

Who is your family and where are they (and no, no dead familys!) And how do
they support themselves?
---------------------------------
(Oops. Went deep into a dead family direction long before that
prohibition, but it's all part of a suitable surrogate group.)
. You were one of the many foundlings taken in by The Order of the
Dragon Over the Horizon over the centuries. It is how they've propogated their
order since the end of The First Age. You were raised by it's disciplined tenets to
become a humble monk, guarding the manse of the order's long gone master.
. When your Exaltation came as a teenager, you went from expectations
of humbleness to the venerated center of attention, heir to the manse, it's
treasures, and the service of the order of monks. After that, your education
continued to focus on martial arts and occult secrets, but the specifics changed
dramatically. Ancient tomes, painstakingly copied again and again over the
centuries, were brought forth and you learned the techniques of the Solar Exalted.
Your teachers, once harsh authority figures, were now obsequious but no less
infuriating, as you underwent a sorcerous initiation prescribed many centuries ago
by your predecessor.
. You once had dim memories of your mother, a farm on which you
lived, and the morning when she would not awake. After that, you had impressions of
hunger, and eventually of a stranger that took you away from there, leaving you in
a nearby village, only a few years old. The monk who found you there, bringing you
to the order, told you that stranger had done you a favor, though not a large one.
If so, the monk did you a far greater one, in bringing you to the monastery and
also in retelling to you the circumstances in which you were found whenever he
stopped there on his traveling rounds. Those retellings are now all you have left
of your life before the monastery, as the memories of your life before, the
memories that kept you up at night, wondering what was and what could have been,
were what you sacrificed in your sorcerous initiation. You'd press that monk again
for details, as you had again and again for years, but, when you were eleven and
before your Exaltation, he did not return from his rounds when expected, and was
never seen again.
. The monastery and it's order are the only home you really have, and
they're very dear to you. You may lament their foibles, but that doesn't change
that they're home and family to you.

Finally, what is one cultural tradition you follow? Roughly greek or japanese
style, like praying or leaving offerings at shrines, bathing daily, refraining from
eating specific things, dressing a certain way, shaving your head, that kind of
thing.
---------------------------------
. You dress in loose, flowing clothing, and keep your head shaved.
Both are marks of your upbringing in The Order of the Dragon Over the Horizon.
While the former retains practical benefits for you, the latter had been a strict
requirement of the members of the order, novices and monks alike, a symbol of their
humility. You suppose you no longer _need_ to keep your head shorn, but you've
grown used to it, and it quickly bothers you if left to grow out.
(In the course of writing up the above, I swapped my two dots in War for a
dot in Investigate and a second dot in Lore. It seemed to both make this character
more Twilight-flavored, vs. the original Dawn caste, and to better suit his
increasingly fleshed out back story and relationship with Rishi. I hope that's OK!)