Exalted 2E - Glories of the Most High - Luna [WW80004c].pdf

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L
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G
LORIES OF THE
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OST
H
IGH
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UNA
Written by Michael Goodwin, John Mørke, Holden Shearer
Additional Material by Neall Raemonn Price
Developed by Eddy Webb
Edited by Carl Bowen
Layout and Design by Brian Glass
Art by Misy Coats, DPI Studios, Imaginary Friends Studio, Saana ‘Kiyo’ Lappalainen, Pasi Pitkanen,
UDON and Long Vo
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.
Check out White Wolf online at http://www.white-wolf.com
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LUNA
Seductive and exotic beyond measure; a supreme
intelligence, infinite in its depth; the very essence of
quixotic; a will to overcome and survive even unto
the death of the cosmos, with a strength to rival the
Unconquered Sun—there is but a single being in
existence who can lay claim to all these things and
more. She is Luna, Goddess of the Moon, Second
on High and patron deity of the Lunar Exalted.
Countless in her guises, she has labored for an
endless era under the weight of her divine task: to
provide spiritual and existential diversity from the
Unconquered Sun. Yet, pulled by a force of love
stronger than even the abstruse Maiden of Serenity
can comprehend, Luna is torn by her innate loyalty
to the Once-Guarding Star and her desire to leave
Creation and fly to the side of Gaia.
In prehistory, it was Luna who convinced the
Emerald Mother to turn against her brethren and
side with the Unconquered Sun. It was by Luna’s
design that the Lunar Exalted were produced, giv-
ing Solars the lovers, champions and seconds they
needed to shoulder their terrible burden and win
the war against the Primordials. And it was Luna
who, during the Primordial War, masked herself as
gods of multiple different purviews so that she could
move undetected amidst the divine bureaucracy,
uncovering Primordial sympathizers and political
enemies of the Unconquered Sun.
Now Luna struggles to protect Creation and Gaia
while laboring under a crippling addiction to the
Games of Divinity. But of all the Celestial Incarnae,
it is she who shows the strongest resistance, regularly
breaking free from the Games to attend the Exalta-
tion of her Chosen, and to step in and directly manage
the affairs of her domain, Silver Chair. Perhaps this
is because she is a being of infinite depth, in a state
of constant evolution and therefore surpassingly
fickle. Or perhaps it is because so much of Luna’s
heart proceeds with longing into the distant Wyld
with Gaia, and because so much of her effort (when
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not playing the Games) goes into creating signs and
pathways to lead Gaia back to Creation.
Yet, that quality might be the cause for even
greater cataclysm, as Luna’s efforts to lure Gaia
home are the secret cause for much anxiety in the
Celestial Order. Luna’s enemies in Heaven and
Creation continue to mount. Meanwhile her Ex-
alted, splintered and flung into marginalized states
at the rim of the world, can avail her little by way
of a defense if that is where they remain.
Even so, the Argent Madonna is anything but
an underdog, and those who would conspire against
her have every reason to pause, as her actions during
the Primordial War have not been forgotten. While
most of her ancient aliases are now well known and
she remains mostly tied up with the Games, the Silver
Lady could still have some alternate identities yet
to be revealed. She might even break free enough
from the Games of Divinity to begin her cycles of
infiltration and spying among the derelict and cor-
rupt gods of Heaven once more.
4
During the making of the world, it became ap-
parent that Creation could not move beyond the
brilliance of sustained day. The Unconquered Sun
was so dominant above all other facets of existence
that life itself was stunted by his constant presence,
locked into the harsh patterns of his perfection and
burning up in emulation of him. Therefore, night
was engineered so the Unconquered Sun could rest
and so Creation could have rest from him. Set above
night as its face and its guardian was the moon; the
spirit of the moon was Luna.
Luna’s chief architect was Cytherea, the trigger
of divine evolution who provided Gaia’s Essence
with the substance it needed to produce Creation.
Cytherea knew that Luna must be what the Uncon-
quered Sun was not. Yet, inspired by the embodiment
of fully realized perfection that was Ignis Divine,
Cytherea wanted the moon to partake of certain
qualities in order to be his peer.
P
ERSONAGE AND
P
ANOPLY
In Cytherea’s mind, Luna began to take shape:
a being of near perfection, of magnificence and
grace and of appreciable definition, yet indefinite.
She would be touched by traits she shared with the
Unconquered Sun, but
defined
by her differences from
him. Where he was day, she would be night. Where
he ordered Creation, her existence would introduce
chaos. Where the Unconquered Sun was the pin-
nacle of all possible perfection, Luna would be the
impossible made possible. And so, while the light of
the Sun expressed all things within Creation, Luna
would draw upon forces outside Creation.
But it was beyond Cytherea’s power to realize
Luna alone. To complete her design, she went to
Oramus, the Dragon Beyond the World, whose
mind dwelled on alien vistas beyond perception,
an infinite forge of the impossible that stirred the
very Wyld into forms and patterns by the movement
of its thoughts. In the forge of Oramus, the moon
was born from Cytherea’s vision, cut apart from his
nightmares to bring what was beyond and apart from
Creation into Creation in a singular form. That
form was Luna, who came bearing Creation’s first
night in the cloak on her shoulders. She was a static
being, wracked with the infinitely shifting whim of
Oramus’s perceptions and driven toward evolution
by the primordial urge of Cytherea.
Luna stood at once in the sky alongside the
Unconquered Sun, and Creation fell down before
her in love and terror. Risking her life in her very
first taste of it, she went to the Unconquered Sun
and put her hands on his face, and said words that
only he heard. There in the sky, she became the
only being to have looked upon the true face of the
Unconquered Sun, to gaze upon his full intensity
without being destroyed. In that instant, Creation
had its first eclipse, as Luna’s billowing cloak of
night spread across the sky The sun was banished
from the world, and night fell on everything. Rising
over the Elemental Pole of Wood, Luna began her
first peregrination from East to West—her lithe legs
and silver body rising over the highest treetops, her
shoulders trailing a cloak of night in which swam
billions of stars, her face shining with the brilliant
glow of one who has gazed into the holy light of
the Most High.
Born from the conceptual “without” of Oramus’s
dreams and infused with the ever-evolving indomi-
table urge of Cytherea, Luna’s is a form that changes
shapes to pull at the forces outside the touch of the
sun’s light. Yet she is a blazing Celestial, allied and
rooted firmly to Creation, fiercely loyal to the Un-
conquered Sun. She gathers darkness about her like
a cloak, but is not of it. She draws upon the Wyld
to touch the world with refreshing chaos, but she is
not of the Wyld. She looks into the Beyond, where
the dreams of Oramus create an existential well of
alien concepts and hellish landscapes. Although
she hails from that place, she herself is beyond the
Beyond, having become something definite and real;
the impossible made possible.
Luna’s design is one of elemental seduction.
She is the great summoner, calling the tide, the
trade winds and the clouds to veil her face. She calls
ants up out of the desert by night to interrupt the
endless stillness; she calls the wolves to attend her
with their prayers. It is Luna who called out to the
Maidens across time, awakening them from their
primordial dreaming, and it is Luna whose call to
“rise and shine” draws the Unconquered Sun from
his slumber each morning. She calls the Wyld in to
fuel the sun’s flame so that Creation might be spared,
and she draws in the enemies of Creation with her
hypnotic sway so that they might not be spared
it. Chief among her duties, she calls to Gaia. For
Cytherea knew that Gaia wished to leave Creation
behind to continue her never-ending quest beyond
the shores of the world, but Cytherea wished to keep
Gaia so that they might share her sister’s seat at the
Games of Divinity and partake of her love.
Ultimately, Luna’s seductive, magnetic nature
was to act as a rook to keep Gaia in Creation. Yet,
as a puppet to Cytherea, Luna failed miserably.
Although Luna was designed to seduce Gaia, she
was not created to love her. Her storied love for
iconoclasts and individuals was epitomized in the
Emerald Mother, who stood out and apart from the
rest of the Primordials. Gaia was a trailblazer, an
adventurer and a being empathetic to the plight of
the myriad billions of life forms teeming on Cre-
ation’s vistas. So in love with Gaia was she that
Luna could not turn her over to the waiting arms
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