OtherTheNatureOfTheCurse
From Exaltedcursejar
[edit] The Double-Edged Sword
The Unconquered Sun and his co-conspirators won the Primordial War, but it did not come without its own cost. Gaia begged them to spare her siblings and it was agreed that all the surviving defeated would swear oaths on their own names to remain within a prison of their own making.
However, there is one proviso made when the treaty was crafted that remains a secret to all but those present, to this very day: the Incarna gave up their ability to personally intervene in the affairs of humans, in order to seal away the makers of Creation. Publicly, divine mandate was granted to their Chosen, the Solars and Lunars and Sidereals, to rule Creation while they idled away in Yu-Shan to play the Games of Divinity. What most do not realize is that the Incarna are addicted to the Games not because they lack the power to resist them, but because they must play them.
Specifically, the terms of the treaty state that on the day the Sun, the Moon, or the Stars attempt to alter Creation's path, the gates to the Prison will shatter and the Yozi will be free once more. It is whispered, perhaps within the scripture of the teodozji or elsewhere, that this day will eventually come; one day the incarna will have no choice but to intervene in order to save humanity from itself, or to forestall some other great catastrophe, and the treaty will be broken. Sacheverell has seen that day, in his restless slumber, but so far, the Yozi have been disappointed. Even the mass genocide of the Solars failed to rouse the Incarna to action, and the mad twisted things that once ruled Creation seethe in thwarted fury, rattling the bars of their cage, and try everything they can to find a way out: or barring that, to incite the Incarna to do something. Anything.
[edit] The True Nature of the Great Curse
When the dying Primordials were cast down to become Neverborn, they flung their spite into the faces of their murderers with their last waking breaths: that the gods and the Exalted would forever suffer the same cycle that had destroyed them.
However, while the anger and spite of the Neverborn is what created the Underworld, it is not the progenitor of the Curse itself. The gods and the Exalted are the creators of the "great curse" that plagues them. Before the Primordial War, there were concepts that existed which do so no longer; conversely, there are concepts that exist today which never would have been had it not been for the defeat of the world's makers. The Ebon Dragon was the least changed of all his fellows, but he changed nonetheless, and with his imprisonment and the twisting of his fetich soul, the concept of Betrayal was truly born.
All Exalted are subject to this curse in one fashion or another. The Solars wrestle with the unfettered might of the strongest of gods, slowly losing their humanity in the process; the Lunars suffer the curse of falling prey to instinctive behavior; the Sidereals suffer a lack of perspective because their power is esoteric and yet limited on its face; there is more than one path and yet that is only the Loom in miniature.
The secret of the Great Curse is that there is no real secret. It is the struggle between divine power and human nature; the two were never intended to co-exist. Combined with the concepts that were created by the cataclysmic events of the Primordial War, the Usurpation itself was a natural outgrowth, a consequence of an aberrant behavior that later became one of the foundations of its operation. Only by ridding the world of treason, of betrayal, and by flensing the soul of the Incarna's influence could one hope to truly release the Exalted from the curse that plagues them.
