ExXxALTED

The "Prequel" (in the first edition of the game/setting at least) to the "World of Darkness", exalted is so radically different from... Absolutely everything else, basically, in terms of tone, setting, design philosophy, content, style, execution, methods, character design... Well, the list just keeps going, endlessly, all while having JUST ENOUGH tantalizing hints of familiarity and pre-existing "World of Darkness" content that it becomes this weird fever-dream of a setting/ruleset which will draw you in like the scent of sweet nectar at the bottom of a pitcher-plant and then similarly digest you alive. It is NOT a game for those that can't distinguish between reality and fantasy.

Exalted is one of those games where the game and its setting are so deeply intertwined and co-mingled that telling them apart becomes almost impossible; and while a brief and abortive attempt to remedy that was made during the second edition with the obscure book "Shards of the Exalted Dream" (Known simply as "Shards" by many fans.), it never had nearly the levels of setting diversity that something like D&D, GURPS, or BESM have. Not only that, but the intimate co-mingling of setting and rules is actually one of its best features, in many ways, which would be lost if the setting was altered from a single handful of interconnected worldlets, to be something as radically diverse as D&D...

In Exalted you (traditionally) take on the role of one of the eponymous "Exalted", mortal human beings granted a power similar to those of the Gods. (Who in this setting are much closer to traditional Greek and Chinese gods, where every river and road has its own patron deity, major ones such as Hera or the Jade Emperor of Heaven only being the most powerful, [and therefore famous], gods in their pantheons, but every single city having its own local patrons, and even individual households.) These mortals aren't BORN semi-divine (although that can happen too, but those sorts of heroes are actually much weaker than the Exalted), but rather gifted with power later at key moments where the situation calls-out for a hero or heroine. Forged to be able to do the impossible and kill the creators of the world that plagued everyone with unending torments; the are made from mortal humans because the humans had deliberately been created to be SO WEAK that they could never threaten the mighty makers of the world and thus didn't need to be sealed to not to harm them by a geas; but by forcing a special shard of power in between the two halves of a human soul, the gods found a way to make humans strong enough to overthrow the Primordials.

However, as they were slain, those Primordials who died cursed the Exalted, so that they could never fully be what they were MEANT to be, absolute paragons of virtue and might to lead humanity into an eternal golden-age, and, as a result of the curse; they become the opposite, twisted mockeries of their original purpose where the worst variant of some virtue they hold dear is magnified to the point of caricature, or it is inverted entirely from say, saintly kindness and compassion, into deliberate cruelty.

Loosely based on the tropes of pulp-fiction novels such as Conan the Barbarian and the early days of fantasy anime such as "Magical Knight Rayarth" (Seriously, that whole show could nearly BE an exalted Chronicle in animated form.) and "Ninja Scroll" the world of Exalted, (known only as "Creation" in the lore) is a post-post-post-apocalyptic fantasy dystopia of larger-than-life heroes and villains locked in an unending battle for the fate of a world, that, TBPH, neither wants nor needs them; right up until it suddenly won't survive if they don't intervene; and which, as a result, finds itself endlessly stumbling from one catastrophe to the next and barely hanging on, yet never fully collapsing.

And, as part of an April-fools update one time during the game's second edition; they "leaked" a few dozen pages of a fake sex-themed sourcebook called "ExXxALTED: The Scroll of Swallowed Darkness"; from which this chapter takes it's title and which was/is a major component of why Onyx Path publishing became a punchline within the industry.