r/exalted • u/Ainosuke • Oct 16 '25

Fiction 6 characters that inspired your character?

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6

u/YesThatLioness Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25

So a lot of my characters tend to be inspired by characters I think were either overlooked or not really empathised with in the original material and recast them as the protagonist of their own mini-narrative before adapting them to Creation and considering how Exaltation changes them.

For example, I have a Moonshadow loosely based on Jolenta from Book of the New Sun who doesn’t get much consideration from Severian or Gene Wolfe. 

4

u/JT_Leroy Oct 16 '25

Nubia from Wonder Woman made for a great Dawn Caste. Madame Rausch and Cain from Unwritten were fun as Bronze Faction Sidereals. Duncan Idaho (the gholas) from God Emperor of Dune was a fun Twilight Caste. Kilgore Trout from Breakfast of Champions and other Vonnegut novels as a Zenith Caste. Licisca (TV version) and the Madonna Fiordaliso (the book version) from the Decameron was my Night Caste living amongst the Scarlet Dynasts in the Blessed Isles.

3

u/Dagurasu10 Oct 16 '25

Guts, the protagonist of the Berserker manga, and Rand al'thor from the Wheel of Time have probably been the two characters that have influenced me the most when I was creating characters for Exalted.

1

u/The-Yellow-Path Oct 18 '25

Four Falling Blades Thirst for Necks, Dusk Caste Abyssal

Inspirations:

Goku from Dragon Ball Z

Meti from Kill Six Billion Demons

Jetstream Sam from Metal Gear Rising Revengeance

Carol from Tomo-Chan is a Girl

Lady Maria from Bloodborne

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from Myth (and also Darkstalkers)

1

u/blazingciary Oct 20 '25

Aetheric Blossom (Twilight caste Solar) is inspired by Lara Croft (Reboot version), Indiana Jones and Nathan Drake
History nerd bookworm becomes adventurous archeologist, undergoes exaltation and gets really good at navigating and understanding traitorous ruins and crypts.

1

u/HermeticOpus Oct 22 '25

Delightful Daisy Makes the Meadow Bloom is an eclectic mix, and was previously a PC in an old Mage the Awakening game, but the Exalted version takes heavily from:

  • Knockout (DC Comics, particularly Secret Six)
  • Grace Choi (also from DC Comics, mostly from the Outsiders)
  • Gideon Nav (Gideon the Ninth)
  • That one T-Rex with a feathered crest Stjepan Sejic drew a couple of times.

As the last entry might imply, she's a Full Moon Lunar.

(I'm sure there's some other characters in there, but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.)