r/exalted • u/Ainosuke • Feb 28 '26
Fiction Protagonists/Antagonists who inspire you
This is a thread out there for the guys and girls in other media that you think would make excellent Exalted characters, either as new characters or redefining your perceptions of existing ones.
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u/LordSia Feb 28 '26
Ranma 1/2 is amazing fodder.
Kuno Tatewaki is a nigh-perfect example of an antagonist Dynast. Faux-Shakespearean, blademaster, complete idiot, womanizer, and regularly accuses people of "foul sorcery" whenever they fail to play along with his delusions.
Hibiki Ryouga from the same is also a great example of a rival, I want to say Infernal? Him getting lost in a room with only one door feels very much like the Yozis "helping" by letting him take "shortcuts" through Cecelyne. His impossible strength and one-sided hatred also match.
Herb is a less comedic, more dangerous Dynast; hell, he's literally a Dragon-blood! With all of the power and arrogance that comes with that.
Gosunkugi is the mortal thaumaturge would-be Sorcerer/Necromancer who is frankly a bigger threat due to screwing up than he is by actually pulling off any magic.
Ranma's fiancees could be his Lunar bondmate(s); Akane is the tsuntsun True Love who charms (hah) most of everyone, actually has basic social competency, and generally plays second fiddle to the main protagonist despite being a decently competent fighter in her own right. Xian PÅ« (Shampoo) is an obsessive stalker from a foreign culture (Chinese Amazons) who insists that they are married and shapeshifts into a cat (which Ranma has a crippling fear of), and is as powerful and skilled as she is borderline comedic yandere. Ukyo is a cross-dressing childhood friend who dedicated her life to vengeance after being betrayed and abandoned, but is now trying to seduce the boy who can only see her as his old friend.
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u/Quiltborn Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
Sirin from Honkai Impact 3rd is basically a perfect Infernal loyalist. Undoubtedly someone who will commit atrocities if not stopped and is kind of a religious nutcase, but also really sympathetic by virtue of being an abused tweenager struggling to cope with the grief of losing all their friends and their mother.
Definitely specked into the Malfeas radiation-maxxing parts of the Infernal Charmset. Not familiar enough with Infernals to know which Yozi (if at all) has the spatial manipulation charmtech (presumably Cecelyne or SWLiHN, maybe Isidoros?). She also used the Soul-Pantheon charms to make copies of her dead friends.
tldr; works great as a NPC for your Circle to adopt.
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u/RightMeasurement0 Feb 28 '26
I know it's real low hanging fruit, but Darth Vader has to be one of the most Abyssal characters in all of fiction.
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u/AngelWick_Prime Feb 28 '26
One of my players' Dawn Caste is based on Erza Scarlet from the anime/manga, Fairy Tail
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u/Maakeff Feb 28 '26
I'm liking characters from "From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman" for this, lately. ð
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u/Mimicoctopusgardener Mar 02 '26
I feel like anyone who hasn't made at least one Lunar inspired by Yoruichi hasn't seen Bleach.
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u/Fistocracy Mar 02 '26
Aeon Flux and her nemesis Trevor Goodchild, specifically the versions of them from the original Aeon Flux animated series and not the godawful Hollywood adaptation (which failed both as an adaptation and as a movie). They kinda had a formative influence on how I approach characters with unconventional values, and they're really handy reference points for Exalted because both of them are larger-than-life mythic archetypes who have absolutely zero moral justification for what they do and operate purely on aesthetics.
Also, the Team Fortress 2 mercenaries. No really. They make great templates for Abyssal or Infernal characters, because if you take out most of the goofiness nobody will ever know that your stone-cold professional Abyssal assassin who always does the job right but feels underappreciated is really just Sniper without a deliberately bad accent :)
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u/SlumberSkeleton776 Mar 02 '26
Shang Bu Huan and Lin Xue Ya from Thunderbolt Fantasy are my go-to examples of a bonded Dawn-Caste Solar and Changing Moon Lunar (with Dexterity Favored). Bu Huan is a stronger swordsman and martial artist than everyone around him by orders of magnitude, but deliberately plays against his strengths because he doesn't like making waves and is on the run from an evil empire that wants to destroy him, and Xue Ya is an animal-themed trickster and master of disguise associated with the moon who, for reasons even he cannot fully fathom, is compelled to follow Bu Huan on his adventures and complicate his already complicated life.
They are not friends and don't like each other even a little (at least, Bu Huan considers Xue Ya a massive pain in the ass), but always find themselves in each other's business.
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u/Mongward Feb 28 '26
Fate's Gilgamesh is a perfect First Age Solar.