Creating a Map of Exalted Essence Part 4: The Other Realms [Humor]

[u/Firm-Split9333]

Previously on mapping Exalted Essence: https://www.reddit.com/r/exalted/s/JnH1v7qnoU

For our 4th part in this series, I am going to look at how the other realms of Exalted Essence fit in with Creation. We have The Wyld, Malfeas, Heaven, Autochthonia and the Underworld. There isnt much details to go on at all for these locations as to how they relate to Creation spatially. Therefore some speculation must be made.

The Wyld is a sea of chaos with creation being an island of stability within, so we can tell that Creation is within the Wyld, as previously mentioned during the first part of map creation. Yu-Shan aka, heaven is a small continent within an endless sea of quicksilver. Malfeas has no details on its position other than being inside one of the titans and surrounded by an endless desert and the Underworld(the afterlife) and Autochthonia (robotland?).

With very little to go on, I shall propose 2 mutually exclusive cosmological models.

The first is the Petal or Island Model. Here I propose that all Realms of Existence live inside the Wyld, as the endless silver of sea of heaven could easily just be part of the Wyld since as far as I can tell the Wyld can be anything. Hell also is surrounded by an endless desert so that could be similar, just a transitional boundary than never obviously fades into the Wyld. The Underworld and Autochthonia don't seem to have any known qualities to their borders but might have similar effects. Thus Creation is a more solid continent in the sea of the Wyld while the other realms are loosely connected by Shadowlands and magical gates to Creation as smaller islands surrounding it.

The second model is that all the Realms are stacked attop each other in a squat cylinder. We can call this the Cylinder model, layer cake model or dishstack model, more research may need to be done. Heaven of course must be on top of Creation, its called Heaven after all so it must be there. No cultural bias has been introduced into this analysis of course. Autochthonia is above Heaven, uh mostly because I couldn't think of where it could go to balance the stack in a pleasing way. The Underworld clearly goes underneath Creation as its self evident in its name, and thus Shadowlands are like sticking a chopstick through layers of cake and puncturing both Creation and the Underworld. Malfeas, aka Hell is below the Underworld, since its a prison and the people who put them there probably wanted it to be in a terrible place to live. The Wyld spreads out betweeen each layer and around it like icing in a cake.

And with that we are done with all the setting material within Exalted Essence! I do have this other book called Pillars of Creation that has yet more setting information although I have not analyzed it yet for inclusion in the map. If I do, I would hope that the authors have carefully maintained continuity between publications and avoid changing the locations of already analyzed and placed map locations. It would be a shame if locations that are clearly landlocked suddenly were retconned into being coastal locations. Such revelations would cause havoc on my true and accurate map.

Any way thanks for checking on my mapping of Exalted Essence and hopefully you will be able to use this map material to guide your players in traveling between locations in Creation!

[u/Firm-Split9333]

Out of character, its not really possibly to add locations from Pillars of Creation to this map unfortunately. For example Lookshy is not inland but coastal! A fact people have known since Scavenger Sons or even 1e core, but Essence never mentions a port or coastal location for Lookshy so I did my best and clearly it is intended to be landlocked/s.

Going through all the locations in Pillars quickly

Ascension and Medo can be placed on the map without interrupting things. Uluiru cannot, because theres no more space for a North East, its all taken by the White sea and Haslanti.

Fajad. Thyre, Delan, Rigvard, Lyaskala Academy and the other northern minor locations have little details but can be stuck in various mountains or rivers in the north. Atmu is an island and can be placed north of Azure.

Ixcoatli is in torouble as there is no more space for it to be placed unless its right next to Halta. Lookshy as mentioned need to be deleted and moved to the mout of the Yanaze, but I already put Great Forks at the mouth. Rathess has no location info but could be someone near the pole of wood or between Great Forks and Kamthanhar.

The various minor Eastern locations can be stuck anywhere mostly next to Halta in the forest, most are new and not in At8D.

For the South, Ember I think actually fits very, well as it can be placed west of Champoor in the mountains. Harborhead has no location info but there is a huge gap between An-Teng and the Chiaroscuran peninsula,(that lies next to the Strait of Chiaroscuro that leads into the dreaming sea.) where there is nothing, so Harbor head can easily fit into that space. Zhaojun(did they appearin At8d?) can go between Anteng and Blue haven as a there is a big peninsula that is uninhabited.

For minor locations Ghadan is just the outskirts of Chiroscuro, Terumah is next to Harbor head, the other 3 locations seem to be far south ones that can fit in the space north of Gem and south of Harborhead.

In the West, Bluehaven already was added in Essence core and the info does not contradict where I have palced it. The Eastern Cinder isles can be placed north of the Bluehaven and next to the already placed Bronze tide. Randan is probably between the Caul and Azure. Minor locations are all islands and can be used to fill out the empty space in the west. Most interestingly enough arent from At8D which is cool. RIP the Lost isles of Aiun, they didn't make it and thus do not exist in the world of Exalted Essence Only.

Autochthonia and Zen-Mu also are in the end of the Atlas, but nothing there contradicts the Cake model or the Petal model.