SCROLL OF KINGS OF SCROLL If there is one surety in the Time of Tumult, it is that there will be war. As nation struggles against nation, as the deathknights ride forth from the shadowlands, as the Realm slips closer and closer to civil war, as the Solars return to reclaim the Mandate of Heaven, wars engulf Creation. And if you’re going to fight a war, fight to win. From the frozen steppes of the North to the burning wastes of the South, from the mysterious forests of the East to the sav- age islands of the West, from all four corners of the world to the heart of Creation, master the combat styles of all nations and wield them against your foes on the field of battle. The tools to do so are contained within. This book does the following: • Details the way Creation’s great nations conduct wars • Features many new rules for use in mass combat • Provides an array of siege weaponry, naval craft and engines of war for use in any Exalted series ISBN: 978-1-58846-611-2 WW80311 $24.99 U.S. 52499 WHITE WOLF WW80311 www.white-wolf.com/exalted 9 781588 466112 PRINTED IN CANADA TM BY M ICHAEL G OODWIN, DEAN S HOMSHAK AND S COTT T AYLOR 1 CREDITS Authors: Michael Goodwin, Dean Shomshak and COMING N EXT: Scott Taylor Comic Scripter: Carl Bowen THE C OMPASS OF C ELESTIAL D IRECTIONS, Developers: Dean Shomshak, with John Chambers and VOL. III — YU-SHAN John Masterson Editor: Scribendi.com The third of five books dedicated to the supernatural Creative Director: Rich Thomas locales of the Exalted setting, this supplement focuses on Production Manager: matt milberger the Celestial City of Yu-Shan, home of the gods. Built by Art Direction: Brian Glass the Primordials as a refuge in which they might enjoy the Artists: Newton Ewell, Andrew Hepworth, Imaginary Friends Games of Divinity, while their subordinates tended to Studio (with Jennyson, Kenneth, Markovah, Scabrouspencil, Creation, Yu-Shan was taken by the gods as the spoils of YJL and Zhi Xian), Saana ‘Kiyo’ Lappalainen, Peter Mohr- the Primordial War. Home to a massive bureaucracy rife bacher, Aaron Nakahara, Pasi Pitkanen, UDON (with Jeff with corruption, the continent-sized city has been the ‘Chamba’ Cruz, Mark Sinclair, Leo Lingas and Chris Stevens), sole province of the Sidereal Exalts since the Usurpation. Melissa Uran and Emily Warren Will the Solar Exalted’s return upset the status quo of the Cover Art: Imaginary Friends Studio featuring Kenneth Celestial City, or will the Chosen of the Maidens succeed in Loh and Ray Toh maintaining their monopoly on the resources of Heaven? Book Design: Brian Glass COMING N EXT I N T HIS S ERIES: THE S CROLL OF L ESSER R ACES This second of the Scrolls of Esoteric Wisdom fo- cuses on the two ancient allies of the Old Realm Solar Deliberative, the Dragon Kings and the Mountain Folk. Once the rulers of Creation before the ascendancy of man, the mighty Dragon Kings were nearly destroyed at the fall of the First Age and their descendents have long since fallen into barbarism. Does the return of the Solars signal a return to greatness for the Dragon Kings, or are they too far gone? The Mountain Folk once armed the Solars for the Primordial War, but those same Lawgivers later came to distrust the Jadeborn and had their creator Autochthon lay the Great Geas upon them, locking them in their subterranean world. Will the modern Solars make amends for their predecessors’ misdeeds, or will they take further advantage of these stoic craftsmen and warriors? © 2007 CCP hf. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only. White Wolf and Exalted are registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. Scroll of Kings, Scroll of the Monk, the Manual of Exalted Power the Lunars, the Manual of Exalted Power the Sidereals, the Books of Sorcery, Wonders of the Lost Age, the White and Black Treatises, Oadenol’s Codex, the Compass of Celestial Directions, the Blessed Isle, the Compass of Terrestrial Directions, the Scavenger Lands, the West, the East, the South, the North, the Age of Sorrows and the Second Age of Man are trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by CCP hf. CCP North America Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of CCP hf. The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned. This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature content. Reader discretion is advised. Check out White Wolf online at http://www.white-wolf.com/ PRINTED IN CANADA 2 TM TABLE OF C ONTENTS INTRODUCTION 4 CHAPTER O NE: FIRE AND I RON 7 CHAPTER T WO: BLOOD IN THE W ATER 34 CHAPTER T HREE: GENERAL W INTER 58 CHAPTER F OUR: SEEDS OF C ONFLICT 80 CHAPTER F IVE: THE F AILING C ENTER 105 CHAPTER S IX: PANOPLY OF W AR 129 3 4 INTRODUCTION A prince ought, therefore, never to let his thoughts stray far from the exercise of war . —Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince The Time of Tumult is a time of war. A cynic might The world is up for grabs, and a lot of people are grab- say that every age is a time of war; but for the last few cen- bing. Some want to conquer. Others just want to avoid being turies in Creation, none of the wars mattered very much. conquered. Either way, there shall be war. Oh, they mattered a great deal to the people who fought and died in them. The shape of Creation was set, however: HOW TO U SE T HIS B OOK the fractious Threshold dominated by the stable, unified Scroll of Kings examines war in the Time of Tumult Realm and its all-powerful Empress. Nobody’s little war from the perspectives of the five Directions of Creation: could change that picture. East, West, North, South and the Blessed Isle in the Cen- That world order now crumbles. A barbarian warlord ter. The environment and resources found in each sector of destroyed an army of the Realm, and the Realm does not Creation give rise to particular forms of combat. The West, retaliate and crush the upstart. The Empress disappeared, for instance, necessarily specializes in naval warfare, while and the Dragon-Blooded masters of the Realm are too busy the South’s access to firedust encourages the development of maneuvering to seize her throne. They pull back the Realm’s incendiary and explosive weapons. The dominant war gods legions and fleets, leaving the Threshold to its own devices. of each Direction further influence the ways that mortals Deathlords claim kingdoms in the mortal world and threaten make war—and are influenced by them in turn. Creation with armies of the dead. More than 100 Solar Each Direction’s favored styles and techniques of warfare Exalted walk Creation, each one a hero who could raise an suggest new options for the mass combat system described empire or cast one down. starting on page 158 of Exalted. Using Scroll of Kings, you INTRODUCTION 5 now can factor the effects of fortification, naval warfare, for quick, decisive battles now inspires a burst of military harsh environments, combat engineering and the Exalted innovation from the Haslanti League and the return of a themselves into battles. form of warfare that Creation has not seen since the First Scroll of Kings also describes the military postures of Age: air power. most of Creation’s major states, and a few of the minor ones, Chapter Four: Seeds of Conflict describes the art of too. Storytellers receive at least one sample combat unit from forest warfare as it is practiced from the redwoods of Halta each country or culture. to the jungles of the Southeast. Easterners master guerilla Chapter One: Fire and Iron reveals the ingenious fire- warfare. They specialize in commando raids, sniping, traps and dust weaponry of the South. The region’s lack of water forces ambuscades. In this sector of Creation, wars can simmer for Southerners to master siegecraft, for attack and defense. The decades or centuries, with neither side gaining a conclusive people of the cities cannot retreat and regroup, for outside advantage or fighting a decisive battle. the fertile oases and river valleys lie starvation, thirst and Chapter Five: The Failing Center tells how the certain death. There is not enough for everyone, and envious Realm makes war. The Realm has two great assets: its im- eyes watch for any sign of weakness. mense population and the Dragon-Blooded. The Realm Chapter Two: Blood in the Water covers naval war- has one great hindrance: everywhere it wants to make war fare, from the Lintha pirates to the corpse-rowed galleys of is hundreds of miles across the sea. The Imperial Army is Skullstone. Naval warfare has many features peculiar to itself: the response: masses of highly trained soldiers, with the one rarely defends territory, combatants are highly mobile best weapons that mortal craft can provide, from simple and ships are so expensive that war is never cheap. And, of spears to mobile siege towers. Where muscle and discipline course, the field of battle itself can ruin all your plans through fail, the Dragon-Blooded bring Essence to the battlefield a sudden storm.