Ouroboros is Broken: The Soul Collectors

(This Exalted game idea is mostly typed up from a hand-written journal I was jotting notes in while playing Sims 2. I'm posting it here now because insomnia doesn't want me to get to sleep! =_=)

Premise - Heaven's soul collectors.

Exalt types - Solars, Lunars. Sidereals and Abyssals possible, given some canon changes (below). I'm not excluding DBs or non-exalts because they *couldn't* help, but because I want this to be a Celestial-only game.

Setting - Varies. Heaven will be prominent, and parts of Creation with high concentrations of undead (shadowlands, likely.)

Time period - post-Second Age as written in canon.

In this version of Creation, reincarnation is broken. Lethe is unattainable, so that the only paths upon death are undeath, Oblivion (permadeath) or stasis. The latter is attained by artifacts specifically crafted to hold souls. Depending on the make and material, the stasis may be pleasant, neutral or outright horrifying - i.e. soulsteel.

The default state is undeath, which is why it is important now that deaths are overseen by those trained as soul collectors. Mortals can be trained to use the artifacts, but Exalts are employed for large scale soul-collection operations.

Heaven is a serious place these days, with less of the weird and fantastical, MUCH less random fooling around, and more of a feel of a majestic, long-standing organization of gods and spirits. The Sidereals are more or less united in purpose -- no longer splintered by factions -- and the PCs are working on behalf of a joint effort between the Bureau of Humanity and the Bureau of Endings. However, because the broken cycle of reincarnation is of import to Yu Shan in general, Sidereals of all bureaus could be assisting (even as PCs, though in that case they'd be less experienced than NPC Sids.)

The Celestial Bureaucracy is hard at work attempting to figure out what has gone wrong with the Wheel. In the meantime, the plan has been to send their operatives to bring the souls of the dead into Heaven's protection (thus the high involvement of the Bureau of Endings). This includes taking back what souls they can that have been forced into undeath. Charms and effects wielded by Heaven's operatives that would previously have sent souls to Lethe (e.g. Zenith anima power, Smooth Transition) have been reworked to draw them into specially made artifacts -- vessels for soul collection.

All of the PCs have such artifacts on their person, and are personalized to them. A warrior may have a soul-storing weapon, a scholar's may take the form of a book, a priest's the shape of a holy symbol, etc. They can actually hold multiple souls, but also a finite (though large, and dependent on the artifact level) number. Special versions of these artifacts may be needed to hold an Exalt's shard.

Ultimately the soul collectors deliver the souls back to Heaven. They are stored there, in gigantic receptacles that are watched over by gods and spirits of the Bureau of Humanity. (Note: Using the souls in any other way besides delivering them to Heaven will lead to some SERIOUS reprimands, perhaps including the loss of one's own soul!)

However, soul collection was never meant to be a permanent solution. At the beginning of the game, the PCs will not be directly helping to repair the cycle of souls; this also allows me to begin the game with a narrower and less world-changing focus. In the meantime, though, Heaven's receptacles grow fuller and fuller, while the birth rate has dropped to all but zero.

On births - people generally do not have children. Those that attempt it run a very large risk of birthing a soulless child, basically a homunculus. There is a small chance that a soul may still implant in the body naturally; this is a rare phenomenon that is still in study. Most who wish to have children instead petition Heaven for one of the stored souls, which can be manually reincarnated via a costly and complicated process. This process cannot be achieved on a large enough scale to completely replace the function of the Wheel, however.

Heaven may also use the process of manual reincarnation to birth agents for their cause. Only exceptional souls and shards are chosen for such an auspicious birth, and they are raised and trained in Yu Shan specifically for the task of soul collection and reducing the numbers of the undead.

It is quite likely that most of Creation is either desolate or overtaken by the undead at this point, because manual reincarnation is too slow to keep up with the death rate. The quickest way to even the numbers with the dead at this point is to reduce the souls they have access to -- meaning the war between Heaven and the Underworld is basically a war of souls. The PCs, as highly trained soul collectors, have a very important role in this war, and may eventually take an important part in opening the way to the gates of Lethe... if, truly, the damage done is reversible.

Things that are NOT in Soul Collector, or are significantly changed:

• Cult of the Illuminated. No... just NO.
• Autochthon, Alchemicals, etc. Also NO.
• The Fae will not have much significance, mostly for simplicity's sake, but can be incorporated into the plot if relevant to a PC's background.
• As mentioned previously, the Celestial Bureaucracy is no longer corrupt to near-uselessness, and the Sidereals are a united faction. However, rivalries and differences in how to deal with the reincarnation crisis still exist between the bureaus.
• None of the canon Deathlords exist. Part of this is because I just plain don't like the canon DLs; I can't stand the idea of having to RP them as NPCs. Besides this, I'd also like it to be possible to be an Abyssal without necessarily being yoked to one. There will be undead leaders, similar to the Deathlords in function, but their identities and motivations may be vastly different (other than serving the purposes of the dead Primordials.)
• The Wheel has been in its current state of stasis perhaps for two or three generations at this point (50 years? ish?) So, it should be assumed that the Realm and various nations of the Threshold have been greatly changed, or outright eradicated. This is not something I want to go into great detail now, because it'd be entirely TOO much work for me to list EVERY location and its status before they crop up in the game. I will say that there are probably very few bastions of living people in Creation at this point in time, and the few that still exist will have to be very close to or actually *contain* a Yu Shan gate.

Whew... this turned out to be a longer write-up than I thought (I ended up adding a lot from the notes). I've come up with plenty of game ideas in the past, but this one is one I actually want to run. Soon? I dunno. Like many of my ideas, it may end up just sitting there, or something I end up running for just Jon.

My biggest hurdle to running Soul Collectors, besides finding those two or three ideal players, is thinking of what Exalted system I will run this game with. I am most familiar with Ex1 rules, but I'm starting to be hesitant about using too many of other people's houserules (particularly people that I am not in any real contact with. :P) I could run Ex1 with minimal changes, but then I'd be left with crappy Lunars. So, I dunno yet. :(