Jarlath Shonida

Game: Exalted (first edition – White Wolf, 2001)

My Experience: I’ll admit that despite being in the White Wolf freelancer community while Exalted was in development, I kind of slept on it for a long time. I wasn’t really into fantasy gaming at the time, and the other influences cited for it weren’t particularly ones I’d liked on first exposure, either. I picked up a copy to support the folks I knew who worked on it, and then left it on my shelf for several years. Since then, I’ve run a couple of one-shots, but I still struggle to get my head around it. It is epic and majestic and exceptionally cool, but still not entirely congruent with me as a player or GM.


Jarlath Shonida, He to Whom Borders Are as the Morning Fog

Born into a merchant family on the fringes of the Realm, Jarlath came of age without ever feeling the weight of the Dynasty’s imperial bureaucracy. House Shonida’s home was a small city in the East of no particular import, in the grey area between the Realm’s control and the ungovernable independent city-states of the Scavenger Lands. Once, the city had been great, but that was before the collapse and the Great Contagion and the invasion of the Fair Folk. Now it was a crumbling monument to the Old Realm’s glory – and thus a fitting base for House Shonida’s work.

No mere line of traders, House Shonida had made its name and fortune on aggressive archaeology, unearthing artifacts of the First Age for collectors in the Realm and the Scavenger Lands alike. It was dangerous, true, but the house’s sages had amassed generations of research and survivor testimony on how to circumvent the worst hazards of ruins and tombs and vaults. As a third son, this was Jarlath’s destiny – the archive and scriptorium, not the open road and exotic lands that he craved. He did his duty and attended to his studies, but took any excuse to indulge his wanderlust.

Eventually, the house elders gave in to Jarlath’s demands. An expedition was returning to a ruined city in the southeastern jungles and was in need of someone to transcribe and translate scrolls known to be too fragile to retrieve. Jarlath eagerly packed his kit and joined the caravan.

The journey was all he could have hoped, but House Shonida was not the only party with an interest in the city. Two nights after the expedition arrived, soldiers of the Realm descended on the encampment. Torches rose and blades fell, making clear their intent: suppression of whatever they feared House Shinoda might find.

Jarlath fled, pursued by a squad of legionnaires, but quickly became lost amid the tumbled ruins. Cornered, he prepared to die alone, cursing the Realm’s power-mad avarice. The first javelin struck and he fell to his knees in agony – and as his blood fell on the ancient stones, something arose from the ground, mist boiling up from the cracks and coalescing into a form. It looked down at Jarlath… and bowed.

“Long have I awaited the night I could repay my debt to you, Cadoc the Peregrine. I feared you had forgotten my humble self and I would be bound forever to this place.” A smile cracked inhuman features never meant to express humor and it glanced over its shoulder at the soldiers, now falling back in disarray with cries of “Anathema!” “Do you wish my aid now?”

“Yes,” Jarlath gasped. And only as the spirit turned and leaped forward, claws outstretched, did he realize that uncontrollable power was now boiling within him.

For Jarlath, the reawakening of a reincarnated spark of the Unconquered Sun’s power was not a blaze of martial glory or arcane might. It was an invocation of pacts made by another self, centuries past. A rumble of speech deep in the earth, the scent of parchment, the slick wetness of signatures in blood and plasm – as the spirit reveled in destruction, these were the signs by which Jarlath’s Exaltation came upon him.

In the silence that came afterward, the spirit and the fallen city’s library taught him enough to survive the next weeks. Enough to, perhaps, begin mastering the power his soul had reclaimed after centuries of deaths at the hands of the Realm’s hunters. Maybe even enough to begin seeking out the bones of his past: places of power trod in a prior age, records hidden against the tide of years, allies sworn to aid a prior incarnation.

For Jarlath, once Cadoc-called-Peregrine, will need power and knowledge and allies, now that the Realm has declared war upon him and all his fellow Solar Exalted who are re-emerging into Creation.


Traits

Caste: Eclipse
Nature: Explorer (Jarlath regains Willpower whenever he makes a significant discovery)

Attributes

Physical: Strength ••, Dexterity ••, Stamina •••
Social: Charisma •••••, Manipulation ••••, Appearance ••
Mental: Perception •••, Intelligence •••, Wits •••

Abilities

Dawn: Martial Arts ••
Zenith: Endurance ••, Presence •••, Survival ••
Twilight: Investigation ••, Lore •••, Occult •
Night: Larceny •
Eclipse: Bureaucracy •••, Linguistics (Forestspeech, High Realm, Low Realm, Old Realm) ••••, Ride ••, Sail •, Socialize •••••

Advantages

Backgrounds: Familiar • (Serafina, a four-eyed grey tabby cat who can sense the approach of spirits), Mentor ••• (spirit of the lost city), Resources ••• (proceeds of artifact sales)

Virtues: Compassion ••, Conviction ••, Temperance •••• (virtue flaw: Ascetic Drive; when pushed beyond the limits of self-control, Jarlath will seek purification and serenity through withdrawal and meditation, to the exclusion of all other concerns), Valor ••

Willpower ••••• •

Essence ••

Charms

Consumer-Evaluating Glance (Bureaucracy): Jarlath can instantly assess a given buyer’s intentions and ability to pay.

Frugal Merchant Method (Bureaucracy): With naught but a glance, Jarlath can assess the quality of any goods offered for sale.

Harmonious Presence Meditation (Presence): Jarlath enhances all social rolls involving one-on-one interactions.

Knowing the Soul’s Price (Socialize): Jarlath can discern the thing that, when offered, will compromise any given person’s resolve and ethics.

Mastery of Small Manners (Socialize): Jarlath reflexively understands the appropriate superficial customs and etiquette for any situation.

Ox-Body Technique x2 (Endurance): Jarlath adds one -0 health level and two -1 health levels to his wound track.

Sagacious Reading of Intent (Linguistics): When reading any text, Jarlath immediately discerns the author’s agenda, biases, and subtext.

Spirit-Detecting Glance (Occult): Jarlath can perceive unmanifested spirits.

Ten Magistrate Eyes (Investigation): Jarlath adds his Essence score as automatic successes on any Investigation rolls.


Equipment

sturdy travel attire
silken courtly clothing
travel kit
scribe’s tools
chain shirt


Notes and Afterthoughts

23 days in and this feels like the first character I’ve really phoned in. I had a clear idea for what I wanted Jarlath to be – “ambassador to spirits” is very strongly implied in the Eclipse Caste writeup – but I just couldn’t get him there mechanically.