31 Days, 31 Characters
As I did two years ago, I will once again participate in the Character Creation Challenge at the start of 2026.
The rules are simple - for every day ion January, I try to create one character for a role-playing game, mostly from scratch (although I have prepared some notes on concepts and backgrounds already, and it won't be precisely one per day since I will be away part of the month - but it should be 31 throughout January). This time all 31 characters will be Lunar Exalts for Exalted 3rd Edition (or possibly Exalted Essence which is a more rules-light version if I can't get 31 full versions done). There will be six characters (two per caste) per region for 5 regions (North, East, South, West and Center) and then one special case to cap off the month.
Uhhh... what?
If none of the above made any sense to you, you might be unfamiliar with role-playing games (RPGs in short) in general - the Wikipedia article I linked is a pretty good primer.
If you know about RPGs in general but not about Exalted or Lunar Exalts, or directions... Exalted is a role-playing game where the player characters are heroes (in the sense of powerful protagonists, not necessarily in a moral sense) infused with the power of a deity. In the case of Lunar Exalts, this deity is Luna, goddess of the Moon. Her chosen (another word for Exalted) are shapeshifters who have one main spirit shape but can also learn to take on other shapes. They usually have one of three castes based on moon phases - those of the Full Moon caste are warriors, the Changing Moon caste are tricksters and the No Moon caste are mystics (very simplified, obviously). Some lunars are also casteless which generally means they have rejected the society of their fellow chosen and are more flexible but less specialized.
So, to start things off, I will have two Full-Moon Caste lunars from the North, followed by two Changing Moons, then two No-Moons, and then move on to the East, South, West, and Center. There will be lots of references to books and other stuff, because I like to sprinkle things like that in. Tomorrow will be Byrna Ioreksdottir, the Bear-Queen of Valland kicking things off.
Published at NZDT