Yay, no longer quiet around here!

Since it raised a bit of an uproar, a summary of DB states in my campaign:

- The Dawn has formed the New Realm, which aspires to be a combination of the good bits of the Realm and the good bits of the First Age Deliberative. All Exalts are welcome to join, and Celestials that agree to play ball can even negotiate rule of their own city-state or whatever, under the purview of the New Realm, with considerable autonomy. The main goal of the character was to avoid rule by potential loose canons, since he remembered the First Age (background) and remembered that things ended quite poorly (and not just because of the Siddies). He himself went crackerjacks during a final siege of Solar holdings on the Blessed Isle back in the First Age, and he has a split personality hell-bent on revenge (and is lucid enough to know he has this alternate persona), so he wants the Exalts to cooperate so they can cover for each other when one or the other of them might flip out. Decent logic.

As for the DBs of the New Realm, they have been allowed to maintain their Dynast Houses, but with each house basically now filling an explicit role (more specialization, basically). If a child shows promise in an area outside their house's specialty, they are sent to the appropriate house for training, in anticipation of eventually marrying into that second house. Thus, the houses, six decades on, are heavily intermarried and more represent a kind of "House Tepet = Diplomatic Guild" for example.

- Because this campaign introduced a new kind of Celestial-grade Exalt working on behalf of Gaia's interests, many DBs from the Threshold, Lost Eggs, and survivors of a few incidents during First and Forsaken Lion's invasion of the Blessed Isle, have flocked to the side of the New Gaian Exalt. Her philosophy promotes cooperation and responsibility, of all people, not just Exalts, and seeks to have all Exalts work for the good of all of Creation's beings, instead of lording it around like First Age/Shogunate/the Realm. That's her ideal, anyway. In practice, she's in the background now (as the player retired her after she drifted into potential direct, military conflict with the Dawn), so her bit of plot is well out of the spotlight, and she is more promoting a kind of mindfulness philosophy designed to not interfere with religion and help both mortals and Exalts alike protect themselves and advocate the welfare of Creation.

- Also of note is that, for the last sixty years or so, Exaltation rates among DBs have sky-rocketed, approaching 100% among groups with some degree of Breeding. And DBs have been able to reproduce freely without the early aging experienced by Second Age DBs. As a result, the population of DBs active in the world has skyrocketed (which is good because about half the Dynast Houses suffered some seriously big losses in the late 700s). The Solars haven't really looked into this in too much depth, to my recollection, but the reason is basically tied to Gaia wanting to limit the influence of the Celestials as they become resurgent (tied to the Gaian Exaltation plan).

So, basically, the DBs can advocate for themselves in a better manner (as I've styled the Gaian Exalt as the direct upgrade to DB Exaltations), and will hopefully be more concerned with protecting/administrating Creation going forward (as opposed to fighting among themselves and living it up). Nothing is guaranteed, of course, and a few wrenches have already emerged:

- Clutches of First Age DBs that were put on ice alongside dead Solars at the end of the First Age, now awakening as more and more Solars enter the scene and rediscover their lost resources.

- A handful of Shogunate-era DBs that were similarly locked in stasis during a failed mission to enter a First Age Solar hospital, in an attempt to fend off the Great Contagion.

I read somewhere on the net about the DBs having their own version of the Great Curse. Where can I read about this/is it a real thing?