#i was gonna put gotoh on here as well but i gave up lol

[heedra]

Exalted Secret Santa Journal: 2022!

That time of year rolls around again! For your perusal this year: three funny women.

DAIA SHAN, Serenity Caste Sidereal Visual Refs: Best ref Image Gallery

Intro: Once just a troublesome junior bureaucrat in the halls of Yu-Shan, Daia truly gained infamy upon her selection to accompany a strike team of Exalted heroes on a mission into the depths of the worldbody of the Yozi Oramus, and her subsequent escape and return from that impossible prison, nearly a thousand years later. The experience left her profoundly changed; even now, the spite of Oramus hangs like a mantle around Daia, ensuring that the waking world she fought so hard to return to will never feel like anything more than a dream. And then, of course, there is the matter of the power she took from the Sevenfold Peacock willingly… and how that power might be changing her still. Visual Details: Daia is a somewhat petite woman, belying an athletic build. She is ethnically from the Blessed Isle, with dark grey hair that she prefers to wear up, usually in a bun or a knot. Her face, which she tries but fails to keep free of stress and worry lines, is usually found bearing a smirk or an expression of dangerous faux-politeness. Her eyes bear the iconic starry blue of the Serenity caste, but are also shot through with bands of a strange prismatic iridescence. She bears a large pair of bull horns atop her head, a mutation received during her time inside the Worldbody. The nature of the power bequeathed to her by Oramus is such, though, that her very nature is beginning to blur around the edges, and it is not unusual for her day-to-day appearance to fluctuate strangely as mutations come and go like glitches- please feel welcome to have fun with this if you want! She is a bit of a fashionista, favoring blues, dramatic and sharp femme looks (she avoids ruffles and prefers sleeker outfits), and jewelry of all sorts (a lot of it). She rarely wears the same exact outfit twice, so do not feel obligated to stick to the reference- you can get creative! She wears makeup, preferring cool colors and a sharp but understated application.

Daia’s most important accessory is her cursed longfang, the Sevenfold Peacock’s Tailfeather. Forged from starmetal, orichalcum, and a crystalline shard of Oramic essence, the weapon contains knowledge of every martial arts technique known by every user to have ever wielded it, and seems to hunger for more to the point where its obsession has bled over into Daia herself. Even more potently, it bears deep within its core the secret to a martial art concocted by the Dragon of Not himself, whose charms grant the power to ignore the limits of impossibility at the cost of making the wielder more and more alien to the waking world. It is a temptation that Daia has drunk deep of, despite all signs pointing to that being a very bad idea. Daia sees the spear as a trophy stolen from her greatest nemesis, but it’s very possible the Yozi himself sees it as a clever snare for hubristic Sidereals. The blade of the weapon is prismatic crystal that resembles a jagged bird’s beak, the pole is jet black starmetal shot through with an orichalcum starmap of constellations, and the orichalcum pommel is fashioned to look like seven golden peacock feathers woven together into a sphere. Personality Details:

While her exaltation may brand Daia a chosen of the Maidens, the elder Sid is a loose cannon, an agent of Heaven in only the most general of terms. She is mercurial, theatrical, fond of causing petty chaos, and utterly disinterested in the politics of the Bureau, unless there is way for her to stir up drama. She has tendency to get ahead of herself with her schemes, and the vast majority of her ‘downfalls’ can be traced back to her own hubris. Beneath all that, she is an extremely lonely woman who feels adrift in a world that no longer feels real to her. She’s a terrible flirt, a huge showoff, and has a weak spot for dangerous women. She’s Creation’s wildest and worst gay aunt.

Side Note: Daia is partially deaf, due to an old and potent supernatural injury. She employs the use of what magic/technology she can to aid her, but relies as well on sign language and interpreters. She’s very used to it at this point. ------------------------------------------------------- I BITE THE FEET OF KINGS, Full Moon Lunar

Visual Refs: This sketch is missing her antennae but is otherwise my favorite i've done of her Image Gallery rough sketch of possible warform

Intro: Once content to be a potter in the city of Lathe, until social exile cast her out into the winds of fate to her eventual exaltation, the drifter known loosely as I Bite the Feet of Kings has several deep seated reasons to distrust the intentions of other people. She spends most of her time in the shapes of various other social animals, living with them among their herds, packs, and hives, finding her company with the things of the field and forest. When she does deign to return to her human form, it is usually to sew chaos and discord. She despises the haughty and the powerful above all, and loves to be a thorn in their side wherever she travels, whether through trickery and gossip, through direct humiliation, or through trouble delivered in animal form; a plague of locusts here, a swarm of ants there. Besides this troublemaking, though, she tends to stay aloof from the world of man; she has better company to choose from, after all. Those that do find themselves in the rare position to socialize with her find her a wry, bitter cynic, blunt and hard to start conversations with unless she is gleefully undermining whatever point they are trying to make or ranting at length about how much better ants are than people. Visual Details: Bite is a tough, wiry woman of unremarkable height, with dusty, tanned skin and hair shaved close to her scalp in a prematurely-grey fuzz. Her forehead often bears a nubby pair of ant antennae; these aren't her tell, just a mutation she keeps around in human form by preference. She bears marks of past injury from having endured a long-term stint with Hansen's disease; blindness in her left eye, a collapsed nose bridge, and several missing digits (most of her index and middle finger on her left hand, her index and the tip of her thumb on the right, and a few toes). These are just normal aspects of her appearance, please avoid playing them up for in a way that treats them as lurid. She generally conceals her moonsilver tattoos, but when visible they evoke the joints and carapace of an insect. I have never settled on an exact reference for them, so feel free to get creative with them if you want to.

Clothingwise, Bite prefers earth tones, baggy pants and 'athletic' tops, and clothes that are comfortable to travel in. She generally goes barefoot. Her signature accessories are a wide-brimmed sunhat, a mandible-carved walking staff that she also uses in combat, and an enormous artifact clay gourd that she carries around, Gaara-style, which is home to her hive of leafcutter ants. She frequently retreats within the gourd, in ant form, when she needs to get away from other people for a while or take shelter. It also doubles as a weapon of its own, as she can deploy her ant comrades as a battlegroup when the need arises.

Her signature animal shape is a soldier-caste leafcutter ant, and her true tell is her blind left eye and the swelling around it. In her Hybrid form, her physique stays much the same, but terrible mandibles sprout from her jaw, jutting out past her lips, a second, insectoid pair of arms sprout from her torso, and her skin becomes patched with sections of red-brown carapace. Her antennae grow to their full size. In her Deadly Beastman form, she bursts forth fully insectile and covered in spiky red carapace, with a huge soldier-ant head, wicked curved mandibles, and powerful but sleek jointed limbs with strange proportions. Her warform isn't the hugest around, but it doesn't have to be to look completely terrifying. I have never nailed down exact designs for these, but feel welcome to play around in this space if that's something that sounds fun. Besides her core forms, her most frequently used animal shape is that of a little basenji-esque pariah dog. Other notable shapes include raiton, goose, meerkat, and river dolphin. All of her animal shapes belong to social or eusocial species. Personality Details: Bite tends to walk with a laid back, confident swagger, and rarely smiles unless it's to piss someone else off. She's often seen chewing on something; sunflower seeds, candied sweets, stalks of grass, or betel nut are common contenders. While she's quick to pick fights, she rarely does so to kill; preferring to humble or humiliate foes instead. She's a Laughing Monster Stylist, focused on dodging her opponents' blows and frustrating them with jabs, jibes and misdirection.

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SACHI

Visual Refs: extremely good face ref courtesy of my friend @ gyrium on tumblr! image gallery

Bio: Sachi was rescued at age 4 from the clutches of the monstrous death-witch, the Dowager of the Irreverent Vulgate in Unrent Veils, by a band of renegade deathknights, one of whom- a Dusk called Avenging Phoenix- would later, after becoming a Solar, become her adoptive father. Now grown up, she has also exalted, much to her dad's anxiety. A sorceror and passionate researcher of supernatural and spiritual ecology, Sachi hopes to create the first-ever comprehensive bestiary of Creation's spirit denizens. However, thanks in part to her father's tutelage, she's also very adept at hunting, binding, and destroying such creatures, if they pose a threat. Despite her magical expertise, she's kind of a meathead, with a passion for getting herself into trouble at a moment's notice. Visual Details: Sachi is tall and gangly, with a long face, and her skin is a light, warm bark-brown, dotted with loads of freckles. She has long, forest-green hair that she likes to wear in a variety of braids, ponytails, and buns; she always ties it back somehow, though, as she can't stand it getting in her face. An angler fish lure pokes out right above her forehead- a consequence of an accidental dunk in wyld-tainted waters while on an adventure. Its bulb seems to change color from time to time, though she's just as perplexed as to why as anyone else is. She tends to wear gear that can handle the wear and tear of the great outdoors, but also really enjoys bright embroidery, cozy, quilted layers, and skirts. She'll also always be the first one to wear something goofy just for the novelty of it. She tends to carry around a journal, a set of writing tools, and a bag of sorcerous bits and bobs with her, as well as her weapon, an artifact orichalcum powerbow (feel free to play around with it's design if you draw it; it had no evocations and was a pretty straightforward weapon). She is prone to taking new familiars whenever the opportunity arises, so it's not unusual to see her chilling with a demon or walking around with some kind of weird animal under one arm. Personality Details: Sachi is extremely friendly, highly enthusiastic, and prone to speaking and acting impulsively. She laughs loudly and deeply, swears like a sailor, smiles easily, and is the worst friend to ever have around if you need someone to talk you out of doing something stupid (and always the first to accept wild dares herself). Being kidnapped and raised underground by a Deathlord in her very early years has left her with some buried trauma, which generally manifests in abandonment and self worth issues she has to work through, and she clings tightly to the friends and loved ones she has. Despite her gung-ho attitude, she is a little intimidated with Solarhood and of the paths it may set her on; dark memories of past lives rumble their way to the surface, and the Dowager lurks out in the Noss Fens yet…she generally doubles down on hiding this anxiety beneath her cheerful outer persona.