Caste Book: Zenith is a softcover, 96 page expansion book for to Exalted. It contains stories about five Exalted of the Zenith caste, some written by the characters and some about them by others in the world of Exalted. It also contains scraps of memories from the first age, new charms for the Zenith caste’s primary abilities, some new artifacts, character sheets for each of the five Exalted within created as newly-created characters, and a set of short entries for other notable Zenith caste Solars currently in the world.
Appearance:
Much like Caste Book: Dawn, Caste Book: Zenith has a simple black cover with yellow around the binding. Below the title on the front cover is the Zenith caste mark with one of the signature Zenith character described within in front; in this case, an ex-gladiator named Panther.
The artwork inside consists of black and white illustrations, a full page picture at the start of each chapter and half-page illustrations every four to six pages. In my opinion, the artwork in Caste Book: Zenith is the best of the Exalted line thus far, and a definite improvement over the Dawn book. Even the worst of the pictures in this book aren’t so much poorly drawn as just dull or uninspiring, and these pictures are the minority. The text of the book is organized into two columns per page, with side boxes for extra information.
Content:
Opening Fiction & Introduction
Caste Book: Zenith opens with an opening fiction and introduction section much like most White Wolf books. The fiction takes up four pages with only one column, somewhat wider than the columns in the rest of the book, and details the misfortune that befalls a town that mistreats a stranger and a Zenith Solar saving them. The most interesting aspect of this story is that it illustrates that the Unconquered Sun isn’t an especially gentle, peacemaking god; both sides of the conflict have been wronged: the townsfolk who mistreated a visitor, and the visitor reacted by attacking the town with supernatural rats. However, no attempt at reconciliation is made. Instead, the Solar trains the town to defend itself and personally kills their supernatural foe.
The introduction contains the usual: what the book is about, how to use it, and source materials. With the possible exception of the source materials, this probably won’t be of much use to Exalted storytellers or veterans but it’s consistent with White Wolf style and only two pages long.
Chapter One: Our Souls Through Our Eyes
Our Soul Through Our Eyes introduces five signature Zenith characters with first person narratives about their lives pre-exaltation up until their exaltation. There’s a decent variety of personalities: we have an ex-gladiator, a pirate captain’s mistress, a general who’s the daughter of a Dragon Blooded noble, an ex-Immaculate Order monk, and a mercenary guard.
Although to a the stories feel a bit formulaic (with a few variations, they usually consist of a summary of pre-exalt life, an encounter with a greater power, a decision to act righteously, and then exalting) they do a good job of showing how each of the characters came to champion an ideal favored by the Unconquered Sun, which is covered in the next Chapter.
Chapter Two: Obligations of the Caste
This chapter is the chapter that I had most been awaiting; some guide to exactly what serving the Unconquered Sun means. From the core book, the Zenith caste were priests of an almost entirely undefined religion. This book doesn’t provide much of a more solid view, and no actual solid beliefs or commandments, but in this chapter each of the five Exalts of chapter one continues their previous narrative and ties it into a virtue they forward; Righteous Action, Rebellion, Justice, Leadership and Truth.
After reading this chapter, I still have a poor conception of exactly what the Unconquered Sun wants, beyond a general “honest, just world of free individuals.” While solid rules aren’t necessarily needed, a few more stories about the Unconquered Sun’s will or some brief biblical-style parables in some other section of the book would have been nice. However, while it is of limited utility to develop a religion from, this chapter does further flesh out the five characters and developing how they understand their service to the Unconquered Sun.
Chapter Three: The World Awaiting Us
Chapter three contains a collection of musings from each of the five exalted on various locales, nations, and people of the world. As with the previous chapters, this can be very useful for helping us understand each character and would be extremely useful to a storyteller using the characters in his game or a player playing one of the five.
Chapter Four: Voices Not Our Own
Chapter four contains what other people in the world (mortals, spirits, other exalted types and castes) write, say, and think about either about their encounters with the Zenith caste or with one of the specific Zenith characters in this book. It does a good job of providing opposing viewpoints for each faction; even among the Solars it’s clear that not all think that the priests of the Unconquered Sun are good to have around. On the other hand we also see that not everyone is willing to believe everything the Realm says about the Solars, even among the factions that are the most strongly aligned against them; we see a dragon-blooded monk of the Immaculate Order who is willing to meet with and talk to his friend who Exalted to Zenith, and an abyssal exalted who seems to like and respect one of the Zenith characters.
Chapter Five: Dreams of the First Age
This chapter contains a series of fragmented memories of the Solars from the First Age. Besides several interesting sites and devices of the First Age mentioned, this chapter gives us an idea of why the Unconquered Sun began to turn from his children; at the end of this chapter, an example of the Zenith priests directly lying about the Unconquered Sun’s will for their own material gain is given.
Chapter Six: Magic of the Zenith
Magic of the Zenith is the section with the rules-oriented bits; it contains new charms for the Zenith favored abilities and new artifacts. New charms include a bunch of endurance charms to permit a character to survive with little in the way of sustenance, resistance charms for “drunken master” style fighting and damage resistance charms that key off of the virtues instead of stamina, survival charms to catch prey, start fires, and an attack charm that calls fire from the sky, performance charms that can disguise the wearer and permit dances with magical effects, and a pair of presence charms related to speaking. The most interesting new aspect of the charms added are the charms that increase the characters’ limit break level as a cost for their effect.
Of note is the fact that, unlike the Caste Book: Dawn, this book only contains charms for the five abilities of Zenith Caste; Dawn had several charms for out-of-caste abilities such as presence. Although the charms in the Dawn book were indeed useful for the martial focus of the caste, for the sake of ease of reference I hope that future books will continue to stick to the primary caste abilities.
The 11 hearthstones provided are for the most part skill or attribute adders; useful, but fairly dull. Among the more interesting ones include one that permits empathic healing (heal a target but suffer some of the damage you heal), and one that permits the character to use dexterity and charisma interchangeably.
Five new artifacts are provided; most interestingly, although this is the Zenith caste book instead of the Dawn book four of the artifacts provided are primarily useful in combat; three weapons and one ring which prevents the death of the user once. One of the weapons, however, also has a useful non-combat function which permits it to be used to call the attention of local spirits through a special ritual dance. Finally, there is a ring which acts as an extremely powerful die pool adder for Zenith abilities. I’d personally like some more non-combat artifacts to play with, but with the exception of the ring each of the artifacts either has an interesting power, a backstory, or both.
Appendix 1: Signature Characters
Appendix 1 contains a character sheet and history summary of each player decided. Very useful to give to a player who doesn’t know what he wants to be and needs a character. A storyteller wanting to use these in a game would probably want to give them some added abilities and experience unless they’re suppose to be fairly newly exalted; Fire Orchid for example is likely to possess Tiger Warrior Training from her story, but doesn’t possess it in her starting sheet.
Appendix 2: Other Notable Zenith Caste
Appendix 2 contains five more Zenith Exalts currently in the world, giving about three pages of information for each one. For a storyteller looking to populate his world with more Exalted or have someone to use as part of a plot, this certainly could help.
Conclusion:
Caste Book: Zenith does an excellent job of providing inspiration for potential Zenith characters and detailing the five it chooses to focus on. I’d recommend it for players who are playing or considering playing a Zenith caste Solar. On the other hand, as a storyteller’s resource the information is spread fairly sparsely across the book, only providing the charms and artifacts in a compact, easy to access format. For a storyteller who wants ideas of what the Zenith caste represents, it can be of help, but it is not especially useful or essential otherwise.
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