General Exalted Discussion XII: One More and Get a Free Deathlord

[Exthalion]

There is more to gaining a Celestial Exaltation than a single moment of Heroism, and more to an Alchemical Exaltation than heroism in past lives.

It is explicitly notes for Alchemicals that anything less than a heroic soul - not just one that was heroic that one time, but one which is heroic as a true property, perhaps learned, perhaps conditioned, perhaps innate - will fail to animate an Alchemical, leaving an extremely expensive failure.
Besides that, how can you claim in the context of Alchemicals that the memories are permanently gone? Alchemicals can remember important events from their Past Lives, minus only previous time spent as an Alchemical.

For Celestials, similarly: Someone who is not heroic will fail to bond with their Exaltation. This, sadly, is only very very heavily implied, not stated explicitly to my knowledge. Perhaps a DB with good breeding would Exalt with only minimal heroism... But that has no bearing on Celestials anyway.

And an additional note - Sidereal heroism is not somehow belittled for the fact that it gives warning in advance. We can still admire the hero who we know will make the choice to stand up to evil when it comes, even though we know they will. The fact that there's a pattern of heroism, or that it's predictable, doesn't make it unheroic. It is that man's fate to oppose the evil tyrant, not because he is a puppet on strings, but because he will find that he wishes to do good when it arrives.

Regarding Alchemical Past Lives: It is explicitly stated. The Alchemical is not a continuation of their prior lives, they are an amalgamation of them. There are missing parts. If I took your memory of graduating kindergarten, my memory of my 7th birthday, and Gensh's memory of watching a basketball game the result would not be any of us, it would be a separate being assembled from our memories. The proper continuity is no longer present. The issue is not that memories are gone, it is that it is no longer the same person with memory as one of the big reasons.

An unheroic soul is NOT the same thing as unable to bond to a celestial exaltation. That is the entire point of the other Solaroids. Infernals explicitly failed, by their own choice or circumstance, and Abyssals bargained away the entire world so they could keep on living, often out of fear.

The point of distinction between Alchemical heroism and celestial heroism is that Alchemicals cannot claim that the heroism that catalyzed them is their own. It was cultivated over generated by maneuvering other people in positions where they would perform the proper activities. It would be like saying you are rich because of hard work (Exalted because of heroism) when a bunch of other people who did actually work hard died and left it to you. This doesn't mean you can't continue the trend, but you didn't personally earn it.

Also, the process of cultivation seems to be designed to reduce uncertainty in Champions. The result being that their proclivities make it more difficult for them to make independent choices contrary to their past life conditioning. As I said, like breeding submissive people together to make better slaves.

Finally, terrestrials. Given that there was a time in which they all Exalted, it seems likely that they also don't have a choice in the matter. Every single offspring, regardless of environment, will exhibit certain behaviors. This implies that they will never have a choice in the matter, the inbuilt programming with force them to behave "heroically". However, this implies that it isn't actually heroism in the same way courage is impossible without fear.