Millennia ago, the gods wished to overthrow the Primordial architects of Creation—but since they could not directly disobey the Primordials who made them, they gave their power to uplift mortal heroes into semidivine champions: the Exalted. These were lordly-brilliant Solars, wild-wise Lunars, fate-spinning Sidereals, and legions of "Dragon Blooded" soldiers of the elemental dragons. However, the Primordials were part of the very fabric of their Creation. When they were defeated, some surrendered and were hellishly warped while others became undead portals to oblivion who, with their "dying" breaths, cursed the Exalted: their greatest strengths would be their undoing.
Now, in the Age of Sorrows, after the corrupt empire of the Solar exalted was overthrown, replaced by an empire of Dragon Bloods called the Realm, rewritten history portrays all non-Dragon Blooded exalts as demonic "anathema." With anathema constantly hunted as soon as they reincarnate, though, there are often not champions strong enough to protect mortals.