Fair Folk

"Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder."
"Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels."
"Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies."
"Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
"Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment."
"Elves are terrific. They beget terror."
"The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
"No one ever said elves are nice."
"Elves are bad."

– Terry Pratchett

The Fair Folk are creatures composed of raw Essence, and inhabit the Wyld – the place that exists between the ordered Creation and pure Chaos. Inhuman and beautiful beings born from chaos, they feed on the dreams and aspirations of the inhabitants of Creation in order to give them strength and form in their own intermediate realm. (In other words, they EAT PEOPLE'S SOULS.) In essence, they are the "kissing cousins" of the Primordials; their territory having been pushed back when the Primordials formed Creation. They prey upon the dreams of mortals and do a brisk trade with the Guild (a powerful economic organization in Creation) in slaves.

The Raksha are divided into four castes: Diplomats, who favor the Staff Grace and the virtue of Conviction; Entertainers, who favor the Cup Grace and the virtue of Compassion; Warriors, who favor the Sword Grace and the virtue of Valor, and Workers, who favor the Ring Grace and the virtue of Temperance. Noble Raksha belong to two of the four castes, favoring the graces and virtues of both. There is also a fifth Grace, the Heart Grace, which is associated with identity and the trait of Willpower. Graces are differing outlets for the use of Essence and are similar to the suits of tarot. The most powerful of the Fair Folk are the Unshaped. Unlike the Raksha, the Unshaped are unable to survive within Creation for extended periods of time, each Unshaped is actually a symbiotic cluster of Fair Folk consisting of a single "guiding intelligence" and one or more "subsidiary intelligences" with no true form.

Being born from a place of fluid reality that resembles a Loony Tunes skit as much as it does creation, fair folk have difficulty functioning like "real" people. For one thing they suffer from "calcification", their natural unshaped forms are incompatible with creation's stagnant, static existence. Even when they take on a semi-real shape (as a Raksha) they bleed essence while in creation and must feed on dreams and souls to keep themselves alive. Secondly a fair folk's emotions and virtues are entirely artificial, represented by their graces. When their phony identities break down they suffer from 'Bedlam'. This can have effects such as losing the ability to comprehend that other people aren't just figments of his imagination (conviction) or forgetting that he is capable of inflicting harm on others (valor).

Playing a Raksha is an interesting choice for those who want a game focused more on subterfuge than direct confrontation. Raksha characters of different factions can play a number of roles. Those from the Duchy of Mirrors can do boring mundane stuff like trying to save creation from the Yozis or Neverborn (making them the easiest to play in mixed circles). Church of Balor circles will be all about a fae fifth column trying to rot creation back into the Wyld. Unshaped Raksha can chill in the Wyld and play chaos fairy mafia dons. Hungry Wolf PCs can just see how many times they can use Limitless Wealth Conjuration Technique before Yu-Shan sends the Exalted equivalent of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms after their ass. It's definitely one of the more roleplay heavy classes with a lot of their charms focusing on social combat. If thats your thing then go nuts, if not why the fuck are you playing Exalted?

Protips

• Even more than regular Exalted, it pays to read the rules carefully; if you try playing a Raksha without a decent familiarity with the rules for shaping, you will slow the game to a crawl.
• Unlike the normal Exalted, your charms tend to focus less on being supernaturally good at individual skills, and more on manipulating the Wyld to aid you.
• You won't win in a straight fight against the more powerful splats like Solars, but your Raksha abilities help ensure that any fight you will never be a straight fight.
• Remember, it is thematically appropriate to indulge in theatrics and drama at every possible moment, but don't let this get in the way of the enjoyment of other players.
• While Shaping can be potentially powerful, it is easily countered by other Exalted charms that protect against the Wyld; if you run into a Twilight Caste Solar for example, you are better off using shaping to attack and hinder them indirectly (such as by shaping the ground underneath their feet into quicksand, or using shaping to attack their mortal allies) than to try to mess with their body, mind, or soul.
• Get familiar with the rules for mutations; The Raksha have a lot of ways to give themselves mutations, and are second only to Lunar Exalted in their ability to easily alter their own form. Be careful giving yourself permanent mutations however, as each one increases the experience cost of Essence later on.
• Your charms don't require dots in any abilities, only in various Graces (and obviously Essence, just like every other splat). This means that you can more easily afford to spread around your ability points (this is especially true for Noble Raksha, because their higher base stats can compensate somewhat for lower ability scores). If you do choose to do this however, then it is probably a good idea to buy dots in the Style advantage, so that your stunting can more effectively compensate.
• Unless you know exactly what you are doing, it is almost always better to play as a Noble rather than a commoner; not only do Commoners have much worse base stats and abilities, they are much more limited in their ability to use Shaping, their caste abilities are much more narrowly focused, and they have access to two Major Graces instead of just one (that last one is super important, since it basically means that they get to play with charms from two different trees very easily). The main thing commoners (well, at least Heroic Commoners, regular commoners get nothing) potentially have going for them is the fact that they have double the Build Points to play around with during character creation. This is useful if you have some combination of abilities you absolutely need to include in your character, and it allows you to customize your abilities more freely, but as mentioned earlier, unless you know exactly what you are doing, you are almost always better off with a Noble caste.

Exalted Classes
Solars - Lunars - Sidereals - Dragon-Blooded - Infernals - Abyssals Alchemicals - Liminal - Getimian - Exigents - Fair Folk Jadeborn - God-Blooded - Mortals