Talk:Eminence

The nature of an Eminence, and of the Bureau of Nature, and of biology in Creation, is very different from that in our world. There are few natural laws, the work of spirits underlying things that to us would be the results of complex biochemistry and evolutionary change... creatures often LOOK the same on Earth and in Creation, act the same way, live and bleed the same way, but the underlying evolution (or creation, if you hold a single omniscient Creator responsible for the formation of all things) and genetics and phyla dont necessarily EXIST in Exalted, so theres a lot of biology thats real which cannot be applied to Creation at all.

Essentially a mammal is a creature whose legitimacy was confirmed by the god holding the title of the Eminence of Mammals in the Bureau of Nature.

Its unclear if that is the only interpretation possible out of the setting material, and if so what it specifically means, but I've assumed that ( as an example) the Eminence of Mammals, in principle, has a set of criteria against which all creatures under the Eminence of Mammals have been compared to determine their legitimacy, and that set is probably similar to the list of traits biology holds are common to mammals.

I suspect it maps much better onto biology from before we could just look at genes/DNA.