A Simple Transaction I

Alienation sorcery is a strange and dangerous art founded upon the alteration, manipulation, and control of distances physical, mental, and conceptual. It functions through pushing targets away from their original place be it physical, mental, or conceptual with the placement of distances into an opportune position to create desirable effects. For example, the placement of physical distance between yourself and the blade of someone trying to murder you so that it cannot reach you, or the placement of mental or emotional distance between a person and an answer you would rather they not know or the solution to a problem you would rather they not solve. With time, practice, and sufficient reserves of space this effect can be scaled up neigh infinitely and can be extended to the conceptual allowing a skilled user to go so far as to literally alienate a person or object from existence (or reality, or simply the reality they live in, whatever suits the alienation sorcerer's purposes best). Of course, such feats require greater skill and power over the usage of distance as well as great reserves of distance in the first place to make the effect truly stick.

Indeed, the accumulation of distance or space is one of the fundamental and most important aspects of Alienation Sorcery. This can be done in many ways, the simplest being to distance yourself from people, places, objects, and ideas in a variety of ways accumulating physical, mental, and conceptual distances. As a result of this Alienation Sorcery tends to be an art well suited to ascetic practitioners and monastic orders, as well as a practice that comes easily to eccentrics and those forced to live on the fringes of society. At first, an unskilled sorcerer can accumulate distance for themselves through any means that could be said to alienate or distance themselves from something. This makes ascetic practices and certain philosophical doctrines that focus on seeing past the physical reality of the world and on learning to take distance from suffering and the self to become a part of the whole particularly adept despite the somewhat contrary goal of universal oneness. Eccentrics behavior of course creates a distance between an individual and those around them in a way that is rather ideal which can encourage some sorcerers to change their behavior quickly and erratically creating distance even from their changes in behavior. On the other hand, vile and crude methods such making many friends or simply creating connections with many people with the sole intention to burn those relationships as hard as possible or transform them as far as they can be stretched is yet another method by which distance can be rapidly accumulated, though this is mostly favored by the desperate. Beyond this an Alienation Sorcerer will eventually grow to be able to use even distance that is not formally "theirs" in their magic and eventually to automatically produce distance themselves. All this being said it must be noted to beware for one of the fundamental principles of Alienation is that to distance something from another is to bring it closer to something else and that axiom can bring unpredictable outcomes with the accumulation and usage of distance.

An example of this effect is the method by with distance can be automatically gathered, namely the practice of Estrangement, or gone awry Derangement. Essentially estrangement and derangement are what happens when a certain amount of distance accumulation from some aspect of a sorcerer's previous state of being becomes normal and they can be said to have become a fundamentally different person than they previously were. For example, if one were to consistently alienate themselves from life, or accumulate distance from life they might find themselves dead, permanently close to death, as some kind of deathly creature, or even just removed from what they traditionally think of as life (perhaps a carbon based creature might become some kind of silicon based rock man). This end state exists in contrast from and distant to their original state of being and thus staying in such a state consistently accumulates distance until such a state is completely normalized to the sorcerer. There are a great many ways of doing this on purpose and most, but not all, personal enhancement spells of alienation sorcery work upon this principle. Indeed one of the most consistent ways for a skilled sorcerer to increase their reserves is to go through a permanent ritual of estrangement reshaping themselves into some new form that creates and stores greater distances more safely and consistently. However, this is not a purely positive phenomenon, particularly as it is something that can happen unintentionally. Such is what makes the difference from an elevation of the self through Estrangement, and the unpredictable and often disastrous corruption of Derangement. If a sorcerer is not careful most anything can result from becoming something unable to properly live even under the condition of their home world to becoming some kind of horrible monster. A careless sorcerer will often allow one to become the other before they even realize what is happening, practice Estrangement at your own risk.

Sorcerers often specialize in on of three areas of Alienation Sorcery, namely the creation and understanding of distances, the manipulation and employment of distances, and the understanding of the results of alienation, of where things end up when distance is shuffled around, of relation and estrangement. Each of these areas has their strengths. The first is often specialized in some combination of sustainability, efficiency, and scale of workings. The second focuses on the swiftness, accuracy, and variability of employment of distance leading into the usage of a great range of effects target at their most effective times and places of employment. The last is the strangest and hardest to understand. It deals not only with enhancement and the permanent alteration of the self, but with a form of divination resulting from understanding of the ebb and flow of distances and being able to predict where things will land or otherwise to subtly interfere with causality to push them towards a desired or advantageous position, though that requires a level of skill and awareness that is rare amongst sorcerers.

Player (Myself)
Break Containment (Combat-Class) (-16, -1, +3)
Curses (Major): Sign of the Crab, Doom of Inflexibility, Doom of the Tyrant, Plenary
Brand (+12 RV)
Curses (Minor): Doom of the Sailor, Affliction of the Weary, Brand of the Childish, Doom of the Chaste, Brand of the Phoenix (+5 RV) [total 0RV, 3LR]
Primary Remittance: Wands (Infernal Charms)
Lesser Remittances
Companion: The High Priestess
Artifact: The Hanged Man
Upgrade: The Hierophant

My primary goal was to get the Infernal Charms selection and The Hanged Man. Perhaps I'm underestimating either the utility or power of the other options, but this is the only option I can see that both provides a solid enough foundation to allow me to be inconvenienced by the Curses necessary to get it, and does not cap out (given this is the system Ulysses used to hit his pseduo devil tiger ascension). A Combat Cursebearer's level starting in Cultivation would not be broad enough to ignore the variety of effects necessary to gain 17 RV, the Ordinal Spiral has a final Ordinal (and I don't have To Shatter Heaven to gain infinite Attainments), the Praxis has never been explained enough for me to understand what it could initially compensate for, and without a way to leverage a recursive loop I don't trust any pair of the lesser magics to start with both the utility and paper to disregard the Curses. This gives me the power and versatility to thrive from the start, and doesn't have an upper limit to stop my growth from the multiple +s I'll get to progression from wearing The Hanged Man around my ankle for decades.
...Of course, looking over my final Curse selections, most of what this comes down to is my Lesser Remittances, so the only true advantages I gained were the additional power relative to growth from its corruption of personality being ignored by the Curse of Inflexibility and the instant removal of the need to sleep, so I suppose I could have figured out something else that would let me survive the Curse of Vigor and also compensate for Brand of the Weary immediately instead of focusing on what inspired me. Still, it does work.
As for the rest? The High Priestess and her cult mostly solve the Sign of the Crab and completely solve the Brand of the Childish without being negatively impacted by the Tyrant's Doom; the Hierophant gives me enough people immune to my curses to cover everyone I care about already, solving the rest of the Sign of the Crab and Tyrant's Doom, covers the High Priestess herself, solving the Brand of the Phoenix; and sheer power relative to Earth across a wide base takes care of the Plenary Brand and the Doom of the Sailor (because I'm not in danger here, and can easily move fast enough to visit areas off the coast as a day trip while living at sea).
The Doom of the Chaste is currently irrelevant, and if that ever changes, I should only need to move a Hierophant slot off one of the Greater Clerics under the High Priestess.

[ ] A Seed of Freedom

Physical *
Mental *
Social *

A Companion and Artifact both. A small plant that can fit in your palm, a vine-worm of trilateral symmetry. A newborn, one of many made to protect and empower the few who fight for freedom in a static world whose masters have dominated the minds of mankind.

If chosen, it will merge with your body and therefore bond with and grow alongside you, accessing new powers along the way. Currently, the Bond will treat it as an extension of you and so render it immune to your particular Curses, but be treated as "you" for the purposes of their function; in your case, it would spread your Affliction and It's Beauty would compel others to trap it.

Its most basic function is to resist control by cognitive domination, and so while it is merged any non-natural means of mental influence, like mental illusions, insertion of thoughts and suggestions, and even psychic attacks are weakened or even nullified depending on the strength of the attack relative to the Seed, synergizing perfectly with other means of mental defence, no matter how improbable. Even another Cursebearer's Brands would affect you as if they had Stage I Mitigation. You may also have the Seed merge with another to confer them these benefits, though they will remain bonded to you.

Given a better relationship, you will also gain access to the Merger, first in times of great stress then eventually at will; a temporary super-powered mode where the physical characteristics of the seed are blended with the human form, granting you improved statistics and esoteric effects.


[ ] Little White Wing [2 Remittances]

Physical **/*****
Mental **/*****
Social **/*****

A trainee Angel from another dimension very different from this one, who has not yet been given his name. A child with blonde hair, blue eyes and beautiful white wings at his back, he has run away from home due to it's alienating nature, and wishes to see more of the universe outside of the stark lines of his original life.

Both his natural curiosity and kind nature make him willing to go with you despite your Curses; he does not mind helping their burden despite how it may affect him, and his supernal attributes makes him very naturally resistant to them.

Currently possesses powerful healing abilities and the ability to talk with ghosts and spirits, alongside a Gift of Tongues. However, his kind can scatter galaxies with the mere flap of his wings, and so if you can work past his own hesitation to fight and help him grow, he could eventually be a powerful ally. More importantly, with just a bit of training he would be able to provide Stage I Mitigation for both of your Curses.

He has no relation to the Angels of this dimension and in fact would be quite unsettled by them, despite superficial similarities.

Artifact:

[ ] Magister

A silver coin inscribed with two crowns that always makes its way back into your pocket. It has two active uses:

First, you may mentally declare an action of low complexity; hitting an attack or rolling a specific die number count, winning a fight does not. By rubbing the coin against your palm, the declared action is guaranteed to happen if its odds of occurring were equal to or more than 1 in 8. If they were less than 1 in 8, the odds are multiplied eightfold instead. Can be used once per day.

Second, given the same activation requirements and conditions, you may guarantee a result which has equal to or more than 1 in 10.000 chance of occurring, or if below that you may multiply the odds by 10.000x. Usage of this power turns off all the magical powers of the coin for a month.

[ ] Crossroads

A bident used by a long dead master of Incarnation, given a spark of Accursed power.

This iconic weapon is made in image of the one wielded by the messenger of the gods, master of choices, the liminal creature between the earthly and the divine, between life and death, past and future. At the start, it allows one to talk with the lingering spirits of the dead, gives one great talent in Incarnation, and a greater intuitive understanding of the choices one can make, improving decision-making capability. Grows alongside the user.

[ ] Heavenly Writ [2 Lesser Remittances]

A single rolled up scroll, brimming with reality-warping power and written with the holiest of words. Single-use. Unfurl the scroll and picture an act vividly in your mind; this will cause the paper to burn with ghostly fire and vanish.

The act you pictured in your mind is now axiomatically Good should you do it. Note, it does not change any subjective interpretations of the act nor the consequences of the same, merely it's objective qualia.

For example, if you burned the scroll thinking of killing 1000 random people and did just that; it would not change the opinions of the friends and family of those killed in any way nor the opinions of society at large, and you may expect to receive severe retribution.

However, should they weight your heart in the Scales of the Souls they'd find it lighter than a feather, a magical effect that hurts you in proportion to the evil you did would leave you completely unaffected; a curse that sends the apparitions of the vengeful against you would find nothing happening and even a perfect supercomputer, if able to calculate the exact, objective moral validity of any action by analyzing the universe past, present and future, would find your action not only unobjectionable, but of positive moral value!

Needless to say, this object can be considered quite terrifying. Use it wisely.


Upgrades:

[ ] Incandescence - The power to spend of yourself for great might. One may spend acquired Progression to achieve greater momentary power or fuel effects that would be otherwise impossible. This is the equivalent to a "level loss" and so does not hamper future efforts, it's simply as if you did not acquire the Exp.

Increased effect when used to enhance Praxis spells thanks to a confluence of design.

[ ] Storage - Your Remittance comes with a handy extra-dimensional pocket you may use to store non-living things whose mass is not greater than yours. The effects of time do not pass in such a pocket and whatever is inside stays perfectly preserved. While you need to touch the object with your hands to store it the first time, you may manifest objects stored in any part of your body with a thought, and to store them again you merely need to touch it.

Great synergy with Embroidery, as it gives the ability to hot-swap Tassels on demand; giving you much greater versatility and power against foes. To swap Tassels constantly can be exhausting on its own, however,

[ ] Intensify - Sharpens and narrows the domain of your Primary Remittance. Substantially increases rate of progress and overall effectiveness of the Praxis, but prevents you from ever employing any other supernatural arts. The jack of all trades cannot overcome the master of one.

[ ] Relinquishment - For each decade of service as a Cursebearer, gain one week of freedom from your Curses. Your burdens will be transferred to volunteering Cursebearers for that time. You are free to travel even with the Geas but must be back before the week is over. You may improve the term and frequency of Relinquishment by mitigating your Curses more.

[ ] To Shatter Heaven - Modifies the Remittance for superior intuitive compatibility with the Cursebearer, increasing it's rate of advancement by 400%. Conceptual limits of the Remittance can be broken with sufficient training.

[ ] Ties of Kin [4 Lesser Remittances]

An incredible and unprecedented gift, beyond what most would be offered; use whatever favor you have in this moment to protect not only you, but all your siblings.

All of those who you share a sufficiently strong metaphysical kinship with are Immune to your Curses. This would mean not only the hills and mountains would be unaffected by your Curses, but also beings who have the Trait [Kin to Hills] or a sufficiently close variant. You are no longer able to alter or add to your metaphysical ties of kinship. The family you have now is all you will ever have; it's more than enough.