Fanwork#2000 words
It is here.
The world is changing, and you are changing with it. Choose one Place, one Person, one Power, one Panoply, and one Free Pick from any section. Places represent hidden realms stitched into the fabric of reality which you possess the knowledge to navigate to. People represent unique companions whose fates are entangled with your own. Powers represent innate magic which the world's evolution has revealed within your soul. Panoply represents pure potentia, crystallized around the nucleation site of your existence, precipitated from the realm of forms by the turning of an age. The Free Pick...is a gift from me to you.
[ ] Lapidea, the Divine Palace - The way is upwards, uphill or upstairs, always towards the pinnacle. The Divine Palace stands at the meeting point of heaven and earth. The halls of Lapidea are populated by a long and plodding queue of spirits, fairies, and demons drawn from every corner of the Greater Span. Each seeks audience with the Heavenly Descendant, an idol of wish-granting carnelian and Master of the Divine Palace. Petitioners of the Descendant will trade much for an advanced position in the queue, but if you hold onto yours all the way to the end, there are few limits to what the Descendant may grant you.
[ ] Refugium, the Last Chance - The way is deeper, into the chambers of safety and security hidden beneath the surface, sub-basements and bank vaults and timeworn tombs. Refugium is a vast network of interconnected caverns and tunnels, carefully woven together to create a finely tuned system of air-, water-, and gene-flow between its many constituent biomes, each preserving a memorable moment in Earth's biological history. The Conservator, Master of the Last Chance, last survivor of the Ancient Race, and magician of unparalleled wisdom, age, and excellence, is an inveterate recluse, but careful and gradual proof of your worthiness may prompt him to share a lesson in magic with you,
[ ] Umbracele, the Night Market - The way winds and turns upon itself, ceaselessly diverting beneath the vigilant gaze of the Sun. The Night Market does not open until sundown. Umbracele is a dangerous place, threats not only to your body but to your soul, your very self, abound, but so too do treasures of incredible power and beauty. Anything can be sold in the Night Market, even the most intangible virtue, and for the right price there's always someone willing to buy. As long as you keep your wits about you the risks of just visiting are negligible, but be wary of scams and pickpockets in a Place where much more than mere matter might be stolen.
[ ] Vastitas, the Trash Heap - The way is out, out, out, to the vast and open places, to where there is nothing, to the endless desert or the fathomless ocean, to nowhere at all. Vastitas is the nadir of the Greater Span, the pit into which the refuse of countless worlds falls. The Trash Heap poses little immediate danger to most visitors, and with some efficacious method of searching, one such guest might find the rare items of true value amidst a universe of rubbish. Do not linger long, though, as Vastitas lacks the metaphysical underpinning which is critical to supporting life or growth for more than a brief excursion.
[ ] Andrea la Valliere - High reliability, high maintenance. A seasoned battle-mage and grizzled veteran of many magical conflicts, Andrea possesses numerous minor magics, a superhuman physique, and the ability to enter a War Form of vast destructive capability. She finds peacetime equally needful yet alien, and must rely on you to guide her through the foreign lands of civility.
[ ] James St. John - High reliability, low maintenance. A deal-maker, a game-player, a people-pleaser, James is a man with many friends, a winning smile, and just a bit of the Devil's own luck. He doesn't have much personal power, but is a master of the magic of networking. Give him just a bit of time and just a little money and he can call in favors from some very high and very low places.
[ ] Ravener Vidra - Low reliability, low maintenance. Vidra is a juvenile black dragon with a voracious appetite who grows in power the more they eat. They possess the might, armor, wings, and fire one expects of a dragon, as well as a human disguise to let them move easily through Earthly societies. They are fiercely independent, but can be persuaded by the offer of powerful or delicious comestibles.
[ ] The Doppelganger - Low reliability, high maintenance. An empty soul clinging to life, a victim of Umbracele's cruelest debt-collectors, and now a hollow mirror of your own self. Select an additional Place, Power, and Panoply, different from your own, which belong to the Doppelganger. The Doppelganger will often be occupied with the work of building a new life for itself, and even when it is free, don't expect much charity from it. It has learned well the lessons of the Night Market: every interaction is a transaction, and don't do anything for free.
[ ] A Grand Design - Become. Become. Become. A power of cognitive evolution. Your baseline quantity, quality, and speed of memory and thought will rise over time, though only slowly. The rate of this increase can be increased by focusing the growth to the domain of a particular task or activity, the increase proportional to the narrowness of focus. Focusing on a domain will also cause you to develop relevant psychic abilities to the task or activity. Once the domain's task or activity is complete, these psychic mutations will begin to fade and growth in the domain will be halted until your baseline catches up. Taking actions which are not at least tangentially relevant to your domain is emotionally exhausting, with severity proportional to its focus. With an effort of will proportional to your domain's focus, you may dissolve it to begin returning to your baseline, or forcefully shift to a new domain, though the latter may induce exhaustion in proportion to the degree that the new domain falls outside the domain you are shifting away from, and may cause severe disorientation and confusion as psychic abilities which are no longer relevant to your new domain are suddenly lost. Additionally, you are rendered immune to direct mental manipulation or surveillance, even by mundane or technological means.
[ ] The Four Senses - Four bridges cross the chasm of ignorance. A power of deft acumen. Your senses of sight, hearing, touch, and olfacto-gustation become massively augmented, vastly expanding their range and precision, an improvement of at least three orders of magnitude along every axis of sensory experience, as well as an expansion of your abilities of sensory processing to match the greatly increased influx of information. You also gain dexterity and bodily control to match your new senses, and are rendered immune to being overwhelmed or disabled by sensory superstimulus, such as being paralyzed by intense pain or blinded by a bright light. Additionally, each of your four senses gains the ability to directly perceive magic within its remit.
[ ] Might of Myriad - Let thy power be multiplied, ten by ten by ten by ten. A power of august fortitude. Your agility, dexterity, endurance, regeneration, stamina, strength, and similar physical parameters are all multiplied by ten thousand, and your bodily control is expanded to allow you to fully utilize your new abilities reliably and safely. Your new abilities do not reduce the benefits of exercise and training, but instead multiply them as well. Additionally, you gain a polymathic genius for martial arts, dance, gymnastics, running, swimming, climbing, parkour, and all similar forms of athleticism.
[ ] Time's Favorite - All things come to those who wait. A power of privilege. Entropy's cruel hand out-stretched in sublime contrition, causing its flow to reverse whenever it would benefit you. Some notable effects of this include immunity to all negative effects of aging and a reversal of all such effects you currently suffer from, a slow but comprehensive healing factor which extends even beyond death, and a restorative, harmonious causality which spreads into the world around you, bending the consequences of even your most insignificant actions towards your desires and preferences. For each year that passes, you may beseech Time for a further boon, so long as it falls within Time's remit and is not too disruptive or onerous to provide. Additionally, you are rendered perfectly immune to all hostile temporal manipulation.
[ ] Luminous Scroll - A cylinder of glass, almost invisibly clear. With a trivial act of will, you may extrude a screen of light from the Scroll to access numerous smartphone-like functions, such as: drawing with trails of light that hang in the air, shining a powerful illumination as a flashlight or lantern, performing vast mathematical calculations nigh-instantly, accessing Earthly or otherworldly internets, and much more. Most importantly, you may use this to access the Scroll's complete library on the Knowledge of Light, a multimedia collection of instructive works, research notes, and other information sources sufficient to initiate even the utterly ignorant into the magic of Light in a matter of hours, and to guide you on the long journey of knowledge-seeking thereafter.
[ ] Second Skin - A panel of mercurial fabric and solemn silver mask. By touching the Skin with intent, you may don it instantly, the Skin conforming tightly yet modestly to your shape. While worn, it may be partially or fully hidden for social purposes, though the efficacy of non-sacrificial functions of the hidden portions are reduced by half. Initially, the Skin provides comprehensive defenses against physical and environmental harm, and may be sacrificed to provide a universal perfect defense against one attack, after which the Skin will regenerate over the course of 100 days. Over time, the Skin will observe the actions you take and the dangers you face, and develop a specialization with them in mind. Once its specialization is formed, it will begin to enhance its defenses against the threats you've encountered, as well as augment itself with gadgetry designed to aid you within the subject of its specialization.
[ ] Singing Steel - A black-bladed saber, shivering eagerly. The Steel itself is intelligent, communicating with you through a simple empathic bond. It is magically well-balanced and sharp, easy to use and never requiring cleaning or honing. When swung through the air, it produces a mellifluous voice of similar character to your own, which sings of your greatest deeds and virtues, providing you and any of your allies who can hear its song with a semi-magical bonus to your morale with magnitude proportional to the greatness of the feats it lyricizes. Most importantly, wielding the Steel initiates the wielder into the Mythos of the Black Blade, an ancient legend told across the Greater Span and beyond, which you may now steadily draw from, unlocking deeper and more powerful incarnations of the Steel's magic every time your own battles echo its story.
[ ] The Skeleton's Closet - A bone-white skeleton key. A symbol of your Mastery over a long-abandoned realm, the key cannot be separated from you for long unless given freely. So long as you possess it, you may find the way to The Skeleton's Closet, a wandering hotel of sorts, drifting through the expanse of the Greater Span. It once served as the premier hiding place for witches, vampires, mediums, ghouls, transmigrators, and all other sorts of fugitives fleeing the ashen gaze of Death and its reapers. Naturally, Death caught up to its former owner eventually, and now the Closet falls to your possession. With some work, and the application of whatever magic you now have, you could return to or even surpass its former furtive glory. It might be safer to transform it into something new and which draws less ire, though.
A whisper in the back of your mind tells you: there are perhaps a dozen others in this world offered one each of Place, Person, Power, and Panoply, and as many as hundreds offered only three or fewer of the four. Each received their own collection of offers, though there was some overlap among Places and Powers. There are none but you who were given a Free Pick.
