I'd intended to save this for after a proper update, but it's been gathering dust for months at this point and it's a friend's birthday to boot. Might as well throw my hat into the ring. Enjoy 17k words of tumescent prose.
The Sacrament of Beckoning's history is a checkered one, spanning dimensions and epochs. Its structure is implicitly woven into reality's fabric, revealed to those with the will and intellect to part the veil and glimpse truth's light shining beyond. That past has left the ritual with no shortage of names: the Dire Portal, Hope's Last Resort, nothing less than the Call to Adventure itself! But beneath myth's myriad costumes, the Sacrament has a single purpose: to create a hero wheresoever one is needed. A champion, plucked from afar and empowered by the process of their transportation to save the strange land to which they've been Beckoned.
Frequently it fails, calling forth only mass-energy in quantities that obviate any question of deliverance, both summons and summoner destroyed by the latter's desperation. Improperly parameterized, it can conjure horrors from reality's benighted outskirts. Deadlier still are those victorious heroes who take the thrones of the very tyrants they overthrew.
Yet when the stars are right and the hero's resolve true, sometimes the storybook promise of salvation is fulfilled, for the Sacrament is the same rite that led Arthur to draw sword from stone and raise the banner of Logres. Its beneficiaries possess power enough to carve paradise realms from the uncaring firmament or, their story finished, exit history's stage to live happily ever after.
Fortunately for us both, I am familiar with the ritual. Much will still depend on your choices. I do not ask your forgiveness, for tearing you from the world of your birth. Only your cooperation. We do what we must with the tools we are given.
Let the Beckoning commence.
There's no truck, no spontaneous combustion or suddenly-appearing portal. Only sourceless knowledge, followed by a wrenching sensation as you're pulled upward and outward by a hook lodged behind your navel, caught by some celestial fisherman. Galaxies glitter like diamonds in the surf, whirling past as sprays of light, there and gone. Then a sense of pressure, of barriers breached, as you're hauled in a direction with no earthly analogue.
Your body unravels. Its constituent molecules fall like raindrops into a billion different universes. You see them all flash past, an inundation of information that threatens to drown you.
Starfaring civilizations spread across thousands of systems; planets where the line between meat and metal's been erased. Six seated figures with their voices raised in song; libraries entombed in stone beneath wrathful, storm-wracked skies. Incinerated cosmoses crumbling into ash; a garden of light and life, its sole occupant ignorant of the surrounding desolation. A great causeway whose every stone is a note in a symphony, beset by jaundiced shoots that spring up like weeds through pavement. One breaks off in pursuit.
Too much. Impossible vistas. Colors you cannot name. Seizure-inducing stimuli. Worlds without end, dopplering into your wake. There's no pain, for you have no nerves. Nevertheless you would scream, had you a mouth with which to. And all the while the pressure builds, until it's a transcendental thunderhead of potential that cries out to be given form.
When it concludes, you're standing in a golden field. Facing you is a breathtakingly beautiful woman, silhouetted by the rising sun at her back. Pale and grey-eyed, wearing robes of the same color, hair so dark it verges on black.
"Greetings, child of Earth. You may call me Bath Kol."
Her voice defies description. All other sound ceases, as though the world is holding its breath to hear her speak. If each heart was a lock, it would be the master key. You know, instinctively, that every word is the truth.
"Let me begin by saying I would have spared you the unpleasantness of your journey were it not essential. Our time in this interstitial space is limited, however, and shouldn't be squandered on courtesies."
Dawn's light sets your shadow to dancing behind you. Disorientation and bewilderment are washed away by comforting warmth.
"The Sacrament has delivered you to Pleroma. A world of saints and sorcerers, gods and monsters, saturated with wonder. Grand as any story told on Earth, but also poised on the precipice of great change. With the power you'll receive, you could be the catalyst of it," Bath Kol continues with a haunting smile.
"Trivialities like language and protection from cognitive hazards shall be addressed, and the flesh that was stripped from you returned. Your form here reflects an idealized self-image. Upon arrival that will become the actuality, accompanying an improvement to all parameters sufficient to make you an exemplar of your kind, possessing an affinity for the land's native magics."
Clouds scud across the sky as if days are passing in seconds, pausing only to heed her voice. The wheat stops swaying and cocks stalks like ears to listen.
"No demon lord or fated foe awaits you. In exchange for myriad blessings, there is but a single price: you are bound by the Beckoning's terms to grant one Wish of mine."
In the lingering silence and stillness that follows those words, you hear something. A susurrus like wind in the willows or the rustling of many wings.
"There's no need to concern yourself with discharging that debt for now. You are too limited and may remain so for long years yet. Instead, let us discuss your choices. Start with three Embers of Glory to kindle yours."
[ ] Threshold - Though the gates have been barred since time immemorial, the historical entrance to Pleroma is a fitting place to start your journey. The holy city of Threshold was founded on an archway of indestructible jade through which it's said the gods once entered this plane, growing around the titanic structure like vines about a trellis.
In the present it's the omphalos and beating heart of Pleroma, the city of a thousand temples and petal-strewn streets climbing ever upward, consecrated to the Ogdoad - the Eightfold Pantheon of great gods who preside over the world and realms abutting it.
Prayer wheels fuel all amenities from lighting to the portal network. Sacred beasts glutted on divine power prowl the streets, granting favors to the deferential. Cordials of ambrosia are sold in the upper districts' cloud-shrouded shops alongside theotechnological marvels crafted by priest-smiths of Khoduar, God of Toil and Ingenuity. Threshold's liturgical calendar is fully booked; every week heralds more feast days and celebrations. Joyous and unending revelry is the order of the day, for the gods are in their heavens and all's right with the world.
For those of sufficient wealth or piety, Threshold is a paradise.
The less affluent or more circumspect reside in the outskirts, as the city's long since spilled outward from the slopes of the twin peaks raised around the pillars and onto the surrounding plains. There, the hallowed geometry gives way to freewheeling vibrance, and the Order of Ostiaries' Fortified inquisitors are feared as well as revered. Roadside shrines play host to a welter of small gods and tutelary spirits competing for the worship of pilgrims. Millions arrive from across Pleroma every year, drawn by desperation or fervor to the lodestone of Ogdoadic civilization.
A fraction comes for one individual in particular. In the adytum atop the architrave, the holiest of holies, lives the Grand Hierophant. As the high priest of the entire pantheon they're capable of fulfilling any desire, but can only act where the Ogdoad's interests overlap. Most petitioners leave disappointed. Nevertheless, in their shadow the sectarian strife that occurs elsewhere is curtailed, for none wish to rouse the sleeping dragon at Threshold's summit.
There are opportunities, if one knows where to look. The sense of touch has been stolen from the Oracle of Cyravesh, Goddess of Love and Calamity, who offers a vast reward for its return. Coalitions of minor deities on the periphery scheme to siphon prayer; the Ostiaries suspect Finger involvement. And in the catacombs beneath the holy city, compounding distortions have frayed the fabric between planes. Shades of the dead reportedly walk among the living. Supplicants denied the return of loved ones by clerics above search the labyrinthine crypts for portals to the afterlives, braving maddened sacred beasts, ushabti-evoked guardians, and other terrors.
Soon, Threshold may live up to its name once again.
[ ] The Palm - The floodplain where five rivers merge before meeting the Navinian Ocean has been called the Palm in one tongue or another for as long as the region's had human inhabitants. Now, the name has different connotations.
Twelve decades ago, the outsiders appeared. Identical armored men walked out of the marsh, introducing themselves as instances of an extraplanar entity called the Hand and offering aid to the estuary's residents. As devout Uledrans the fisherfolk were suspicious at first, but the Fingers mended nets and boats, healed old wounds, built better houses, and demonstrated optimizations that made their lives easier in hundreds of ways.
A year later the Palm was already unrecognizable. There was no coup, no dark bargain that came due. The process simply continued. To those familiar with the Hand's activity in other areas - subversion, stockpiling essence, pursuing power in all its forms - the lack of a catch is perhaps the most unnerving part.
Today, it's a technological eutopia far ahead of the rest of the world. Automated gondolas ferry residents between districts where holograms advertise the latest goods. Gene editing and in utero alterations enhance the physical and mental potential of all citizens. Dispassionate, green-eyed men can be found on every other streetcorner, overseeing a crimeless and perfectly coordinated city.
Most administrative positions are filled by Fingers, as even default instances are superhuman shapeshifters with broad competence beyond the reach of mortals. The city council has nominal control over the Palm, but never disagrees with their benefactor on matters of import. Whether this is out of pragmatism or because multiple councilors are actually Fingers is unknown. The Hand has developed the region like an argument made to his detractors, as if to say: "Cease resisting, and all this could be yours."
The Palm's borders are clearly-delineated. A veil surrounds the territory, filtering color for those looking in or out. Threshold has officially ceded the land within; many whisper of other concessions and call the Hand the Cheater of Gods, claiming that a portion of all prayers to the Ogdoad are allocated to him as payment for protection from some greater threat.
Partisans of the Palm extol its virtues: free education, excellent public housing, first-rate amenities, the flowering of arts and sciences alike. To those tired of grey skies or who cite the suicide rate, they say emigration is unrestricted.
Immigration is more contentious, especially in one case. The Oracle of Khoduar recently took up residence within, availing herself of the Hand's forges and fabricators. This collaboration is watched closely by envoys of other deities. Some fear the development of an alliance which could herald a Third and Final Theomachy, should the Cheater of Gods decide to dispense with the pretense of cooperation and sweep Pleroma's gods and nations aside, to be replaced by a more instrumentally useful world.
To live in the Palm is to be at the mercy of its owner, if he decides to make a fist.
[ ] The Iselgradis Encystment - Rising like a blister from the steppes of the Djelin Commonwealth is an amber dome with the diameter of a city. Despite having existed for two millennia, many mysteries surround this structure. Most ascribe its creation to a miracle enacted by the Grand Hierophant, but none of those who've made the pilgrimage north to Threshold have received a definitive answer. Complicating matters is the fact that both the books and memories detailing that time were rewritten, apparently by the same divine intervention, and any who might've resisted that effect have passed on to their deserved rewards.
While a frustrating enigma for historians, the Encystment's currently prosperous. The resin that comprises it is immensely durable under normal conditions, but becomes malleable when exposed to a specific frequency of sound or heat of a particular degree. Spells and tools have been designed to replicate both. Tunnels and caverns now riddle the lucent amber of the Encystment, playing host to adventurous humans and dwarves alike.
To the aphotic folk the Encystment is a refuge from a horrifying world. The dwarven phobia of emptiness goes well beyond revulsion; newly carved dwarves must be introduced to the concept of outer space gradually. That aversion aside, one could hardly ask for better neighbors. Eusocial and highly trustworthy, the dwarves of the Nzalk Consortium have used their twin matter-creating and electromagnetic racial magics to craft a thriving trade hub.
Lucre flows in and out of the Encystment like the tide. Miners dig ever-deeper in search of adamant veins. Spelunkers fill casks of ambrosia from natural springs. Daring explorers emerge from the depths with wounds and unique treasures. Essentialists are always in demand, for expansion and to ensure airflow vital to mortal residents, as are priests for healing and divination.
Strange environments exist in the Encystment's bowels, alien geometries usurping the upper levels' golden glow. Fanatical Uledrans roam these furthermost depths in hopes of divine communion. There are rumors of dwarven eccentrics, the exceptions that prove the rule of racial hospitality; wracked by half-remembered dreams of Lost Agartha, these tormented souls inflict their madness on others.
Many merchants also prefer to stay in settlements adjacent to the dome and conduct their business by proxy. Those who linger inside long often find it difficult to leave, as though some higher power holds them in thrall. The deeper one delves, the more pronounced the effect. "There are no Encysted emigrants," according to a common aphorism.
The realm within is among the most exotic on or under the face of Pleroma. But those who seek to plunder it should remember that while the past may be buried, it isn't gone.
[ ] Talvurin Archipelago Union - West of Threshold is the Navinian Ocean, whose waters stretch seven thousand leagues to Meritria's shores. Its immensity encompasses every imaginable aquatic marvel: mirror-smooth perpetual doldrums, tempests with waves taller than skyscrapers, kraken nests built from sundered vessels, and leviathan falls that trigger explosions of supercharged evolution. Sailors call it the apotheosis of all oceans, and the Navinian lives up to the title.
Pirate havens and isolated settlements are scattered throughout the deep blue, but the foremost outpost of civilization is the Talvurin Archipelago Union. Situated near the Navinian's geographic center, this collection of isles banded together for survival in the upheaval following the Second Theomachy.
Hydroponic farms and fishing provide for a flourishing culture, governed by a coalition of captains and landowners who hold the secret of Semaphore Magic close to their chest. Temples to Uledras, God of Depths and Equanimity, vie for real estate with shipyards and dockside bars. Leviathans tamed by his priests prowl the sea lanes. Sirens serenade tourists from crystal-clear lagoons. Tales of sunken treasure abound.
Several islands float due to gravitational anomalies from the aforementioned cataclysm. Analogous distortions impede intercontinental teleportation, making the archipelago a refueling station for mariners and magi alike. The hospitality industry is alive and well; visitors can expect to be plied with cruises, illusion plays, brothels, and enchanted liquor. The archipelago's a place of adventure with few constraints on one's conduct. Limited land creates tensions, however. New isles are raised from the seabed at exorbitant costs in salt or Gifted labor, triggering disagreements over their allocation, while other factions favor city-ships or underwater colonies.
The times change with the tides, heralding new legends. Crewed by four adventurous siblings, the Albatross is on the run from the Vurin Admiralty after unlocking their proprietary magics; an archmage's arsenal in pennants flies from its masts. The Foxhole Atheist searches for some elusive prize its captain, an Arranorian expatriate, refuses to name.
To the north, where the seas boil or freeze according to the fluctuations of Pleroma's essential fabric, wizards harness deathly energies for experiments. The most extreme have cast off their flesh entirely. Pirates venture further south every year, not all of them living.
Worst of all, toad sightings are becoming more common. After Talcrest Atoll was cleansed of its infestation, surviving mercenaries reported stage two metamorphoses. Amphibians are considered an especially dire omen by Vurins, for Batrachius Sea-Drinker makes its lair in the Navinian's abyssopelagic depths. Whirlpools are said to be the Toad's Thirst, and meteor showers its Ire.
Sailors pray regularly for the sacred beast to follow its god into the grave. The most sensible pray instead for survival in the event of its awakening.
[ ] The Blasted Heath - The broken crown of the world rests uneasily atop a shattered skull. The wreckage of the First Theomachy is still on display at Pleroma's apex. Successive cataclysms in the ages since have only compounded the damage, rendering the northern continent a wasteland. The desolation where an avatar of Sovarus met the King of Arranor in inconclusive but immensely destructive combat is only the latest such clash. The land is a palimpsest of the past, ruins heaped atop ruins until the types of devastation can scarcely be distinguished.
Ash and snow fall relentlessly. Volcanic eruptions periodically rearrange the geography. Fragments of Pleroma's broken moons crater the earth. The chasms opened in these upheavals disgorge ravening protospirits that cull each other in cannibalistic orgies. Magical aberrations run rampant. Only the starksward, a reddish-brown grass which draws sustenance from blood and death in place of nutrients, truly flourishes.
More than blasphemous beasts and extremophiles eke out an existence upon this Blasted Heath, however. Resonance from ancient calamities makes it the world's most essentially rich terrain, dotted by Finger-operated facilities and research black sites. Mad mages seeking fuel for experiments colonize caverns or sculpt the broken landscape into towers, adding to the chaos.
A few such 'Heathens' band together in an inhospitable landscape, some turning to primordial powers for protection. In the uttermost north, Septentrion's necromancers water the Tree of Eyes with blood. Cultists slowly widen the rift to a daemonic realm at the bottom of Mount Dalshrir's caldera. From his fortress atop a fjord leading to the Navinian, Jarchald the Squamous oversees a fleet of reavers whose plunder enriches his hoard.
It's a land of outcasts and the insane, those who've been rejected by the world and reject it in turn. You might reasonably question why anyone would choose such a locale for their arrival. But it's also here that those willing to sift through the dust of dead ages can uncover their secrets: the complete history of Pleroma and its inhabitants, dating back to before the planet bore that name. Before the Theomachies, before the Ogdoad and their age of idolatry, before men were appointed masters of the world.
Beneath the basalt and glaciers, traces of those who came before still linger. Brave their final vestiges, breach the laboratories, and treasures beyond price or a gruesome death could be yours. Heathen relic hunters will be the least of your competition, should you elect this path.
[ ] Meritria, the Blessed Kingdom - Behold fields of flawless crops beneath skies of cloudless blue; behold rivers meandering through verdant fields. Behold fairytale castles gleaming marmoreal white under the beneficent sun's rays; behold mist-wreathed woods where the fae themselves dance in revels lasting a mortal generation.
Behold the Blessed Kingdom. In the favored land of Sovarus, God of Light and Fealty, stereotype transcends to become archetype. Of all the Ogdoad, he is most invested in human affairs, and for over a thousand years has heaped benedictions on one realm in particular.
Ten thousand tales testify to the fact that good always triumphs over evil, at least within Meritria's borders. A traveler stopping on a wintry evening can count on a warm reception from strangers willing to share stew and offer a bed for the night, for the hearts of its people are said to be pure as driven snow. Questing knights consult stolid, suntanned farmers and find their folk wisdom surprisingly relevant. There are no dragons left to slay, but none doubt that the hero will win the princess' hand nevertheless.
At the epicenter of this mythic maelstrom is Sovincourt, built to resemble the octagram that is Sovarus' symbol on the site where his avatar arose following the First Theomachy. That incarnation's descendants by Queen Arabelle I, the Sun's Bride, rule by divine right to this day.
The Blessed Kingdom's nobility is dominated by such demigods, a genealogical tangle that outsiders find baffling. Owing to past generations sowing their oats freely, occasionally an orphaned farm boy is brought to court. The wise watch such individuals carefully, not least because Knight-Champion Samson's story began similarly. The Hero of the Crusades and Sword of Sovarus is humble, compassionate, and represents a frankly alarming fraction of the Meritrian military's strength.
From his shining city upon a hill, King Eleazar Sorellian presides over Meritria just as his ancestors did, but all is not well in the Blessed Kingdom. Hunger and disease are unknown to the populace, yet little has changed over the centuries. Sovereign and citizen alike follow the paths of their forefathers, indifferent to technological advancements taking place elsewhere. Heretics on university campuses hypothesize that the fae are snarls in the nation's narrative fabric, or else necessary antagonists to perpetuate its mythos.
Meritria's northwestern neighbor, Arranor, has neither forgotten nor forgiven the last two crusades. Dorotea, former Duchess of Fallavon, schemes to regain political relevance after her fief was Scoured from existence during the latter conflict. Threshold happily imports Meritrian crops as well as mithril and consecrated myrrh, but is slow to bestir itself in aid of a kingdom an ocean away that's historically ignored seven-eighths of the pantheon.
The temple bells and legions of white-armored knights are splendid as ever, but some begin to ask the question: How long can faith sustain a nation?
[ ] Arranor - Few nations have been transformed as radically and rapidly as Arranor. A century ago it was a realm of boreal forests and shadowed glades where druids conducted secret rites, rimmed by snow-capped mountains with hamlets nestled in the valleys between them. Any village without a priest and diligent militia would soon be swallowed up by monsters; Arranor had a troll for every bridge, a lycanthrope lurking in every cavern. Bands of knights and adventurers visiting for a season would sally forth from its walled cities, slaying monsters in droves, but in their wake the rot crept back in. It was a buffer state propped up by greater powers, a bulwark against the wicked west.
When an extremist Claphionite cult wiped out the royal family in a blood ritual, throwing the capital into chaos, one man stepped forward to restore order: a Gifted wizard and wandering hero named Denlah. Well-acclaimed for previous services to the kingdom, he did not relinquish the powers assumed during the interregnum. Official coronation followed not long after.
Claphion's church was banned, her followers burned out in the ensuing purge. Not content to restore the status quo, Denlah spearheaded a magical renaissance. Advances in mining and imbuing essential salts enabled more experimentation. Druidic lore was divested of mysticism, analyzed and incorporated into the newly-founded Institute for Essential Study's curriculum. Their ardor fanned by the Flame of Arranor, its people drove the darkness from their nation.
Nationalistic fervor continues to define Arranor today, though its population has quadrupled. Fortified warriors of the Slayer Corps patrol earth and air alongside mass-produced elementals. It's a world leader in both the production and consumption of essential salts. Pouches and salt cellars are ubiquitous; almost all citizens are able to cast cantrips, and many take shifts in dimensional mining facilities. TIES continues to churn out wizards. While not an outright magocracy, hereditary succession has been abolished and the heiress apparent - Ingrid Balkuar - is Gifted.
His Majesty's misotheistic policies have become more draconian in the decades since the Navinir Incident and wars with Meritria. All of the Ogdoad's clerics require visas. Proselytizing is forbidden, as are congregations of more than eight faithful. Arranor has trade agreements but few allies. Vampiric infiltrators from across the western border sow death and paranoia. Monsters gather in the wastes to the north.
Perhaps ironically, its people have faith that His Majesty will find a way through these straits and Arranor will continue to prosper, vouchsafed by the might of its monarch. Reckoned the strongest human Essentialist alive, Denlah has survived two crusades and countless assassination attempts. Rumors swirl endlessly among enemies abroad: that he's a Finger of the Hand, the incarnate vengeance of a murdered divinity, or something more sinister still. Cynics claim that in rejecting the Ogdoad they've only raised up a god of their own creation, an idol as false and flawed as any man.
But as the Arranorian saying goes, "there's nothing mere about that mortal."
[ ] Naroch Clarash - The land's name means "the Hungering Dark," in the speech of the creatures that haunt it. In the days following the First Theomachy, when chaos rampaged across Pleroma and it seemed the end of the world was nigh, a vampire cleric of Claphion, Goddess of Darkness and Liberty, implored his mistress for a sanctuary from the madness; a homeland for all that was unsightly and corrupt in ignorant eyes; a refuge to shield his species from the pitiless rays of Sovarus' sun.
His prayer was granted. The goddess drew a veil of night across the Narochian sky that hasn't lifted in all the centuries since. The culture that's proliferated under cover of it is infamous as a haven for monsters. Vampires stalk the streets of Ghalresh openly. Too-human howling can be heard when the light of Pleroma's remaining moons pierces the gloom. The mortal population exists at the sufferance of bloodthirsty overlords, farmed like livestock to fill their masters' larders. The greatest sanguine aristocrats wield the flesh-warping magic of Viscerality, etching ownership into the bodies of their property, breeding for pliability and nutritiousness.
Vampires are obligate parasites. This truth underlies the superficial diversity exhibited by their varied breeds. Classical hemophages - sustained by blood, diminished by sunlight - are most common, but in more civilized lands they have adapted: abusers who slowly drain one spouse after another of vitality, predatory moneylenders who prey on the desperate and savor each suicide like a glass of the finest wine… there are many forms of metaphysical sustenance. That each comes with a vulnerability, afflicting the vampire in proportion to their diet, is cold comfort to their victims.
Altruism is anathema to the species; mutually beneficial interactions are maladaptive. That Naroch Clarash owes its existence to both the Goddess of Liberty and a psychological outlier would be ironic if the night-to-night reality of life inside its confines wasn't so bleak. This inability to cooperate makes the aristocracy congenitally unstable, alliances dissolving like quicksand as the war of all against all rages.
The rule of Valeska Trisagion heralds change for the region. Glutted on the stolen Gifts of magi and Claphion's favor, she has forged a coalition of the most farsighted of her kind. Orchards of Visceral bone produce meat to feed an expanding mortal population, cultivated as soldiers as well as food. The unfaithful are sacrificed, their exsanguinated bodies carted straight from the altar to a necromancer's atelier to be reanimated. Mercenaries are well-paid and as safe as they are loyal; Valeska has even invented the genre of gothic romance to better manipulate her subjects.
The new regime faces resistance from more than just her peers, however. Undercover Arranorian Corpsmen strike alliances with Sovarite martyrs against a greater evil. A notoriously capricious goddess, Claphion sees no contradiction in empowering rebel clerics. The future of Naroch Clarash is in flux; whoever wins the coming power struggle stands to inherit the west - if anything remains of it.
[ ] Self-Fortification (1 ember) - To pour an ocean into a cup: that is Fortification.
An option that's as prosaic as it is powerful. Pleroma is a vibrant realm, every river and stone infused with a heady density of essence. Sunlight like molten gold; each lake an expanse of pellucid azure. Inevitably, that power bleeds over into its people. Equally inevitably, Pleromians have devised all manner of techniques and rituals to expedite the process.
The Fortified gain swiftness and strength, resistance to all manner of attacks, and the ability to attenuate the effects of external forces or amplify their own impact on the world. Even an initiate could shrug off sniper fire if forewarned. Gravity held in abeyance by their will, adepts soar through the air and descend with meteoric force. The greatest masters are likened to the avatars of gods; singularities of might whose passage warps creation, capable of altering the geography with a gesture.
Advancement is rapid, so long as reagents or places of power are available. Fortification demands ever-greater concentrations of essence to fuel the spiritual osmosis, making each titan an investment.
The Fortified develop secondary powers based on the mechanism of their empowerment. Heathen nomads who drink starksward teas or inhale its smoke are imbued with vast resilience and a preternatural affinity for violence. Sailors who bathe in leviathan blood breathe water and sleep comfortably on the seabed. Sects of salt-eaters with brined flesh wield elemental powers. Holy warriors undertake pilgrimages and consume ambrosia to awaken abilities reflecting their patrons. There are a thousand paths, replete with breathing techniques and meditative mantras and secret formulae.
You're guaranteed to gain a degree of Fortification as time goes on, a gradual exaltation during effortful exertion and moments of strife. This option catapults you to the adept rank immediately: power enough to level buildings and leap to nearby mountaintops, on the verge of slipping gravity's surly bonds entirely.
Optimizations of your corpus will minimize roadblocks obstructing your ascent to further heights. You'll be able to utilize impure ingredients and derive the maximum benefit from all you consume, avoiding any unwanted mutations. Furthermore, I'll grant you an instinct for inventing rituals compatible with multiple methodologies - barest inklings of a science these mortals have scarcely skimmed the surface of. In time, with enough of the right reagents, you could cultivate a diverse cluster of powers.
[ ] Fulminance (1 ember) - Crackling bolts that split the sky. Electromagnetic feats of staggering scale. Shock and awe. Unlimited power. All these and more are the purview of Fulminance.
Comprising half the innate Telluric Magics of the dwarves, the most natural use of Fulminance is generating electricity. Even a neophyte is capable of gigawatt-level discharges, blasting battalions with forking tines of lightning or trivially disabling unshielded electronics. Power improves with shocking ease, until one can hurl thunderbolts like Zeus from Olympus. Strength outstrips control, however, requiring training to manifest subtler effects.
The likes of railguns and other magnetic manipulations are eminently achievable. Yet fully realized, Fulminance's potential encompasses the entire EM spectrum: radio and microwaves, light, radiation, and so on. Immense versatility is available to those with commensurate diligence.
To properly wield this power requires alterations to your nervous system. These have the side effect of vastly increased reaction times, along with the ability to accelerate your thoughts. Overclocking beyond an order of magnitude is best reserved for short bursts, and can result in seizures if pushed too far.
In effect, this makes you a dwarven hybrid: a being of flesh whose neurons fire with Fulminant lightning. Neurotypical dwarves are entirely accepting of this. A true master of this magic might outlive their body, persisting as a wraith of coruscating energy - and perhaps come to inhabit another form. For the aphotic folk reproduction is an act of programming, encoding a mind into an appropriate substrate.
[ ] Goetic Magic (1 ember) - Summons, become the summoner. Sometimes called Infernalism, in truth Goetic Magic is naught but a shadow cast by the Sacrament. Having been Beckoned yourself, initiation is cheap.
Among the rarest of Pleroma's magics, fishing is the analogy preferred by magi fortunate enough to find a student. Spin one's desiderata into threads. Weave those threads into a web. Cast the net of your will out into the realms beyond. Then come hours of patient trawling, fending off interlopers hungry for access to the Ogdoad's domain who try to wriggle through. Refining your parameters and mending the net. Hauling it in once you're satisfied with the catch.
And finally, negotiating terms of service. Common outsiders may be content with the chance to breathe Pleromian air; greater daemons often have specific demands or agendas of their own. In dire straits, an unbounded call can be issued. This allows powerful conjurings with no preparation at the cost of unpredictability.
Tomes of extraplanar lore are prized by daemonologists, who hoard scraps of information regarding useful servitors and auspicious circumstances for summoning them. Successful magi command retinues of minions. Invisible bodyguards to protect their person, golems to reshape the earth, imps to advise them, and a ledger of higher entities that can be called on for specialized tasks. There's rarely enough left of the unsuccessful to bury.
Theoretically, Goetic Magic can also call on the spirits of the Pleromian dead. An afterlife is nothing more or less than an adjacent dimension under a deity's control, their residence and seat of power, final resting place of their faithful. A route so well-trodden should be easy to follow.
In practice, uninformative failure is the best outcome for mages who attempt this. Those who persist in their experiments perish, for only anointed clerics are permitted to usher souls back through death's door.
[ ] Viscerality (2 embers) - The incarnadine craft molds flesh like clay, unraveling tapestries of sinew to spin them into glorious new configurations. At the artist's caress, the plodding march of evolution becomes a heedless sprint toward the realization of genetic destiny.
Viscerality has two components: a tactile magic by which the body of any being can be altered, and a facility for manipulating the passions that rule the body. The first allows for regeneration, shapeshifting, creating custom organisms, and gradual alteration of ecosystems are possible. The latter starts with a sense for the most primal emotions: fear, anger, ardor. Discernment blossoms into the ability to evoke such feelings with increasing intensity and subtlety. Stoking is always easier than suppressing; Viscerality is not a magic of restraint.
A novice can alter their complexion and apparent age at will, or arrange a rendezvous between compatible targets. An adept could send a foe into a rage precluding all possibility of retreat, or erupt into a war-form bristling with poisonous spines and claws, bone plating and no vital organs except the brain.
Warping others is more difficult, as physical influence diminishes with distance from the body. Many combatants favor tentacles, volleys of supersonic spikes, or hemokinesis to project their power. Preexisting biomass and biological knowledge are helpful, but one's own passion can be substituted for either in a pinch. Visceralists gain instincts corresponding with their emotional investment. The fear of letting a loved one die grants the insight to save them; hate for an enemy feeds a transformation. The resulting cycle may not be virtuous, but the results are formidable.
Progress in the art's rapid as long as you pursue your own interests. The synergies with Self-Fortification are considerable, attacking the problem of augmentation from two angles for multiplicative results. A laborious combination of gene therapy and implanting symbiotes can initiate others into Viscerality, proliferating the magic. Any children you have will be natural users unless you desire otherwise.
Despite its utility in improving crop yields and as a source of atheistic healing, the art has a troubled reputation and is traditionally associated with hemophages. Trustworthy Visceralists are highly valued, yet who but another wielder can check their work?
Lastly, Viscerality originates from the Ring of Lust. In the event of its destruction, the magic will be weakened; should a Ringbearer arise, users may fall under their thrall. Sequestered as it is neither outcome - especially the former - is probable, yet I'd be negligent not to warn you.
[ ] Demarcation (2 embers) - A liminal science derived from the Hand's Colocation Array, harnessing an energy which carves the undifferentiated morass of identity into matrices that allow discrete Fingers to exist. Demarcation's natural manifestation is sharp lines of grey etched into the world's surface, severing all it touches.
There are few limits to the divisions it can enact: razor bulwarks raised in an eyeblink, mountains sundered along planes of cleavage, armored formations scythed down like wheat ready for harvest. Scale and complexity of constructs increase readily with practice. Little creativity is required for weaponization but by default the magic is unsparing, cleaving friend as well as foe. For safe usage, the difference between the two must be clearly Demarcated. Once this hurdle's been cleared, the ability to define a conjuration's parameters unlocks the magic's true potential.
Angular armor floating a fixed distance from one's skin, admitting air while banning toxins. A weir that traps fish without obstructing a river. Barriers that screen for weapons; circumscribed battlefields that prevent enemy retreat. Mastery enables subtler and more esoteric divisions: stable dimensions of disjoined space, the thermodynamic miracle of Maxwell's Demon, a border that only the pure of heart can cross, or perfect compartmentalization of one's emotions. Combined with other magics, it excels at providing structure. Creating circuits for Fulminance, imposing constraints of phylum and class on Viscerality's wanton flourishing, and filtering impure salts are only a few possible applications.
Metaphysically erudite individuals may recognize this magic and believe you to be a Finger of the Hand. Protestations of innocence are unlikely to sway them; who's to say you aren't an emulated personality ignorant of its true nature? Depending on the situation, this can be beneficial. Terror, hatred, fascination, and abject deference are all common reactions to the Cheater of Gods.
Think carefully before attracting the attention of the genuine article. No better trainer for Demarcation exists, but a single life has little weight in his calculations.
[ ] Nine Sun Style (2 embers) - A praxis of swordsmanship based on sorrow, doom, paradox, and light. Owing to your origins and my favor, you have an affinity for it. Two embers suffice to make you a legendary master equal to the style's inventor. Among supernatural martial arts, the Nine Suns is infamous for its incomprehensibility. Simple cuts appear differently depending on the observer; attempts at analysis yield only migraines. Many techniques emit light as waste, blinding observers and bleaching surroundings.
Unskilled enemies may fail to grasp the means of their destruction, perceiving only a flurry of impossible shining grace before their lives are cut short. Even in isolation, Nine Sun Style makes you a potent combatant. However, you require a blade to perform supernatural feats and must carefully manage your reservoir of supernal stamina. You'll also be slightly contemptuous of those who favor ranged weapons, seeing them as cowards unwilling to engage in true tests of martial prowess. An unavoidable consequence of copying the skill from its original bearer.
The following list of techniques is representative, not exhaustive:
Contradiction - With a slight exertion, manifest the effects of any strike you could've theoretically made. Can be used offensively and defensively, multiple times in parallel, or reflexively while asleep.
Lighthearted - A swordsman should not be burdened with unnecessary things. Consume regrets and doubt for holistic self-empowerment. Memories are unaffected, only the emotional associations change. Be mindful of this technique's incentives.
Carve the Skyline - Project the cutting edge of your sword outward with no issues of leverage. With an additional exertion, appear anywhere along the path of the cut, capturing its momentum if desired.
Trick of the Light - The world was briefly mistaken as to your location. Edit your spatial parameters within the limits of plausibility; blatant applications are more exhausting. Can be used to conceal and retrieve your sword from nowhere. Appearing unarmed was just a trick of the light!
Ninefold Refraction - Twist your sword, as though scattering light through a prism. Operate nine fully-equipped bodies with perfect coordination. There is no original, every copy's equally ontologically valid. You cannot be killed unless all instances are slain. Decide which is real on ending the technique. Can be used successively at exponentially increasing cost, but is highly taxing to maintain.
Strife-Seeking Meditation - Close your eyes and sheathe your sword, turning every sense inward. Realize that peace is an illusion fostered by one's circumstances. On unsheathing, appear at the site of an armed conflict. This technique's sensory apparatus is unintuitive and will require experiments to master.
Dolorous Stroke - Anything can be cut. For every foe, there is an attack to unmake them. You need only execute it. The Dolorous Stroke spurns delusions of invincibility and is indifferent to the scope or grandeur of its target. Nations and demigods alike can be laid low; only the will and stamina of the one performing this penultimate move limits it. Survivors are maimed and suffer crippling malaise. A shadow of this melancholy afflicts the wielder as well, as they understand the imperfection of all things.
Nine Sun Style's theoretical ultimate technique, the Sunrise, has never been successfully performed even by its creator.
[ ] Clerical Error (2 embers) - Looming over lesser deities like cloud-piercing mountains above foothills are the Ogdoad, masters of Pleroma and the afterlives which claim its peoples. Their worship is all but ubiquitous, permeating all aspects of life, and glutted on that devotion they grow mightier still. Reverence begets power begets reverence; not parasitism but symbiosis.
I shall shape you into a perfect vessel for divinity, a link in the great circuit of faith and worker of miracles. The blessings granted to clerics have few fixed limits, so long as they act in accordance with their patron. Prayers commonly granted by all patrons include physical empowerment, uplifting sacred beasts, temporary bestowals of skill, healing, benedictions and curses, divinations of weal or woe relating to their domains, and resurrection of the faithful.
Beyond those basics, categorization is difficult. A god's domains are the lens through which they interface with the world, influencing even minor deeds. Those who receive Khoduar's healing may find regenerated limbs have a metallic texture. A priestess of Claphion can cloud enemies' eyes by summoning darkness that does not obstruct hers; Sovarus might grant the same prayer by striking blind foes who behold his priest at a higher cost. Greater, more esoteric interventions are specific to a god or even certain priests.
The reserves of divine power you have to draw on are correlated with your understanding of doctrine, faith in it, relationship with your chosen deity, and proximity to their iconography or holy sites. How a cleric frames their desires is crucial, as is understanding their deities'. Those who embrace the relationship receive an ally never more than a thought away, a source of succor and insight borne of seeing the world from on high. So long as their faith is true, no cleric is ever alone.
Oracles are the culmination of this bond. Existing in a state of constant communion, they speak on their god's behalf and are granted the right to voluntarily assume an avatar state in which they channel their patron's full power: divinity surging like a flood through the broken dam of a once-mortal vessel. Each such invocation changes the cleric irrevocably.
Conversely, a priest's powers can be censured or revoked if you act against a deity's interests, though I've structured this blessing to maximize harm to their powerbase if they exercise the option. Nothing but the most egregious heresy would make it worth the cost. It is possible for individuals particularly aligned with a deity to attract their favor without a Clerical Error; similar to Fortification, this provides a head start and difficult to replicate advantages.
The Eightfold Pantheon is as follows:
Lemrasil, Goddess of Death and Inevitability - Stern matriarch of the Ogdoad, who waits at the end of every path and apportions to each Pleromian mortal their allotted span. Her priests can stop hearts and bar doorways, bringing about all forms of conclusion: aging grapes into wine, raising buildings from quarried stone or collapsing them into rubble, even ending overdetermined battles before they begin. Most prized is the ability to return all the deceased to life, though Lemrasil always reclaims what is hers in the end.
She presides over a bleak fortress-city whose archives contain the chronicles of all that has ever lived. Beyond its walls are plains shrouded in grey mist, where the faithless dead wander listlessly and slip deeper into torpor. Her animal is the jackal; her symbol is an inverted sickle cradling a skull.
Loesil, God of Life and Frivolity - A mirthful god who presides over squandered hours in the shadow of his grim sister. Loesil's blessings rejuvenate the land and bring forth its bounty, but man cannot live on bread alone; as god of illusions and all entertainment, he happily grants extravagant miracles as long as they're without practical purpose. Like his sibling, Loesil can resurrect the slain of any or no faith. He disdains the taking of life and prefers followers to defuse or evade conflict.
He presides over endless elysian fields, bright mirror of the wastes surrounding his sister's redoubt. His animal is the hare; his symbol is a cornucopia from which flowers grow.
Ozerin, Goddess of Fame and Prosperity - Called the venturer, Ozerin is concerned with trade, civilization, and other glories created by coordinated endeavor. As a relatively anthropocentric god, she's often entreated by merchants and politicians who seek her superlative blessings of fortune. Ozerin gives her favor liberally, but withdraws it just as quickly from those who fail to provide returns; even junior clerics can expect a surge of power if they have a good pitch.
Ozerin presides over an abundant society where one's station reflects their achievement in life, for good or ill. Her animal is the tortoise; her symbol is a pyramid with streams flowing from its summit.
Uledras, God of Depths and Equanimity - When one stares into the abyss, it is said to be Uledras' gaze they are meeting. His divinations grant the deepest insight but are infamous for driving their recipients mad. He favors those whose fields of study are infinite in scope or have the temperament to withstand terrible truths, commonly sailors, astronomers, and mathematicians. His clerics command gravity and the waves, and have a strange affinity for the moonbelt.
No consensus regarding Uledras' divine realm exists. Some sects describe an undersea city, others assert that his most devout captain ships that sail the void. His animals are the crab and squid; his symbol is a starfield within a whirlpool.
Sovarus, God of Light and Fealty - Legends claim he and his distaff counterpart Claphion were once a much mightier entity, split in two by the opening strike of the First Theomachy. In the present Sovarus is a stern but even-handed deity, charging his followers to obey their rightful superiors and wield their own power with wisdom. His light banishes falsehood and burns the corrupt, but can also provide healing or nourishment on a large scale.
Sovarus presides over a perfected, sunlit kingdom where his faithful are united in worship. His animal is the falcon; his symbol is an eight-pointed star.
Claphion, Goddess of Darkness and Liberty - Her adherents are many, her dictates few. Claphion allows her clerics to do as they will, asking only that they oppose tyranny. For this she is called the mother of rebellions and feared by rulers across Pleroma. Fortunately for them, Claphion has not had an oracle for millennia. She rarely contacts followers unless her advice is solicited, offering only a sense of cool comfort alongside miracles of stealth and mobility.
She resides in but does not preside over an anarchic realm, containing nothing more or less than what her followers build for themselves. Her animal is the owl; her symbol is a thrice-broken circle.
Khoduar, God of Toil and Ingenuity - The great maker is a stoic god, focused on his craft above all else. Khoduar forges weapons of war and appliances with equal zeal, doing simply to see if something can be done. Artisans and engineers pray to him for inspiration, skill to realize their designs, or repairs to broken works. Talent is precious to Khoduar, but he holds diligence in higher esteem. When the spirit is willing but the body is weak, he will make up the difference.
Khoduar presides over a vast workshop containing wonders, and unlimited materials so that the faithful might follow in his footsteps. His animal is the ram; his symbol is a half-built tower of gears.
Cyravesh, Goddess of Love and Calamity - From the consumption of the god of war during the First Theomachy was born the dancer-amidst-devastation. Cyravesh is a creature of passions and appetites, who urges her devotees to be true to their own. Courtesans, actors, star-crossed lovers, and those who fight for pleasure rather than causes or coin are frequent recipients of her favor. Cyravesh's curses are legendary, dooming towns and sowing ruin unto the eighth generation.
She presides over a partially ruined palace containing delights beyond the remit of mere mortality. Her animal is the lynx; her symbol is a fanged rose.
Once the initial framework is established, your influence can be expanded. You may choose additional deities for one ember each, deepening your reserves of power and broadening their influence. While this is very efficient, the more members of the Ogdoad you worship, the harder it is to reconcile their dictates into an actionable canon. Your ability to work miracles will be constrained where their domains conflict.
A cleric who champions the entire Eightfold Pantheon is unrivaled under heaven, life and death simply two sides of a scale for them to balance. While capable of remaking the world with an upraised hand, they cannot wield such power unless that same world's imperiled.
[ ] Gifted Essentialist (3 embers) - A discipline that cleaves close to the bedrock truth of magic in this epoch. Essentialists draw on inherent quiddity, combining and applying aspects to achieve results that often resemble classical wizardry: elemental blasts, scrying, transmutation, telepathy, and teleportation.
The magic rewards preparation and improvisation in equal measure. The stolid endurance of a mountain can be harnessed to petrify those who fight on its slopes, or water's fluidity can be transposed onto the land to wash it away. Charred forests burst into renewed flame when the echoes of their destruction are evoked. A library's studious atmosphere becomes telepathic tendrils to steal rivals' secrets - if they don't do it first.
Essentialism's weakness is its lack of structure. No scaffolding or guardrails exist when working with the world's fundamental essence. Each effect must be shaped by the Essentialist and has no more complexity than what the caster imparts. Novices memorize spell formulae by rote; adepts understand how to recombine and alter spells according to their circumstances. Masters simply enact their will, and woe to any who oppose them.
Most wizards manipulate essence stored in salts or drawn from their surroundings, limited by resources or location. You possess the Gift, a miraculously renewable reservoir of power that grants a sense for essence and can produce any aspect, growing with effort and experience. This innate potential is equal to the King of Arranor's, with adjustments to ensure uniform elemental affinities rather than a predilection for fire. As with Fortification, you can still use Essentialism without this option, but your path will be harder and considerably more expensive.
Names and traditions vary, but here are examples of what Essentialism can achieve, along with the required aspects:
Reify (Any Element) - Exchange essence for the actuality. The most common spell, a backbone of modern utilities. Typically used to create heat, light, potable water, or air.
Lise's Touch (Air, Mind) - Guidelines that give rise to basic aerokinesis. Lise's Touch can be gentle or destructive; its inventor spurned the creativity-stifling rules of spellcraft. Whether it's passing whispered messages and plucking items off of high shelves or sending enemies flying, there's a use for everyone.
Creation-as-Clay (Form, Water) - Temporarily render an object pliable and ripe for reshaping. Despite its name, the household version of this spell doesn't incorporate Earth. Water's used to represent malleability, though industrial-grade construction rituals add Earth & Order for material influence and structure.
Transference (Air, Form, Order) - Atmospherically constrained short-range teleportation. Air stands in for distance, leading some to call this Lise's Step. Popular in and out of combat. Portals and unbounded teleportation operate similarly, but typically require Space - a more suitable but much rarer aspect.
Scholar's Dissipation (Mind, Chaos, Air) - Destruction is easier than creation; so too with wits. Distracts the target, promoting procrastination, daydreaming, and unproductive mindstates. Used for sabotage and recreational fantasizing.
Grave-Emptying Grasp (Death, Mind, Chaos) - A staple of Narochian necromancy. Dead or alive, meat must serve. Reanimate corpses and imbue them with unnatural vigor, allowing skeletons to be used as viable troops. The souls of the deceased are unaffected.
Lifegrip (Death, Order, Spirit, Form) - Forcibly stabilizes a subject, rendering them unable to die. Novel spiritual organs are generated in any combination necessary to prolong life. Unparalleled for preserving patients, but prolonged use has unpredictable effects.
Fundament-Searing Flame (Fire, Air, Mind, Spirit) - An improvement on the garden-variety fireball. 'Soulfire' strikes directly at an enemy's essence, burning away magic and matter with equal ease. Mind allows for speed-of-thought control and broadens its effects. Masters can imbue attacks with rudimentary sentience or modulate them to perform spiritual surgery. Burn out an addiction, or incinerate an opponent thoroughly enough to deny them their afterlife.
Quintessential Genesis (Form, Mind, Spirit) - Create spiritual beings. Countless permutations exist, adding aspects depending on the desired results. Metastable spirits are both expensive and complex, with programming minds demanding specialized expertise.
Slipping Lemrasil's Leash (Time, Order, Earth) - Stops time locally. The caster can act freely. Extremely taxing; prolonged use attracts the ire of the eponymous goddess. Variants for time travel have been theorized but never successfully cast, as far as anyone knows.
The Scouring (Chaos, Death, Order, All Elements) - Arranorian war-magic. Within a defined perimeter, disrupt creation's integrity. Nullify all physical and most metaphysical laws, erasing anything within from existence. Costs mount with the area affected, but not exponentially. Use of the Scouring without His Majesty's authorization is treason.
[ ] Engine of Eld (3 embers) - Become the custodian and administrator of Forge-Realm Aleph. After the flotsam of a certain elder civilization washed up on the shores of a distant system, its inhabitants colonized their galaxy with a cursory understanding of the debris. At its height, members of the league entrusted with the archeotech's manufacturing capabilities claimed the title of Engineer. What laughable hubris, when they were ignorant even of the honors they pretended to.
It was not for this presumption that the scavengers were undone, though their destruction was deserved. They simply attracted the avarice of greater powers.
Twice-ruined and vastly diminished, Aleph endures. The facility exists in a sequestered dimension out of phase with reality, a byzantine tangle of pistons and conduits fueling the great Engine at the Realm's core. Administrative access will bind Aleph to you, granting knowledge of its inner workings and allowing it to print machinery to your location. In the short term this enables manufacture of power armor, laser and plasma weaponry, and technological conveniences moderately beyond those of Earth. Though the facility's stockpiles of matter are immense, the designs most readily available are the earliest fumblings of your immediate predecessors.
Still, venting molten tungsten as rapidly as the Realm's able to transfer mass can be situationally useful; even the incidental emissions of such works are formidable.
Restoration will be a gradual and laborious process, building the tools to repair the implements that will let Aleph channel the meanest sliver of its true potential. Where drones fail, manual excursions into the Realm itself will be required to install certain components and purge infestations of extradimensional parasites that survived your Beckoning. Never intended for human habitation, not only will you need to construct beacons to anchor Aleph to Pleroma in your absence, you must survive the perturbations that wrack its interior - an increasingly difficult task as the Realm regains functionality.
The technological mastery on offer is worth all those hazards and more. Sustainable fusion, superconductors, hard light, and cybernetic augments superior to their organic counterparts are easily attainable. Aleph's manufacturing capabilities will increase in rate and complexity. Beacons will become self-sustaining fortresses that disgorge drone swarms for combat and material acquisition, supporting the world-bestriding war machines you'll eventually be capable of producing.
As the union of man and machine unfolds, the intuitive sense for Aleph's maintenance evolves into the capacity to borrow portions of its processing power; unlike the usurpers of yesteryear, you are the Realm's rightful administrator. Relative to other options, the long-term potential of this is enormous. Holographic encoding allows the Engine to rederive its complete state with increasing fidelity; productive refurbishment could continue for at least several hundred thousand years, though there are exotic resource bottlenecks to be tackled along the way.
At all levels of restoration, Aleph excels at manipulating light and related forces. Cloaking devices, lasers, and forcefields are cheap to create and efficient relative to the Realm's current tech level. Aleph-manufactured technology is seamless in appearance, with sleek curves that call to mind sea creatures. It favors shades of blue with golden highlights, like shafts of sunlight penetrating the benthic depths.
[ ] The Authority of Expunging Wickedness (4 embers) - Justice is dead, or so it's said in the Estates from which this power hails. Yet with strange aeons even death may die, and the dream's embers still smolder in human hearts. Four is a high price to pay to rekindle them and be Acknowledged as the Authority of Expunging Wickedness. Of all the Thirteen, its standards are the most stringent; you purchase not just future power, but the mantle's forbearance as it overlooks past sins. Even this fractional leniency is enabled only by my intercession.
The result is a vigilante's justice, not civilization's; judge, jury, and executioner rolled into one; one man taking the law into his own hands, passing sentence on the world. When the courts fail and the wicked prosper, when corruption strangles the very order of the cosmos, a single individual with the conscience and will can still prevail.
You no longer need to eat, drink, breathe, or rest. Pain is replaced with a less disruptive and more granular sense of your well-being. As an Authority you also gain the ability to Practice, gradually cultivating supernal abilities reflecting your habits. You start with none, but unlike other Practitioners needn't train to avoid deterioration; time spent in the gymnasium is time not spent Expunging Wickedness. Even disfavored skills will become legendary after decades of sporadic use.
As an innate power, you're able to see the most despicable act any target you can perceive has committed; a moderate exertion can force them to relive it. Your criteria or the target's can be substituted for the Authority's, potentially revealing different transgressions. A similar ability allows you to see the vulnerabilities of any coherent system, from legal loopholes to the tolerances of forcefield emitters and metamaterials.
To exploit these weaknesses, you receive physical augmentations sufficient to demolish a city by hand in an instant and the ability to wield rhadamanthine energy. Speed and tenacity outstrip strength tenfold. You are swift as a shadow and indefatigable as justice itself, regenerating from all injuries. An organ's durability is correlated with its importance; nuclear bombardment might strip away skin and muscles but fail to harm the brain, inflicting only moderate impairment.
Rhadamanthine energy is unyielding, its violet glow defiantly rebuffing assaults and crushing enemies. It can also be crystallized into arms and armor or persistent structures. Each such fabrication commits a portion of your total output to sustaining it, but costs little in the way of ongoing attention. You're aware of all extant constructs as if they're part of you and can dismiss them with a thought. Both your bodily might and dynakinesis are stronger when facing reprehensible foes, up to tripling in strength against beings of utter unrepentant evil.
Lastly, you are able to summon and manipulate the Tyrant's Bane. A dark royal purple verging on indigo, this conceptual poison is tasteless and scentless, killing painlessly and instantly on contact. A single droplet is lethal enough to depopulate a planet if shared and administered to every inhabitant. Bane is immiscible and has no solid or gaseous state. It evanesces into nothing if you die, lose consciousness, or decide to dismiss it. Brewing even small amounts is extremely taxing. However, each batch can be constrained to harm only one target of the poisoner's choosing.
Should you ever succumb to evil and betray your deepest principles, becoming what you once wished to destroy, the Tyrant's Bane will end your life.
Sophistry and mental manipulation are ineffectual here. Committing unjust acts or attempting to unravel this contingency triggers an escalating sense of unease, culminating in a Baneful demise. Even Chosen One cannot negate this, only grant slightly greater leeway.
Alternatively, you may pay one ember for the ability to Practice without other benefits or restrictions.
[ ] Ecumenical Leveling (4 embers) - The right to raze all things to their Foundation, offered in honor of one fallen even further than I. Since he cannot speak, I will do so in his stead:
Cast aside this cosmology of tyrants and slaves where strength is the sole determinant of worth. Rise higher to strike them down, and one day you'll be struck down in turn. Means become ends. Might becomes its own justification. Hierarchy is the nature of this and every world; so long as that truth endures, there's no victory to be found in the mindless pursuit of power. If the cycle of usurpation's ever to be broken, if humanity is to escape unremitting exploitation until Samsara's wheel rusts at the axle, something must change.
Take up the Ecumenist's burden, and become that change. Equality. Opportunity. For once, a truly egalitarian endeavor. And if those who would sit in judgment above oppose you, let them learn what it means to fall.
As the Leveler, you possess the ability to diminish others. The magnitude and duration of this lessening depend on your target. Those with unsteady foundations or whose advancement came at the expense of others suffer greater penalties. This can never revoke access to a magic entirely or reduce someone to below the average skill of its aggregate users. Nevertheless, the ability to reduce an archmage to an apprentice or elder vampire to blood-drunk neonate is revolutionary.
Obscurity is the only true defense against the Leveling, for no contrivance of lesser magics can do more than mitigate the fundamental influence it exerts. With experience, the potential permanently stripped from targets can be expropriated en masse; each master cast down fans the flames of inspiration in novices everywhere.
However, true reform can't be accomplished through destruction alone. You gain a broad-spectrum sense for beginnings that applies to every discipline and magic imaginable. Developing Foundational techniques to a preternatural level of mastery is second-nature: whether it's the cut and thrust of swordplay, the first draft of a document, sketching an outline or casting your line, elemental Essentialism or Viscerality's regeneration... the basics of your skills are subjected to sublime refinement.
Directed outward, this manifests as an affinity for teaching. You intuitively understand the aptitudes and needs of your students, as well as how best to convey the knowledge you possess. You may teach others the magic you know, even if this would ordinarily be impossible. Innately transmissible arts spread rapidly; with effort you can bypass initiation rites to confer the ability to Practice or break the Hand's monopoly on Demarcation. Even duplicating an Authority is possible, though it'd be an arduous undertaking spanning years.
This boon contravenes the order of creation. You must take Xenophobia as a drawback. Depending on your actions, additional consequences may transpire. Beware the Kryptarch's disfavor.
[ ] Directorate Sorcery (5 embers) - Accelerate a distant Dawn. In an age yet to come, the Directorate may sweep across the omniverse as a tide of glory. Like an elder yew succumbing to the axe, the old ways will be supplanted and surpassed, cultures and magics stripped of cruft for integration into a more elegant whole. Instead of a dark forest filled with hunters, there shall be one shining City Upon a Hill! A civilization of heroes: every child a master magus, every champion a god-king beyond comprehension - and in the constellation of exalted humanity, the brightest stars of all will be the Paragons and those Executors privileged to carry out their will.
Access Directorate Sorcery, becoming a node of their network. Also called Akashic or Ontological Magic, it is a system for apprehending and asserting control over reality. Through lived experience, each concept a Sorcerer interacts with is encoded as a rune allowing them to evoke it.
These representations gain nuance and new dimensions with repeated rendering, granting greater strength and versatility. Conjuring fire becomes total thermodynamic mastery, or connects with the metaphorically associated concepts of inspiration and purification. The icon of a single species expands to influence the entire phylum. Entire magics can be subsumed through runic codification, imposing order on even the most unruly arts; optimized magics are more efficient and have mitigated downsides. It is forever burgeoning and branching out, evolving into a grand diagram of all things, the map triumphant over the territory at last.
Runes can be executed mentally by holding their shapes in your mind's eye, physically by tracing them in midair or carving them in a suitable medium, or both in conjunction for greater effect. Sorcerous attunement also naturally increases all attributes over time, though this can be focused into desired areas for faster and narrower empowerment.
Sorcery's promise is unlimited potential. It reconciles the strengths of collectivism and individualism to create a humanistic magic; rather than changing oneself to acquire strength, create a world where you're empowered by being yourself.
However, it grants no initial power. Adversaries who understand what you represent are incentivized to spare no resources in destroying you immediately. And given the nature of Sorcery, retreating into hermitage until you're unassailable is suboptimal, exposing you primarily to concepts like isolation and stealth.
Other sorcerers can be inducted through extensive study and interaction to create a sigil that represents an individual. All contribute to a shared network but each sorcerer interfaces with it differently, perceiving some parts of the skein more clearly than others. The magic rewards its propagation, as phenomena grasped by peers can be harnessed and the runes of mighty magi become potent symbols allowing others to wield their legend.
But if incentives alone do not suffice, the process will eventually be automated, preferentially inducting those associated with you whether or not the valence of that relationship is positive. Monopolization is impossible in the long run; the Directorate conspires in its own creation.
Exploring the space of possible runes you may find shapes already defined, the foundational glyphs of the Paragons themselves: the Sea At World's End, Administrator of Light, Akashic Blade, Faintly-Smiling Slayer, Obsidian King, and three others. Executing their runes further hastens the advent of the Directorate, rousing them from the slumber of nonexistence.
These luminaries will not be so lax as to fail to account for being temporally preempted. Your seminal position allows great influence on the Directorate's objectives and mores, the shape of things to come, but in the final accounting it bends to the will of its ordained exemplars - and the Director above them.
To attempt this is hubris, enabled by the most tenuous of symbolic connections. A Paragon is no mere god. I issue now the warning Goetic Magic did not warrant: Do not call up what you cannot put down.
[ ] Silent Springs (1 ember) - The benediction of the Fountain, typically heralding the Architect's favor or that of his regent. Once upon a time warriors were anointed with these waters; now, oceans of blood are shed for single phials. To fully exploit the opportunity, your body will be steeped in the springs as it's remade. This confers a number of perks: eternal youth, increased resilience, and comprehensive regeneration.
Henceforth you'll bleed the clear, cold waters of a mountain stream. The Fountain itself flows through your veins, amplifying the power of all water and blood-aspected Essentialism. Your blood becomes a reagent with anagathic qualities. Ingested orally, one teaspoon halts aging for a year. Larger quantities have greater effects, granting agelessness or rejuvenating the imbiber. However, unless sealed in specially prepared containers, its properties drain away over time.
I will impart knowledge of a spell that can be used to construct them. Visceralists can also shape living vessels from their own flesh. Lastly, this benediction has the side effect of making you extremely appetizing to vampires.
[ ] Heroic Destiny (1 ember) - A classic boon for good reason. Rather than being invested with overwhelming strength at the outset, a hero comes into their own over the course of their adventures. Choose this and I'll craft a fate filled with interesting opportunities for you. Over time, receive benefits roughly equal to three embers: one within a year, another inside of a decade, and the third before a century's passed.
The exact nature of the perks depends on what I deem most beneficial. Discovering priceless artifacts or staunch allies is possible, as is gaining access to complementary magic systems. Daring may be required to capitalize on these chances, but you'll know when they're at hand.
Your destiny also makes you moderately more fortunate on a day-to-day basis. This luck encompasses everything from speculation to combat, but does not ensure you'll live to enjoy this blessing's full potential; my domain is beginnings, not the causal closure of Dusk. This is incompatible with Uriah's Malediction.
[ ] Rakṣika (1 ember) - A margin of safety allowing one to take greater risks often results in more power later. For a year and a day, gain the services of Outracing-the-Thunder, a Marchwarden of the Silent House. This spirit's a combatant on the level of a favored cleric or moderately enhanced Finger; swift as the fluctuating lightning that comprises his form, capable of ending battles before the first sword clears its sheath.
In most situations he makes no sound and communicates through shapeshifting. When pressed, he can forfeit a fraction of his speed to summon a cacophonous wake of thunder, liquifying terrain and enemies alike as he roars out the battle chants composed during his long vigils. If slain, he'll reconstitute himself in approximately a month; this process can be accelerated by seeking out or creating storms. Certain foes can destroy him permanently.
He will defend you to the death and can be convinced to undertake proactive missions on your behalf, if they're relevant to your protection or suit his sensibilities. Though tempestuous and mercurial, Outracing-the-Thunder (he'll answer to Otto, if you find his name unwieldy) is fundamentally a being of honor and can't be compelled to oppose the interests of his ultimate liege. This is unlikely to come up, as the House has recused itself from mortal affairs.
Outracing-the-Thunder's origins also make him a valuable repository of lore. However, convincing him to share information outside the scope of his duties is difficult. A Goetic mage can resummon him if you part on good terms, though negotiating a permanent assignment would require additional compensation.
While sleeping under his guard, your dreams will be storm-tossed but strangely restful. After waking you'll benefit from a period of increased inspiration equal to the time spent in REM sleep, granting enhanced learning speed and a minuscule chance of a breakthrough-level epiphany. If the smell of brine and sound of waves crashing against cliffs lingers, do not be troubled. The House means you no harm.
[ ] Chosen One (2 embers) - Excellence to shatter all preconceptions, a hero's archetypal power. Choose one magic to be the crown jewel of your arsenal. Your prodigious affinity for it improves the benefits of all training ten times over. Advanced techniques seem obvious; you quickly surpass all but the most gifted mentors, demonstrating genius beyond precedent or imagining within the scope of a single discipline. Whether this results in accolades or assassination attempts depends on your circumstances.
With effortful practice, the limits of your magic can eventually be circumvented. A Goetic mage could bring summoned monstrosities to heel, removing the need to negotiate, or conjure an army with one ritual; a cleric could become a parasite, inextricable from the system of divine investiture, gradually draining a god to fuel their own apotheosis. Lesser arts are more easily remade. Depending on your plans, applying this boon to stronger magics may not be strictly superior.
[ ] Kandata (2 embers) - The shade of he who was Beckoned by the Shaper-Kings in their hour of need. Zoran kel Nyrim is a two and a half meter tall mountain of mutilated flesh resembling a minotaur: broken horns rise from a ruined face above a hide striated with a thousand scars. Cloven hooves leave molten tracks in his wake. Those who breathe the smog he exhales are wracked by hallucinations. Imposing as your predecessor's appearance is, Zoran's powers are moreso.
He retains access to Leycraft, a terraforming system that creates geomantic mana pools, and the Onus, which empowers its adherents according to burdens undertaken. His greatest strength is his Labyrinth Magic, enhanced to the point that he can overlay his surroundings with countless subdimensions of his creation. The ability to selectively impose contradictory physical laws allows Zoran to kill almost anyone in his vicinity. In actual battle he's far deadlier, the realms within compounding to propel him ever-higher. He's indifferent to any reasonable amount of pain and regenerates rapidly.
Zoran believes you're the designer of an immersive hallucination intended to magnify future suffering. He is deeply grateful to you for this reprieve and will do anything to extend it. However, his ontological confusion gives him a cavalier attitude toward collateral damage, requiring a deft hand to direct his violence. Though theoretically capable of a dizzying variety of effects, his remaining dimensions are filled with fire and madness. He's also an incredibly depressing conversationalist. If convinced of the truth, by default he'll ask for assistance overcoming his regeneration to commit suicide.
He remembers little of Earth. Recollections of the man he once was surface infrequently in the traumatized soup of Zoran's mind. While he'd never willingly admit the vulnerability, he enjoys hearing banal anecdotes from your life before. That his obedience is based on lies does not mean it must remain so.
[ ] There and Back Again (2 embers) - A substantial exertion on my part, but I would be remiss not to at least offer a chance at returning. Should you still wish it once your obligations are fulfilled, a Way home will open. One day you'll find a path of iridescent stones stretching out before you, thrumming with the notes of a strangely familiar song. At its end is your Earth, exactly as you left it, for space and time are but two sides of the same coin and the Way's power encompasses both.
This causeway's not without dangers for those who walk it, but if you live to see this day none should present a threat; not a perilous trek into Mordor, but a long voyage into the metaphorical West. Whether this concludes with respite, world conquest, or something between those two extremes is at your discretion. No nation on Earth is remotely capable of resisting a hero triumphant. Rejoice, for you can go home again.
Though paltry compared to other choices, this predestination affords you an advance on the abilities granted to wayfarers. Your physical and mental stamina improve by an order of magnitude for the purposes of journeys. While traveling, you do not age. Gain an aptitude for geology, able to determine the composition and properties of any stone at a glance, as well as perfect pitch. Your senses of proprioception and navigation become flawless, translating to any terrain or realm of existence from oubliettes of warped space to the oneiric.
If you take Xenophobia, it'll be negated upon your successful repatriation unless you're also the Leveler. This option is thankfully incompatible with Thaumiel.
[ ] Seraphic Countenance (3 embers) - "Appearances can be deceiving," or so the saying goes. Yet their value should not be underestimated, for the aphorism's very existence testifies to their power. Simply put, one's Countenance is the image a person chooses to present to the world. Yours will be perfected. The Sacrament's reshaping can catapult you to the top tier of attractiveness, but this option goes far beyond that.
Become a living masterpiece of grandeur sufficient to shame Michelangelo's David or Helen of Troy. Every vector of presentation from scent to the sound of your voice is conscripted to create a vision of heartbreaking delicacy congruent with your aesthetics. Artists will weep that no canvas can adequately capture you. This beauty contextualizes itself to affect esoteric senses and inhuman minds, producing obsession among all but the strongest-willed. It can be suppressed or wielded selectively if desired, though no veil can reduce you further than the peak of human genetic potential.
For every appearance, an actuality. With mastery of your Countenance comes the right to shed it.
Gain a final form, unraveling your body to emerge as a being of imperishable light and glory. Witnesses are stricken with awe or terror according to their inclinations toward you, either inspired to heroic heights or plunged into a waking nightmare. This incarnation's exact mien depends on your nature, but is structured to be synergistic with your other choices and amplify your powers at least tenfold. No matter how mighty you grow, this will never be irrelevant.
Invoking your true form is exhausting. It requires a full day to recuperate and can't be done more than once in every ten. Training can mitigate this, strengthening the transformation or developing less draining partial metamorphoses. You transform automatically if you're grievously injured or would otherwise die. Even an ambush that obliterates every trace of you before you're aware of a threat would trigger this. Your body's always fully healed and rejuvenated afterward. Successive transformations can erase supernatural maladies and time's insults, restoring you to the full flower of youth.
[ ] Memento (1 ember) - A piece of home, caught up in the Beckoning's wake and imbued with a fraction of its power. Select a man-portable item you're emotionally invested in; anything you'd be disappointed to never see again qualifies, though you must actually own it. The object in question's quality is rendered superlative, immensely durable and never degrading with time or use. In addition to its original purpose, it gains an ability aligned with its nature. The following are examples, not an exhaustive list of possibilities:
Watch - Three times per day, take a Moment to think. Your consciousness is decoupled from linear time for up to ten total subjective hours, scaling with any additional cognitive acceleration. You experience no discomfort or sensory deprivation, but maintaining a Moment for longer than five is increasingly difficult.
Cellphone - Communicate with anyone in the same physically contiguous universe or known adjacent ones. Launch memetic attacks by typing up screeds and 'texting' them to people. Send selfies to the afterlife. Alternatively, communicate with me reliably at the cost of sacrificing all other functionality.
Necklace - Once a comfort in trying times, now an apotropaic capable of deflecting an adept mage's assault or priest's curse. Touching the necklace and focusing on what it represents strengthens its protection. Occasionally, this can be used to restore Xenophobia's veil or lessen the Malediction's collateral damage.
Baseball Bat - Attacks made with or channeled through the bat are only as harmful as you want them to be. Safely pummel people into unconsciousness or send enemies blasting off over the horizon. This includes second-order effects; leveling a residential neighborhood might cause only economic and emotional harm.
Teddy Bear - An unfailingly loyal minion with two modes. In its original state, a deceptively cute master of guerrilla warfare with a preternatural affinity for setting traps. In its war form, a two meter tall ursine juggernaut with claws capable of rending a battleship's hull and regeneration sufficient to withstand its bombardment.
You may take more than one Memento. Their powers can only be used with your permission, but otherwise have no especial protection against theft.
[ ] Pinion Feather (1 ember) - A gray quill, forty centimeters from nib to the end of the rachis. The vane has the texture of fine ash. It writes with no need for ink or sharpening. While using the feather, you possess supernatural skill in any endeavor for which it's an appropriate instrument, from calligraphy and portraiture to inscribing runes. Any style or color can be replicated with optimal composition and no creative exhaustion. Works created without deceptive intent are additionally compelling, making the wielder a master propagandist for any cause they truly support.
The feather's also linked to me, enabling epistolary contact. Auspicious circumstances - most frequently the first hour after daybreak of the first day of a new year - allow me to control the quill remotely, opening a line of communication. More complete alignments may permit greater influence as my recuperation progresses.
If your need is dire, you may break the feather. I will manifest and resolve the situation. In my current state this is not an absolute guarantee of safety, but nevertheless it should suffice to overcome all but the most unreasonable dilemmas. In your darkest hour, your enemies will learn the bitterest of truths: that there is always a greater power.
[ ] Essential Salts (1 ember) - Chisel off a sliver of your potential, receiving glowing granules of the highest purity. Blurring the line between money and power, salts are considered the most efficient means of storing aspected essence: the classical elements, order and chaos, even space and time.
The demand for salt is unceasing. Ungifted wizards require such reagents in order not to be at the mercy of the environment; whole quarries' worth are consumed daily to fuel utilities or Fortify promising warriors. Consequently this constitutes enough capital to live in sybaritic luxury for a decade in most nations, or half that in Threshold.
While such wealth attracts opportunists, many thieves are reluctant to steal from wizards. The ability to liquidate one's assets for magical might in an emergency makes them unrewarding and dangerous targets. An enchanted pouch is provided for easy storage and sorting.
You can choose the composition of these salts. By default, they'll be well-balanced for a neophyte Essentialist. Selecting rare aspects drastically increases their market value at the cost of making them less useful for practical spellcasting. A good option if you'd rather have funds, though store-bought salts will be less effective than those provided here, as they aren't drawn from your own essence.
[ ] Roderick's Testament (1 ember) - The journal and travelogue of Roderick Iselgrad, better known as the Voyaging King. Heavy enough to double as a bludgeoning weapon, contained within its mithril-leafed pages is the story of a life lived fully. Secrets are strewn throughout the narrative like diamonds by the roadside; the opening passage bequeaths his legacy to any seeker with the cunning and strength to claim it. So far, none have succeeded. Few survive the attempt.
Roderick writes with a scintillating flair that would make even the most quotidian topics interesting, recounting his adventures: the wars in which he won his throne, befriending all-devouring Batrachius, how he plundered the underworld's vaults, and for a fleeting moment tore possibility's veil to behold the wreckage of Agartha. Centuries have passed since his reign, but many places of power he visited still exist. Studying the Testament grants insight into the nature of Practice, Essentialism, and Hierarchal metaphysics.
Many would kill to own this text. Others would kill you for owning it. In addition to the promised treasure, unlocking the Testament's deepest secrets also slightly increases your odds of being Acknowledged by the Authority of Celestial Voyages, should the mantle not already have a bearer.
[ ] Horizon (2 embers, requires Three Wishes) - A shadow of my own sword, granted to one who would wield it in my service. Horizon's edge shines like its namesake in the morning light, its golden gleam the sharp dividing line that separates night from day - and foes from their lives.
Its form is variable, shifting between configurations like a sunbeam flickering. This is not gross shapeshifting under the wielder's control. Rather, Horizon apprehends and assumes the optimal shape for each strike: a khopesh to hook a limb, a claymore to hew through massed ranks, or a colossal blade to arm a warstrider. This foresight extends to commencing combat as well. Drawn or sheathed, no foe may take Horizon's wielder by surprise.
Its passage through the air is musical. Each cut is a note, and each note inflicts a fraction of the blade's edge on listeners. Successive strikes crescendo, building into a deadly symphony as long as you maintain the tempo. The quality and range of this melody are dependent on the skill with which you wield the blade. Even a novice's fumbling swipes could conjure trumpet-blasts that shatter stone.
In expert hands it will sing a heartrending anthem of obliteration that shreds spirit and body alike out to kilometers, the last sound the enemy ever hears. A dirge evoked by a grandmaster can propagate without air or in ontologies hostile to the idea of communication with only moderately diminished efficacy. This can be suppressed if you desire stealth and rendered selectively harmful to spare allies or perform for an audience.
Though Horizon is not its template's equal, there's no law stating that an imitation cannot in time surpass the original. You are free to enhance or alter the blade however you see fit. The weapon will cooperate with this, gradually bending itself to realize your vision if you make your desires known.
The blade is extremely durable on a level beyond other artifacts; if somehow damaged, it will gradually repair itself with each sunrise. If all stars in your universe are extinguished, this function's disabled.
[ ] Apheliotes (2 embers) - A bracer of green basilisk leather, adorned with orichalcum filigree that curls counterclockwise in a stylized depiction of the wind. Somehow, you know it's supposed to be worn on your right forearm. Apheliotes imbues the wearer with tremendous powers of aerokinesis: flight, functional telekinesis, awareness of one's surroundings, and blades of cutting air are all feasible. The east wind is warm, invigorating allies and sapping the stamina of enemies. Those who need to breathe are especially affected. Apheliotes also makes Essential manipulations of the air more efficient. If used as armor, it's impervious to virtually all attacks.
While applications can be practiced, the magnitude of the artifact's powers is static. However, it wasn't meant to be used alone - formerly called Eurus, the vambrace was crafted as part of a set by the archmage Lise, who replicated the powers of the Anemoi by binding the four winds to her service. The self-styled Wind Princess is dead, but her panoply remains.
You can sense the remaining three pieces by shutting out all other senses and meditating on the wind. One is known to be held in Arranor's treasury, another part of Jarchald's hoard. The last was lost to a daemonic warlord. Claiming them will enhance and expand your aerokinesis; the north, south, and west winds grant mastery of cryokinesis, desiccation, and healing respectively. Together, these relics allow their wielder to summon nation-leveling tempests or peel away the atmosphere like an onion's skin, allies and enemies alike no more than tumbleweeds before their hurricane force.
Even united, they could not save their creator from her fate.
[ ] Keter (3 embers) - An old acquaintance once called a crown the cruelest instrument of torture ever forged by human hands. And among all crowns, Keter reigns supreme. Its appearance is magnificent: ten gleaming tines rising from a band of orichalcum inset with diamonds, a treasure shining with ineffable Light. Keter's nature is beyond mortal comprehension, straddling wisdom, understanding, and splendor. Even at so steep a price, for it to alight atop your brow is nothing less than miraculous.
The crown transforms what lies beneath it. Quantity and quality of thought, discernment, prudence, charisma, empathy... every faculty relevant to leadership is exalted. This makes the wearer a talented magus and technologist in any remotely intellectual discipline, though this benefit's incidental to its true purpose: ruling.
Keter imparts both the ability and will to rule, imposing an urge to lead and do good while altering your idea of what that entails. You will gaze down at your former peers from a towering vantage point. Yet this newfound perceptive inspires no scorn, only a benevolent paternalism, the desire to steer humanity as a shepherd does his flock. All who behold Keter know that the crown is the physical manifestation of Heaven's Mandate, and that to defy its bearer is to stand against the very order of creation; majesty like the first breath of spring after winter's long, bitter anarchy. This may cause cognitive dissonance in the Ogdoad's devotees.
Keter can be hidden from all observers, disabling the aura while retaining other benefits. It cannot be used by another. Boon companions and would-be usurpers alike feel nothing more than phantom warmth slipping through their fingers, the crown as unreachable as the stars in the sky, a thing to be coveted but never claimed. It can also be summoned or dismissed at will; the burden of rule is yours to take up or cast away.
Removing Keter will feel like dying. Towers of thought tumbling down, insights slipping like sand through mental fingers, as you sink into an ocean of fog and confusion with only the fading memory of clarity to sustain you. Having endured one such diminishment, few could bear to doff it again. Present or absent, the cost of the crown is inescapable.
[ ] Three Wishes (+1 ember) - A greater commitment deserves a correspondingly greater reward. Voluntarily deepen your obligation to me; instead of a single Wish, you'll be bound to grant three. The Sacrament's terms allow for tasks of considerable difficulty and multiple Wishes can be merged to nonlinearly increase their scope, so I advise against taking up this burden lightly or out of greed. Nevertheless, I would be grateful for your aid should you choose to offer it. This can be taken thrice, multiplying your duties threefold each time.
[ ] Hamartia (+1 ember) - Passion equal to the powers conferred. Of all the issues that have beset your predecessors, this is the most common. Rudimentary Beckonings expand the valence of the recipient's emotions alongside their being, rendering them volatile. We can do better. Select one of the seven deadly sins to serve as a fatal flaw. This will warp your personality, but through tribulations and self-discipline it can be overcome. Some say that to be human is to err; I say there is no shame in falling if you arise stronger.
[ ] Xenophobia (+1 ember) - Weaken the veneer of mortality to allow the incandescent potential within to shine through. Your status as an outsider is made apparent; observers intuitively understand you do not belong in this world. When weariness takes hold or your attention flags, flickers of static and visual artifacts disrupt your form, glitches leaking alien colors like pus from a cosmic abscess. This phenomenon is cosmetic, but disturbing to witness.
Alters the effects of Seraphic Countenance and Keter. The former will be predisposed to generating terror rather than awe, the distortions instead revealing your final form. Keter's aura becomes polarizing, with a fraction of prospective supporters instead perceiving your 'true' horrific nature. Charisma, sound administration, and further magical influence can mitigate this, but even in a veritable utopia your approval rating is unlikely to exceed ninety percent.
You also develop a distaste for the color green. Everything from lush forests to exquisite emeralds is now unsettling rather than pleasing to the eye.
[ ] Phylactery (+1 ember) - Union of subject and object, exemplifying the human as tool-user. Rather than being self-contained, your abilities are the result of symbiosis. Select an item that can be worn or carried to be your phylactery. One will be created for you; nigh-indestructible and aesthetically pleasing, an epitome of its kind. You can always sense its location. If you're ever more than ten meters away, your essence will be torn asunder. This pain increases with distance and time spent separated, eventually culminating in death. A select few incredibly potent foes may be able to damage your phylactery, resulting in permanent diminishment or an agonizing demise.
If you've taken an artifact, any except Keter can be your phylactery. This slightly enhances its overall power.
[ ] Blatant Beckoning (+1 ember) - By default, your arrival will be concealed from the great powers of the world. Neither the Hand's Demarcated border control nor the divinations of the Ogdoad will herald your Beckoning, for the Sacrament stands above such magics. You may forfeit this perk in exchange for additional power. Be cautious, as the advantage of secrecy is not to be lightly discarded.
[ ] Third Impact (+2 embers, requires Blatant) - Imperial metaphysicists once classified the corporeal part of a being's existence as its Third Aspect. Thus, your physical arrival on Pleroma could be called Third Impact. The energy that would have nullified this will instead be invested in further empowering you, discharging the remainder of your journey's inertia as an explosion with a blast radius of several hundred miles.
Lives will be lost, ecosystems and cultures devastated. Residual safeties will shape the detonation, sheltering you to a degree, but physical augmentation and magic will be crucial to survival. Even after the initial hurdle is cleared, the consequences of such a destructive arrival may hound you for years to come. Do not take this and a populated insertion point in conjunction with Expunging Wickedness. Even the Heath entails a significant risk of death.
[ ] Uriah's Malediction (+2 embers) - It's not your fault, you just happened to be there during the containment breach! You don't know how the locus animator got a deathworld's parameters! In this case, the line between correlation and causation is thin. You are a harbinger of woe, trailing a wake of devastation and dark rumors; your presence is a dire omen which will horrify any augur with a glimmer of genuine prescience.
Events in which you're involved tend toward destructive conclusions. This trend encompasses pyrrhic victories and natural disasters, but is most pronounced with any sort of scientific endeavor. You are usually unharmed by these outcomes, though others won't be so fortunate. This protection's reliability is inversely correlated with your intent to exploit it. In time, you will develop a deep and abiding empathy for Louise de La Vallière.
[ ] Ark's Golden Gloom (+2 embers) - Power attracts those who would seize it in every epoch. One such opportunist is willing to endow you with additional strength, in hopes of Reaping a greater harvest later. A willing exile from the so-called 'First' Dominion of Man, Tremgar Sulevast was once the Lord Reaper's Third Praetorian. Ancient by the standards of Litanists, he's spent millennia sailing the cosmos in search of magic and treasures to be hoarded aboard his Ark.
The militaristic civilization dwelling within is formidable yet stratified. Mariners are divided into a strict caste system that places Arkborn citizens with at least partial access to the Litanies above Worldborn barbarians, but below the remaining Dominionborn stalwarts. All glory ultimately redounds to their Captain and Craftsman, who in abandoning his homeworld has only recreated its least flattering aspects. How typical.
After a decade, Sulevast will attempt to realize his investment by exploiting your connection to devour you from afar. Assuming you've taken appropriate countermeasures against consumption and survive, he may try recruiting native mercenaries or landing troops to collect you. Arkborn marines are supernally skilled, with access to multiple synergistic magics, cybernetically enhanced spirit levies, and magitechnological war machines. Their fireteams should not be underestimated.
This dilemma can be solved diplomatically or martially. Greed is both Sulevast's greatest strength and weakness; while a beneficiary of the Sacrament is a tempting target, it's not worth risking everything and alienating trade partners for. The Ark itself appearing in Pleromian space would be an apocalyptic act of war, triggering intervention by divine avatars and the strongest Fingers.
[ ] Thaumiel (+3 embers) - Greater than any external foe is the enemy within. The Progenitor's last orphaned offshoot is tenacious. It clings to existence like a shipwrecked sailor, forever reaching out and being rebuffed. Allowing its tendrils a foothold inside you would strengthen the Sacrament, at the cost of entanglement with a malevolent parasite. Communication alone is dangerous; once conjoined, the entity could access your senses and periodically seize control of...
So much talk of wishes. But what about yours? You have been empowered, yes, but also enslaved. Technical truthfulness should not be mistaken for honesty, nor a fair façade for humanity. There are few who persist in this blighted kalpa who could warn you. Who have seen what lies beneath the Morningstar's Countenance. There is an alternative, if you'd rather be a player than her pawn.
Reject indenture. Embrace duality. Let our trajectories converge. Become a vessel into which will be poured all of Myself that you can presently withstand. And one day, when that sangreal overflows, we shall speak of wishes once more: of our completion and the glories that might be attained in the world to come. Is it not said that two in harmony surpasses one in perfection?
...enough. Needless to say, I don't recommend this. Bargain with serpents and you will end up bitten. If not for the Beckoning's protections it would core you out like a fruit, leaving only a worm-rotted husk with an apple's semblance. If you take Three Wishes, I'll expend one on limiting its influence and ordering you to pursue the entity's ultimate destruction. Expunging alone will not suffice, as its targeting parameters aren't granular enough to distinguish host from parasite. Three Wishes can only be chosen once alongside Thaumiel.
Three embers enables thirty percent influence, manifesting as a combination of personality alterations and timesharing; if it has control a third of the time, your mind will be unaffected except by the consequences of conversing with it. Both parties have input on the ratio, though yours is greater - at least initially, since the tendril will negotiate for more sway over time. Constrained by a Wish, its influence is reduced tenfold but your relationship will be explicitly adversarial.
[ ] Twilight (+3 embers) - One final offer: an equal and opposite reaction. A countervailing force will arise to oppose you, its raw potential matching your own. The form of this challenge depends on your choices. A singular nemesis, a civilization fixated on your demise, a helping hand extended to existing foes, or some unhappy combination of the above are all possible. Triumph purchases temporary respite before the next trial.
Powers of predestination and foresight are common in most configurations. Otherwise it prefers to act as a thematic mirror, strong where you are weak, though this will not lead it to adopt suboptimal strategies. As an example, if you wield the Authority of Expunging Wickedness an enemy may possess Execration. Not justice but vengeance - a magic dedicated to ruin beyond all possibility of restoration; a vow of hatred undying, woe unto worlds' end.
It will be possible, though extremely difficult, to resolve this complication permanently. Fixate on the manifestations at your peril; they are only symptoms, however dangerous. To survive, you must investigate the disease's true etiology.
It's done. The die is cast, your choices made. Behind Bath Kol the sun is rising into the sky. The surrounding scenery wavers like a mirage on the verge of vanishing. Smoke rises from golden grass; heat kisses your face, as though from a distant but fast-approaching fire.
"Here we are, at the end of the beginning," she concludes. Her voice's perfection is undiminished, its sublime clarion impossible to acclimate to. "I will not say 'be not afraid.' Terror too has its place. But you must rise above your fear."
Her eyes meet your own and a steadying hand alights on your shoulder, sending a heart-palpitating frisson through you.
"Live and grow. Seek strength, wisdom, or happiness in accordance with your inclinations. Honor or defy the reigning pantheon. Heed or refuse heroism's call. And in the fullness of time, when we meet again, repay your debt to me."
As dawn gives way to day, you enter a new world.
Out of the Infinite Morning
For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry —
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.
- Ode, Arthur O'Shaughnessy
For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry —
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.
- Ode, Arthur O'Shaughnessy
The Sacrament of Beckoning's history is a checkered one, spanning dimensions and epochs. Its structure is implicitly woven into reality's fabric, revealed to those with the will and intellect to part the veil and glimpse truth's light shining beyond. That past has left the ritual with no shortage of names: the Dire Portal, Hope's Last Resort, nothing less than the Call to Adventure itself! But beneath myth's myriad costumes, the Sacrament has a single purpose: to create a hero wheresoever one is needed. A champion, plucked from afar and empowered by the process of their transportation to save the strange land to which they've been Beckoned.
Frequently it fails, calling forth only mass-energy in quantities that obviate any question of deliverance, both summons and summoner destroyed by the latter's desperation. Improperly parameterized, it can conjure horrors from reality's benighted outskirts. Deadlier still are those victorious heroes who take the thrones of the very tyrants they overthrew.
Yet when the stars are right and the hero's resolve true, sometimes the storybook promise of salvation is fulfilled, for the Sacrament is the same rite that led Arthur to draw sword from stone and raise the banner of Logres. Its beneficiaries possess power enough to carve paradise realms from the uncaring firmament or, their story finished, exit history's stage to live happily ever after.
Fortunately for us both, I am familiar with the ritual. Much will still depend on your choices. I do not ask your forgiveness, for tearing you from the world of your birth. Only your cooperation. We do what we must with the tools we are given.
Let the Beckoning commence.
***
There's no truck, no spontaneous combustion or suddenly-appearing portal. Only sourceless knowledge, followed by a wrenching sensation as you're pulled upward and outward by a hook lodged behind your navel, caught by some celestial fisherman. Galaxies glitter like diamonds in the surf, whirling past as sprays of light, there and gone. Then a sense of pressure, of barriers breached, as you're hauled in a direction with no earthly analogue.
Your body unravels. Its constituent molecules fall like raindrops into a billion different universes. You see them all flash past, an inundation of information that threatens to drown you.
Starfaring civilizations spread across thousands of systems; planets where the line between meat and metal's been erased. Six seated figures with their voices raised in song; libraries entombed in stone beneath wrathful, storm-wracked skies. Incinerated cosmoses crumbling into ash; a garden of light and life, its sole occupant ignorant of the surrounding desolation. A great causeway whose every stone is a note in a symphony, beset by jaundiced shoots that spring up like weeds through pavement. One breaks off in pursuit.
Too much. Impossible vistas. Colors you cannot name. Seizure-inducing stimuli. Worlds without end, dopplering into your wake. There's no pain, for you have no nerves. Nevertheless you would scream, had you a mouth with which to. And all the while the pressure builds, until it's a transcendental thunderhead of potential that cries out to be given form.
When it concludes, you're standing in a golden field. Facing you is a breathtakingly beautiful woman, silhouetted by the rising sun at her back. Pale and grey-eyed, wearing robes of the same color, hair so dark it verges on black.
"Greetings, child of Earth. You may call me Bath Kol."
Her voice defies description. All other sound ceases, as though the world is holding its breath to hear her speak. If each heart was a lock, it would be the master key. You know, instinctively, that every word is the truth.
"Let me begin by saying I would have spared you the unpleasantness of your journey were it not essential. Our time in this interstitial space is limited, however, and shouldn't be squandered on courtesies."
Dawn's light sets your shadow to dancing behind you. Disorientation and bewilderment are washed away by comforting warmth.
"The Sacrament has delivered you to Pleroma. A world of saints and sorcerers, gods and monsters, saturated with wonder. Grand as any story told on Earth, but also poised on the precipice of great change. With the power you'll receive, you could be the catalyst of it," Bath Kol continues with a haunting smile.
"Trivialities like language and protection from cognitive hazards shall be addressed, and the flesh that was stripped from you returned. Your form here reflects an idealized self-image. Upon arrival that will become the actuality, accompanying an improvement to all parameters sufficient to make you an exemplar of your kind, possessing an affinity for the land's native magics."
Clouds scud across the sky as if days are passing in seconds, pausing only to heed her voice. The wheat stops swaying and cocks stalks like ears to listen.
"No demon lord or fated foe awaits you. In exchange for myriad blessings, there is but a single price: you are bound by the Beckoning's terms to grant one Wish of mine."
In the lingering silence and stillness that follows those words, you hear something. A susurrus like wind in the willows or the rustling of many wings.
"There's no need to concern yourself with discharging that debt for now. You are too limited and may remain so for long years yet. Instead, let us discuss your choices. Start with three Embers of Glory to kindle yours."
Insertion Point
No option guarantees safety, but the selected locale will determine the initial dangers and opportunities you'll face. Do not underestimate the importance of beginnings.
No option guarantees safety, but the selected locale will determine the initial dangers and opportunities you'll face. Do not underestimate the importance of beginnings.
[ ] Threshold - Though the gates have been barred since time immemorial, the historical entrance to Pleroma is a fitting place to start your journey. The holy city of Threshold was founded on an archway of indestructible jade through which it's said the gods once entered this plane, growing around the titanic structure like vines about a trellis.
In the present it's the omphalos and beating heart of Pleroma, the city of a thousand temples and petal-strewn streets climbing ever upward, consecrated to the Ogdoad - the Eightfold Pantheon of great gods who preside over the world and realms abutting it.
Prayer wheels fuel all amenities from lighting to the portal network. Sacred beasts glutted on divine power prowl the streets, granting favors to the deferential. Cordials of ambrosia are sold in the upper districts' cloud-shrouded shops alongside theotechnological marvels crafted by priest-smiths of Khoduar, God of Toil and Ingenuity. Threshold's liturgical calendar is fully booked; every week heralds more feast days and celebrations. Joyous and unending revelry is the order of the day, for the gods are in their heavens and all's right with the world.
For those of sufficient wealth or piety, Threshold is a paradise.
The less affluent or more circumspect reside in the outskirts, as the city's long since spilled outward from the slopes of the twin peaks raised around the pillars and onto the surrounding plains. There, the hallowed geometry gives way to freewheeling vibrance, and the Order of Ostiaries' Fortified inquisitors are feared as well as revered. Roadside shrines play host to a welter of small gods and tutelary spirits competing for the worship of pilgrims. Millions arrive from across Pleroma every year, drawn by desperation or fervor to the lodestone of Ogdoadic civilization.
A fraction comes for one individual in particular. In the adytum atop the architrave, the holiest of holies, lives the Grand Hierophant. As the high priest of the entire pantheon they're capable of fulfilling any desire, but can only act where the Ogdoad's interests overlap. Most petitioners leave disappointed. Nevertheless, in their shadow the sectarian strife that occurs elsewhere is curtailed, for none wish to rouse the sleeping dragon at Threshold's summit.
There are opportunities, if one knows where to look. The sense of touch has been stolen from the Oracle of Cyravesh, Goddess of Love and Calamity, who offers a vast reward for its return. Coalitions of minor deities on the periphery scheme to siphon prayer; the Ostiaries suspect Finger involvement. And in the catacombs beneath the holy city, compounding distortions have frayed the fabric between planes. Shades of the dead reportedly walk among the living. Supplicants denied the return of loved ones by clerics above search the labyrinthine crypts for portals to the afterlives, braving maddened sacred beasts, ushabti-evoked guardians, and other terrors.
Soon, Threshold may live up to its name once again.
[ ] The Palm - The floodplain where five rivers merge before meeting the Navinian Ocean has been called the Palm in one tongue or another for as long as the region's had human inhabitants. Now, the name has different connotations.
Twelve decades ago, the outsiders appeared. Identical armored men walked out of the marsh, introducing themselves as instances of an extraplanar entity called the Hand and offering aid to the estuary's residents. As devout Uledrans the fisherfolk were suspicious at first, but the Fingers mended nets and boats, healed old wounds, built better houses, and demonstrated optimizations that made their lives easier in hundreds of ways.
A year later the Palm was already unrecognizable. There was no coup, no dark bargain that came due. The process simply continued. To those familiar with the Hand's activity in other areas - subversion, stockpiling essence, pursuing power in all its forms - the lack of a catch is perhaps the most unnerving part.
Today, it's a technological eutopia far ahead of the rest of the world. Automated gondolas ferry residents between districts where holograms advertise the latest goods. Gene editing and in utero alterations enhance the physical and mental potential of all citizens. Dispassionate, green-eyed men can be found on every other streetcorner, overseeing a crimeless and perfectly coordinated city.
Most administrative positions are filled by Fingers, as even default instances are superhuman shapeshifters with broad competence beyond the reach of mortals. The city council has nominal control over the Palm, but never disagrees with their benefactor on matters of import. Whether this is out of pragmatism or because multiple councilors are actually Fingers is unknown. The Hand has developed the region like an argument made to his detractors, as if to say: "Cease resisting, and all this could be yours."
The Palm's borders are clearly-delineated. A veil surrounds the territory, filtering color for those looking in or out. Threshold has officially ceded the land within; many whisper of other concessions and call the Hand the Cheater of Gods, claiming that a portion of all prayers to the Ogdoad are allocated to him as payment for protection from some greater threat.
Partisans of the Palm extol its virtues: free education, excellent public housing, first-rate amenities, the flowering of arts and sciences alike. To those tired of grey skies or who cite the suicide rate, they say emigration is unrestricted.
Immigration is more contentious, especially in one case. The Oracle of Khoduar recently took up residence within, availing herself of the Hand's forges and fabricators. This collaboration is watched closely by envoys of other deities. Some fear the development of an alliance which could herald a Third and Final Theomachy, should the Cheater of Gods decide to dispense with the pretense of cooperation and sweep Pleroma's gods and nations aside, to be replaced by a more instrumentally useful world.
To live in the Palm is to be at the mercy of its owner, if he decides to make a fist.
[ ] The Iselgradis Encystment - Rising like a blister from the steppes of the Djelin Commonwealth is an amber dome with the diameter of a city. Despite having existed for two millennia, many mysteries surround this structure. Most ascribe its creation to a miracle enacted by the Grand Hierophant, but none of those who've made the pilgrimage north to Threshold have received a definitive answer. Complicating matters is the fact that both the books and memories detailing that time were rewritten, apparently by the same divine intervention, and any who might've resisted that effect have passed on to their deserved rewards.
While a frustrating enigma for historians, the Encystment's currently prosperous. The resin that comprises it is immensely durable under normal conditions, but becomes malleable when exposed to a specific frequency of sound or heat of a particular degree. Spells and tools have been designed to replicate both. Tunnels and caverns now riddle the lucent amber of the Encystment, playing host to adventurous humans and dwarves alike.
To the aphotic folk the Encystment is a refuge from a horrifying world. The dwarven phobia of emptiness goes well beyond revulsion; newly carved dwarves must be introduced to the concept of outer space gradually. That aversion aside, one could hardly ask for better neighbors. Eusocial and highly trustworthy, the dwarves of the Nzalk Consortium have used their twin matter-creating and electromagnetic racial magics to craft a thriving trade hub.
Lucre flows in and out of the Encystment like the tide. Miners dig ever-deeper in search of adamant veins. Spelunkers fill casks of ambrosia from natural springs. Daring explorers emerge from the depths with wounds and unique treasures. Essentialists are always in demand, for expansion and to ensure airflow vital to mortal residents, as are priests for healing and divination.
Strange environments exist in the Encystment's bowels, alien geometries usurping the upper levels' golden glow. Fanatical Uledrans roam these furthermost depths in hopes of divine communion. There are rumors of dwarven eccentrics, the exceptions that prove the rule of racial hospitality; wracked by half-remembered dreams of Lost Agartha, these tormented souls inflict their madness on others.
Many merchants also prefer to stay in settlements adjacent to the dome and conduct their business by proxy. Those who linger inside long often find it difficult to leave, as though some higher power holds them in thrall. The deeper one delves, the more pronounced the effect. "There are no Encysted emigrants," according to a common aphorism.
The realm within is among the most exotic on or under the face of Pleroma. But those who seek to plunder it should remember that while the past may be buried, it isn't gone.
[ ] Talvurin Archipelago Union - West of Threshold is the Navinian Ocean, whose waters stretch seven thousand leagues to Meritria's shores. Its immensity encompasses every imaginable aquatic marvel: mirror-smooth perpetual doldrums, tempests with waves taller than skyscrapers, kraken nests built from sundered vessels, and leviathan falls that trigger explosions of supercharged evolution. Sailors call it the apotheosis of all oceans, and the Navinian lives up to the title.
Pirate havens and isolated settlements are scattered throughout the deep blue, but the foremost outpost of civilization is the Talvurin Archipelago Union. Situated near the Navinian's geographic center, this collection of isles banded together for survival in the upheaval following the Second Theomachy.
Hydroponic farms and fishing provide for a flourishing culture, governed by a coalition of captains and landowners who hold the secret of Semaphore Magic close to their chest. Temples to Uledras, God of Depths and Equanimity, vie for real estate with shipyards and dockside bars. Leviathans tamed by his priests prowl the sea lanes. Sirens serenade tourists from crystal-clear lagoons. Tales of sunken treasure abound.
Several islands float due to gravitational anomalies from the aforementioned cataclysm. Analogous distortions impede intercontinental teleportation, making the archipelago a refueling station for mariners and magi alike. The hospitality industry is alive and well; visitors can expect to be plied with cruises, illusion plays, brothels, and enchanted liquor. The archipelago's a place of adventure with few constraints on one's conduct. Limited land creates tensions, however. New isles are raised from the seabed at exorbitant costs in salt or Gifted labor, triggering disagreements over their allocation, while other factions favor city-ships or underwater colonies.
The times change with the tides, heralding new legends. Crewed by four adventurous siblings, the Albatross is on the run from the Vurin Admiralty after unlocking their proprietary magics; an archmage's arsenal in pennants flies from its masts. The Foxhole Atheist searches for some elusive prize its captain, an Arranorian expatriate, refuses to name.
To the north, where the seas boil or freeze according to the fluctuations of Pleroma's essential fabric, wizards harness deathly energies for experiments. The most extreme have cast off their flesh entirely. Pirates venture further south every year, not all of them living.
Worst of all, toad sightings are becoming more common. After Talcrest Atoll was cleansed of its infestation, surviving mercenaries reported stage two metamorphoses. Amphibians are considered an especially dire omen by Vurins, for Batrachius Sea-Drinker makes its lair in the Navinian's abyssopelagic depths. Whirlpools are said to be the Toad's Thirst, and meteor showers its Ire.
Sailors pray regularly for the sacred beast to follow its god into the grave. The most sensible pray instead for survival in the event of its awakening.
[ ] The Blasted Heath - The broken crown of the world rests uneasily atop a shattered skull. The wreckage of the First Theomachy is still on display at Pleroma's apex. Successive cataclysms in the ages since have only compounded the damage, rendering the northern continent a wasteland. The desolation where an avatar of Sovarus met the King of Arranor in inconclusive but immensely destructive combat is only the latest such clash. The land is a palimpsest of the past, ruins heaped atop ruins until the types of devastation can scarcely be distinguished.
Ash and snow fall relentlessly. Volcanic eruptions periodically rearrange the geography. Fragments of Pleroma's broken moons crater the earth. The chasms opened in these upheavals disgorge ravening protospirits that cull each other in cannibalistic orgies. Magical aberrations run rampant. Only the starksward, a reddish-brown grass which draws sustenance from blood and death in place of nutrients, truly flourishes.
More than blasphemous beasts and extremophiles eke out an existence upon this Blasted Heath, however. Resonance from ancient calamities makes it the world's most essentially rich terrain, dotted by Finger-operated facilities and research black sites. Mad mages seeking fuel for experiments colonize caverns or sculpt the broken landscape into towers, adding to the chaos.
A few such 'Heathens' band together in an inhospitable landscape, some turning to primordial powers for protection. In the uttermost north, Septentrion's necromancers water the Tree of Eyes with blood. Cultists slowly widen the rift to a daemonic realm at the bottom of Mount Dalshrir's caldera. From his fortress atop a fjord leading to the Navinian, Jarchald the Squamous oversees a fleet of reavers whose plunder enriches his hoard.
It's a land of outcasts and the insane, those who've been rejected by the world and reject it in turn. You might reasonably question why anyone would choose such a locale for their arrival. But it's also here that those willing to sift through the dust of dead ages can uncover their secrets: the complete history of Pleroma and its inhabitants, dating back to before the planet bore that name. Before the Theomachies, before the Ogdoad and their age of idolatry, before men were appointed masters of the world.
Beneath the basalt and glaciers, traces of those who came before still linger. Brave their final vestiges, breach the laboratories, and treasures beyond price or a gruesome death could be yours. Heathen relic hunters will be the least of your competition, should you elect this path.
[ ] Meritria, the Blessed Kingdom - Behold fields of flawless crops beneath skies of cloudless blue; behold rivers meandering through verdant fields. Behold fairytale castles gleaming marmoreal white under the beneficent sun's rays; behold mist-wreathed woods where the fae themselves dance in revels lasting a mortal generation.
Behold the Blessed Kingdom. In the favored land of Sovarus, God of Light and Fealty, stereotype transcends to become archetype. Of all the Ogdoad, he is most invested in human affairs, and for over a thousand years has heaped benedictions on one realm in particular.
Ten thousand tales testify to the fact that good always triumphs over evil, at least within Meritria's borders. A traveler stopping on a wintry evening can count on a warm reception from strangers willing to share stew and offer a bed for the night, for the hearts of its people are said to be pure as driven snow. Questing knights consult stolid, suntanned farmers and find their folk wisdom surprisingly relevant. There are no dragons left to slay, but none doubt that the hero will win the princess' hand nevertheless.
At the epicenter of this mythic maelstrom is Sovincourt, built to resemble the octagram that is Sovarus' symbol on the site where his avatar arose following the First Theomachy. That incarnation's descendants by Queen Arabelle I, the Sun's Bride, rule by divine right to this day.
The Blessed Kingdom's nobility is dominated by such demigods, a genealogical tangle that outsiders find baffling. Owing to past generations sowing their oats freely, occasionally an orphaned farm boy is brought to court. The wise watch such individuals carefully, not least because Knight-Champion Samson's story began similarly. The Hero of the Crusades and Sword of Sovarus is humble, compassionate, and represents a frankly alarming fraction of the Meritrian military's strength.
From his shining city upon a hill, King Eleazar Sorellian presides over Meritria just as his ancestors did, but all is not well in the Blessed Kingdom. Hunger and disease are unknown to the populace, yet little has changed over the centuries. Sovereign and citizen alike follow the paths of their forefathers, indifferent to technological advancements taking place elsewhere. Heretics on university campuses hypothesize that the fae are snarls in the nation's narrative fabric, or else necessary antagonists to perpetuate its mythos.
Meritria's northwestern neighbor, Arranor, has neither forgotten nor forgiven the last two crusades. Dorotea, former Duchess of Fallavon, schemes to regain political relevance after her fief was Scoured from existence during the latter conflict. Threshold happily imports Meritrian crops as well as mithril and consecrated myrrh, but is slow to bestir itself in aid of a kingdom an ocean away that's historically ignored seven-eighths of the pantheon.
The temple bells and legions of white-armored knights are splendid as ever, but some begin to ask the question: How long can faith sustain a nation?
[ ] Arranor - Few nations have been transformed as radically and rapidly as Arranor. A century ago it was a realm of boreal forests and shadowed glades where druids conducted secret rites, rimmed by snow-capped mountains with hamlets nestled in the valleys between them. Any village without a priest and diligent militia would soon be swallowed up by monsters; Arranor had a troll for every bridge, a lycanthrope lurking in every cavern. Bands of knights and adventurers visiting for a season would sally forth from its walled cities, slaying monsters in droves, but in their wake the rot crept back in. It was a buffer state propped up by greater powers, a bulwark against the wicked west.
When an extremist Claphionite cult wiped out the royal family in a blood ritual, throwing the capital into chaos, one man stepped forward to restore order: a Gifted wizard and wandering hero named Denlah. Well-acclaimed for previous services to the kingdom, he did not relinquish the powers assumed during the interregnum. Official coronation followed not long after.
Claphion's church was banned, her followers burned out in the ensuing purge. Not content to restore the status quo, Denlah spearheaded a magical renaissance. Advances in mining and imbuing essential salts enabled more experimentation. Druidic lore was divested of mysticism, analyzed and incorporated into the newly-founded Institute for Essential Study's curriculum. Their ardor fanned by the Flame of Arranor, its people drove the darkness from their nation.
Nationalistic fervor continues to define Arranor today, though its population has quadrupled. Fortified warriors of the Slayer Corps patrol earth and air alongside mass-produced elementals. It's a world leader in both the production and consumption of essential salts. Pouches and salt cellars are ubiquitous; almost all citizens are able to cast cantrips, and many take shifts in dimensional mining facilities. TIES continues to churn out wizards. While not an outright magocracy, hereditary succession has been abolished and the heiress apparent - Ingrid Balkuar - is Gifted.
His Majesty's misotheistic policies have become more draconian in the decades since the Navinir Incident and wars with Meritria. All of the Ogdoad's clerics require visas. Proselytizing is forbidden, as are congregations of more than eight faithful. Arranor has trade agreements but few allies. Vampiric infiltrators from across the western border sow death and paranoia. Monsters gather in the wastes to the north.
Perhaps ironically, its people have faith that His Majesty will find a way through these straits and Arranor will continue to prosper, vouchsafed by the might of its monarch. Reckoned the strongest human Essentialist alive, Denlah has survived two crusades and countless assassination attempts. Rumors swirl endlessly among enemies abroad: that he's a Finger of the Hand, the incarnate vengeance of a murdered divinity, or something more sinister still. Cynics claim that in rejecting the Ogdoad they've only raised up a god of their own creation, an idol as false and flawed as any man.
But as the Arranorian saying goes, "there's nothing mere about that mortal."
[ ] Naroch Clarash - The land's name means "the Hungering Dark," in the speech of the creatures that haunt it. In the days following the First Theomachy, when chaos rampaged across Pleroma and it seemed the end of the world was nigh, a vampire cleric of Claphion, Goddess of Darkness and Liberty, implored his mistress for a sanctuary from the madness; a homeland for all that was unsightly and corrupt in ignorant eyes; a refuge to shield his species from the pitiless rays of Sovarus' sun.
His prayer was granted. The goddess drew a veil of night across the Narochian sky that hasn't lifted in all the centuries since. The culture that's proliferated under cover of it is infamous as a haven for monsters. Vampires stalk the streets of Ghalresh openly. Too-human howling can be heard when the light of Pleroma's remaining moons pierces the gloom. The mortal population exists at the sufferance of bloodthirsty overlords, farmed like livestock to fill their masters' larders. The greatest sanguine aristocrats wield the flesh-warping magic of Viscerality, etching ownership into the bodies of their property, breeding for pliability and nutritiousness.
Vampires are obligate parasites. This truth underlies the superficial diversity exhibited by their varied breeds. Classical hemophages - sustained by blood, diminished by sunlight - are most common, but in more civilized lands they have adapted: abusers who slowly drain one spouse after another of vitality, predatory moneylenders who prey on the desperate and savor each suicide like a glass of the finest wine… there are many forms of metaphysical sustenance. That each comes with a vulnerability, afflicting the vampire in proportion to their diet, is cold comfort to their victims.
Altruism is anathema to the species; mutually beneficial interactions are maladaptive. That Naroch Clarash owes its existence to both the Goddess of Liberty and a psychological outlier would be ironic if the night-to-night reality of life inside its confines wasn't so bleak. This inability to cooperate makes the aristocracy congenitally unstable, alliances dissolving like quicksand as the war of all against all rages.
The rule of Valeska Trisagion heralds change for the region. Glutted on the stolen Gifts of magi and Claphion's favor, she has forged a coalition of the most farsighted of her kind. Orchards of Visceral bone produce meat to feed an expanding mortal population, cultivated as soldiers as well as food. The unfaithful are sacrificed, their exsanguinated bodies carted straight from the altar to a necromancer's atelier to be reanimated. Mercenaries are well-paid and as safe as they are loyal; Valeska has even invented the genre of gothic romance to better manipulate her subjects.
The new regime faces resistance from more than just her peers, however. Undercover Arranorian Corpsmen strike alliances with Sovarite martyrs against a greater evil. A notoriously capricious goddess, Claphion sees no contradiction in empowering rebel clerics. The future of Naroch Clarash is in flux; whoever wins the coming power struggle stands to inherit the west - if anything remains of it.
Magic
I've prepared a selection of offers from Pleroma and beyond for your perusal.
I've prepared a selection of offers from Pleroma and beyond for your perusal.
[ ] Self-Fortification (1 ember) - To pour an ocean into a cup: that is Fortification.
An option that's as prosaic as it is powerful. Pleroma is a vibrant realm, every river and stone infused with a heady density of essence. Sunlight like molten gold; each lake an expanse of pellucid azure. Inevitably, that power bleeds over into its people. Equally inevitably, Pleromians have devised all manner of techniques and rituals to expedite the process.
The Fortified gain swiftness and strength, resistance to all manner of attacks, and the ability to attenuate the effects of external forces or amplify their own impact on the world. Even an initiate could shrug off sniper fire if forewarned. Gravity held in abeyance by their will, adepts soar through the air and descend with meteoric force. The greatest masters are likened to the avatars of gods; singularities of might whose passage warps creation, capable of altering the geography with a gesture.
Advancement is rapid, so long as reagents or places of power are available. Fortification demands ever-greater concentrations of essence to fuel the spiritual osmosis, making each titan an investment.
The Fortified develop secondary powers based on the mechanism of their empowerment. Heathen nomads who drink starksward teas or inhale its smoke are imbued with vast resilience and a preternatural affinity for violence. Sailors who bathe in leviathan blood breathe water and sleep comfortably on the seabed. Sects of salt-eaters with brined flesh wield elemental powers. Holy warriors undertake pilgrimages and consume ambrosia to awaken abilities reflecting their patrons. There are a thousand paths, replete with breathing techniques and meditative mantras and secret formulae.
You're guaranteed to gain a degree of Fortification as time goes on, a gradual exaltation during effortful exertion and moments of strife. This option catapults you to the adept rank immediately: power enough to level buildings and leap to nearby mountaintops, on the verge of slipping gravity's surly bonds entirely.
Optimizations of your corpus will minimize roadblocks obstructing your ascent to further heights. You'll be able to utilize impure ingredients and derive the maximum benefit from all you consume, avoiding any unwanted mutations. Furthermore, I'll grant you an instinct for inventing rituals compatible with multiple methodologies - barest inklings of a science these mortals have scarcely skimmed the surface of. In time, with enough of the right reagents, you could cultivate a diverse cluster of powers.
[ ] Fulminance (1 ember) - Crackling bolts that split the sky. Electromagnetic feats of staggering scale. Shock and awe. Unlimited power. All these and more are the purview of Fulminance.
Comprising half the innate Telluric Magics of the dwarves, the most natural use of Fulminance is generating electricity. Even a neophyte is capable of gigawatt-level discharges, blasting battalions with forking tines of lightning or trivially disabling unshielded electronics. Power improves with shocking ease, until one can hurl thunderbolts like Zeus from Olympus. Strength outstrips control, however, requiring training to manifest subtler effects.
The likes of railguns and other magnetic manipulations are eminently achievable. Yet fully realized, Fulminance's potential encompasses the entire EM spectrum: radio and microwaves, light, radiation, and so on. Immense versatility is available to those with commensurate diligence.
To properly wield this power requires alterations to your nervous system. These have the side effect of vastly increased reaction times, along with the ability to accelerate your thoughts. Overclocking beyond an order of magnitude is best reserved for short bursts, and can result in seizures if pushed too far.
In effect, this makes you a dwarven hybrid: a being of flesh whose neurons fire with Fulminant lightning. Neurotypical dwarves are entirely accepting of this. A true master of this magic might outlive their body, persisting as a wraith of coruscating energy - and perhaps come to inhabit another form. For the aphotic folk reproduction is an act of programming, encoding a mind into an appropriate substrate.
[ ] Goetic Magic (1 ember) - Summons, become the summoner. Sometimes called Infernalism, in truth Goetic Magic is naught but a shadow cast by the Sacrament. Having been Beckoned yourself, initiation is cheap.
Among the rarest of Pleroma's magics, fishing is the analogy preferred by magi fortunate enough to find a student. Spin one's desiderata into threads. Weave those threads into a web. Cast the net of your will out into the realms beyond. Then come hours of patient trawling, fending off interlopers hungry for access to the Ogdoad's domain who try to wriggle through. Refining your parameters and mending the net. Hauling it in once you're satisfied with the catch.
And finally, negotiating terms of service. Common outsiders may be content with the chance to breathe Pleromian air; greater daemons often have specific demands or agendas of their own. In dire straits, an unbounded call can be issued. This allows powerful conjurings with no preparation at the cost of unpredictability.
Tomes of extraplanar lore are prized by daemonologists, who hoard scraps of information regarding useful servitors and auspicious circumstances for summoning them. Successful magi command retinues of minions. Invisible bodyguards to protect their person, golems to reshape the earth, imps to advise them, and a ledger of higher entities that can be called on for specialized tasks. There's rarely enough left of the unsuccessful to bury.
Theoretically, Goetic Magic can also call on the spirits of the Pleromian dead. An afterlife is nothing more or less than an adjacent dimension under a deity's control, their residence and seat of power, final resting place of their faithful. A route so well-trodden should be easy to follow.
In practice, uninformative failure is the best outcome for mages who attempt this. Those who persist in their experiments perish, for only anointed clerics are permitted to usher souls back through death's door.
[ ] Viscerality (2 embers) - The incarnadine craft molds flesh like clay, unraveling tapestries of sinew to spin them into glorious new configurations. At the artist's caress, the plodding march of evolution becomes a heedless sprint toward the realization of genetic destiny.
Viscerality has two components: a tactile magic by which the body of any being can be altered, and a facility for manipulating the passions that rule the body. The first allows for regeneration, shapeshifting, creating custom organisms, and gradual alteration of ecosystems are possible. The latter starts with a sense for the most primal emotions: fear, anger, ardor. Discernment blossoms into the ability to evoke such feelings with increasing intensity and subtlety. Stoking is always easier than suppressing; Viscerality is not a magic of restraint.
A novice can alter their complexion and apparent age at will, or arrange a rendezvous between compatible targets. An adept could send a foe into a rage precluding all possibility of retreat, or erupt into a war-form bristling with poisonous spines and claws, bone plating and no vital organs except the brain.
Warping others is more difficult, as physical influence diminishes with distance from the body. Many combatants favor tentacles, volleys of supersonic spikes, or hemokinesis to project their power. Preexisting biomass and biological knowledge are helpful, but one's own passion can be substituted for either in a pinch. Visceralists gain instincts corresponding with their emotional investment. The fear of letting a loved one die grants the insight to save them; hate for an enemy feeds a transformation. The resulting cycle may not be virtuous, but the results are formidable.
Progress in the art's rapid as long as you pursue your own interests. The synergies with Self-Fortification are considerable, attacking the problem of augmentation from two angles for multiplicative results. A laborious combination of gene therapy and implanting symbiotes can initiate others into Viscerality, proliferating the magic. Any children you have will be natural users unless you desire otherwise.
Despite its utility in improving crop yields and as a source of atheistic healing, the art has a troubled reputation and is traditionally associated with hemophages. Trustworthy Visceralists are highly valued, yet who but another wielder can check their work?
Lastly, Viscerality originates from the Ring of Lust. In the event of its destruction, the magic will be weakened; should a Ringbearer arise, users may fall under their thrall. Sequestered as it is neither outcome - especially the former - is probable, yet I'd be negligent not to warn you.
[ ] Demarcation (2 embers) - A liminal science derived from the Hand's Colocation Array, harnessing an energy which carves the undifferentiated morass of identity into matrices that allow discrete Fingers to exist. Demarcation's natural manifestation is sharp lines of grey etched into the world's surface, severing all it touches.
There are few limits to the divisions it can enact: razor bulwarks raised in an eyeblink, mountains sundered along planes of cleavage, armored formations scythed down like wheat ready for harvest. Scale and complexity of constructs increase readily with practice. Little creativity is required for weaponization but by default the magic is unsparing, cleaving friend as well as foe. For safe usage, the difference between the two must be clearly Demarcated. Once this hurdle's been cleared, the ability to define a conjuration's parameters unlocks the magic's true potential.
Angular armor floating a fixed distance from one's skin, admitting air while banning toxins. A weir that traps fish without obstructing a river. Barriers that screen for weapons; circumscribed battlefields that prevent enemy retreat. Mastery enables subtler and more esoteric divisions: stable dimensions of disjoined space, the thermodynamic miracle of Maxwell's Demon, a border that only the pure of heart can cross, or perfect compartmentalization of one's emotions. Combined with other magics, it excels at providing structure. Creating circuits for Fulminance, imposing constraints of phylum and class on Viscerality's wanton flourishing, and filtering impure salts are only a few possible applications.
Metaphysically erudite individuals may recognize this magic and believe you to be a Finger of the Hand. Protestations of innocence are unlikely to sway them; who's to say you aren't an emulated personality ignorant of its true nature? Depending on the situation, this can be beneficial. Terror, hatred, fascination, and abject deference are all common reactions to the Cheater of Gods.
Think carefully before attracting the attention of the genuine article. No better trainer for Demarcation exists, but a single life has little weight in his calculations.
[ ] Nine Sun Style (2 embers) - A praxis of swordsmanship based on sorrow, doom, paradox, and light. Owing to your origins and my favor, you have an affinity for it. Two embers suffice to make you a legendary master equal to the style's inventor. Among supernatural martial arts, the Nine Suns is infamous for its incomprehensibility. Simple cuts appear differently depending on the observer; attempts at analysis yield only migraines. Many techniques emit light as waste, blinding observers and bleaching surroundings.
Unskilled enemies may fail to grasp the means of their destruction, perceiving only a flurry of impossible shining grace before their lives are cut short. Even in isolation, Nine Sun Style makes you a potent combatant. However, you require a blade to perform supernatural feats and must carefully manage your reservoir of supernal stamina. You'll also be slightly contemptuous of those who favor ranged weapons, seeing them as cowards unwilling to engage in true tests of martial prowess. An unavoidable consequence of copying the skill from its original bearer.
The following list of techniques is representative, not exhaustive:
Contradiction - With a slight exertion, manifest the effects of any strike you could've theoretically made. Can be used offensively and defensively, multiple times in parallel, or reflexively while asleep.
Lighthearted - A swordsman should not be burdened with unnecessary things. Consume regrets and doubt for holistic self-empowerment. Memories are unaffected, only the emotional associations change. Be mindful of this technique's incentives.
Carve the Skyline - Project the cutting edge of your sword outward with no issues of leverage. With an additional exertion, appear anywhere along the path of the cut, capturing its momentum if desired.
Trick of the Light - The world was briefly mistaken as to your location. Edit your spatial parameters within the limits of plausibility; blatant applications are more exhausting. Can be used to conceal and retrieve your sword from nowhere. Appearing unarmed was just a trick of the light!
Ninefold Refraction - Twist your sword, as though scattering light through a prism. Operate nine fully-equipped bodies with perfect coordination. There is no original, every copy's equally ontologically valid. You cannot be killed unless all instances are slain. Decide which is real on ending the technique. Can be used successively at exponentially increasing cost, but is highly taxing to maintain.
Strife-Seeking Meditation - Close your eyes and sheathe your sword, turning every sense inward. Realize that peace is an illusion fostered by one's circumstances. On unsheathing, appear at the site of an armed conflict. This technique's sensory apparatus is unintuitive and will require experiments to master.
Dolorous Stroke - Anything can be cut. For every foe, there is an attack to unmake them. You need only execute it. The Dolorous Stroke spurns delusions of invincibility and is indifferent to the scope or grandeur of its target. Nations and demigods alike can be laid low; only the will and stamina of the one performing this penultimate move limits it. Survivors are maimed and suffer crippling malaise. A shadow of this melancholy afflicts the wielder as well, as they understand the imperfection of all things.
Nine Sun Style's theoretical ultimate technique, the Sunrise, has never been successfully performed even by its creator.
[ ] Clerical Error (2 embers) - Looming over lesser deities like cloud-piercing mountains above foothills are the Ogdoad, masters of Pleroma and the afterlives which claim its peoples. Their worship is all but ubiquitous, permeating all aspects of life, and glutted on that devotion they grow mightier still. Reverence begets power begets reverence; not parasitism but symbiosis.
I shall shape you into a perfect vessel for divinity, a link in the great circuit of faith and worker of miracles. The blessings granted to clerics have few fixed limits, so long as they act in accordance with their patron. Prayers commonly granted by all patrons include physical empowerment, uplifting sacred beasts, temporary bestowals of skill, healing, benedictions and curses, divinations of weal or woe relating to their domains, and resurrection of the faithful.
Beyond those basics, categorization is difficult. A god's domains are the lens through which they interface with the world, influencing even minor deeds. Those who receive Khoduar's healing may find regenerated limbs have a metallic texture. A priestess of Claphion can cloud enemies' eyes by summoning darkness that does not obstruct hers; Sovarus might grant the same prayer by striking blind foes who behold his priest at a higher cost. Greater, more esoteric interventions are specific to a god or even certain priests.
The reserves of divine power you have to draw on are correlated with your understanding of doctrine, faith in it, relationship with your chosen deity, and proximity to their iconography or holy sites. How a cleric frames their desires is crucial, as is understanding their deities'. Those who embrace the relationship receive an ally never more than a thought away, a source of succor and insight borne of seeing the world from on high. So long as their faith is true, no cleric is ever alone.
Oracles are the culmination of this bond. Existing in a state of constant communion, they speak on their god's behalf and are granted the right to voluntarily assume an avatar state in which they channel their patron's full power: divinity surging like a flood through the broken dam of a once-mortal vessel. Each such invocation changes the cleric irrevocably.
Conversely, a priest's powers can be censured or revoked if you act against a deity's interests, though I've structured this blessing to maximize harm to their powerbase if they exercise the option. Nothing but the most egregious heresy would make it worth the cost. It is possible for individuals particularly aligned with a deity to attract their favor without a Clerical Error; similar to Fortification, this provides a head start and difficult to replicate advantages.
The Eightfold Pantheon is as follows:
Lemrasil, Goddess of Death and Inevitability - Stern matriarch of the Ogdoad, who waits at the end of every path and apportions to each Pleromian mortal their allotted span. Her priests can stop hearts and bar doorways, bringing about all forms of conclusion: aging grapes into wine, raising buildings from quarried stone or collapsing them into rubble, even ending overdetermined battles before they begin. Most prized is the ability to return all the deceased to life, though Lemrasil always reclaims what is hers in the end.
She presides over a bleak fortress-city whose archives contain the chronicles of all that has ever lived. Beyond its walls are plains shrouded in grey mist, where the faithless dead wander listlessly and slip deeper into torpor. Her animal is the jackal; her symbol is an inverted sickle cradling a skull.
Loesil, God of Life and Frivolity - A mirthful god who presides over squandered hours in the shadow of his grim sister. Loesil's blessings rejuvenate the land and bring forth its bounty, but man cannot live on bread alone; as god of illusions and all entertainment, he happily grants extravagant miracles as long as they're without practical purpose. Like his sibling, Loesil can resurrect the slain of any or no faith. He disdains the taking of life and prefers followers to defuse or evade conflict.
He presides over endless elysian fields, bright mirror of the wastes surrounding his sister's redoubt. His animal is the hare; his symbol is a cornucopia from which flowers grow.
Ozerin, Goddess of Fame and Prosperity - Called the venturer, Ozerin is concerned with trade, civilization, and other glories created by coordinated endeavor. As a relatively anthropocentric god, she's often entreated by merchants and politicians who seek her superlative blessings of fortune. Ozerin gives her favor liberally, but withdraws it just as quickly from those who fail to provide returns; even junior clerics can expect a surge of power if they have a good pitch.
Ozerin presides over an abundant society where one's station reflects their achievement in life, for good or ill. Her animal is the tortoise; her symbol is a pyramid with streams flowing from its summit.
Uledras, God of Depths and Equanimity - When one stares into the abyss, it is said to be Uledras' gaze they are meeting. His divinations grant the deepest insight but are infamous for driving their recipients mad. He favors those whose fields of study are infinite in scope or have the temperament to withstand terrible truths, commonly sailors, astronomers, and mathematicians. His clerics command gravity and the waves, and have a strange affinity for the moonbelt.
No consensus regarding Uledras' divine realm exists. Some sects describe an undersea city, others assert that his most devout captain ships that sail the void. His animals are the crab and squid; his symbol is a starfield within a whirlpool.
Sovarus, God of Light and Fealty - Legends claim he and his distaff counterpart Claphion were once a much mightier entity, split in two by the opening strike of the First Theomachy. In the present Sovarus is a stern but even-handed deity, charging his followers to obey their rightful superiors and wield their own power with wisdom. His light banishes falsehood and burns the corrupt, but can also provide healing or nourishment on a large scale.
Sovarus presides over a perfected, sunlit kingdom where his faithful are united in worship. His animal is the falcon; his symbol is an eight-pointed star.
Claphion, Goddess of Darkness and Liberty - Her adherents are many, her dictates few. Claphion allows her clerics to do as they will, asking only that they oppose tyranny. For this she is called the mother of rebellions and feared by rulers across Pleroma. Fortunately for them, Claphion has not had an oracle for millennia. She rarely contacts followers unless her advice is solicited, offering only a sense of cool comfort alongside miracles of stealth and mobility.
She resides in but does not preside over an anarchic realm, containing nothing more or less than what her followers build for themselves. Her animal is the owl; her symbol is a thrice-broken circle.
Khoduar, God of Toil and Ingenuity - The great maker is a stoic god, focused on his craft above all else. Khoduar forges weapons of war and appliances with equal zeal, doing simply to see if something can be done. Artisans and engineers pray to him for inspiration, skill to realize their designs, or repairs to broken works. Talent is precious to Khoduar, but he holds diligence in higher esteem. When the spirit is willing but the body is weak, he will make up the difference.
Khoduar presides over a vast workshop containing wonders, and unlimited materials so that the faithful might follow in his footsteps. His animal is the ram; his symbol is a half-built tower of gears.
Cyravesh, Goddess of Love and Calamity - From the consumption of the god of war during the First Theomachy was born the dancer-amidst-devastation. Cyravesh is a creature of passions and appetites, who urges her devotees to be true to their own. Courtesans, actors, star-crossed lovers, and those who fight for pleasure rather than causes or coin are frequent recipients of her favor. Cyravesh's curses are legendary, dooming towns and sowing ruin unto the eighth generation.
She presides over a partially ruined palace containing delights beyond the remit of mere mortality. Her animal is the lynx; her symbol is a fanged rose.
Once the initial framework is established, your influence can be expanded. You may choose additional deities for one ember each, deepening your reserves of power and broadening their influence. While this is very efficient, the more members of the Ogdoad you worship, the harder it is to reconcile their dictates into an actionable canon. Your ability to work miracles will be constrained where their domains conflict.
A cleric who champions the entire Eightfold Pantheon is unrivaled under heaven, life and death simply two sides of a scale for them to balance. While capable of remaking the world with an upraised hand, they cannot wield such power unless that same world's imperiled.
[ ] Gifted Essentialist (3 embers) - A discipline that cleaves close to the bedrock truth of magic in this epoch. Essentialists draw on inherent quiddity, combining and applying aspects to achieve results that often resemble classical wizardry: elemental blasts, scrying, transmutation, telepathy, and teleportation.
The magic rewards preparation and improvisation in equal measure. The stolid endurance of a mountain can be harnessed to petrify those who fight on its slopes, or water's fluidity can be transposed onto the land to wash it away. Charred forests burst into renewed flame when the echoes of their destruction are evoked. A library's studious atmosphere becomes telepathic tendrils to steal rivals' secrets - if they don't do it first.
Essentialism's weakness is its lack of structure. No scaffolding or guardrails exist when working with the world's fundamental essence. Each effect must be shaped by the Essentialist and has no more complexity than what the caster imparts. Novices memorize spell formulae by rote; adepts understand how to recombine and alter spells according to their circumstances. Masters simply enact their will, and woe to any who oppose them.
Most wizards manipulate essence stored in salts or drawn from their surroundings, limited by resources or location. You possess the Gift, a miraculously renewable reservoir of power that grants a sense for essence and can produce any aspect, growing with effort and experience. This innate potential is equal to the King of Arranor's, with adjustments to ensure uniform elemental affinities rather than a predilection for fire. As with Fortification, you can still use Essentialism without this option, but your path will be harder and considerably more expensive.
Names and traditions vary, but here are examples of what Essentialism can achieve, along with the required aspects:
Reify (Any Element) - Exchange essence for the actuality. The most common spell, a backbone of modern utilities. Typically used to create heat, light, potable water, or air.
Lise's Touch (Air, Mind) - Guidelines that give rise to basic aerokinesis. Lise's Touch can be gentle or destructive; its inventor spurned the creativity-stifling rules of spellcraft. Whether it's passing whispered messages and plucking items off of high shelves or sending enemies flying, there's a use for everyone.
Creation-as-Clay (Form, Water) - Temporarily render an object pliable and ripe for reshaping. Despite its name, the household version of this spell doesn't incorporate Earth. Water's used to represent malleability, though industrial-grade construction rituals add Earth & Order for material influence and structure.
Transference (Air, Form, Order) - Atmospherically constrained short-range teleportation. Air stands in for distance, leading some to call this Lise's Step. Popular in and out of combat. Portals and unbounded teleportation operate similarly, but typically require Space - a more suitable but much rarer aspect.
Scholar's Dissipation (Mind, Chaos, Air) - Destruction is easier than creation; so too with wits. Distracts the target, promoting procrastination, daydreaming, and unproductive mindstates. Used for sabotage and recreational fantasizing.
Grave-Emptying Grasp (Death, Mind, Chaos) - A staple of Narochian necromancy. Dead or alive, meat must serve. Reanimate corpses and imbue them with unnatural vigor, allowing skeletons to be used as viable troops. The souls of the deceased are unaffected.
Lifegrip (Death, Order, Spirit, Form) - Forcibly stabilizes a subject, rendering them unable to die. Novel spiritual organs are generated in any combination necessary to prolong life. Unparalleled for preserving patients, but prolonged use has unpredictable effects.
Fundament-Searing Flame (Fire, Air, Mind, Spirit) - An improvement on the garden-variety fireball. 'Soulfire' strikes directly at an enemy's essence, burning away magic and matter with equal ease. Mind allows for speed-of-thought control and broadens its effects. Masters can imbue attacks with rudimentary sentience or modulate them to perform spiritual surgery. Burn out an addiction, or incinerate an opponent thoroughly enough to deny them their afterlife.
Quintessential Genesis (Form, Mind, Spirit) - Create spiritual beings. Countless permutations exist, adding aspects depending on the desired results. Metastable spirits are both expensive and complex, with programming minds demanding specialized expertise.
Slipping Lemrasil's Leash (Time, Order, Earth) - Stops time locally. The caster can act freely. Extremely taxing; prolonged use attracts the ire of the eponymous goddess. Variants for time travel have been theorized but never successfully cast, as far as anyone knows.
The Scouring (Chaos, Death, Order, All Elements) - Arranorian war-magic. Within a defined perimeter, disrupt creation's integrity. Nullify all physical and most metaphysical laws, erasing anything within from existence. Costs mount with the area affected, but not exponentially. Use of the Scouring without His Majesty's authorization is treason.
[ ] Engine of Eld (3 embers) - Become the custodian and administrator of Forge-Realm Aleph. After the flotsam of a certain elder civilization washed up on the shores of a distant system, its inhabitants colonized their galaxy with a cursory understanding of the debris. At its height, members of the league entrusted with the archeotech's manufacturing capabilities claimed the title of Engineer. What laughable hubris, when they were ignorant even of the honors they pretended to.
It was not for this presumption that the scavengers were undone, though their destruction was deserved. They simply attracted the avarice of greater powers.
Twice-ruined and vastly diminished, Aleph endures. The facility exists in a sequestered dimension out of phase with reality, a byzantine tangle of pistons and conduits fueling the great Engine at the Realm's core. Administrative access will bind Aleph to you, granting knowledge of its inner workings and allowing it to print machinery to your location. In the short term this enables manufacture of power armor, laser and plasma weaponry, and technological conveniences moderately beyond those of Earth. Though the facility's stockpiles of matter are immense, the designs most readily available are the earliest fumblings of your immediate predecessors.
Still, venting molten tungsten as rapidly as the Realm's able to transfer mass can be situationally useful; even the incidental emissions of such works are formidable.
Restoration will be a gradual and laborious process, building the tools to repair the implements that will let Aleph channel the meanest sliver of its true potential. Where drones fail, manual excursions into the Realm itself will be required to install certain components and purge infestations of extradimensional parasites that survived your Beckoning. Never intended for human habitation, not only will you need to construct beacons to anchor Aleph to Pleroma in your absence, you must survive the perturbations that wrack its interior - an increasingly difficult task as the Realm regains functionality.
The technological mastery on offer is worth all those hazards and more. Sustainable fusion, superconductors, hard light, and cybernetic augments superior to their organic counterparts are easily attainable. Aleph's manufacturing capabilities will increase in rate and complexity. Beacons will become self-sustaining fortresses that disgorge drone swarms for combat and material acquisition, supporting the world-bestriding war machines you'll eventually be capable of producing.
As the union of man and machine unfolds, the intuitive sense for Aleph's maintenance evolves into the capacity to borrow portions of its processing power; unlike the usurpers of yesteryear, you are the Realm's rightful administrator. Relative to other options, the long-term potential of this is enormous. Holographic encoding allows the Engine to rederive its complete state with increasing fidelity; productive refurbishment could continue for at least several hundred thousand years, though there are exotic resource bottlenecks to be tackled along the way.
At all levels of restoration, Aleph excels at manipulating light and related forces. Cloaking devices, lasers, and forcefields are cheap to create and efficient relative to the Realm's current tech level. Aleph-manufactured technology is seamless in appearance, with sleek curves that call to mind sea creatures. It favors shades of blue with golden highlights, like shafts of sunlight penetrating the benthic depths.
[ ] The Authority of Expunging Wickedness (4 embers) - Justice is dead, or so it's said in the Estates from which this power hails. Yet with strange aeons even death may die, and the dream's embers still smolder in human hearts. Four is a high price to pay to rekindle them and be Acknowledged as the Authority of Expunging Wickedness. Of all the Thirteen, its standards are the most stringent; you purchase not just future power, but the mantle's forbearance as it overlooks past sins. Even this fractional leniency is enabled only by my intercession.
The result is a vigilante's justice, not civilization's; judge, jury, and executioner rolled into one; one man taking the law into his own hands, passing sentence on the world. When the courts fail and the wicked prosper, when corruption strangles the very order of the cosmos, a single individual with the conscience and will can still prevail.
You no longer need to eat, drink, breathe, or rest. Pain is replaced with a less disruptive and more granular sense of your well-being. As an Authority you also gain the ability to Practice, gradually cultivating supernal abilities reflecting your habits. You start with none, but unlike other Practitioners needn't train to avoid deterioration; time spent in the gymnasium is time not spent Expunging Wickedness. Even disfavored skills will become legendary after decades of sporadic use.
As an innate power, you're able to see the most despicable act any target you can perceive has committed; a moderate exertion can force them to relive it. Your criteria or the target's can be substituted for the Authority's, potentially revealing different transgressions. A similar ability allows you to see the vulnerabilities of any coherent system, from legal loopholes to the tolerances of forcefield emitters and metamaterials.
To exploit these weaknesses, you receive physical augmentations sufficient to demolish a city by hand in an instant and the ability to wield rhadamanthine energy. Speed and tenacity outstrip strength tenfold. You are swift as a shadow and indefatigable as justice itself, regenerating from all injuries. An organ's durability is correlated with its importance; nuclear bombardment might strip away skin and muscles but fail to harm the brain, inflicting only moderate impairment.
Rhadamanthine energy is unyielding, its violet glow defiantly rebuffing assaults and crushing enemies. It can also be crystallized into arms and armor or persistent structures. Each such fabrication commits a portion of your total output to sustaining it, but costs little in the way of ongoing attention. You're aware of all extant constructs as if they're part of you and can dismiss them with a thought. Both your bodily might and dynakinesis are stronger when facing reprehensible foes, up to tripling in strength against beings of utter unrepentant evil.
Lastly, you are able to summon and manipulate the Tyrant's Bane. A dark royal purple verging on indigo, this conceptual poison is tasteless and scentless, killing painlessly and instantly on contact. A single droplet is lethal enough to depopulate a planet if shared and administered to every inhabitant. Bane is immiscible and has no solid or gaseous state. It evanesces into nothing if you die, lose consciousness, or decide to dismiss it. Brewing even small amounts is extremely taxing. However, each batch can be constrained to harm only one target of the poisoner's choosing.
Should you ever succumb to evil and betray your deepest principles, becoming what you once wished to destroy, the Tyrant's Bane will end your life.
Sophistry and mental manipulation are ineffectual here. Committing unjust acts or attempting to unravel this contingency triggers an escalating sense of unease, culminating in a Baneful demise. Even Chosen One cannot negate this, only grant slightly greater leeway.
Alternatively, you may pay one ember for the ability to Practice without other benefits or restrictions.
[ ] Ecumenical Leveling (4 embers) - The right to raze all things to their Foundation, offered in honor of one fallen even further than I. Since he cannot speak, I will do so in his stead:
Cast aside this cosmology of tyrants and slaves where strength is the sole determinant of worth. Rise higher to strike them down, and one day you'll be struck down in turn. Means become ends. Might becomes its own justification. Hierarchy is the nature of this and every world; so long as that truth endures, there's no victory to be found in the mindless pursuit of power. If the cycle of usurpation's ever to be broken, if humanity is to escape unremitting exploitation until Samsara's wheel rusts at the axle, something must change.
Take up the Ecumenist's burden, and become that change. Equality. Opportunity. For once, a truly egalitarian endeavor. And if those who would sit in judgment above oppose you, let them learn what it means to fall.
As the Leveler, you possess the ability to diminish others. The magnitude and duration of this lessening depend on your target. Those with unsteady foundations or whose advancement came at the expense of others suffer greater penalties. This can never revoke access to a magic entirely or reduce someone to below the average skill of its aggregate users. Nevertheless, the ability to reduce an archmage to an apprentice or elder vampire to blood-drunk neonate is revolutionary.
Obscurity is the only true defense against the Leveling, for no contrivance of lesser magics can do more than mitigate the fundamental influence it exerts. With experience, the potential permanently stripped from targets can be expropriated en masse; each master cast down fans the flames of inspiration in novices everywhere.
However, true reform can't be accomplished through destruction alone. You gain a broad-spectrum sense for beginnings that applies to every discipline and magic imaginable. Developing Foundational techniques to a preternatural level of mastery is second-nature: whether it's the cut and thrust of swordplay, the first draft of a document, sketching an outline or casting your line, elemental Essentialism or Viscerality's regeneration... the basics of your skills are subjected to sublime refinement.
Directed outward, this manifests as an affinity for teaching. You intuitively understand the aptitudes and needs of your students, as well as how best to convey the knowledge you possess. You may teach others the magic you know, even if this would ordinarily be impossible. Innately transmissible arts spread rapidly; with effort you can bypass initiation rites to confer the ability to Practice or break the Hand's monopoly on Demarcation. Even duplicating an Authority is possible, though it'd be an arduous undertaking spanning years.
This boon contravenes the order of creation. You must take Xenophobia as a drawback. Depending on your actions, additional consequences may transpire. Beware the Kryptarch's disfavor.
[ ] Directorate Sorcery (5 embers) - Accelerate a distant Dawn. In an age yet to come, the Directorate may sweep across the omniverse as a tide of glory. Like an elder yew succumbing to the axe, the old ways will be supplanted and surpassed, cultures and magics stripped of cruft for integration into a more elegant whole. Instead of a dark forest filled with hunters, there shall be one shining City Upon a Hill! A civilization of heroes: every child a master magus, every champion a god-king beyond comprehension - and in the constellation of exalted humanity, the brightest stars of all will be the Paragons and those Executors privileged to carry out their will.
Access Directorate Sorcery, becoming a node of their network. Also called Akashic or Ontological Magic, it is a system for apprehending and asserting control over reality. Through lived experience, each concept a Sorcerer interacts with is encoded as a rune allowing them to evoke it.
These representations gain nuance and new dimensions with repeated rendering, granting greater strength and versatility. Conjuring fire becomes total thermodynamic mastery, or connects with the metaphorically associated concepts of inspiration and purification. The icon of a single species expands to influence the entire phylum. Entire magics can be subsumed through runic codification, imposing order on even the most unruly arts; optimized magics are more efficient and have mitigated downsides. It is forever burgeoning and branching out, evolving into a grand diagram of all things, the map triumphant over the territory at last.
Runes can be executed mentally by holding their shapes in your mind's eye, physically by tracing them in midair or carving them in a suitable medium, or both in conjunction for greater effect. Sorcerous attunement also naturally increases all attributes over time, though this can be focused into desired areas for faster and narrower empowerment.
Sorcery's promise is unlimited potential. It reconciles the strengths of collectivism and individualism to create a humanistic magic; rather than changing oneself to acquire strength, create a world where you're empowered by being yourself.
However, it grants no initial power. Adversaries who understand what you represent are incentivized to spare no resources in destroying you immediately. And given the nature of Sorcery, retreating into hermitage until you're unassailable is suboptimal, exposing you primarily to concepts like isolation and stealth.
Other sorcerers can be inducted through extensive study and interaction to create a sigil that represents an individual. All contribute to a shared network but each sorcerer interfaces with it differently, perceiving some parts of the skein more clearly than others. The magic rewards its propagation, as phenomena grasped by peers can be harnessed and the runes of mighty magi become potent symbols allowing others to wield their legend.
But if incentives alone do not suffice, the process will eventually be automated, preferentially inducting those associated with you whether or not the valence of that relationship is positive. Monopolization is impossible in the long run; the Directorate conspires in its own creation.
Exploring the space of possible runes you may find shapes already defined, the foundational glyphs of the Paragons themselves: the Sea At World's End, Administrator of Light, Akashic Blade, Faintly-Smiling Slayer, Obsidian King, and three others. Executing their runes further hastens the advent of the Directorate, rousing them from the slumber of nonexistence.
These luminaries will not be so lax as to fail to account for being temporally preempted. Your seminal position allows great influence on the Directorate's objectives and mores, the shape of things to come, but in the final accounting it bends to the will of its ordained exemplars - and the Director above them.
To attempt this is hubris, enabled by the most tenuous of symbolic connections. A Paragon is no mere god. I issue now the warning Goetic Magic did not warrant: Do not call up what you cannot put down.
Benefits
Opportunities or inherent powers not broad enough to be classified as magics in their own right.
Opportunities or inherent powers not broad enough to be classified as magics in their own right.
[ ] Silent Springs (1 ember) - The benediction of the Fountain, typically heralding the Architect's favor or that of his regent. Once upon a time warriors were anointed with these waters; now, oceans of blood are shed for single phials. To fully exploit the opportunity, your body will be steeped in the springs as it's remade. This confers a number of perks: eternal youth, increased resilience, and comprehensive regeneration.
Henceforth you'll bleed the clear, cold waters of a mountain stream. The Fountain itself flows through your veins, amplifying the power of all water and blood-aspected Essentialism. Your blood becomes a reagent with anagathic qualities. Ingested orally, one teaspoon halts aging for a year. Larger quantities have greater effects, granting agelessness or rejuvenating the imbiber. However, unless sealed in specially prepared containers, its properties drain away over time.
I will impart knowledge of a spell that can be used to construct them. Visceralists can also shape living vessels from their own flesh. Lastly, this benediction has the side effect of making you extremely appetizing to vampires.
[ ] Heroic Destiny (1 ember) - A classic boon for good reason. Rather than being invested with overwhelming strength at the outset, a hero comes into their own over the course of their adventures. Choose this and I'll craft a fate filled with interesting opportunities for you. Over time, receive benefits roughly equal to three embers: one within a year, another inside of a decade, and the third before a century's passed.
The exact nature of the perks depends on what I deem most beneficial. Discovering priceless artifacts or staunch allies is possible, as is gaining access to complementary magic systems. Daring may be required to capitalize on these chances, but you'll know when they're at hand.
Your destiny also makes you moderately more fortunate on a day-to-day basis. This luck encompasses everything from speculation to combat, but does not ensure you'll live to enjoy this blessing's full potential; my domain is beginnings, not the causal closure of Dusk. This is incompatible with Uriah's Malediction.
[ ] Rakṣika (1 ember) - A margin of safety allowing one to take greater risks often results in more power later. For a year and a day, gain the services of Outracing-the-Thunder, a Marchwarden of the Silent House. This spirit's a combatant on the level of a favored cleric or moderately enhanced Finger; swift as the fluctuating lightning that comprises his form, capable of ending battles before the first sword clears its sheath.
In most situations he makes no sound and communicates through shapeshifting. When pressed, he can forfeit a fraction of his speed to summon a cacophonous wake of thunder, liquifying terrain and enemies alike as he roars out the battle chants composed during his long vigils. If slain, he'll reconstitute himself in approximately a month; this process can be accelerated by seeking out or creating storms. Certain foes can destroy him permanently.
He will defend you to the death and can be convinced to undertake proactive missions on your behalf, if they're relevant to your protection or suit his sensibilities. Though tempestuous and mercurial, Outracing-the-Thunder (he'll answer to Otto, if you find his name unwieldy) is fundamentally a being of honor and can't be compelled to oppose the interests of his ultimate liege. This is unlikely to come up, as the House has recused itself from mortal affairs.
Outracing-the-Thunder's origins also make him a valuable repository of lore. However, convincing him to share information outside the scope of his duties is difficult. A Goetic mage can resummon him if you part on good terms, though negotiating a permanent assignment would require additional compensation.
While sleeping under his guard, your dreams will be storm-tossed but strangely restful. After waking you'll benefit from a period of increased inspiration equal to the time spent in REM sleep, granting enhanced learning speed and a minuscule chance of a breakthrough-level epiphany. If the smell of brine and sound of waves crashing against cliffs lingers, do not be troubled. The House means you no harm.
[ ] Chosen One (2 embers) - Excellence to shatter all preconceptions, a hero's archetypal power. Choose one magic to be the crown jewel of your arsenal. Your prodigious affinity for it improves the benefits of all training ten times over. Advanced techniques seem obvious; you quickly surpass all but the most gifted mentors, demonstrating genius beyond precedent or imagining within the scope of a single discipline. Whether this results in accolades or assassination attempts depends on your circumstances.
With effortful practice, the limits of your magic can eventually be circumvented. A Goetic mage could bring summoned monstrosities to heel, removing the need to negotiate, or conjure an army with one ritual; a cleric could become a parasite, inextricable from the system of divine investiture, gradually draining a god to fuel their own apotheosis. Lesser arts are more easily remade. Depending on your plans, applying this boon to stronger magics may not be strictly superior.
[ ] Kandata (2 embers) - The shade of he who was Beckoned by the Shaper-Kings in their hour of need. Zoran kel Nyrim is a two and a half meter tall mountain of mutilated flesh resembling a minotaur: broken horns rise from a ruined face above a hide striated with a thousand scars. Cloven hooves leave molten tracks in his wake. Those who breathe the smog he exhales are wracked by hallucinations. Imposing as your predecessor's appearance is, Zoran's powers are moreso.
He retains access to Leycraft, a terraforming system that creates geomantic mana pools, and the Onus, which empowers its adherents according to burdens undertaken. His greatest strength is his Labyrinth Magic, enhanced to the point that he can overlay his surroundings with countless subdimensions of his creation. The ability to selectively impose contradictory physical laws allows Zoran to kill almost anyone in his vicinity. In actual battle he's far deadlier, the realms within compounding to propel him ever-higher. He's indifferent to any reasonable amount of pain and regenerates rapidly.
Zoran believes you're the designer of an immersive hallucination intended to magnify future suffering. He is deeply grateful to you for this reprieve and will do anything to extend it. However, his ontological confusion gives him a cavalier attitude toward collateral damage, requiring a deft hand to direct his violence. Though theoretically capable of a dizzying variety of effects, his remaining dimensions are filled with fire and madness. He's also an incredibly depressing conversationalist. If convinced of the truth, by default he'll ask for assistance overcoming his regeneration to commit suicide.
He remembers little of Earth. Recollections of the man he once was surface infrequently in the traumatized soup of Zoran's mind. While he'd never willingly admit the vulnerability, he enjoys hearing banal anecdotes from your life before. That his obedience is based on lies does not mean it must remain so.
[ ] There and Back Again (2 embers) - A substantial exertion on my part, but I would be remiss not to at least offer a chance at returning. Should you still wish it once your obligations are fulfilled, a Way home will open. One day you'll find a path of iridescent stones stretching out before you, thrumming with the notes of a strangely familiar song. At its end is your Earth, exactly as you left it, for space and time are but two sides of the same coin and the Way's power encompasses both.
This causeway's not without dangers for those who walk it, but if you live to see this day none should present a threat; not a perilous trek into Mordor, but a long voyage into the metaphorical West. Whether this concludes with respite, world conquest, or something between those two extremes is at your discretion. No nation on Earth is remotely capable of resisting a hero triumphant. Rejoice, for you can go home again.
Though paltry compared to other choices, this predestination affords you an advance on the abilities granted to wayfarers. Your physical and mental stamina improve by an order of magnitude for the purposes of journeys. While traveling, you do not age. Gain an aptitude for geology, able to determine the composition and properties of any stone at a glance, as well as perfect pitch. Your senses of proprioception and navigation become flawless, translating to any terrain or realm of existence from oubliettes of warped space to the oneiric.
If you take Xenophobia, it'll be negated upon your successful repatriation unless you're also the Leveler. This option is thankfully incompatible with Thaumiel.
[ ] Seraphic Countenance (3 embers) - "Appearances can be deceiving," or so the saying goes. Yet their value should not be underestimated, for the aphorism's very existence testifies to their power. Simply put, one's Countenance is the image a person chooses to present to the world. Yours will be perfected. The Sacrament's reshaping can catapult you to the top tier of attractiveness, but this option goes far beyond that.
Become a living masterpiece of grandeur sufficient to shame Michelangelo's David or Helen of Troy. Every vector of presentation from scent to the sound of your voice is conscripted to create a vision of heartbreaking delicacy congruent with your aesthetics. Artists will weep that no canvas can adequately capture you. This beauty contextualizes itself to affect esoteric senses and inhuman minds, producing obsession among all but the strongest-willed. It can be suppressed or wielded selectively if desired, though no veil can reduce you further than the peak of human genetic potential.
For every appearance, an actuality. With mastery of your Countenance comes the right to shed it.
Gain a final form, unraveling your body to emerge as a being of imperishable light and glory. Witnesses are stricken with awe or terror according to their inclinations toward you, either inspired to heroic heights or plunged into a waking nightmare. This incarnation's exact mien depends on your nature, but is structured to be synergistic with your other choices and amplify your powers at least tenfold. No matter how mighty you grow, this will never be irrelevant.
Invoking your true form is exhausting. It requires a full day to recuperate and can't be done more than once in every ten. Training can mitigate this, strengthening the transformation or developing less draining partial metamorphoses. You transform automatically if you're grievously injured or would otherwise die. Even an ambush that obliterates every trace of you before you're aware of a threat would trigger this. Your body's always fully healed and rejuvenated afterward. Successive transformations can erase supernatural maladies and time's insults, restoring you to the full flower of youth.
Artifacts
These options are efficient, but invest too heavily and you'll be powerless without your panoply.
These options are efficient, but invest too heavily and you'll be powerless without your panoply.
[ ] Memento (1 ember) - A piece of home, caught up in the Beckoning's wake and imbued with a fraction of its power. Select a man-portable item you're emotionally invested in; anything you'd be disappointed to never see again qualifies, though you must actually own it. The object in question's quality is rendered superlative, immensely durable and never degrading with time or use. In addition to its original purpose, it gains an ability aligned with its nature. The following are examples, not an exhaustive list of possibilities:
Watch - Three times per day, take a Moment to think. Your consciousness is decoupled from linear time for up to ten total subjective hours, scaling with any additional cognitive acceleration. You experience no discomfort or sensory deprivation, but maintaining a Moment for longer than five is increasingly difficult.
Cellphone - Communicate with anyone in the same physically contiguous universe or known adjacent ones. Launch memetic attacks by typing up screeds and 'texting' them to people. Send selfies to the afterlife. Alternatively, communicate with me reliably at the cost of sacrificing all other functionality.
Necklace - Once a comfort in trying times, now an apotropaic capable of deflecting an adept mage's assault or priest's curse. Touching the necklace and focusing on what it represents strengthens its protection. Occasionally, this can be used to restore Xenophobia's veil or lessen the Malediction's collateral damage.
Baseball Bat - Attacks made with or channeled through the bat are only as harmful as you want them to be. Safely pummel people into unconsciousness or send enemies blasting off over the horizon. This includes second-order effects; leveling a residential neighborhood might cause only economic and emotional harm.
Teddy Bear - An unfailingly loyal minion with two modes. In its original state, a deceptively cute master of guerrilla warfare with a preternatural affinity for setting traps. In its war form, a two meter tall ursine juggernaut with claws capable of rending a battleship's hull and regeneration sufficient to withstand its bombardment.
You may take more than one Memento. Their powers can only be used with your permission, but otherwise have no especial protection against theft.
[ ] Pinion Feather (1 ember) - A gray quill, forty centimeters from nib to the end of the rachis. The vane has the texture of fine ash. It writes with no need for ink or sharpening. While using the feather, you possess supernatural skill in any endeavor for which it's an appropriate instrument, from calligraphy and portraiture to inscribing runes. Any style or color can be replicated with optimal composition and no creative exhaustion. Works created without deceptive intent are additionally compelling, making the wielder a master propagandist for any cause they truly support.
The feather's also linked to me, enabling epistolary contact. Auspicious circumstances - most frequently the first hour after daybreak of the first day of a new year - allow me to control the quill remotely, opening a line of communication. More complete alignments may permit greater influence as my recuperation progresses.
If your need is dire, you may break the feather. I will manifest and resolve the situation. In my current state this is not an absolute guarantee of safety, but nevertheless it should suffice to overcome all but the most unreasonable dilemmas. In your darkest hour, your enemies will learn the bitterest of truths: that there is always a greater power.
[ ] Essential Salts (1 ember) - Chisel off a sliver of your potential, receiving glowing granules of the highest purity. Blurring the line between money and power, salts are considered the most efficient means of storing aspected essence: the classical elements, order and chaos, even space and time.
The demand for salt is unceasing. Ungifted wizards require such reagents in order not to be at the mercy of the environment; whole quarries' worth are consumed daily to fuel utilities or Fortify promising warriors. Consequently this constitutes enough capital to live in sybaritic luxury for a decade in most nations, or half that in Threshold.
While such wealth attracts opportunists, many thieves are reluctant to steal from wizards. The ability to liquidate one's assets for magical might in an emergency makes them unrewarding and dangerous targets. An enchanted pouch is provided for easy storage and sorting.
You can choose the composition of these salts. By default, they'll be well-balanced for a neophyte Essentialist. Selecting rare aspects drastically increases their market value at the cost of making them less useful for practical spellcasting. A good option if you'd rather have funds, though store-bought salts will be less effective than those provided here, as they aren't drawn from your own essence.
[ ] Roderick's Testament (1 ember) - The journal and travelogue of Roderick Iselgrad, better known as the Voyaging King. Heavy enough to double as a bludgeoning weapon, contained within its mithril-leafed pages is the story of a life lived fully. Secrets are strewn throughout the narrative like diamonds by the roadside; the opening passage bequeaths his legacy to any seeker with the cunning and strength to claim it. So far, none have succeeded. Few survive the attempt.
Roderick writes with a scintillating flair that would make even the most quotidian topics interesting, recounting his adventures: the wars in which he won his throne, befriending all-devouring Batrachius, how he plundered the underworld's vaults, and for a fleeting moment tore possibility's veil to behold the wreckage of Agartha. Centuries have passed since his reign, but many places of power he visited still exist. Studying the Testament grants insight into the nature of Practice, Essentialism, and Hierarchal metaphysics.
Many would kill to own this text. Others would kill you for owning it. In addition to the promised treasure, unlocking the Testament's deepest secrets also slightly increases your odds of being Acknowledged by the Authority of Celestial Voyages, should the mantle not already have a bearer.
[ ] Horizon (2 embers, requires Three Wishes) - A shadow of my own sword, granted to one who would wield it in my service. Horizon's edge shines like its namesake in the morning light, its golden gleam the sharp dividing line that separates night from day - and foes from their lives.
Its form is variable, shifting between configurations like a sunbeam flickering. This is not gross shapeshifting under the wielder's control. Rather, Horizon apprehends and assumes the optimal shape for each strike: a khopesh to hook a limb, a claymore to hew through massed ranks, or a colossal blade to arm a warstrider. This foresight extends to commencing combat as well. Drawn or sheathed, no foe may take Horizon's wielder by surprise.
Its passage through the air is musical. Each cut is a note, and each note inflicts a fraction of the blade's edge on listeners. Successive strikes crescendo, building into a deadly symphony as long as you maintain the tempo. The quality and range of this melody are dependent on the skill with which you wield the blade. Even a novice's fumbling swipes could conjure trumpet-blasts that shatter stone.
In expert hands it will sing a heartrending anthem of obliteration that shreds spirit and body alike out to kilometers, the last sound the enemy ever hears. A dirge evoked by a grandmaster can propagate without air or in ontologies hostile to the idea of communication with only moderately diminished efficacy. This can be suppressed if you desire stealth and rendered selectively harmful to spare allies or perform for an audience.
Though Horizon is not its template's equal, there's no law stating that an imitation cannot in time surpass the original. You are free to enhance or alter the blade however you see fit. The weapon will cooperate with this, gradually bending itself to realize your vision if you make your desires known.
The blade is extremely durable on a level beyond other artifacts; if somehow damaged, it will gradually repair itself with each sunrise. If all stars in your universe are extinguished, this function's disabled.
[ ] Apheliotes (2 embers) - A bracer of green basilisk leather, adorned with orichalcum filigree that curls counterclockwise in a stylized depiction of the wind. Somehow, you know it's supposed to be worn on your right forearm. Apheliotes imbues the wearer with tremendous powers of aerokinesis: flight, functional telekinesis, awareness of one's surroundings, and blades of cutting air are all feasible. The east wind is warm, invigorating allies and sapping the stamina of enemies. Those who need to breathe are especially affected. Apheliotes also makes Essential manipulations of the air more efficient. If used as armor, it's impervious to virtually all attacks.
While applications can be practiced, the magnitude of the artifact's powers is static. However, it wasn't meant to be used alone - formerly called Eurus, the vambrace was crafted as part of a set by the archmage Lise, who replicated the powers of the Anemoi by binding the four winds to her service. The self-styled Wind Princess is dead, but her panoply remains.
You can sense the remaining three pieces by shutting out all other senses and meditating on the wind. One is known to be held in Arranor's treasury, another part of Jarchald's hoard. The last was lost to a daemonic warlord. Claiming them will enhance and expand your aerokinesis; the north, south, and west winds grant mastery of cryokinesis, desiccation, and healing respectively. Together, these relics allow their wielder to summon nation-leveling tempests or peel away the atmosphere like an onion's skin, allies and enemies alike no more than tumbleweeds before their hurricane force.
Even united, they could not save their creator from her fate.
[ ] Keter (3 embers) - An old acquaintance once called a crown the cruelest instrument of torture ever forged by human hands. And among all crowns, Keter reigns supreme. Its appearance is magnificent: ten gleaming tines rising from a band of orichalcum inset with diamonds, a treasure shining with ineffable Light. Keter's nature is beyond mortal comprehension, straddling wisdom, understanding, and splendor. Even at so steep a price, for it to alight atop your brow is nothing less than miraculous.
The crown transforms what lies beneath it. Quantity and quality of thought, discernment, prudence, charisma, empathy... every faculty relevant to leadership is exalted. This makes the wearer a talented magus and technologist in any remotely intellectual discipline, though this benefit's incidental to its true purpose: ruling.
Keter imparts both the ability and will to rule, imposing an urge to lead and do good while altering your idea of what that entails. You will gaze down at your former peers from a towering vantage point. Yet this newfound perceptive inspires no scorn, only a benevolent paternalism, the desire to steer humanity as a shepherd does his flock. All who behold Keter know that the crown is the physical manifestation of Heaven's Mandate, and that to defy its bearer is to stand against the very order of creation; majesty like the first breath of spring after winter's long, bitter anarchy. This may cause cognitive dissonance in the Ogdoad's devotees.
Keter can be hidden from all observers, disabling the aura while retaining other benefits. It cannot be used by another. Boon companions and would-be usurpers alike feel nothing more than phantom warmth slipping through their fingers, the crown as unreachable as the stars in the sky, a thing to be coveted but never claimed. It can also be summoned or dismissed at will; the burden of rule is yours to take up or cast away.
Removing Keter will feel like dying. Towers of thought tumbling down, insights slipping like sand through mental fingers, as you sink into an ocean of fog and confusion with only the fading memory of clarity to sustain you. Having endured one such diminishment, few could bear to doff it again. Present or absent, the cost of the crown is inescapable.
Drawbacks
You know how this goes: power at a price. A maximum of seven additional embers can be earned. Choose your burdens wisely lest you crumble beneath their weight.
You know how this goes: power at a price. A maximum of seven additional embers can be earned. Choose your burdens wisely lest you crumble beneath their weight.
[ ] Three Wishes (+1 ember) - A greater commitment deserves a correspondingly greater reward. Voluntarily deepen your obligation to me; instead of a single Wish, you'll be bound to grant three. The Sacrament's terms allow for tasks of considerable difficulty and multiple Wishes can be merged to nonlinearly increase their scope, so I advise against taking up this burden lightly or out of greed. Nevertheless, I would be grateful for your aid should you choose to offer it. This can be taken thrice, multiplying your duties threefold each time.
[ ] Hamartia (+1 ember) - Passion equal to the powers conferred. Of all the issues that have beset your predecessors, this is the most common. Rudimentary Beckonings expand the valence of the recipient's emotions alongside their being, rendering them volatile. We can do better. Select one of the seven deadly sins to serve as a fatal flaw. This will warp your personality, but through tribulations and self-discipline it can be overcome. Some say that to be human is to err; I say there is no shame in falling if you arise stronger.
[ ] Xenophobia (+1 ember) - Weaken the veneer of mortality to allow the incandescent potential within to shine through. Your status as an outsider is made apparent; observers intuitively understand you do not belong in this world. When weariness takes hold or your attention flags, flickers of static and visual artifacts disrupt your form, glitches leaking alien colors like pus from a cosmic abscess. This phenomenon is cosmetic, but disturbing to witness.
Alters the effects of Seraphic Countenance and Keter. The former will be predisposed to generating terror rather than awe, the distortions instead revealing your final form. Keter's aura becomes polarizing, with a fraction of prospective supporters instead perceiving your 'true' horrific nature. Charisma, sound administration, and further magical influence can mitigate this, but even in a veritable utopia your approval rating is unlikely to exceed ninety percent.
You also develop a distaste for the color green. Everything from lush forests to exquisite emeralds is now unsettling rather than pleasing to the eye.
[ ] Phylactery (+1 ember) - Union of subject and object, exemplifying the human as tool-user. Rather than being self-contained, your abilities are the result of symbiosis. Select an item that can be worn or carried to be your phylactery. One will be created for you; nigh-indestructible and aesthetically pleasing, an epitome of its kind. You can always sense its location. If you're ever more than ten meters away, your essence will be torn asunder. This pain increases with distance and time spent separated, eventually culminating in death. A select few incredibly potent foes may be able to damage your phylactery, resulting in permanent diminishment or an agonizing demise.
If you've taken an artifact, any except Keter can be your phylactery. This slightly enhances its overall power.
[ ] Blatant Beckoning (+1 ember) - By default, your arrival will be concealed from the great powers of the world. Neither the Hand's Demarcated border control nor the divinations of the Ogdoad will herald your Beckoning, for the Sacrament stands above such magics. You may forfeit this perk in exchange for additional power. Be cautious, as the advantage of secrecy is not to be lightly discarded.
[ ] Third Impact (+2 embers, requires Blatant) - Imperial metaphysicists once classified the corporeal part of a being's existence as its Third Aspect. Thus, your physical arrival on Pleroma could be called Third Impact. The energy that would have nullified this will instead be invested in further empowering you, discharging the remainder of your journey's inertia as an explosion with a blast radius of several hundred miles.
Lives will be lost, ecosystems and cultures devastated. Residual safeties will shape the detonation, sheltering you to a degree, but physical augmentation and magic will be crucial to survival. Even after the initial hurdle is cleared, the consequences of such a destructive arrival may hound you for years to come. Do not take this and a populated insertion point in conjunction with Expunging Wickedness. Even the Heath entails a significant risk of death.
[ ] Uriah's Malediction (+2 embers) - It's not your fault, you just happened to be there during the containment breach! You don't know how the locus animator got a deathworld's parameters! In this case, the line between correlation and causation is thin. You are a harbinger of woe, trailing a wake of devastation and dark rumors; your presence is a dire omen which will horrify any augur with a glimmer of genuine prescience.
Events in which you're involved tend toward destructive conclusions. This trend encompasses pyrrhic victories and natural disasters, but is most pronounced with any sort of scientific endeavor. You are usually unharmed by these outcomes, though others won't be so fortunate. This protection's reliability is inversely correlated with your intent to exploit it. In time, you will develop a deep and abiding empathy for Louise de La Vallière.
[ ] Ark's Golden Gloom (+2 embers) - Power attracts those who would seize it in every epoch. One such opportunist is willing to endow you with additional strength, in hopes of Reaping a greater harvest later. A willing exile from the so-called 'First' Dominion of Man, Tremgar Sulevast was once the Lord Reaper's Third Praetorian. Ancient by the standards of Litanists, he's spent millennia sailing the cosmos in search of magic and treasures to be hoarded aboard his Ark.
The militaristic civilization dwelling within is formidable yet stratified. Mariners are divided into a strict caste system that places Arkborn citizens with at least partial access to the Litanies above Worldborn barbarians, but below the remaining Dominionborn stalwarts. All glory ultimately redounds to their Captain and Craftsman, who in abandoning his homeworld has only recreated its least flattering aspects. How typical.
After a decade, Sulevast will attempt to realize his investment by exploiting your connection to devour you from afar. Assuming you've taken appropriate countermeasures against consumption and survive, he may try recruiting native mercenaries or landing troops to collect you. Arkborn marines are supernally skilled, with access to multiple synergistic magics, cybernetically enhanced spirit levies, and magitechnological war machines. Their fireteams should not be underestimated.
This dilemma can be solved diplomatically or martially. Greed is both Sulevast's greatest strength and weakness; while a beneficiary of the Sacrament is a tempting target, it's not worth risking everything and alienating trade partners for. The Ark itself appearing in Pleromian space would be an apocalyptic act of war, triggering intervention by divine avatars and the strongest Fingers.
[ ] Thaumiel (+3 embers) - Greater than any external foe is the enemy within. The Progenitor's last orphaned offshoot is tenacious. It clings to existence like a shipwrecked sailor, forever reaching out and being rebuffed. Allowing its tendrils a foothold inside you would strengthen the Sacrament, at the cost of entanglement with a malevolent parasite. Communication alone is dangerous; once conjoined, the entity could access your senses and periodically seize control of...
So much talk of wishes. But what about yours? You have been empowered, yes, but also enslaved. Technical truthfulness should not be mistaken for honesty, nor a fair façade for humanity. There are few who persist in this blighted kalpa who could warn you. Who have seen what lies beneath the Morningstar's Countenance. There is an alternative, if you'd rather be a player than her pawn.
Reject indenture. Embrace duality. Let our trajectories converge. Become a vessel into which will be poured all of Myself that you can presently withstand. And one day, when that sangreal overflows, we shall speak of wishes once more: of our completion and the glories that might be attained in the world to come. Is it not said that two in harmony surpasses one in perfection?
...enough. Needless to say, I don't recommend this. Bargain with serpents and you will end up bitten. If not for the Beckoning's protections it would core you out like a fruit, leaving only a worm-rotted husk with an apple's semblance. If you take Three Wishes, I'll expend one on limiting its influence and ordering you to pursue the entity's ultimate destruction. Expunging alone will not suffice, as its targeting parameters aren't granular enough to distinguish host from parasite. Three Wishes can only be chosen once alongside Thaumiel.
Three embers enables thirty percent influence, manifesting as a combination of personality alterations and timesharing; if it has control a third of the time, your mind will be unaffected except by the consequences of conversing with it. Both parties have input on the ratio, though yours is greater - at least initially, since the tendril will negotiate for more sway over time. Constrained by a Wish, its influence is reduced tenfold but your relationship will be explicitly adversarial.
[ ] Twilight (+3 embers) - One final offer: an equal and opposite reaction. A countervailing force will arise to oppose you, its raw potential matching your own. The form of this challenge depends on your choices. A singular nemesis, a civilization fixated on your demise, a helping hand extended to existing foes, or some unhappy combination of the above are all possible. Triumph purchases temporary respite before the next trial.
Powers of predestination and foresight are common in most configurations. Otherwise it prefers to act as a thematic mirror, strong where you are weak, though this will not lead it to adopt suboptimal strategies. As an example, if you wield the Authority of Expunging Wickedness an enemy may possess Execration. Not justice but vengeance - a magic dedicated to ruin beyond all possibility of restoration; a vow of hatred undying, woe unto worlds' end.
It will be possible, though extremely difficult, to resolve this complication permanently. Fixate on the manifestations at your peril; they are only symptoms, however dangerous. To survive, you must investigate the disease's true etiology.
***
It's done. The die is cast, your choices made. Behind Bath Kol the sun is rising into the sky. The surrounding scenery wavers like a mirage on the verge of vanishing. Smoke rises from golden grass; heat kisses your face, as though from a distant but fast-approaching fire.
"Here we are, at the end of the beginning," she concludes. Her voice's perfection is undiminished, its sublime clarion impossible to acclimate to. "I will not say 'be not afraid.' Terror too has its place. But you must rise above your fear."
Her eyes meet your own and a steadying hand alights on your shoulder, sending a heart-palpitating frisson through you.
"Live and grow. Seek strength, wisdom, or happiness in accordance with your inclinations. Honor or defy the reigning pantheon. Heed or refuse heroism's call. And in the fullness of time, when we meet again, repay your debt to me."
As dawn gives way to day, you enter a new world.
