Appended/Expanded Keyword: Magnitude
Charms with the Magnitude Keyword eschew concrete 'dimensions' or borders in favor of the amount of mortal Extras it can support, as per Mass Unit rules. So a Magnitude 3 Charm can only affect or support a Magnitude 3 unit or lesser amount of people.
New Keyword: Authority
Charms with this keyword can be invoked on something or someone Loyal to the Solar, defined as having an intimacy that describes the relationship between leader or owner. For exampe, a character always has Authority over the tools and property she owns and works directly. Alternatively, the Solar has appropriate authority over her employees or sworn retainers and their properties. This Keyword allows Charms to work on 'loyal subjects' and their holdings like farms, businesses or other courts.
New Keyword: Procedure
Charms with this keyword as part of their use automatically teach the Solar a thaumaturgical procedure that can in turn be conveyed to other characters as recorded information. If the Charm does not specify, the procedure is a '0th degree' ritual and functions accordingly. Some procedures can be invalidated, such as a songline that requires a specific landmark or terrain feature. In those cases, any experience spent on such a procedure is refunded once the character realizes her information is out of date.
As long as the procedure is performed faithfully, the effect attached to the ritual persists indefinitely where applicable.
God-King's Harvest Eye
Cost: 1m, Minimums: Survival 2, Essence 2
Type: Simple (Dramatic Action)
Keywords: Magnitude [Essence]
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites: None
The genius of the Lawgiver touches all walks of life, even that of the humble farmer, showing unsurpassed skill in all things.
Using this Charm, the Solar can spend one mote to instantly assess the quality of a given property or acerage with an effective Magnitude of [Essence]. She immediately identifies if the land is healthy and suitable for cultivation or livestock, develops a rough list of tasks needed to prepare it for agriculture, and any immediate events or concerns, or anything that happened in the last ten years that might affect growth positively or negatively. Events include anything immediately impactful such as a beligerent god, a poisoned well or uncapped demesne, a seasonal plague on wheat, a battle in the distant past, or a soured Dragon Line nearby.
Activating this Charm again after a recently occured event automatically recalculates the schedule, and will inform the Solar if their crop cannot be saved without further magic. Additionally, on land the Solar or a loyal character owns, she intuitively knows the exact time to breed livestock, plant or harvest crops. She can with a glance, determine if a field needs to lie fallow, or the specific nutritional and envirionmental requirements of a given crop or herd.
Grain-and-Foal Blessing Scheme
Cost: 10m, Minimums: Survival 3, Essence 2
Type: Simple (Dramatic Action)
Keywords: Authorirty, Magnitude [Essence]
Duration: One Season
Prerequisites: None
The Solar performs a five-hour dramatic action in which they carefully channel their Essence into cropland, or an icon of their primary livestock animal, either with a magnitude no greater than their Permanent [Essence]. This charm reduces external penalties on agricultural actions by an amount equal to their permanent Essence. In narrative terms, this Charm almost guarantees such endeavors are successful unless contested, and increase the wealth and health of the local region.
This Charm only influences the health and wellness of her crops or livestock- arranging for the actual harvest or fashioning something from the take are the domains of Bureaucracy and Craft, respectively. But should the circumstances surrounding the blessing change drastically, such as the land falling into the darkness of a shadowland, her harvest will still develop nevertheless unaffected until the duration lapses. As an additional effect, any spirit with a domain or asset connected to the blessed region is automatically informed of the sudden and all-encompassing change of circumstance, though not its source. Many will undoubtedly seek to either investigate the benefactor of this unexpected windfall, or arm herself at the challenge being leveled against her holdings.
A second purchase of this Charm at Essence 3 allows the Solar to automatically renew the blessing at the end of the season. A third purchase at Essence 4 allows the Solar to designate a character who is loyal to her or her holdings as a manager, which in turn reduces the committed cost of this charm to one mote.
Sun-Touched Husbandry Technique
Cost: 5m, Minimums: Survival 4, Essence 3
Type: Simple (Dramatic Action)
Keywords: Authority, Combo-OK, Magnitude [Essence], Obvious, Stackable
Duration: Instant
Prerequsite Charms: Grain-and-Foal Blessing Scheme
Through careful attention and planning, the Solar can coax greatness out of ordinary foodcrop and the humble farm animal.
The Solar evaluates her crop or herd and devises a plan with an [Intelligence + Survival/ Craft Wood] roll, with a Difficulty equal to the Resources or Familiar rating of the target crop in question. As part of this Charm's planning roll, the Solar automatically develops a 1st degree thaumaturgical procedure that she learns at no cost and can teach as like any other procedure. This procedure describes a Miscelanous [Charisma + Survival] ritual observance or similar feat with a Difficulty of 2, and a Resources cost of 2 dots. The Solar automatically and reflexively succeeds on this ritual.
Characters who fail to observe the ritual when working the land or herds suffer a -2 external penalty when dealing with the blessed flora and fauna.
1 success: a pox or similar mutation that represents a natural improvement to the animal or plant as a cultivated crop. Quality of life improvements like firmer bones or adaptation to harsh soils, but wings or gills still remain the domain of Craft, Medicine and Sorcery.
2 successes: Instinctual biases are ingrained into animals, such as hunting during the day or roosting in trees instead of caves, or plants naturally draw health and nutrients from sources beyond the ones which they have adapted, like mushrooms blossoming in dry, warm sunlight.
3 successes: Increase the effective magnitude of the plot or herd by 1 for the purposes of agricultural yields. This is represented by a simply higher quality of the harvest on an individual scale, lush crops and larger animals, not additional points of Magnitude.
Plants and animals blessed by this Charm show immediate and obvious signs of Solar influence- fur that gleams like burnished gold, plants that face the sun at all times, and so on. So long as the breeding population is not culled or diluted by other sources, these changes will persist indefinitely. It is for this reason that some taverns of the far west speak of siaka that hunt like men, or the word-spinning spiders, who's webs display the last words of men lost in the jungle.
Spider-Keeper Instruction Method
Cost: - , Minimums: Survival 5, Essence 3
Type: Permanent
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious
Duration: Permanent
Prerequsites: Sun-Touched Husbandry Technique
This Charm expands its prerequisite.
3 successes: Fauna can be trained with complex behaviors such as military maneuvers, coordinated hunting patterns, or the ability to read and write. Note that this does not improve the animal's intelligence, just their ability to respond to commands beyond that of ordinary creatures.
4 successes: Fauna enhanced by the procedure become utterly fearless around mortals and Exalts alike, even in the loudest arena or marketplace, though will attack to defend themselves or flee if approached with hostility. Flora will cling tenaciously to the offcasts of mortal society, growing like weeds in trash heaps, sewers, cesspools and other toxic urban enviroments, slowly breaking it down into fertilizing mulch.
5 successes: The Solar fully domesticates an animal that normally cannot be domesticated, such as wild spiders, lions, sharks or similar.
As long as a character performs the ritual provided by Sun-Touched Husbandry Technique, they may train and treat blessed animals as though they were a familiar coded to her essence, though she recieves none of the direct supernatural benefits. Like its prerequisite, this Charm creates enduring changes in a population of animals or crops.
Winter Feast Planning Strategem
Cost: 15 +1wp, Minimums: Survival 4, Essence 3
Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-OK, Magnitude [Essence]
Duration: One Season
Prerequisites: Food-Gathering Exercise, Grain-and-Foal Blessing Scheme
There comes a time where one must work the land one has in the least time. This Charm allows the Solar to compress a growing season into three months, with planting happening in the first month, and harvest at the third. Further, the Solar may plant crops in otherwise inhospitable climes- any area with a survival Difficulty of 4 or less are valid locations for such a feat. However, any agricultural action is performed at an external penalty equal to the local Survival Difficulty.
This supernatural technique saps the health of the affected region, and must lie fallow for three seasons unless another Charm or effect would restore its vitality.
