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- Gladstone, OR
I regret being the one to say this, but if your mechanic relies so much on the ST's skill, it's likely not a well-balanced mechanic.
General Exalted Thread
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- Ottawa
Sorcerous workings cost xp.
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- United States
When looking at a subsystem, if you think "this is too easy because if my pools are maxed it's easy" you're sort of glossing over the missing the fact that you're using someone who maxed out their ability to do things.
This is like balancing combat where it's expected that everyone has Dex 5, Ability 5.
This is like balancing combat where it's expected that everyone has Dex 5, Ability 5.
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- Gladstone, OR
True, but a system ought be tested at it's 'intended' level as well as any extremes the developers can think of. Remember that I've gone on and on about how 2e combat works better with smaller numbers, but most people play with Dex 5 Combat Ability 5 and so on and so forth.
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- Singapore
Yeah. But what else is there? I don't think there's anyone that plays rpgs that doesn't min max their stats
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- Ottawa
There are a great many people who don't min max their stats. They may even be a majority, although I obviously haven't performed a study.
But really, the thing keeping sorcerous workings balanced is the xp cost. Not the rolling.
But really, the thing keeping sorcerous workings balanced is the xp cost. Not the rolling.
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- Virginia
I didn't say anything about ST skill.
The real problem with workings is the same as the real problem with artifacts: most people are godawful at coming up with good ones. This could in theory be solved by more explanation but at some point you run into the issue that creativity is irreducibly hard.
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- Spain
Sorcerous workings cost a trivial amount of xp.
When making a perfectly loyal spirit with the power of a second circle, that will serve you forever unless he gets spirit-killed somehow, costs less than a single charm, there is something rather wrong with the system.
(Like, among other things, it makes that line of charms in integrity that give you a spirit familiar completely obsolete, since they do the same thing for a greater cost)
This is true. Like, proper minmaxing is actually rather hard. You need extensive rule-knowledge and you need to do a lot of math?
Taking Dex 5 Melee 5? That's not minmaxing at all! It's, like, bloodie obvious how good it is, if the game will have combat at all. Not taking it is crippling your combat effectiveness in purpose, which is a rather different thing.
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Well, if we're talking about xp costs, there are problems there too. Most obviously, once you've picked up Solar Circle Sorcery, it's easier to do an Ambition 1 Solar Working than it is to do an Ambition 3 Terrestrial Working, despite the former being vastly more expansive in scope than the latter. And an Ambition 2 Solar Working will cost less than an Ambition 3 Celestial Working. Secondly, you can pay for Workings with Solar xp, so they're not competing for space with Charms. The cost for an Ambition 3 Working of your Circle is 8xp, so if we look at this in terms of opportunity cost, that's equivalent to learning a new spell or raising an attribute up to 3 dots. I'm not really sure that's appropriately balanced at all.
But that's kind of a tangent to my original point, which was that Means are basically irrelevant up until you hit high Solar Workings and even then they're too easy to come by. Even setting aside the "rewrite the laws of Creation" thing, I don't think it's at all desirable for players to be able to casually do large scale projects without needing any infrastructure.
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- Gladstone, OR
I think this discussion leans on a root difference of 1e/2e vs 3e as well.
2e as a culture and a game was a lot more interested in Processes. We had structured mechanics (for good or ill) that determined how things worked. Things were complicated because they wanted lots of points of failure/success for the whole table to anticipate what was going to happen.
Contrast with 3e, where a lot of the non-combat mechanics are results-based. Workings, their costs and trappings aside, care more about What you're doing vs How you're doing it. The game doesn't want you to think about enduring infrastructure, but instead see the campaign as a series of loosely connected one-off feats or events. This isn't to say you can't play an enduring internally consistent campaign, but the rules don't really reward you for it either.
2e as a culture and a game was a lot more interested in Processes. We had structured mechanics (for good or ill) that determined how things worked. Things were complicated because they wanted lots of points of failure/success for the whole table to anticipate what was going to happen.
Contrast with 3e, where a lot of the non-combat mechanics are results-based. Workings, their costs and trappings aside, care more about What you're doing vs How you're doing it. The game doesn't want you to think about enduring infrastructure, but instead see the campaign as a series of loosely connected one-off feats or events. This isn't to say you can't play an enduring internally consistent campaign, but the rules don't really reward you for it either.
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- Virginia
I don't think this is accurate at all. I do think some of the subsystems communicated their intent poorly, but workings are absolutely not supposed to be "okay well I want to do a Thing; I don't care how it happens". There is supposed to be an internal narrative of how you are achieving your outcome: not "I roll 3 times to give myself fire breath" but "I harvest a fungus that grows on firedust deposits in certain Southern caves, then cultivate its growth in my own lungs".
The difference is that the mechanics themselves only loosely enforce that kind of infrastructure requirement, because no one has ever come up with a system that does that doesn't produce stupid answers, which you are then obligated to accept as somehow valid because, hey, the math checks out.
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- Gladstone, OR
Oh I don't dispute that the Workings expect a narrative, but they generally seem to expect an isolated one.
Like, speaking for myself, I wanted to see a Creation that says 'the sorcerer has a richly appointed workshop' and then you get bonuses for having it, using it over and over, and making it a Big part of your sorcerer's style. I'm sure 3e Workings allow for that, but they don't seem to encourage it. My impression of workings, from the text and the thread, is a series of one-off 'acquire means/roll to make the working' actions. So yes you go a-questing every time, but you don't really build up either.
Well, looking at what you can use as a Means, you do benefit from controlling a Demense or owning a workshop full of occult tools which you can use for all your Workings, but the problem is that if you've designed your character with being a Sorcerer in mind, you don't actually need one unless you're trying to do something on the scale of changing the metaphysical laws of Creation or creating something as powerful as a Third Circle demon.
Dif Essay: Folk Magic and Superstitions of Creation Part 3 - Moving Heaven and Earth
Long-delayed, finally hammered this out between work and various other nonsense! The books don't generally give a fair-shake to any notable thaumaturgists operating outside of urbanized areas, mostly relegating them to being vaguely the same but in "impoverished"/worse trappings, or simply practicing placating gestures and a load of meaningless ritual hogwash because they don't know any "educated" magic. Looking to give the whole thing a better treatment this time around, something to ground interesting NPCs and origin stories.
Folk Magic and Superstitions of Creation: Part 3 - Moving Heaven and Earth
The gods of developed lands are pampered and tamed, spoiled and fattened by human recognition and subservience. But the more distant one travels from well-trod roads and cultivated farmsteads, a harsher, more predatory character emerges. While most will see the practical uses for thaumaturgic ritual in domestic life and trade, the sheer number and magnitude of supernatural dangers in the far wilderness often require someone take up the mantle of spirit-warrior, faith-healer and psychopomp, to intercede where the demands and stress on her community become untenable. Malicious spirits, plagues and residual bleed from the immaterial world come frequent enough that simply weathering the worst is not possible, and so her people look to one person to alleviate the crisis, the local shaman.
A neighborhood alchemist might enrich her small township by diagnosing illness during lean times, or supplying birth control through various poultices and powders when maiden tea is scarce or expensive, but the burden shouldered by a shaman means to prepare herself as the front line in a magical contest of wills against all-comers. While her chieftain or bey acts with the material livelihoods of the people in mind, the shaman looks after spiritual well-beings and the safety of traditions, to present herself as the fearsome gatekeeper to all creatures low or high who would wish to bring harm and cause disorder. Some of these roles are not termed as shamans or as obvious as others, like that of the storyteller of tribal epics, the midwife blessing newborn souls, and the leader of ritual sacrifices, but in every aspect she serves as a shaman to defend and reinforce who her people are and will continue to be.
This status does not come easily, and her reasons for being a shaman can vary as widely as the culture she resides in. Some are chosen by way of spirit summons, others by birth inheritance, by life-altering physical or psychological illness, unexpected wandering or insight into the unseen worlds of the gods or the dead, even something as simple as celestial signs and omens which insist she alone must be trained for the future career she will lead. Inevitably all roads arrive at a rite of passage that irrevocably shapes both the would-be shaman's mind and her understanding of the world, considered by many to be the time when her destiny divides her away from the shared comfort and identity of her people. To be the kind of defender her tribe or community needs, she must become something more akin to the spirits themselves, but never losing track of who and what she stands for.
The strongest of shamans exist literally or metaphorically between states of being seen as significant to the culture she lives and works inside, walking the outskirts of two mortal worlds just as she would cross into the land of spirits. The casteless-one born from the union of a princess and a beggar, the oyster-diver who dreamt too deeply of the sea and awoke breathing water, the boy-child who undertook the rites of womanhood instead of her traditional tribal role, someone who drank from the shadowland river until she felt the touch of ghosts on her skin, the bordermarch hermit who lived isolated for years speaking only the tongues of monkeys and birds, all possess strong sympathies of distance or opposition from the societies which consider these things notable exceptions to typical life. While this alone is not totally indicative of potential shamanic skill, an uncommon background is often helpful to further strengthen her leverage against the supernatural in ways which will not become clear until later.
By her role as a comfortable stranger wrapped in upholding the old traditions, someone who is of the people and the sacred ways but stands apart in the observance, a shaman may willingly bypass social restrictions unimpeded by rules of honor or etiqutte. She can perform acts and interact with people generally considered 'spiritually unclean' by cultural mores without repercussions, walk through sacred places, speak crudely to sensitive ears and take others to task for misjudgements and slights regardless of class or station, cutting through many societal conflicts which cannot be acceptably managed by her peers. So long as the root of the issue lies with magical influence or the trespass of spirits, there is no one who holds higher dominion and expertise on the subject, and only the foolish would seek to second-guess her advisement. She might be treated as powerful royalty or feared as any outsider emissary, and most of the time this lies somewhere inbetween, as a figure of trepidation and awe for the mantle of austere authority she possesses.
Despite these vital services to her community, the shamanic tradition is often a lonesome one for this reason, typically a personal journey of power and discovery, or a formal pact of learning which passes from teacher to student, even if the two share nothing else in common save living outside the established norms. Aspirants are expected to be apprenticed for several years, serving as the interpreter and attendant for the aging elder shaman, explaining away the behaviors and trappings accumulated by decades of fraught spirit conflict or appeasement, and guiding her mentor to court and ceremony when hands tremble and eyes have grown cloudy and vacant from applying or ingesting the ritual mixtures necessary to witness the land of the unseen firsthand. She prepares the meals of food given as tribute, banks the fires, mending clothes and ritual dress to learn humility and understanding of the cosmic place of shamanic ways as her elder attempts to impart a lifetimes worth of unique and personal experiences, shrouded in secrecy and sworn to silence. Like any position of high esteem, there are alliances, mutual enemies, tacit agreements and looming challenges to be weighed carefully. Because like stepping into an empty throne, this time of uncertainty is ripe for local spirits jockeying to take advantage of perceived weaknesses in the fortitude of her people.
Even the lowest spirit is canny in the ways that power and authority is transferred, and would seek to test the limits and abilities of the shaman-to-be, either by demanding she meet or exceed the deeds accomplished by her superior as a proving rite, leveraging generous oaths and pacts once thought impossible in the hopes of gaining an upper hand, or seeking to change its community standing by openly preying upon her inexperience and ignorance of its domain. These trials are often overseen by the elder shaman in a hands-off manner, to give the apprentice a chance to build her own foundation of competence and repute, as many of these same spirits are ancient and entrenched to the land, keen upon bedeviling her progress and career until such a time she either dies in the attempt or takes on an apprentice of her own to pass the mantle, as it has continued for generations prior and will for generations hence. Her methods, partnerships and rivalries made here among the spirit courts will shape the kind of shaman she is seen to be, and her mistakes will be long remembered by creatures with a vested interest in exploiting those flaws for the indefinite future.
The politics of such spirits are rarely kind, regularly leaving the memories, health or flesh of the apprentice held as collateral for such dealings, in the hopes both sides will honor the agreement when she at last attains shamanhood. Canny aspirants play these interests against eachother, such as promising her arm to one spirit and her hand to another, forcing the two into conflict over which has the more legitimate right to eventually collect on this debt. Because in many cases, more than simple tithes of prayer and service are at stake for both the shaman and her people. A city god or powerful cult might persist entirely on prayer alone, the concentrated magnitude of attention and recognition being enough to sublimate the whims and lifestyle of the god on its own, but there are no parallels in the more sparsely populated frontiers. Its ambitious spirits are akin to starving dogs, snappish and greedy for whatever can be found, conquered or stolen on the sly, while the mission of any shaman is to foster productive dialogue and mutual coexistence between these troublesome sorts and her community, by force if necessary.
Prizes sought by spirits are typically brute labor in erecting grand constructions in it's honor, lavish celebrations of name and deed, exploiting the populace for wealth on its greatest exports, armed defense of important territory and gleaning godblooded heirs from blessed unions to oversee the growing domain. It falls to the shaman to curtail the worst extremes of these demands, deflecting the potential abuses while arranging for favors, such as negotiating undisturbed hunting rights of the spirit's herds in exchange for prayers of thanks during feasts and kills, or obtaining blessings upon the tribe's warriors in battle so long as the sacred lands are kept free from interlopers during several auspicious nights a year. These agreements are typically little more than bribes, stringing along needy and isolated gods with the promise of stone idols which may one day become temples, or pacts of song and celebration which may one day turn into strict religious reverence. Faced with the most irrational or unconscionable of these spirits, whose appetites grow too strong or patience for this slow-burn progress runs too thin, polite communications inevitably break down and a shaman is left to take matters into her own hands.
Fighting Spirit
The reputation of a shaman is fraught with fear and suspicion, not simply her origins, methods and abilities, but also the forces she trucks with as a matter of daily life. Even the most kind-hearted faith-healer may be regarded with unsure glances and deferential gestures of appeasement, as she is known primarily as the dead woman who was brought low by a mortal sickness, internalized it and now uses that power over illness to draw it out from others. That her endurance and understanding allowed her to overcome the disease and bend it towards her will is never fully considered, simply that there is something Odd about her nature, such that the normally-fatal affliction never took hold upon her life. This kind of unusual perception at being uncomfortably out-of-sync with her people is the strongest of a shaman's tools, and wielding this fearsome demeanor benefits both keeping tribal peace and broaching spirit conflict.
The traditional dress of a shaman is tailored to her station and goals, invoking necessary sympathies and resonances without having to parade around with a trove of mystical baubles. Retelling the historic epics of her people may require many masks strung about her robes within easy reach as she comports herself as the medium for a cast of ancient heroes or archetypal characters, donning one mask to regard the others held in her hands as the audience present to her dialogue, switching faces and personalities throughout the exchange of words and deeds. Kit for battle, the shaman could be piled-upon with many pelts of local predators or carnivores, arrayed with feathers or scrimshawed bone to display fighting prowess or offend her enemies. Unlike the warriors and proven adults of her tribe, the tattoos and scarification which crisscross her skin are more than symbolic merit, but embedded wards of protection, banishment and luck. Where the shaman travels she is unmistakable for who she is, and the simple act of her presence may inspire peace by her authority where force of arms cannot.
When she must wield her rituals and conjurings against spirits, it takes on a highly informal and improvisational character, as her foes often give little time for elaborate preparations. When one of her flock falls sick with a magical illness, time is of the essence to distract the bedeviling spirit before treatment becomes impossible. In a more highly developed land of abundance, a simple banishment would be effective enough to send off an unwanted god in search of easier prey, but her people may be the only settlement for miles where no other claims can be made. The creature will return again some other time, and perhaps again and again, watching and waiting for when her people are distracted, desperate and weak, with centuries of experience and patience behind its schemes. If she is to make any inroads and turn aside the will of an ambitious spirit, especially one who may exceed her at intelligence, physical might or resources, a shaman must fight to make this and every victory a decisive one at a moment's notice.
The most critical outcome in this endeavor almost never ends with a kill, since such means may well be out of her ability or control, and spirits are extremely slippery and evasive when pushed into corners. Instead she shamefully wounds her opposition in its ego and self-image, proactively working to baffle, frighten and frustrate the creature by defying its prior expectations for any representative of her people, and if not outwit it through quick-thinking and abusing loopholes in oaths and supernatural natures, then to cause hurt in ways the spirit did not know it could be hurt. For minor spirits, she arrays herself as a fearsome figure of antagonistic dread or unpredictable wildcard who is unimaginably far removed from the folk it would have thought to rule. By refusing to drown when the spirit thought to pull her under and spook her tribe into compliance with a show of murderous intent, or in striding imperiously through nightmarish illusions to haul the creature out into the firelight from its shadowed hiding place, she becomes an unplanned-for and unpredictable variable many gods cannot reconcile.
Though wielders of breathtaking powers and terrifying visages, most spirits are as dimwitted and foolish as the average mortal and just as easy to deceive. Sometimes simply suggesting to the arrogant god she knows or carries its true weakness is all which is necessary to brook surrender after these shows of blindsiding dominance, reaching into or shaking a pouch of unrelated refuse as an acting talisman, tricking the short-sighted and cowed creature into thinking itself defeated with no material evidence required. This same trick may even work more than once, provided she is careful enough to disguise her methods with novelty and misdirection. Time spent to research and gain familiarity becomes more vital for major spirits with notable legends, personalities and trappings to its name, so that she may act to capitalize on its hidden secrets, desires and fears. Casting herself to be a Peerless Hunter with ritual bow and skinning knife in hand makes her position vastly more secure when her foe thrives in the company of animals, taking the shape and demeanor of a spectral deer glowing within from molten heat.
It is her mission to continually put this supernatural enemy on a back foot and unprepared for her actions or plans, unable to utilize its potentially quicker thinking or powerful magics from caution or befuddlement over what is taking place. In the hesitation left by the offended sensibilities and disorientation of spirits at mortal impudence, the shaman has a chance to strike with a blow or forcefully present a bargain which would have no chance of being as effective if the circumstances were more equal. With luck and persistence, this manner of unkind rebuff repeatedly leveled from new and unforeseen directions will not only dissuade the creature from further visitations, but create an insult so detached from her community by her outsider status that the spirit will seek her demise or rivalry alone, her people be-damned and forgotten. Some spirits may even wish her such ill-will that nothing else save a violent challenge might suffice, and in this respect a wise shaman knows where to proactively plan her next battlefield.
Without a crisis to be solved, the standard means for conducting shamanic thaumaturgy is public ceremony, a communal demonstration accompanied by ritual chanting and music for her people to solemnly witness and engage with her magic respectfully as she calls down the rain or entreats the powers that be for strength and deliverance. As the representative of her people to invisible supernatural forces, it stands to reason that her most potent rites should be visible to all so it may help grant assurance and security in knowing she has fulfilled the will of the community to the best of her ability. Spoken word narration of her method and visions, laying out the scope of the places, meanings and beings she encounters beyond mortal perceptions during this performance is the cornerstone of this trust, bringing along her audience through the medium of her storytelling skill.
To impart the gravity of the circumstances, she vividly describes the journey of her mind and awareness to a meeting with a spirit benefactor within its distant sanctum, relays to her chief the bargaining position of the immaterial god standing within the bonfire circle, or illustrates with sweeping gestures how the east wind guides away dying souls into a gateway of Lethe or the underworld she has opened for the sacred warriors of her tribe. It is ironically this presence of ceremony which gives a shaman the edge when spirits seek her death, as few would turn down such a grandiose duel as a chance for indulging in unplanned spectacle, to shame and dispatch her before the horrified eyes of her people. Leaning into this desire for pageantry permits the shaman to subtly engineer a battlefield in her favor, even setting a conclusive time of day or pick of weapons which normally her foe would never allow.
The challenge often comes with many strings attached, formalizing the contest of choice, the ritual circle or fighting grounds, and establishing the stakes for both parties as winner-take-all. Before progressing to an outright confrontation, a last opportunity is traditionally taken by the canniest of shamans to employ some manner of subterfuge or ruse to permanently solve the dispute without need for bloodshed, usually as some form of "double-or-nothing" bet to pique curiosity or greed. More commonly, any spirit haughty or dimwitted enough to have taken its grudge to this degree often doesn't need much pressure to accept, likely viewing the gesture as an act of desperation or cowardice. The self-assured creature convinces itself of victory so well that it will readily take ridiculous-sounding terms, such as exiling itself out of the sacred lands for the next 300 years if it would mean the shaman is contractually bound to slice her own head from her shoulders when she inevitably loses.
These agreements made in bloodthirsty haste can quickly spell the spirit's downfall, and generations of tribes have been liberated by the act of a shaman declaring something as simple as a distant cliff-side where the spirit's true name can be seen to all who know where to look, challenging the spirit to manifest and walk with her to investigate knowing full well no such thing lies at the destination. Left unawares as her path takes an unusually circuitous course but distracted by its own irritation towards her delaying tactics, the spirit only realizes too late how deeply it has been deceived when both arrive at the top of the cliff not to find any evidence, but to overlook her handiwork below. Where the deliberately paced route of the entire trek itself can be seen to scrawl the unmistakable name of the spirit though the rough dirt, just as visible as she had said it would be. This compounded insult rarely works twice, but the fact it worked at all can be enough to send spirits into conniptions of unbridled rage or somber fugues of depression lasting decades, giving plenty of time to prepare for a future rematch.
More intelligent spirits are harder to catch in a lie or loophole, either by questioning her motives or having once been the victim of such a ploy and unwilling to shame itself further. So warned by her overweening cleverness, it eschews all contest save that of blood, trusting more in the ability to overpower her with brute might. In many cases, this spiritual battle may not even be fought with physical strikes and blows, but between the dematerialized attacker and the shaman through aggressive manipulations of essence and mental fortitude. Outsiders unfamiliar with local customs or occult works may see this as some manner of extravagant tribal dance or ceremonial worship, but her people know better. Her mighty shouts, foot stomps and rhythmic gestures are the physical manifestations of immaterial weapons and defenses, and many generations have sat and watched enraptured as the village shaman has dueled with an unseen spirit for the livelihood and safety of those under protection, breathlessly describing every invisible interplay of strike, dodge and riposte in the heat of battle. But a shaman is not limited by the sly tricks at her disposal or the knowledge passed down by her elders, chemical aides can supplement for the skills she lacks when the aim is to win by any means.
Various blends of drug play an important role in many shamanic rituals, as relaxants, stimulants and pain-killers to rival any urban apothecary, but focusing and honing the mind stands above all others when the supernatural is broached. A drug-addled mind with a single purpose is all but impossible to utilize against its wielder, when in many ways the horrifying illusions and honeyed words of spirits are easily lost in a sea of cottony haze or sensory overload. Many rites make use of altered states for safety and defense, walling the shaman away behind the assuredness of her compromised perceptions, knowing nothing can be trusted save the beat of the ceremonial drums in her ears and the practiced hand which guides her conjurings and prayers. Besides use for meditation aides and expanding her perception of the real, specifically-measured blends of hallucinogens and near-poisons are also often ingested to violently tear down the veils of her worldly ignorance. Experienced shamans are typically well-versed veterans of these transformative visions, waking nightmares or substance-triggered compulsions, and have successfully come out the other side whole and sane.
But bolstering herself against the worst of spirit influence through bone-deep chills of withdrawal and dissociative trances is not normally enough to tip the scales, and potent drugs may also be used as secret combat arts when the time comes. Ingested herbs and warpaint are often a much more subtle means of delivering spiritual banes, protective sealings and contact poisons to battle, repelling or horribly scarring her foe when the spirit thinks to engage her in a wrestling contest or tear fangs into her flesh. While it is the spirit who takes the full brunt of the admixture slicked from her skin in feverish sweats, this method is intensely taxing on the mind and body of the user, and is employed only against the most dangerous of foes or to send a clear and actionable message to any being who would attempt a similar engagement. Like most unnecessarily extreme compromisings of her well-being to harm a foe, all it takes is just the once to leave an unmistakable impression.
The average god is a presumptuous, self-interested and easily-deflated creature in this respect, ill-equipped to deal with meaningful opposition from an enemy seemingly made from weaponized contradictions, which call into question how narrow its preconceived notions generally are towards mortal agency. In defying the common conventions of her people the shaman also defies safe categorization, cannot easily be hoodwinked, spooked or shown the darkness of her own soul in the same methods of her peers, and would sooner see herself dead or mad by her own hand than finally acquiesce to otherworldly demands. Expending the due effort needed to subjugate such rebellious measures so that a shaman's people would fall into the spirits sway out of terror will often vastly outstrip the actual desire to deal with her continued and insufferable obstructions further, and so most self-respecting gods take this stinging insult away to bide time until cultural attitudes change or the shaman dies without another to fill her place.
However, any slighted spirit will certainly become enamored with the idea of pursuing both these aims during idle hours, preferably one leading into the other and indirectly of personal blame. No matter how definitive her victory, no shaman treats a single duel as the end of hostilities, but the start of a long and ongoing war of attrition that any mere mortal will eventually lose, even someone of her knowledge and strength. If not to the predations of the spirit and its agents, then the march of time conspiring against her steady hand, willful convictions and keen eye. So it becomes all the more important to find and educate a suitable replacement for the role, someone unlike her in every respect so her enemies will gain no greater insight against her pupil's methods, someone who will carry on the fight with a new passion and vigor when the shaman has at last exhausted her body, her inventive tricks and lingering alternatives.
Only through this repeated sacrifice can her tribe endure through the ages, and customarily the final words of even the harshest teacher upon passing down the mantle to an aspiring shaman takes the shape of a long-withheld apology. Remorse for the weight of destiny unfairly placed on her shoulders, in the hopes that in time she might one day forgive her elder and people for arming her thus, sent to fend away a den of lions with only her wits to guide her. Should her strength or cunning falter as the anchor point holding against foreign encroachment, all the culture and traditions contained within the land or customs, in what is seen as sacred to her people, and those lessons held inside herself would be left to the mercy of otherworldy forces unseen and unknowable. Paradoxically both the first to respond and the last line of defense, it is only with a shaman's aid can some societies even survive in some of Creation's harshest conditions.
A Wilderness of Mirrors
The shaman goes where the community needs her, helping to alleviate worldly concerns and bring spiritual assurances which touch on aspects of life both significant and trivial. When not fighting or fleecing aggressive spirits, the foremost duties of a shaman will vary wildly according to the potency and density of the magic which pervades the surrounding frontiers and wild places of her homeland, and it this easy contact which shapes the character of her practice in ways vastly apart from urban thaumaturgy. Powerful demesnes, shadowlands and wyld pockets are strewn across Creation haphazardly, and at these crossroads many tribal traditions are classically born out of rules and conduct demanded by the creatures and wildlife found lurking inside, and to which her people must live and work nearby in dangerous proximity. So it is imperative for a shaman to test her relationship to the land, analyze and if-possible reinforce and sow disinformation among the borders of the supernatural world, so that she may know how far one may acceptably go and quickly intercede when someone or something inevitably pushes back.
Upholding this tenuous harmony in her society and without is paramount above all things, conforming social identity and laws to coexist with neighbors both mortal and mystical, glean the advantages from otherworldly benefactors to ease the common toil of everyday life, and lastly reduce or disguise the impact of the tribe left on the earth and wildlife wherever supernatural attention might take offense. Because the wildlands of Creation do not truly belong to the shaman's people and never really have, no more than one may claim ownership on a migrating herd or a raging windstorm, and thus any populated area will persist only at the sufferance of the god who holds the most vested interest. Many benevolent spirits posture as prideful hosts to mortal peoples, but are entirely willing to dole out harsh punishments to those who flout this generous hospitality or act overly entitled to these good graces.
In some cases it may be her people who are metaphorically owned by the land, duty-bound there because of responsibilities for necessary care and mindfulness which were passed down from one generation to the next, and therefore it falls to the shaman to keep alive this longstanding history of custodianship. She may verse the young and brash in impure terms and epithets not to be spoken in good company, lest a link be drawn and rouse the attentions of a cruel namesake. Communal rituals might be needed to tame a disastrous sorcery or powerful demesne for safekeeping, preserve a holy place marking the death of a hero or mighty beast, to maintain the seals upon some ancient tomb or gateway to the underworld and beyond, perhaps help cultivate the only living examples of an imported plant or animal in a harsh foreign climate with its origins left unknown, among other greater missions of devotion. No place in Creation is truly free from these demands, though some just make better displays of hiding what must be done using architecture, annual celebrations, cultural taboos and rites of passage.
The only alternative is the path of the nomad, moving where the fairest wind blows and asking due permission through ritual and song for an extended rest on arrival at a new locale, giving grateful thanks and prayers for the brief respite along such a protracted and directionless journey. Here the shaman is the peacemaker and diplomat, easing the flow of her people around the chains and strictures held by others, never lingering in one land too long lest the tolerance of the gods for drifters run thin. Without a land to give shape to history, she also becomes the lore-speaker of her people, tying traditions and ways of life to ancient stories once told when she was young. A forgotten home, an impossible exile, the blessings, skirmishes and various cross-cultural detritus accumulated during such travels form the undercurrents of these tales, either in the pursuit of somewhere these traditions will finally find peace for her people, or be underscored as necessary sacrifices for the sake of freedom beneath an open sky.
As foremost authority when conducting relations with supernatural forces, it is the shaman who acts the as go-between whenever something particularly magical or exotic falls into the hands of her people, such as being called upon when excavations for construction or random chance uncover some lost and bygone ruin of ages past. Tense negotiations normally ensue in these cases, arguing whether the people hold ownership of the find by right of discovery, or the local spirit by dint of lordship over its domain. Due to her uncouth manner with upstart gods, she may find herself dealing most often with godblooded, the agents and heirs of patrons too frustrated or fearful of her methods to personally intervene. When the subject of this discovery is a being, be it a wandering monk, petty sorcerer on pilgrimage, or even an Exalt who has ignited within her people, the shaman steps forward first to determine how this newcomer might endanger her people and the sacred ways.
If threat is naught to be found and this continued presence would pique no concern among the local spirits or cultural customs, this is a joyous cause for celebration. The shaman has now a fresh mind full of strange foreign knowledge to entertain as an honored guest, and typically this intrusion will be the rare time she will have to compare practices and methods with an equal. Such an outsider customarily lives off the shaman's hospitality, kept mercifully distant from the tribe if these unknown magics would cause fear and suspicion, entrusted to her care until the decision is made to depart. Should this unexpected mysticism appear amongst her own people, it is not uncommon for the shaman to take the chosen under her wing as a mentor and advisor, possibly even apprenticed to someday follow in her footsteps as a guardian, helping to teach the ways this power will help enrich the traditions and beliefs her people hold dear.
Fulfilling the practical needs of her people's way of life and spiritual health demands a shaman must be a consummate teacher and knowledgeable in a variety of diverse, multidisciplinary pursuits. Depending on the treatment and her own resourcefulness at healing, she may verse local women in the use of poultices and powders, fight crippling and joint pain with pressure-point massage and needles, educate foraging children on the correct leaf-shapes needed for herbal remedies, conduct bloodletting, bone-setting or the transference of physical injury to herself, a prepared effigy or disposable livestock. So long as the methods do not break taboo, medicine work is an important skill to be shared in times of need. Where divination is vital, the shaman might conduit herself for spirit mediumship, scry for places and people in a dish of fresh water or tranquil pond, throw bones and etched runes to catch the manipulations of fate, read the upcoming weather in the entrails of a holy animal, or even outright undertake a hallucinatory vision to give some chance insight towards foretelling future events.
The shaman may purge bad luck or disease from domiciles with a mournful chant, practice extortion against unwanted haunts and coat the floors and furnishings of a cursed room with purified ashes to catch the footsteps and fingerprints of invisible spirits. Repelling sorcerous scrying or immaterial beings could require meticulously shaping the essence of the land into nets and whorls using carved trenches and standing stones, rearranging the placement of indoor furniture or cultivating plants or animals the presence finds offensive, like lining a hut with rowan-wood or fashioning ceremonial garments from bear pelt. The shaman might even indulge in a bit of calculated mischief herself, using sleight-of-hand tricks, miraculous feats of strength or endurance, ventriloquism and even brief acts of shapeshifting to defuse arguments, keep lovers faithful, befuddle enemies and enforce taboos with foreboding omens of her own design.
Critics and detractors among her fellows over her strange behaviors and habits are never as threatening as her spiritual rivals, but remain a persistent annoyance when she must opt to act diplomatically within her tribe. While lacking any supernatural acumen to contest her uses of power and station directly, such inconveniences can stand in the way of the cooperation and recognition she seeks, and so she must learn to posture herself as an austere figure worthy of her position. Preying on fears and cautionary tales told in her absence are the easiest method for cowing gossips and blowhards, like calling the result of a dice game several times with increasing certainty before wordlessly moving on. Often small efforts such as this is all that is necessary to still unwanted tongue-wagging, but for those who draw her ire further, the denial of her services can be almost ostracizing when she chooses to exert her indispensable nature. Even the most staunch-hearted will relent at the fear of being refused proper burial alongside cherished ancestors and kin.
But the most prominent role for a shaman is serving as master of ceremonies, officiating public gatherings and celebrations, blessing hunts and sacred unions, organizing religious devotions and quelling civil disputes, standing watch over childbirth and funerary rites in equal measure. It is the shaman who sees that bridal customs are upheld along with pledges of fealty under the onus of the spirits, and may regularly meet with a conclave of neighboring shamans to hear word of changes and upsets from distant lands worthy of sharing with her people. Though she may not be entirely welcome due to an icy reputation, the shaman's presence at a birth or marriage insures the happy occasion will be free from any malign entities or curses fueled by jealousy, focusing favorable rites on the spiritual well-being of the child through practiced midwifery, or seeing fit that the couple's union occurs during only the most auspicious of circumstances to impart the greatest amount of luck to the partnership.
These performances are at once both weighty religious ceremony and artistic performance, with the shaman in charge of uniting together various forms of music, dance, interpretative gesture, poetry and song harmoniously by her own hand or staged by accompanying artisans to best convey the mystical process being worked. It is her leadership which brings the assembled audience and performers involvement with her through this ritualistic experience, and a shaman's wisdom at best utilizing the rhythmic and lyrical aptitudes among the tribe to accentuate her craft can give a windfall of great esteem when the spirits will not tolerate half-measures or rehearsals. An auspicious dream or vision might provoke her to orchestrate a ceremonial trance with drumming and chants to derive its meaning, perhaps even coaxing out the aid of relevant spirits with an unspoken bribe in recognition and communal significance.
If an important sacrifice is not available at hand, such as carefully bred and trained guard dogs too valuable to kill to protect a simple gate, the shaman may engineer a satisfactory replacement from other materials like carved stone or baked clay, dubbing each one with a fearsome title like Bone-breaker or Foe-chaser to invest the effigy with sympathetic suggestions of its living kin. With due care she will nevertheless find these spectral hounds bowing at her passage at the rituals end, incarnate by the will of her magic though her knife drew no blood. Similar figurines might be used to array the honored dead with unliving servants and warriors, or to guide the soul of an ancestor or mighty animal to an expectant mother by reflecting the trappings of form it held in life.
Of tasks and ritualism she does not fulfill herself, the shaman will bless the work of other skilled artisans in the tribe, such as anointing with sterilizing soot the tattooist's art which marks the face of a grown adult with health and beauty. Her personal touch is what adds a measure of significance to practicing traditional forms of midwifery on a fateful child or applying sacred markings for life events and infuse the ink with power, but often she will merely be working alongside more generalist practitioners to achieve her goals. Although the most honored within the tribe by her willing contests with supernatural forces, the shaman is not alone in providing for the community with inventive works of thaumaturgy, and often will have been the one to help record, develop and pass along these minor tricks and techniques to a prospective artisan when a certain level of skill or prestige has been reached to allow for it. If no one holds the ability to surpass the aging master, she will be the one to learn and carry on the secrets of the craft instead, bestowing it upon a worthy successor when the time comes.
Though she may play host to the hidden techniques and special practices of her people, the shaman is not simply a gatekeeper to such knowledge, but a guardian to insure continuity from one generation to the next. She understands the valued place of this magic and the powerful influence it provides to one capable of fully utilizing its potency, and similarly it is customary within tribes to seek the shaman's council where spirits might be broached or trespass against the land is at risk by the possession or workings of these procedures. Many peoples hold histories of mighty weapons being forged by the hand of a blacksmith at the height of the art, gifts paid to the spirits of woven cloth enchanted by careful hands, and great acts of prophecy wrought by tribal astrologers, all aided by the overseeing guidance of the shaman to help insure everything goes according to plan. Equally many have seen the earth rise up against such efforts, spirits angered by the befouling of shared territory, the people caught unaware by the hubris of the act before it was too late to call the shaman to mediate.
It is her burden of secrecy to foresee which outcome this may be.
Folk Magic and Superstitions of Creation: Part 3 - Moving Heaven and Earth
The gods of developed lands are pampered and tamed, spoiled and fattened by human recognition and subservience. But the more distant one travels from well-trod roads and cultivated farmsteads, a harsher, more predatory character emerges. While most will see the practical uses for thaumaturgic ritual in domestic life and trade, the sheer number and magnitude of supernatural dangers in the far wilderness often require someone take up the mantle of spirit-warrior, faith-healer and psychopomp, to intercede where the demands and stress on her community become untenable. Malicious spirits, plagues and residual bleed from the immaterial world come frequent enough that simply weathering the worst is not possible, and so her people look to one person to alleviate the crisis, the local shaman.
A neighborhood alchemist might enrich her small township by diagnosing illness during lean times, or supplying birth control through various poultices and powders when maiden tea is scarce or expensive, but the burden shouldered by a shaman means to prepare herself as the front line in a magical contest of wills against all-comers. While her chieftain or bey acts with the material livelihoods of the people in mind, the shaman looks after spiritual well-beings and the safety of traditions, to present herself as the fearsome gatekeeper to all creatures low or high who would wish to bring harm and cause disorder. Some of these roles are not termed as shamans or as obvious as others, like that of the storyteller of tribal epics, the midwife blessing newborn souls, and the leader of ritual sacrifices, but in every aspect she serves as a shaman to defend and reinforce who her people are and will continue to be.
This status does not come easily, and her reasons for being a shaman can vary as widely as the culture she resides in. Some are chosen by way of spirit summons, others by birth inheritance, by life-altering physical or psychological illness, unexpected wandering or insight into the unseen worlds of the gods or the dead, even something as simple as celestial signs and omens which insist she alone must be trained for the future career she will lead. Inevitably all roads arrive at a rite of passage that irrevocably shapes both the would-be shaman's mind and her understanding of the world, considered by many to be the time when her destiny divides her away from the shared comfort and identity of her people. To be the kind of defender her tribe or community needs, she must become something more akin to the spirits themselves, but never losing track of who and what she stands for.
The strongest of shamans exist literally or metaphorically between states of being seen as significant to the culture she lives and works inside, walking the outskirts of two mortal worlds just as she would cross into the land of spirits. The casteless-one born from the union of a princess and a beggar, the oyster-diver who dreamt too deeply of the sea and awoke breathing water, the boy-child who undertook the rites of womanhood instead of her traditional tribal role, someone who drank from the shadowland river until she felt the touch of ghosts on her skin, the bordermarch hermit who lived isolated for years speaking only the tongues of monkeys and birds, all possess strong sympathies of distance or opposition from the societies which consider these things notable exceptions to typical life. While this alone is not totally indicative of potential shamanic skill, an uncommon background is often helpful to further strengthen her leverage against the supernatural in ways which will not become clear until later.
By her role as a comfortable stranger wrapped in upholding the old traditions, someone who is of the people and the sacred ways but stands apart in the observance, a shaman may willingly bypass social restrictions unimpeded by rules of honor or etiqutte. She can perform acts and interact with people generally considered 'spiritually unclean' by cultural mores without repercussions, walk through sacred places, speak crudely to sensitive ears and take others to task for misjudgements and slights regardless of class or station, cutting through many societal conflicts which cannot be acceptably managed by her peers. So long as the root of the issue lies with magical influence or the trespass of spirits, there is no one who holds higher dominion and expertise on the subject, and only the foolish would seek to second-guess her advisement. She might be treated as powerful royalty or feared as any outsider emissary, and most of the time this lies somewhere inbetween, as a figure of trepidation and awe for the mantle of austere authority she possesses.
Despite these vital services to her community, the shamanic tradition is often a lonesome one for this reason, typically a personal journey of power and discovery, or a formal pact of learning which passes from teacher to student, even if the two share nothing else in common save living outside the established norms. Aspirants are expected to be apprenticed for several years, serving as the interpreter and attendant for the aging elder shaman, explaining away the behaviors and trappings accumulated by decades of fraught spirit conflict or appeasement, and guiding her mentor to court and ceremony when hands tremble and eyes have grown cloudy and vacant from applying or ingesting the ritual mixtures necessary to witness the land of the unseen firsthand. She prepares the meals of food given as tribute, banks the fires, mending clothes and ritual dress to learn humility and understanding of the cosmic place of shamanic ways as her elder attempts to impart a lifetimes worth of unique and personal experiences, shrouded in secrecy and sworn to silence. Like any position of high esteem, there are alliances, mutual enemies, tacit agreements and looming challenges to be weighed carefully. Because like stepping into an empty throne, this time of uncertainty is ripe for local spirits jockeying to take advantage of perceived weaknesses in the fortitude of her people.
Even the lowest spirit is canny in the ways that power and authority is transferred, and would seek to test the limits and abilities of the shaman-to-be, either by demanding she meet or exceed the deeds accomplished by her superior as a proving rite, leveraging generous oaths and pacts once thought impossible in the hopes of gaining an upper hand, or seeking to change its community standing by openly preying upon her inexperience and ignorance of its domain. These trials are often overseen by the elder shaman in a hands-off manner, to give the apprentice a chance to build her own foundation of competence and repute, as many of these same spirits are ancient and entrenched to the land, keen upon bedeviling her progress and career until such a time she either dies in the attempt or takes on an apprentice of her own to pass the mantle, as it has continued for generations prior and will for generations hence. Her methods, partnerships and rivalries made here among the spirit courts will shape the kind of shaman she is seen to be, and her mistakes will be long remembered by creatures with a vested interest in exploiting those flaws for the indefinite future.
The politics of such spirits are rarely kind, regularly leaving the memories, health or flesh of the apprentice held as collateral for such dealings, in the hopes both sides will honor the agreement when she at last attains shamanhood. Canny aspirants play these interests against eachother, such as promising her arm to one spirit and her hand to another, forcing the two into conflict over which has the more legitimate right to eventually collect on this debt. Because in many cases, more than simple tithes of prayer and service are at stake for both the shaman and her people. A city god or powerful cult might persist entirely on prayer alone, the concentrated magnitude of attention and recognition being enough to sublimate the whims and lifestyle of the god on its own, but there are no parallels in the more sparsely populated frontiers. Its ambitious spirits are akin to starving dogs, snappish and greedy for whatever can be found, conquered or stolen on the sly, while the mission of any shaman is to foster productive dialogue and mutual coexistence between these troublesome sorts and her community, by force if necessary.
Prizes sought by spirits are typically brute labor in erecting grand constructions in it's honor, lavish celebrations of name and deed, exploiting the populace for wealth on its greatest exports, armed defense of important territory and gleaning godblooded heirs from blessed unions to oversee the growing domain. It falls to the shaman to curtail the worst extremes of these demands, deflecting the potential abuses while arranging for favors, such as negotiating undisturbed hunting rights of the spirit's herds in exchange for prayers of thanks during feasts and kills, or obtaining blessings upon the tribe's warriors in battle so long as the sacred lands are kept free from interlopers during several auspicious nights a year. These agreements are typically little more than bribes, stringing along needy and isolated gods with the promise of stone idols which may one day become temples, or pacts of song and celebration which may one day turn into strict religious reverence. Faced with the most irrational or unconscionable of these spirits, whose appetites grow too strong or patience for this slow-burn progress runs too thin, polite communications inevitably break down and a shaman is left to take matters into her own hands.
Fighting Spirit
The reputation of a shaman is fraught with fear and suspicion, not simply her origins, methods and abilities, but also the forces she trucks with as a matter of daily life. Even the most kind-hearted faith-healer may be regarded with unsure glances and deferential gestures of appeasement, as she is known primarily as the dead woman who was brought low by a mortal sickness, internalized it and now uses that power over illness to draw it out from others. That her endurance and understanding allowed her to overcome the disease and bend it towards her will is never fully considered, simply that there is something Odd about her nature, such that the normally-fatal affliction never took hold upon her life. This kind of unusual perception at being uncomfortably out-of-sync with her people is the strongest of a shaman's tools, and wielding this fearsome demeanor benefits both keeping tribal peace and broaching spirit conflict.
The traditional dress of a shaman is tailored to her station and goals, invoking necessary sympathies and resonances without having to parade around with a trove of mystical baubles. Retelling the historic epics of her people may require many masks strung about her robes within easy reach as she comports herself as the medium for a cast of ancient heroes or archetypal characters, donning one mask to regard the others held in her hands as the audience present to her dialogue, switching faces and personalities throughout the exchange of words and deeds. Kit for battle, the shaman could be piled-upon with many pelts of local predators or carnivores, arrayed with feathers or scrimshawed bone to display fighting prowess or offend her enemies. Unlike the warriors and proven adults of her tribe, the tattoos and scarification which crisscross her skin are more than symbolic merit, but embedded wards of protection, banishment and luck. Where the shaman travels she is unmistakable for who she is, and the simple act of her presence may inspire peace by her authority where force of arms cannot.
When she must wield her rituals and conjurings against spirits, it takes on a highly informal and improvisational character, as her foes often give little time for elaborate preparations. When one of her flock falls sick with a magical illness, time is of the essence to distract the bedeviling spirit before treatment becomes impossible. In a more highly developed land of abundance, a simple banishment would be effective enough to send off an unwanted god in search of easier prey, but her people may be the only settlement for miles where no other claims can be made. The creature will return again some other time, and perhaps again and again, watching and waiting for when her people are distracted, desperate and weak, with centuries of experience and patience behind its schemes. If she is to make any inroads and turn aside the will of an ambitious spirit, especially one who may exceed her at intelligence, physical might or resources, a shaman must fight to make this and every victory a decisive one at a moment's notice.
The most critical outcome in this endeavor almost never ends with a kill, since such means may well be out of her ability or control, and spirits are extremely slippery and evasive when pushed into corners. Instead she shamefully wounds her opposition in its ego and self-image, proactively working to baffle, frighten and frustrate the creature by defying its prior expectations for any representative of her people, and if not outwit it through quick-thinking and abusing loopholes in oaths and supernatural natures, then to cause hurt in ways the spirit did not know it could be hurt. For minor spirits, she arrays herself as a fearsome figure of antagonistic dread or unpredictable wildcard who is unimaginably far removed from the folk it would have thought to rule. By refusing to drown when the spirit thought to pull her under and spook her tribe into compliance with a show of murderous intent, or in striding imperiously through nightmarish illusions to haul the creature out into the firelight from its shadowed hiding place, she becomes an unplanned-for and unpredictable variable many gods cannot reconcile.
Though wielders of breathtaking powers and terrifying visages, most spirits are as dimwitted and foolish as the average mortal and just as easy to deceive. Sometimes simply suggesting to the arrogant god she knows or carries its true weakness is all which is necessary to brook surrender after these shows of blindsiding dominance, reaching into or shaking a pouch of unrelated refuse as an acting talisman, tricking the short-sighted and cowed creature into thinking itself defeated with no material evidence required. This same trick may even work more than once, provided she is careful enough to disguise her methods with novelty and misdirection. Time spent to research and gain familiarity becomes more vital for major spirits with notable legends, personalities and trappings to its name, so that she may act to capitalize on its hidden secrets, desires and fears. Casting herself to be a Peerless Hunter with ritual bow and skinning knife in hand makes her position vastly more secure when her foe thrives in the company of animals, taking the shape and demeanor of a spectral deer glowing within from molten heat.
It is her mission to continually put this supernatural enemy on a back foot and unprepared for her actions or plans, unable to utilize its potentially quicker thinking or powerful magics from caution or befuddlement over what is taking place. In the hesitation left by the offended sensibilities and disorientation of spirits at mortal impudence, the shaman has a chance to strike with a blow or forcefully present a bargain which would have no chance of being as effective if the circumstances were more equal. With luck and persistence, this manner of unkind rebuff repeatedly leveled from new and unforeseen directions will not only dissuade the creature from further visitations, but create an insult so detached from her community by her outsider status that the spirit will seek her demise or rivalry alone, her people be-damned and forgotten. Some spirits may even wish her such ill-will that nothing else save a violent challenge might suffice, and in this respect a wise shaman knows where to proactively plan her next battlefield.
Without a crisis to be solved, the standard means for conducting shamanic thaumaturgy is public ceremony, a communal demonstration accompanied by ritual chanting and music for her people to solemnly witness and engage with her magic respectfully as she calls down the rain or entreats the powers that be for strength and deliverance. As the representative of her people to invisible supernatural forces, it stands to reason that her most potent rites should be visible to all so it may help grant assurance and security in knowing she has fulfilled the will of the community to the best of her ability. Spoken word narration of her method and visions, laying out the scope of the places, meanings and beings she encounters beyond mortal perceptions during this performance is the cornerstone of this trust, bringing along her audience through the medium of her storytelling skill.
To impart the gravity of the circumstances, she vividly describes the journey of her mind and awareness to a meeting with a spirit benefactor within its distant sanctum, relays to her chief the bargaining position of the immaterial god standing within the bonfire circle, or illustrates with sweeping gestures how the east wind guides away dying souls into a gateway of Lethe or the underworld she has opened for the sacred warriors of her tribe. It is ironically this presence of ceremony which gives a shaman the edge when spirits seek her death, as few would turn down such a grandiose duel as a chance for indulging in unplanned spectacle, to shame and dispatch her before the horrified eyes of her people. Leaning into this desire for pageantry permits the shaman to subtly engineer a battlefield in her favor, even setting a conclusive time of day or pick of weapons which normally her foe would never allow.
The challenge often comes with many strings attached, formalizing the contest of choice, the ritual circle or fighting grounds, and establishing the stakes for both parties as winner-take-all. Before progressing to an outright confrontation, a last opportunity is traditionally taken by the canniest of shamans to employ some manner of subterfuge or ruse to permanently solve the dispute without need for bloodshed, usually as some form of "double-or-nothing" bet to pique curiosity or greed. More commonly, any spirit haughty or dimwitted enough to have taken its grudge to this degree often doesn't need much pressure to accept, likely viewing the gesture as an act of desperation or cowardice. The self-assured creature convinces itself of victory so well that it will readily take ridiculous-sounding terms, such as exiling itself out of the sacred lands for the next 300 years if it would mean the shaman is contractually bound to slice her own head from her shoulders when she inevitably loses.
These agreements made in bloodthirsty haste can quickly spell the spirit's downfall, and generations of tribes have been liberated by the act of a shaman declaring something as simple as a distant cliff-side where the spirit's true name can be seen to all who know where to look, challenging the spirit to manifest and walk with her to investigate knowing full well no such thing lies at the destination. Left unawares as her path takes an unusually circuitous course but distracted by its own irritation towards her delaying tactics, the spirit only realizes too late how deeply it has been deceived when both arrive at the top of the cliff not to find any evidence, but to overlook her handiwork below. Where the deliberately paced route of the entire trek itself can be seen to scrawl the unmistakable name of the spirit though the rough dirt, just as visible as she had said it would be. This compounded insult rarely works twice, but the fact it worked at all can be enough to send spirits into conniptions of unbridled rage or somber fugues of depression lasting decades, giving plenty of time to prepare for a future rematch.
More intelligent spirits are harder to catch in a lie or loophole, either by questioning her motives or having once been the victim of such a ploy and unwilling to shame itself further. So warned by her overweening cleverness, it eschews all contest save that of blood, trusting more in the ability to overpower her with brute might. In many cases, this spiritual battle may not even be fought with physical strikes and blows, but between the dematerialized attacker and the shaman through aggressive manipulations of essence and mental fortitude. Outsiders unfamiliar with local customs or occult works may see this as some manner of extravagant tribal dance or ceremonial worship, but her people know better. Her mighty shouts, foot stomps and rhythmic gestures are the physical manifestations of immaterial weapons and defenses, and many generations have sat and watched enraptured as the village shaman has dueled with an unseen spirit for the livelihood and safety of those under protection, breathlessly describing every invisible interplay of strike, dodge and riposte in the heat of battle. But a shaman is not limited by the sly tricks at her disposal or the knowledge passed down by her elders, chemical aides can supplement for the skills she lacks when the aim is to win by any means.
Various blends of drug play an important role in many shamanic rituals, as relaxants, stimulants and pain-killers to rival any urban apothecary, but focusing and honing the mind stands above all others when the supernatural is broached. A drug-addled mind with a single purpose is all but impossible to utilize against its wielder, when in many ways the horrifying illusions and honeyed words of spirits are easily lost in a sea of cottony haze or sensory overload. Many rites make use of altered states for safety and defense, walling the shaman away behind the assuredness of her compromised perceptions, knowing nothing can be trusted save the beat of the ceremonial drums in her ears and the practiced hand which guides her conjurings and prayers. Besides use for meditation aides and expanding her perception of the real, specifically-measured blends of hallucinogens and near-poisons are also often ingested to violently tear down the veils of her worldly ignorance. Experienced shamans are typically well-versed veterans of these transformative visions, waking nightmares or substance-triggered compulsions, and have successfully come out the other side whole and sane.
But bolstering herself against the worst of spirit influence through bone-deep chills of withdrawal and dissociative trances is not normally enough to tip the scales, and potent drugs may also be used as secret combat arts when the time comes. Ingested herbs and warpaint are often a much more subtle means of delivering spiritual banes, protective sealings and contact poisons to battle, repelling or horribly scarring her foe when the spirit thinks to engage her in a wrestling contest or tear fangs into her flesh. While it is the spirit who takes the full brunt of the admixture slicked from her skin in feverish sweats, this method is intensely taxing on the mind and body of the user, and is employed only against the most dangerous of foes or to send a clear and actionable message to any being who would attempt a similar engagement. Like most unnecessarily extreme compromisings of her well-being to harm a foe, all it takes is just the once to leave an unmistakable impression.
The average god is a presumptuous, self-interested and easily-deflated creature in this respect, ill-equipped to deal with meaningful opposition from an enemy seemingly made from weaponized contradictions, which call into question how narrow its preconceived notions generally are towards mortal agency. In defying the common conventions of her people the shaman also defies safe categorization, cannot easily be hoodwinked, spooked or shown the darkness of her own soul in the same methods of her peers, and would sooner see herself dead or mad by her own hand than finally acquiesce to otherworldly demands. Expending the due effort needed to subjugate such rebellious measures so that a shaman's people would fall into the spirits sway out of terror will often vastly outstrip the actual desire to deal with her continued and insufferable obstructions further, and so most self-respecting gods take this stinging insult away to bide time until cultural attitudes change or the shaman dies without another to fill her place.
However, any slighted spirit will certainly become enamored with the idea of pursuing both these aims during idle hours, preferably one leading into the other and indirectly of personal blame. No matter how definitive her victory, no shaman treats a single duel as the end of hostilities, but the start of a long and ongoing war of attrition that any mere mortal will eventually lose, even someone of her knowledge and strength. If not to the predations of the spirit and its agents, then the march of time conspiring against her steady hand, willful convictions and keen eye. So it becomes all the more important to find and educate a suitable replacement for the role, someone unlike her in every respect so her enemies will gain no greater insight against her pupil's methods, someone who will carry on the fight with a new passion and vigor when the shaman has at last exhausted her body, her inventive tricks and lingering alternatives.
Only through this repeated sacrifice can her tribe endure through the ages, and customarily the final words of even the harshest teacher upon passing down the mantle to an aspiring shaman takes the shape of a long-withheld apology. Remorse for the weight of destiny unfairly placed on her shoulders, in the hopes that in time she might one day forgive her elder and people for arming her thus, sent to fend away a den of lions with only her wits to guide her. Should her strength or cunning falter as the anchor point holding against foreign encroachment, all the culture and traditions contained within the land or customs, in what is seen as sacred to her people, and those lessons held inside herself would be left to the mercy of otherworldy forces unseen and unknowable. Paradoxically both the first to respond and the last line of defense, it is only with a shaman's aid can some societies even survive in some of Creation's harshest conditions.
A Wilderness of Mirrors
The shaman goes where the community needs her, helping to alleviate worldly concerns and bring spiritual assurances which touch on aspects of life both significant and trivial. When not fighting or fleecing aggressive spirits, the foremost duties of a shaman will vary wildly according to the potency and density of the magic which pervades the surrounding frontiers and wild places of her homeland, and it this easy contact which shapes the character of her practice in ways vastly apart from urban thaumaturgy. Powerful demesnes, shadowlands and wyld pockets are strewn across Creation haphazardly, and at these crossroads many tribal traditions are classically born out of rules and conduct demanded by the creatures and wildlife found lurking inside, and to which her people must live and work nearby in dangerous proximity. So it is imperative for a shaman to test her relationship to the land, analyze and if-possible reinforce and sow disinformation among the borders of the supernatural world, so that she may know how far one may acceptably go and quickly intercede when someone or something inevitably pushes back.
Upholding this tenuous harmony in her society and without is paramount above all things, conforming social identity and laws to coexist with neighbors both mortal and mystical, glean the advantages from otherworldly benefactors to ease the common toil of everyday life, and lastly reduce or disguise the impact of the tribe left on the earth and wildlife wherever supernatural attention might take offense. Because the wildlands of Creation do not truly belong to the shaman's people and never really have, no more than one may claim ownership on a migrating herd or a raging windstorm, and thus any populated area will persist only at the sufferance of the god who holds the most vested interest. Many benevolent spirits posture as prideful hosts to mortal peoples, but are entirely willing to dole out harsh punishments to those who flout this generous hospitality or act overly entitled to these good graces.
In some cases it may be her people who are metaphorically owned by the land, duty-bound there because of responsibilities for necessary care and mindfulness which were passed down from one generation to the next, and therefore it falls to the shaman to keep alive this longstanding history of custodianship. She may verse the young and brash in impure terms and epithets not to be spoken in good company, lest a link be drawn and rouse the attentions of a cruel namesake. Communal rituals might be needed to tame a disastrous sorcery or powerful demesne for safekeeping, preserve a holy place marking the death of a hero or mighty beast, to maintain the seals upon some ancient tomb or gateway to the underworld and beyond, perhaps help cultivate the only living examples of an imported plant or animal in a harsh foreign climate with its origins left unknown, among other greater missions of devotion. No place in Creation is truly free from these demands, though some just make better displays of hiding what must be done using architecture, annual celebrations, cultural taboos and rites of passage.
The only alternative is the path of the nomad, moving where the fairest wind blows and asking due permission through ritual and song for an extended rest on arrival at a new locale, giving grateful thanks and prayers for the brief respite along such a protracted and directionless journey. Here the shaman is the peacemaker and diplomat, easing the flow of her people around the chains and strictures held by others, never lingering in one land too long lest the tolerance of the gods for drifters run thin. Without a land to give shape to history, she also becomes the lore-speaker of her people, tying traditions and ways of life to ancient stories once told when she was young. A forgotten home, an impossible exile, the blessings, skirmishes and various cross-cultural detritus accumulated during such travels form the undercurrents of these tales, either in the pursuit of somewhere these traditions will finally find peace for her people, or be underscored as necessary sacrifices for the sake of freedom beneath an open sky.
As foremost authority when conducting relations with supernatural forces, it is the shaman who acts the as go-between whenever something particularly magical or exotic falls into the hands of her people, such as being called upon when excavations for construction or random chance uncover some lost and bygone ruin of ages past. Tense negotiations normally ensue in these cases, arguing whether the people hold ownership of the find by right of discovery, or the local spirit by dint of lordship over its domain. Due to her uncouth manner with upstart gods, she may find herself dealing most often with godblooded, the agents and heirs of patrons too frustrated or fearful of her methods to personally intervene. When the subject of this discovery is a being, be it a wandering monk, petty sorcerer on pilgrimage, or even an Exalt who has ignited within her people, the shaman steps forward first to determine how this newcomer might endanger her people and the sacred ways.
If threat is naught to be found and this continued presence would pique no concern among the local spirits or cultural customs, this is a joyous cause for celebration. The shaman has now a fresh mind full of strange foreign knowledge to entertain as an honored guest, and typically this intrusion will be the rare time she will have to compare practices and methods with an equal. Such an outsider customarily lives off the shaman's hospitality, kept mercifully distant from the tribe if these unknown magics would cause fear and suspicion, entrusted to her care until the decision is made to depart. Should this unexpected mysticism appear amongst her own people, it is not uncommon for the shaman to take the chosen under her wing as a mentor and advisor, possibly even apprenticed to someday follow in her footsteps as a guardian, helping to teach the ways this power will help enrich the traditions and beliefs her people hold dear.
Fulfilling the practical needs of her people's way of life and spiritual health demands a shaman must be a consummate teacher and knowledgeable in a variety of diverse, multidisciplinary pursuits. Depending on the treatment and her own resourcefulness at healing, she may verse local women in the use of poultices and powders, fight crippling and joint pain with pressure-point massage and needles, educate foraging children on the correct leaf-shapes needed for herbal remedies, conduct bloodletting, bone-setting or the transference of physical injury to herself, a prepared effigy or disposable livestock. So long as the methods do not break taboo, medicine work is an important skill to be shared in times of need. Where divination is vital, the shaman might conduit herself for spirit mediumship, scry for places and people in a dish of fresh water or tranquil pond, throw bones and etched runes to catch the manipulations of fate, read the upcoming weather in the entrails of a holy animal, or even outright undertake a hallucinatory vision to give some chance insight towards foretelling future events.
The shaman may purge bad luck or disease from domiciles with a mournful chant, practice extortion against unwanted haunts and coat the floors and furnishings of a cursed room with purified ashes to catch the footsteps and fingerprints of invisible spirits. Repelling sorcerous scrying or immaterial beings could require meticulously shaping the essence of the land into nets and whorls using carved trenches and standing stones, rearranging the placement of indoor furniture or cultivating plants or animals the presence finds offensive, like lining a hut with rowan-wood or fashioning ceremonial garments from bear pelt. The shaman might even indulge in a bit of calculated mischief herself, using sleight-of-hand tricks, miraculous feats of strength or endurance, ventriloquism and even brief acts of shapeshifting to defuse arguments, keep lovers faithful, befuddle enemies and enforce taboos with foreboding omens of her own design.
Critics and detractors among her fellows over her strange behaviors and habits are never as threatening as her spiritual rivals, but remain a persistent annoyance when she must opt to act diplomatically within her tribe. While lacking any supernatural acumen to contest her uses of power and station directly, such inconveniences can stand in the way of the cooperation and recognition she seeks, and so she must learn to posture herself as an austere figure worthy of her position. Preying on fears and cautionary tales told in her absence are the easiest method for cowing gossips and blowhards, like calling the result of a dice game several times with increasing certainty before wordlessly moving on. Often small efforts such as this is all that is necessary to still unwanted tongue-wagging, but for those who draw her ire further, the denial of her services can be almost ostracizing when she chooses to exert her indispensable nature. Even the most staunch-hearted will relent at the fear of being refused proper burial alongside cherished ancestors and kin.
But the most prominent role for a shaman is serving as master of ceremonies, officiating public gatherings and celebrations, blessing hunts and sacred unions, organizing religious devotions and quelling civil disputes, standing watch over childbirth and funerary rites in equal measure. It is the shaman who sees that bridal customs are upheld along with pledges of fealty under the onus of the spirits, and may regularly meet with a conclave of neighboring shamans to hear word of changes and upsets from distant lands worthy of sharing with her people. Though she may not be entirely welcome due to an icy reputation, the shaman's presence at a birth or marriage insures the happy occasion will be free from any malign entities or curses fueled by jealousy, focusing favorable rites on the spiritual well-being of the child through practiced midwifery, or seeing fit that the couple's union occurs during only the most auspicious of circumstances to impart the greatest amount of luck to the partnership.
These performances are at once both weighty religious ceremony and artistic performance, with the shaman in charge of uniting together various forms of music, dance, interpretative gesture, poetry and song harmoniously by her own hand or staged by accompanying artisans to best convey the mystical process being worked. It is her leadership which brings the assembled audience and performers involvement with her through this ritualistic experience, and a shaman's wisdom at best utilizing the rhythmic and lyrical aptitudes among the tribe to accentuate her craft can give a windfall of great esteem when the spirits will not tolerate half-measures or rehearsals. An auspicious dream or vision might provoke her to orchestrate a ceremonial trance with drumming and chants to derive its meaning, perhaps even coaxing out the aid of relevant spirits with an unspoken bribe in recognition and communal significance.
If an important sacrifice is not available at hand, such as carefully bred and trained guard dogs too valuable to kill to protect a simple gate, the shaman may engineer a satisfactory replacement from other materials like carved stone or baked clay, dubbing each one with a fearsome title like Bone-breaker or Foe-chaser to invest the effigy with sympathetic suggestions of its living kin. With due care she will nevertheless find these spectral hounds bowing at her passage at the rituals end, incarnate by the will of her magic though her knife drew no blood. Similar figurines might be used to array the honored dead with unliving servants and warriors, or to guide the soul of an ancestor or mighty animal to an expectant mother by reflecting the trappings of form it held in life.
Of tasks and ritualism she does not fulfill herself, the shaman will bless the work of other skilled artisans in the tribe, such as anointing with sterilizing soot the tattooist's art which marks the face of a grown adult with health and beauty. Her personal touch is what adds a measure of significance to practicing traditional forms of midwifery on a fateful child or applying sacred markings for life events and infuse the ink with power, but often she will merely be working alongside more generalist practitioners to achieve her goals. Although the most honored within the tribe by her willing contests with supernatural forces, the shaman is not alone in providing for the community with inventive works of thaumaturgy, and often will have been the one to help record, develop and pass along these minor tricks and techniques to a prospective artisan when a certain level of skill or prestige has been reached to allow for it. If no one holds the ability to surpass the aging master, she will be the one to learn and carry on the secrets of the craft instead, bestowing it upon a worthy successor when the time comes.
Though she may play host to the hidden techniques and special practices of her people, the shaman is not simply a gatekeeper to such knowledge, but a guardian to insure continuity from one generation to the next. She understands the valued place of this magic and the powerful influence it provides to one capable of fully utilizing its potency, and similarly it is customary within tribes to seek the shaman's council where spirits might be broached or trespass against the land is at risk by the possession or workings of these procedures. Many peoples hold histories of mighty weapons being forged by the hand of a blacksmith at the height of the art, gifts paid to the spirits of woven cloth enchanted by careful hands, and great acts of prophecy wrought by tribal astrologers, all aided by the overseeing guidance of the shaman to help insure everything goes according to plan. Equally many have seen the earth rise up against such efforts, spirits angered by the befouling of shared territory, the people caught unaware by the hubris of the act before it was too late to call the shaman to mediate.
It is her burden of secrecy to foresee which outcome this may be.
- Location
- Ottawa
Not crippling, just reducing. And trust me, people do it.
It's possible the xp cost is too low. On the other hand, if we're comparing to demon-summoning or artifact creation, any xp cost seems too high.
Thing is, "this river now flows with clean pure water that's perfectly safe to drink" isn't directly comparable to "robot bodyguard" or "+1 Manipulation" or "Hungry Tiger Technique". Any cost you set is gonna be mostly arbitrary; the best you can hope for is that players don't consider the choice a no-brainer. And I think that's the case here. I, for one, am hesitant to externalise my xp into a character I don't get to play.
That being said, I do think the "create loyal servant" option stands out as significantly more powerful, or at least more practical, than its rank on the working chart implies. Most workings are rather more...diffuse. Less controlled. If I was writing the book, I would make sorcerous creations no more reliable than weird monsters you social-fu-d into working for you.
Actually, maybe that's the intention already. The book doesn't say the creation's loyalty is perfect, after all.
Yeah, that's always bugged me.
I see where you're coming from, but I don't see a good solution. Make it so a max stats Solar needs Means for everything and you make it so that non-max-stats DBs can't do much of anything. Forget about mortals.
To preface this, I haven't looked at the specific mechanics of workings for awhile, so I'm being general here on purpose. But I think raising the difficulty can work and not run into this problem if you do it well. My initial thoughts immediately go to making excellencies not applicable (adjusting difficulties a bit in response). Alternatively just inflate the numbers for the higher ambition/circle stuff. Add a couple points of difficulty to Solar workings doesn't change the numbers for Dragonblooded.
- Location
- Virginia
The real solution is to play Chuubo's.
Not necessarily. If you make the difficulty jumps from Terrestrial to Celestial to Solar Workings significantly larger than they are now (especially the ones that persist even after aquiring the appropriate level of Sorcery), you can leave Terrestrial Workings as accessible to Dragonblooded and difficult for Mortals, while making top level Solar Workings require lots of effort even for maxed out Solars.
I don't know enough to speculate on specific numbers for that, but I shouldn't need to.
Well, as it is currently, Dragonblooded have a max dicepool of 19 counting stunts, but their Occult Excellency also includes a dice trick that allows rerolls, which raises their effective total. I haven't done the exact math, but eyeballing it they'll be averaging only about one less success than a Solar would. So they should be able to pull off any of the Celestial Workings pretty easily. And Dragonblooded only need ability dots to max out your Excellency, so having low stats actually hurts them less than Solars, because it's pretty easy to buy up a favored ability, and you already need a minimum of 3 dots in Occult to pick up Sorcery. So a Dragonblooded Sorcerer with the absolute minimum possible dice pool- which in practice will probably never happen- would have at least 9 dice counting stunts. When spending willpower, they're going to be averaging 5-6 successes before you add in the dice trick, which is more than enough to complete Finesse 3 Terrestrial Workings quite comfortably- about five or six rolls for an Ambition 3 Working.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Whooboy, this session was embarrassing, and it was all my fault. Welcome friends, foes and other, to another session of Sunlit Sands. Thanks again to @Aleph for running!
Session 35 Log
Session 35 Log
We resume where we left off last week, having met Susili Moto in the flesh and having proven that he is exactly as advertised- a deporable swine of a man who has no patience for manners and a rutheless, cunning streak a mile wide.
Unfortunately, I did not roleplay this as snazzily as I could have. This whole session was character-blunder after character blunder, and none of it felt wrong, but after the fact I felt really ill and upset about how I played. It wasn't anything specific to Aleph or how she was running the session either- these are all my screwups.
But, productive postmortem time!
Functionally, Susili Moto is the first major encounter with a peer-level opponent (An E4 DB), in his place of power. A manse, no less (first Inks has seen on camera), and in his domain. Everything about this man, I realized after the fact, is a calculated effort on his part to achieve his ends, he's not an asshole because he likes to be (though I'm sure he does), but because it serves his purposes well to avoid gladhanders and people begging for his time.
The first scene was a study in contrasts as well as the ordinary player problem of 'Hammer/nail' psychology. I leaned on Inks's sexy stats, (and off camera I went to the trouble of actually writing up more bonuses for that), but halfway through I was informed that it wouldn't work, so I had to hard-shift to a Craft boast.
Now here's the fun thing- Aleph learned from Hinna, in that she allowed me to do something- the copy tool stunt, knowing that it might not work or might even be the least advantageous approach possible, but I still felt good for succeeding in and of itself.
The trick for these kinds of situations, I feel, is that a player should feel like they succeeded at Something, even if they didn't succeed at what they wanted. Not like 'gimmies or freebies', but so that it doesn't feel like wasted effort or time.
Long and the short of it is that Inks could've handled Moto in this first scene a lot better, but I was too bull-headed and off balance in and out of character to figure out how. This is why Pipera was pretty scathing about her critique of Inks in the next scene.
I'm of mixed feelings about this, because it made sense in-character, but like in reality, very few people like being raked over their own mistakes in strident, upset tones. Inks did not feel good hearing what Pipera had to say, and neither did I. This is a very real feeling that in some ways makes me averse as a player to asking for more criticism (in character or not), but it's also a wrong feeling.
The challenge as ST here, is that the emotional conveyance is important but separated or compartmentalized from terminal failure; Moto deciding he wants to attack us, or prevent us from doing things, or any number of similar 'Cannot recover from' states.
I know I can recover (don't know how yet), but Pipera's in-game criticism dinged Inks's confidence and mine.
I think it's also telling that I'm much better at handling Environmental challenges like the Wyldstorm, over People and Intrigue challenges like Moto. My player skill is better there.
The rest of the session more or less stands on its own I think.
Inks's response to Moto is summed up as:
Unfortunately, I did not roleplay this as snazzily as I could have. This whole session was character-blunder after character blunder, and none of it felt wrong, but after the fact I felt really ill and upset about how I played. It wasn't anything specific to Aleph or how she was running the session either- these are all my screwups.
But, productive postmortem time!
Functionally, Susili Moto is the first major encounter with a peer-level opponent (An E4 DB), in his place of power. A manse, no less (first Inks has seen on camera), and in his domain. Everything about this man, I realized after the fact, is a calculated effort on his part to achieve his ends, he's not an asshole because he likes to be (though I'm sure he does), but because it serves his purposes well to avoid gladhanders and people begging for his time.
The first scene was a study in contrasts as well as the ordinary player problem of 'Hammer/nail' psychology. I leaned on Inks's sexy stats, (and off camera I went to the trouble of actually writing up more bonuses for that), but halfway through I was informed that it wouldn't work, so I had to hard-shift to a Craft boast.
Now here's the fun thing- Aleph learned from Hinna, in that she allowed me to do something- the copy tool stunt, knowing that it might not work or might even be the least advantageous approach possible, but I still felt good for succeeding in and of itself.
The trick for these kinds of situations, I feel, is that a player should feel like they succeeded at Something, even if they didn't succeed at what they wanted. Not like 'gimmies or freebies', but so that it doesn't feel like wasted effort or time.
Long and the short of it is that Inks could've handled Moto in this first scene a lot better, but I was too bull-headed and off balance in and out of character to figure out how. This is why Pipera was pretty scathing about her critique of Inks in the next scene.
I'm of mixed feelings about this, because it made sense in-character, but like in reality, very few people like being raked over their own mistakes in strident, upset tones. Inks did not feel good hearing what Pipera had to say, and neither did I. This is a very real feeling that in some ways makes me averse as a player to asking for more criticism (in character or not), but it's also a wrong feeling.
The challenge as ST here, is that the emotional conveyance is important but separated or compartmentalized from terminal failure; Moto deciding he wants to attack us, or prevent us from doing things, or any number of similar 'Cannot recover from' states.
I know I can recover (don't know how yet), but Pipera's in-game criticism dinged Inks's confidence and mine.
I think it's also telling that I'm much better at handling Environmental challenges like the Wyldstorm, over People and Intrigue challenges like Moto. My player skill is better there.
The rest of the session more or less stands on its own I think.
Inks's response to Moto is summed up as:
Queshire
Wants a pink flamingo for their lawn.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
So, this is a stupid question. I'm planning a fanfic story with a twilight caste protagonist primarily based off of 3e. For reasons their ability to disguise themselves is important to their character, but I'm not sure if I'm comfortable giving them Flawlessly Impenetrable Disguise and implying Larceny 4. Naturally, since this is a story I can do whatever the fuck I want, but I'm still not comfortable with it. Do you think I should give them it anyways, or a larceny charm with a lower requirement and basically have them rely on their excellency for their disguises until they've practiced up enough to get Flawlessly Impenetrable Disguise?
i mean
you could just have them disguise themselves mundanely
Charms aren't necessary for all kinds of actions. Dye your hair with mundane plant dyes, rub saffron in your skin to change its tint, use another accent - none of this requires a Charm. Yes, that means that you can't disguise yourself too far away from your natural appearance, but that's a useful constraint to a story, not a flaw.
Queshire
Wants a pink flamingo for their lawn.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Sure, but it feels to me that with Solars if you do something enough you should start developing charms for it.