Cost: Every attempt to use the Path of Alchemy costs one Willpower point. Additionally, a fully stocked laboratory is necessary, usually requiring a Resources or Sanctum rating at least equal to the rank being used.
Roll: Intelligence + Crafting
Modifiers: Difficulty is reduced by 1 if the alchemist has mastered the recipe. At character creation, recipes can be mastered in this way for one freebie point each, and later they may be mastered for one experience point each.
Time: Any alchemical procedure requires at least an hour, and in general it is one day per level of the effect, though levels in excess of this subtract (so an alchemist with twice the required rating can do the work in hours, one with three ranks and perform a level two procedure in a day, etc.) Mastered recipes do this calculation at rank one higher than the alchemist has. On top of the time for the procedure, ingredients must be prepared. Rank one and two recipes require a day or two for preparation, but higher rank recipes require one week per level.
Duration: The effects of alchemy typically last one scene, with some exceptions. The outputs of alchemy also have a shelf-life. If left out in the open, exposed to the air, they only last a half hour. Otherwise, they expire depending on the number of successes achieved in creating them, after which time they become inert and potentially dangerous:
• One Day
•• One Week
••• One Month
•••• Three Months
••••• Six Months
Cost of Failure: When an alchemist fails, some of their equipment is damaged. They will need to replace glassware and ingredients, of course, and occasionally a more complex apparatus, as well as cleaning tools that survive. However, the most dangerous cost of failure is that the result will usually do something. If the alchemist is lucky, it will merely mess up their laboratory or perhaps explode unexpectedly. If they are unlucky, it may appear to have worked properly at creation and do something wildly different in use (the best case scenario here is poison).
OOC: Speaking of this stuff I should probably consolidate Chicago Synthetics into dots or resources, I do not think keeping track of the money at this point is helpful and resource dots would play nicer with other WoD mechanics like this one.
EDIT: Updated with Psychic Phenomena.
EDIT2: Updated with Paths from Paranormalists Handbook and W20 Kinfolk.
People mentioning what Paths of Sorcery they would like to get has prompted me to get back to finishing up this summary of the available Paths from Sorcerer Revised and M20 Sorcerer. So people who don't have the RPG books can have at least some idea of what others are talking about. These are also the rules that most Practitioners, including the Ordo Lebes, will likely be using for their powers.
Now I am going to be using mostly M20 Sorcerer as the base for this as it is more recent and intended for use with the 20th Anniversary Edition rules, it also consolidates some extra Paths that didn't appear in Sorcerer Revised. Though I will reference Revised where necessary. Just to be clear, when I say Revised I mean Sorcerer: Revised Edition and when I mention M20 I mean M20 Sorcerer.
The M20 core rules for casting and using Path Magic are neater and more consistent, however some of the standard Aspects have issues with scaling that render the lower/mid levels much weaker than Revised. Given that the higher levels are at least as strong, I think this is due to not properly balancing the mechanics during writing, not an intended change. All examples below use the published Aspects as is, unless noted otherwise.
A Sorcerer has a specific Attribute, determined by how they practice magic, this is the characters casting attribute. (Molly's appears to be intelligence)
Each Path they learn has an Ability associated with it, determined by how they practice that Path, this is the characters Path Ability. (Molly's alchemy is based on craft)
Paths are rated 1 to 6, though 6 represents legendary mastery and is extremely rare (for non-Exalts at least). The actual rules for 6 dots in a Path appear only in Revised. Though M20 does mention that going beyond the fifth dot in an aspect may be possible.
Paths have spells and rituals, spells are quick magic that generally takes a base of one turn per level, rituals are slower and usually take 10 minutes per Path level. Generally Rituals allow the caster to achieve much greater effects than an equivalent spell, but are more effort intensive. Usually a Sorcerer can cast any spell they have sufficient Path dots for, but have to learn each specific ritual they want to use.
Spells have aspects, these are variables in the spell like duration, range, damage, area, sympathetic connection ect. The level of a spell is the level of the highest Aspect in the spell. A Sorcerer cannot use an aspect of a higher rating than their Path Level. Rituals also have aspects but they get [Path Ability] bonus successes to pay for aspects and often expand the scale/scope of aspects.
To cast a spell/ritual the caster spends 1 point of willpower and rolls [Casting Attribute] + [Path Ability] against a difficulty of [spell/ritual Path level + 4]. You usually need one success for each level of each aspect in a spell. If you don't have enough successes the spell fails completely.
You can lower the difficulty of your roll by spending Mana
You can shorten the time to cast a spell by increasing the difficulty by 1 for each turn shaved off the casting time.
You can cast spells as extended actions, each roll after the first (which takes the normal casting time) takes one turn. Rituals can also be cast as extended actions in Revised, but M20 doesn't give a specific rule regarding this. (The logical extrapolation of the rules for M20 would be generally 10 minutes per extra Ritual roll.)
Teamwork can be used to group cast spells and rituals this extends the casting time.
All paths that can use both rituals and spells have a 5 dot ritual that allows a Sorcerer to store a spell in an object for later use.
Rituals listed are examples of power/capability not the full width of what is available to a Path.
This is the basics, I have not covered various additional rules.
The common aspects are, Area, Damage/Healing, Distance, Duration, Number of Targets, Metaphysical Weight, Passengers, Range, Sympathetic Connection, Travel Speed and Weight.
A spell/ritual does not need to have all Aspects available to a path, applying 0 in an Aspect simply means the spell doesn't have that variable. (For example Fascination spells can be cast via Sympathetic Connection or directly at the target with Range, they don't require both.)
Scaling on Aspects is generally lower than Sphere Magick and is capped at [Path level] successes, in general don't expect Path Magic to directly match what the Awakened (or in DF Wizards) can do.
Most of the Aspects are fairly straight forward but some are a bit less intuitive:
Metaphysical Weight - How mystically powerful the subject is, covers all creatures, but the relevant tiers for Spirits are:
1 - minor gafflings and equivalents.
2 - powerful gafflings and weak ghosts.
3 - most jagglings and ghosts, servitor demons, notable elementals.
4 - powerful jagglings and umbrood preceptors, strong demons.
5 - Incarnae, Barons of Hell, very powerful Elementals.
Damage/Healing - 2 Dice of damage of healing per level, aggravated costs 2 additional levels to deal/heal. Remember Aspects are capped at [Path rating] levels/successes, thus damage is capped at [Path rating]x2 dice.
Sympathetic Connection - used to cast spells via links rather than range/LoS.
1 - physical contact
2 - True Name (full mortal name, not DF True Name)
3 - body part (including blood, hair ect.)
4 - prized possession
5 - any possession
Rituals only, no Spells, Alchemy calls its rituals recipes
Doesn't use Aspects
Time: One day per level of recipe, reduced by One day for every dot in [Path rating] above the recipes level, if reduced below one day time becomes several hours.
Alchemy is simply the Path of one use consumables and transmutation. Alchemical products are things that provide some temporary effect when used or are substances that have some unusual innate properties. Alchemy is focused on transmutation, refinement, purification and transformation and it products reflect this. You can turn lead into gold, make healing potions, create acid that burns ghosts or produce impossible alloys, but not produce love potions or elixirs of bad luck.
Consumables produced by Alchemy usually have a shelf life, though it may be years in some cases, while transmuted substances are generally permanent.
Alchemy needs equipment and resources to use, with higher tier recipes requiring more extensive gear and generally costlier or rarer ingredients.
At basic level an Alchemist can produce refined or improved versions of normal chemicals and substances, including pharmaceuticals and industrial products.
At intermediate level they can increase capabilities beyond human limits, grant temporary minor supernatural abilities, create materials that exceed normal limitations and make substances that do supernatural things.
A Master Alchemist can create potions that greatly slow or halt aging, replicate the effects of powers of up to the third dot, grant outright superhuman capability and produce substances with major supernatural properties.
The Alchemists of Legend can freely transmute materials, produce elixirs of youth, manufacture the most exotic of substances and similar feats of puissance.
The Path fits neatly into DF as is, it covers potions, magical substances and transmutation, which are the kinds of things we see various characters using/making quite a few times.
Aspects - Distance, Number of Targets, Weight, can also spend successes to have the conjured object act without needing to touch it.
Conjuration (aka apportation) is the art of summoning/moving objects and beings (though not the Sorcerer). It allows you to pull rabbits out of hats, shotguns out of vests and at the highest levels drop a car (or an elephant) wherever you please.
Conjuration is instantaneous, the object/being vanishes from it current location and appears where the Sorcerer directs. Things move from their current location to the vicinity of the Sorcerer, it doesn't allow sending things to distant locations, changing locations in the presence of the Sorcerer is allowed. Conjured objects also can be made to animate for a few turns when summoned, this can be used to make attacks or manipulate things.
Basic skill only allows coin tricks and otherwise moving tiny objects at a distance of a few feet.
Intermediate skill allows them to move up to ten targets massing up to 100 pounds 100 feet.
Masters can potentially move hundreds of targets with the total mass of a car or elephant up to 5 miles.
Legendary Conjurers can move a fully loaded 18-wheeler 50 miles, or make it rain coins around them.
Though very much a trick associated with magicians, the Path of Conjuration isn't really a power seen much in DF. It is just moving something else from point A to point B, so it does make a good talent for a Practitioner as its applications are limited mostly by how inventive the wielder is.
Aspects - Distance, Travel Speed and Passengers; also costs a success for each barrier that must be bypassed to get to the destination and teleportation add two successes to the required total.
Conveyance is the Path of magical transportation, everything from boosting speed to run somewhere, making you car fly across a river to just just teleporting somewhere directly.
Teleportation is not necessarily instant, it still takes time based on the travel distance and the Travel Speed Aspect to reach the destination. Distances given are for populated areas like cities, open areas or wilderness increase the maximum distance significantly.
With basic skill the Sorcerer can move across a room about 3 time faster than they could run, but they wouldn't bring their clothes along or use a ritual to double their running speed for several minutes.
At Intermediate level they can teleport themselves and someone else 100ft or with a hanging Ritual teleport back to a pre-prepared location from 50 miles away.
A Master of Conveyance can move 5 miles instantly with up to three passengers or Ritually create a multiple use two way gate between two points.
Legendary Conveyance allows for always arriving in the nick of time and rituals to build permanent portals or move large groups.
Conveyance slots fairly neatly into DF. While magical travel/teleportation other than the Ways isn't much of a thing, Conveyance allows magical transportation around the local area without invalidating the need for Ways to handle longer journeys.
No distinction between spells and rituals
Aspects - Time Period, Accuracy and Query (how complex the question is)
Time - casting time is determined directly by whatever practice the Sorcerer uses for this Path
Divination is the Path of prophecy, foresight and visions. It enable the Sorcerer to pose questions to the universe and receive visions and omens in answer.
Divinations of the future, no matter how accurate, are never set in stone, as the very act of viewing the future changes it and the future is an ever changing muddle. This Path can be used to ask questions about the past and present as well.
A novice Diviner can only ask simple yes or no questions about things no more than a day in the future/past, the answers will be incredibly vague and difficult to interpret.
With intermediate skill a Sorcerer can ask questions that could be answered through research of publicly available knowledge concerning things no more than one month ahead/behind and their visions will be accurate but vague and open to misinterpretation.
The Master of Divination can ask very detailed questions that require lost, destroyed or deliberately hidden information to answer from a decade away and the answers will be accurate, often easy to interpret, but still subject to human error.
A Sorcerer with Legendary skill in Divination can seek answers to almost any question covering things two decades ahead or almost unlimited behind, they will know what will happen, when it will happen and who it will happen to, unless they are wrong, of course.
Divination works great as is in DF, there are plenty of prophecies, ancient secrets and beings with uncanny knowledge or insight.
To make things easier on storytellers (or DP is this case) it very explicitly can't give absolute answers about the future and while it can give quite clear answers at higher levels, it tends to be highly symbolic and abstract about its answers. Further there are whole sidebars in both Revised and M20 stating that this Path is only directly open to players with storyteller permission due to how much it can muck with the story, so DP you have authorial approval to ban this Path if you want.
Aspects - Metaphysical Weight and Spiritual Reach
The Path of Ephemera is the art of shamanism, spirit pacts and negotiation. This Path allows the Sorcerer to contact and negotiate with spirits, in exchange for chiminage or sometimes other considerations the spirits beckoned by this Path can assist the summoner or carry out tasks for them.
Ephemera allows summoning and communication with spirits, but does not compel them. Calling up a spirit is an invitation to that spirit and provides an opportunity for that spirit to appear or communicate but can be refused without consequence. Many minor spirits are eager to perform feats that express their nature and will perform such for minimal or no payment. Typically Ephemera is aspected towards the Middle or Low Umbra. The Path also provides some social bonuses with spirits, though nothing overwhelming.
At basic skill with the Path a Sorcerer can communicate with and get the attention of local spirits.
With Intermediate skill a Sorcerer can summon specific spirits of up to Jaggling in power.
The Master of Ephemera can summon Incarnae, see into the penumbra, astral project and even fight spirits.
This Path is very much the nice alternative to Summoning, Binding and Warding, unlike that Path its based around social interaction, not compulsion. Ephemera is also better at actually summoning as it can get immediate presence/communication, rather than requiring the summoned to travel to the Sorcerer.
As the Path of shamanism, Ephemera works perfectly in DF. (Mortimer Lindquist is an excellent example of a practitioner with Ephemera(Ghosts) and the Spirit Magnet merit.)
Rituals only, no Spells
Does not use Aspects
Time - Crafting time for the object, plus 1-3 days per level of the enchantment
Enchantment is quite simply the Path of making magical items.
The base item for a Talisman generally needs to be crafted to a high standard to the Sorcerer. Talismans created by Enchantment have one function, they do not posses multiple powers. Talismans are usually permanent or have a set number of uses.
One dot Talismans are rarely noticeably magical, they add one to an attribute/ability roll or decrease the difficulty of an attack or ability by 1 or provide other minor boons.
Three dot Talismans can be obviously magical items, such as two dice to up to three attributes or abilities or replicate one dot supernatural powers.
Five dot Talismans are potent items that can add 5 dice to a roll, boost attributes to superhuman levels, reproduce 3 dot powers or benefits of similar magnitude.
(Six dot Talismans don't have defined capabilities but by extrapolation they would probably be equivalent to 4 dot powers)
(Further there is something rather odd about the example high-tier Talismans from Revised, they all seem to have onerous requirements or crippling drawbacks that make most of them inferior to the lower tier ones. Nowhere in either the fluff or rules description in Revised and M20 is there any mention of Talismans requiring major downsides, just in the example items carried over from Revised.)
Enchantment is a straight 1 to 1 port for the DF setting, doesn't really need any changes or adaption. Though I would advise ignoring the sample Talismans because some of them really don't match the rules text of what Talismans are supposed to do.
Aspects - Duration, Number of Targets, Range, Sympathetic Connection, Allure and Willbending (strangely Fascination lacks the Duration Aspect in M20, I assume this is an error as it has it in Revised. Further the Willbending Aspect does not allow any form of resistance in M20, this is grossly unbalanced so I have added a standard resistance roll)
Fascination is about using mental influence to charm and manipulate people. Classic charm spells, mindbending seduction and subtle irresistible suggestions are its domain.
Fascination can apply two different sorts of influence, Allure boosts social dice pools and Willbending directly enthralls targets. targets of Willbending may roll Willpower (difficulty 4 + Spell level) to resist, each success reduces the level of influence by one, orders that that go against the targets character allow the target to spend one willpower to make another resistance roll, reductions in influence are cumulative across multiple rolls.
A Sorcerer with basic skill in Fascination can add 1 dice to social dice pools, draw attention even in a crowd and make mild suggestions that align with the targets personality and situation.
With middling skill a Sorcerer can add 3 dice to social dice pools, influence up to ten people with a single spell, ensure those around them vie for their attention and make suggestions that don't align with a targets personality. With a Ritual they could influence everyone, guests and staff, at a social event to treat them as a VIP regardless of if they were invited.
A Master of Fascination can effect hundreds of people with a single spell, influencing to obey their requests and making their suggestions almost irresistible even if they wildly defy the targets character and situation.
Legendary Fascination can influence thousands of people and turn them into slaves utterly obedient to their new owner.
Very much appropriate for DF, this is straight up Black Magic Enthrallment and mental manipulation, even the social boost is black magic as it operates by messing with others minds.
Aspects - Duration, Number of Targets and Severity. Fortune determines all durations as if the Duration Aspect were 1 higher than its actual value.
The bending of the tides of probability, both blessing and cursing are available to the Path of Fortune. This Path operates entirely though fate and probability influencing the course of events.
Fortune is an extremely imprecise Path, the Sorcerer determines strength, duration and general impetus, but has no control over the specifics. When targeted at more than one person all targets must be part of a defined group (a family, a small town, an organisation ect). Supernaturals are highly resistant to curses and may roll willpower to negate them (difficulty 4 + [Path rating]) if they become aware of the curse and try to resist. Botches with Fortune tend to be even worse than botches with other Paths, botched blessings aimed at the caster tend to be particularly bad.
At basic level Fortune can produce brief inconveniences or minor weals, such as saying something stupid, stubbed toes or catching a bus just in time. Such spells effect a single target for no more than a scene.
At intermediate level spells can produce major setbacks or bonuses, including serious but not life threatening injuries/illnesses, lasting social setbacks or successes with gambling, luck with relationships, or perhaps getting the one helpful bureaucrat. Such spells can last for a fortnight and encompass groups of up to ten people. With ritual they can even preform greater feats like guiding someone to a potential true love in a few months to a year.
At Master level spells can lead the cursed to a painful and unusual death, blessings are similarly dramatic, providing last minute saves from certain death or victories rarer than one in a million. These blessings/curses can cover hundreds and linger for years. A ritual can bless a family for generations, if someone is willing to sacrifice their life for it.
Legendary Fortune can lay epic blessings and curses that effect entire towns and last for a lifetime.
Straight up luck magic, in DF this is the domain of Wizard entropy curses and the providence wielded by angels. Interestingly this Path also has a Death Curse ritual that allows the Sorcerer to sacrifice themself to power a much larger and stronger curse than they normally could.
In Revised Fortune gained increased benefits from teamwork and group casting, this was removed in M20, a change I agree with as it made an already powerful Path overwhelmingly strong.
Aspects - Healing, successes can also reduce wound penalties or the toxin ratings of poisons/drugs/illnesses.
The art of Healing magic, covering healing wounds, reliving pain and discomfort, neutralising poison and curing disease.
Healing operates at touch range. Healing aggravated damage increases the required level/successes by two.
At basic level spells can heal 2 dice of bashing/lethal damage and reduce wound penalties and toxin ratings by 1 per casting. A ritual can put a willing or unconscious patient into peaceful sleep.
Intermediate level allows spells to heal aggravated damage and reduce poisons/diseases by 3 levels. A rituals can unpleasantly purge all toxins from a patient, even magical potions.
At Master level a Sorcerer can heal minor congenital and neurological problems and cure all but the most virulent diseases with a single spell.
Legendary Healing allows the elimination of moderate neurological and congenital issues and with a ritual revive the recently dead or restore missing limbs.
Healing magic is uncommon in DF, but understandably highly valued.
Aspects - Damage, Range, Area and Special Effects.
Hellfire is the Path of direct damage via elemental effects.
Without extra Aspects Hellfire does lethal damage by fire. The caster is explicitly not immune to their own spells. Spells hit everything in the area of effect automatically, like explosives. Directly dealing supernatural aggravated damage requires two extra successes/levels to inflict. Elemental attacks can take advantage of a targets supernatural weaknesses, like fire vs kindred. The Damage Aspect is capped at [Path level] successes, capping damage at [Path level]x2 dice for a single spell.
Special Effects are demi-Aspects that can be learned, for [effect level + 1]xp that give the Sorcerer access to options that change the elemental nature and effects of the Path. Examples include blinding dust storms, lightning, icy blizzards, decay that only damages non-living objects and more.
At basic level spells can deal 2 dice of damage, across a 1 foot radius, at touch range and available effects include toxic smoke, blinding dust and similar things.
At intermediate level spells can deal encompass a 6 foot radius, at 25ft and the available effects include most elements, such as lightning, causing the earth to split underneath the area or animate and aggressive plants. Rituals can provide limited protection against an element or create a hanging effect that sets the first person to touch the caster on fire.
At master level spells can reach 150ft and have a radius of 25ft, alternate effects can encompass sophisticated elemental manipulation, such as having an existing body of water drown those in the target area. Rituals can store a standard spell in an object to be released later or ignite an entire building with un quenchable flame.
Hellfire with various Special Effect is rather common in DF, anyone launching a direct harmful magic attack that isn't a wizard is using this Path. Also just to cover my bases, the Path of Hellfire (conjuring elemental attacks) has nothing whatsoever to do with DF Hellfire (empowering your magic with infernalism).
(If this Path is used in quest for a Practitioner or Molly I would recommend reducing the base casting time to one turn, as it take far to long to deliver even basic attacks by RAW.)
Aspects - Duration, Number of Targets, Senses and Realism
Illusion is the art of confounding the senses.
By default the Path of Illusion creates false sensory impressions in the minds of its targets. However it can be altered to a separate Path creating free standing illusions that appear to all onlookers by switching the Number of Targets Aspect for the Area Aspect (for size of the illusion).
Illusions exist only in the minds of the targets and have no external reality. Targets can usually notice the deception with a Perception + Awareness roll [difficulty: 4 + Realism Aspect] requiring [Senses Aspect] successes.
At basic level spells can create a completely immobile and fixed (and flat if visual) illusion affecting one sense of one person.
Intermediate level illusions can effect three senses of ten people and generate illusions that can change with perspective and even have simple moving parts.
Mastery allows illusions effecting all senses of hundreds with illusion that are fully immersive.
Messing with perceptions isn't a rare thing in DF, though the default form of this Path is black magic due to being based around mind-tricks. Though some things that Wizards us, like veils, are solidly mind-whammies, so maybe this path would get a pass from the White Council.
This Path summons inclement weather by drawing winds and tempests from the Shadowlands. As it siphons energy directly from the Low Umbra it weakens, pacifies and at the highest levels harms ghosts.
Maelstroms is incompatible with the DF setting due to relying on metaphysics and associations that don't apply. It might be inspiration for new ways necromancers can mess with ghosts, but the Path itself is inappropriate.
(They renamed this Path from Mana Manipulation to Quintessence Manipulation between Revised and M20, but I prefer the older name and it fits the DF setting better anyway.)
Aspects - Area, Duration and Flow
Mana Manipulation is the art of sensing, controlling and directing mystical energies. Whether called mana, quintessence, chi, gnosis, essence, sekhem or many other names this Path bends the flow of mystic energies.
Mana Manipulation includes all forms of magical energy control and influence, both external and internal, including geomancy, feng shui, chi control, manipulating chakras and more. It includes sensing and examining mystical energies. Geomancy/feng shui can allow blessings/curses on an area or act as a power source for magical workings. This Path can also be used to directly disrupt the powers of others by channeling energy into counterspells (Per Sorcerer rules you can counterspell active powers from almost any supernatural).
At basic level a Sorcerer can sense energies in an area or objects and determine resonance, such sensory perception spells last a few minutes.
At intermediate level sensory spells can be used to perceive the subtle flows of others magic and allow the fine perceptions of the energies of others allowing examination of meridians and chakras or the judging of magical potential. Spells can disrupt or divert flows, forcing geomantic nodes into temporary dormancy or allowing power to be stored in objects. Rituals can enable the creating of consumable stores of mana (tass/mana potions) or allow the adjustment of local geomancy/feng shui in a building sized area.
At master level fine nuanced control becomes possible, spells can draw energy directly from places of power or the reserves of others, influence the flows with an individual greatly affecting their health and granting merits or flaws, directly channel extra energy into counterspells to enhance their power, block others from using their own energies or even alter the resonance of mana, cleaning tainted mana for use.
A Legendary Sorcerer can channel vast energies, even creating temporary upwellings of mana with spells or reshape the geomantic landscape with rituals.
In DF Mana Manipulation covers everything to do with leylines and is pretty important for powering the big rituals we see in the books. Note that in WoD mana/quintessence/chi/sekhem/gnosis ect are all forms of the same underlying stuff, as magic in DF is similar in it all seems to be variations of the same energies, this Path should function just like it does in WoD. Essence, due to being a condensed primal form, is probably harder to work with directly than the standard and may require a higher Path level to manipulate.
Aspects - Duration and Ghost Binding
The Path of Necromancy grants power over the spirits of the dead by channelling the energies of death.
Necromancy manipulate ghosts, it doesn't directly involve corpses or objects (no zombies). Casting a spell or ritual of this Path causes [Spell/Ritual level] levels of bashing damage to the Sorcerer, in addition to the normal cost, due exposure to the energies of death. Failing a spell/ritual of this path causes the caster to be overwhelmed by despair suffering a derangement for an hour.
At basic level spells allow the Sorcerer to perceive and communicate with ghosts, with a ritual they can peer into ghostly realms adjacent to the living world.
Intermediate level spells can infuse the caster with death energies intimidating the dead and force a ghost into corporeal form allowing physical interaction. A ritual can allow the caster to straddle the line between ling and dead for several minutes, letting them interact directly with both.
Master level spells can summon any ghost whose true name (full name, not DF true name) the caster knows or compel the obedience of any ghost whose will the Sorcerer can overpower. Rituals can temporarily make some far more vulnerable to possession by the dead, steal lifeforce from living victims and equivalent feats.
The Path of Ghost enslavement, in DF any practitioner/sorcerer compelling the spirits of the dead to obey is probably using this Path or Summoning, Binding and Warding.
Aspects - Area, Duration and Impedance, also Damage and Range for direct attack spells
The Path of the ghosthunter, specifically the hunter bit, Necronics uses the casters life energy to harm ghost and disrupt their powers.
Basic level spells can disrupt active ghostly powers in an area.
Intermediate spells increase the local shroud rating or can trap a ghost in a fake pocket realm. Rituals of this level can create a small bubble of impenetrable shroud or disrupt ghostling activity across a whole city block.
At Master level, spells can directly attack ghosts or create areas that rapidly harm ghost within them. Rituals can extract information about a ghost, even its passions/fetters/true name or with the ghost name and one of their fetters, inflict major changes on a ghost directly.
More Necromantic jackassery, in DF this is appropriate for necromancers dealing heavily with ghosts along with the preceding Path.
Aspects - Sympathetic Connection and Dreamwalking.
Oneiromancy is the magic of entering, observing and manipulating the dreams of others.
Lucid dreaming is a talent/merit not Path Magic. This Path involves the dreams of others, messing around with your own dreams is lucid dreaming and the Demesne background.
Basic Oneiromancy spells can touch the dreams of another, seeing flashes of imagery that can be interpreted to grant insight about the target.
An Intermediate Dreamwalker can fully enter the dreams of a target or observe them from outside the dream. They can transform the dreams they encounter, mimicking the Nightmares flaw or soothing the dreamer to gain an extra point of willpower from sleep. With a ritual they can invade a targets Demesne and attempt to control it, though they are at a significant disadvantage to the owner.
With Mastery, specific and detailed dream sequences can be sent and multiple dreamers can be drawn into a shared dream.
The Legendary Oneiromancer can physically enter into the realm of dreams and draw forth objects or even living things to the physical world for a time.
The ability to go wandering though others heads, Rosie seems to have native skill in this and the oneiromancy form of Divination. Causing night terrors and directly messing with peoples dreams is almost certainly considered black magic.
Aspects - Area, Duration, Distance, Number of Targets and Shadowgrip
The literal power of darkness, the Path of Shadows conjures and controls the very stuff of shadows and darkness.
This Path creates and shapes darkness/shadow, it doesn't directly affect light (other than to snuff it out). Spells can dampen existing light and sound. This Path can inflict supernatural fear and terror on its targets and. Magic can be used to directly boost stealth. By default shadows are intangible and exert no physical force, some rituals and legendary spells may change this. Bright light, does not generally inhibit this Path, though some specific effects may be weakened. Spells can be cast on self or others to provide bonuses to stealth, intimidation and identity concealment.
At basic level the Sorcerer can deepen existing shadows and slightly muffle sounds, granting bonuses to stealth or with a ritual grant the power to see perfectly in darkness for eight hours.
At intermediate Level spells can shape and animate darkness, wither light and induce limited sensory distortions in targets. A ritual can harden the shadows on their person for 24 hours, granting 2 points of armour and +2 dice to grappling.
Master level spells can assail targets with nightmarish shades, dampen the senses and wrap the Sorcerer in impenetrable blackness, recording devices exposed to such magics are typically destroyed.
The Legendary Sorcerer's spells can dim the sun across a defined area or even give the shadows physical form.
The path of spookyness, probably Anduriel's favourite magic if he was a mortal. Mostly not technically black magic as you don't
actually have to induce crippling fear.
Aspects - Scale, Subject and Disparity
The Path of physical transformations, Shapeshifting enables adopting human and animal shapes and combination thereof.
Shapeshifting grants human and animal transformations. All spells last for a scene. Shifts can be partial or full. At higher Path levels the Sorcerer can transform others and mix and match features from multiple animals. If adopting a full animal form it is possible to lose oneself in the transformation. Forms grant the full capabilities and sense of that shape.
At basic level spells can perform cosmetic shifts or with ritual copy the form of a human with some of their hair.
Intermediate Shapeshifting spells can change a single body part completely into that of another creature.
With Mastery of Shapeshifting a spell can change the Sorcerer completely into an animal, make three unrelated shifts at once and/or transform up to two subjects. A ritual at this level can transform the caster into a giant version of an existing animal.
The Legendary Sorcerer's spells can freely mix and match traits and even transform into mythic or imaginary shapes (doesn't grant supernatural powers).
Shapeshifting is all over the place in the DF, though most shifters have more specific forms than a Sorcerer with this path.
(Starlight is the Path of voyaging into and navigating the Underworld, it provides the ability to open doors in and out, resistance to hazards, bonuses to dealing with the environment and navigational ability. It is mechanically a direct match to using ways and traveling the Nevernever. Thus I have converted the Path to dealing with the Nevernever as it just fits so well.)
Aspects - Duration, Passengers and Wending
The Path of Starlight is the art of entering and navigating the Nevernever.
Doors opened by this Path allow only the Sorcerer and their passengers to pass, for others they usually don't exist. The Sorcerer may exit the Nevernever by a different threshold than they entered, this requires another casting of Starlight. This Path doesn't provide any combat bonuses, other than improved ability to deal with the environment in the Nevernever. The bonuses granted by this Path's magic only apply to the Nevernever.
At basic level the Sorcerer can open passages into the Nevernever at any doorway or physical threshold and likewise open such gates out, these gates last at most a few minutes.
Intermediate level Sorcerers can open passages that last for a day, grant protections that lower the difficulty of all Awareness, Leadership, Survival and Occult by 1 when dealing with the environment of the Nevernever and grant a general understanding of where a passage may exit the Nevernever and their general location within it
Mastery of Starlight grant a Sorcerer the ability to determine exactly where a passage will lead and where they are, always find their way to a passage out of the Nevernever no matter how deep or turned around they are and bless themsleves and others with -1 difficulty Awarness, Survival rolls and willpower rolls to resit fear/intimidation so long as they are in the Nevernever.
It is the Way travel Path, converted to the Nevernever from the Low Umbra.
Only Rituals, no Spells
Rituals has different Aspects depending on branch
Aspects (Warding) - Duration and Strength (While not mentioned in Revised or M20 warding circles should probably have Area as well)
Aspects (Summoning) - Duration, Number of Targets and Metaphysical Weight
Aspects (Binding) - Duration, Metaphysical Weight and Binding Intensity
The classic Sorcerer power, summoning and commanding creatures, spirits and other things.
There are multiple variants of this Path, each covering a particular category of target, including material creatures (animals and humans), ghosts, demons, fae, spirits of nature, inanimate objects, virtual constructs and more. Each variant must be learned as a separate Path.
Rituals exist to target both specific individual beings and specific classes of beings. There are separate rituals to summon, bind and ward against a specific target. A swarm of small creatures counts as a single target. This Path focuses on compulsion, rituals force the target to obey. It requires different rituals to affect each type of target (ward against vermin is different to ward against humans, even though both are part of the same Path variant).
Warding rituals subtract [Strength] dice from all actions against the Sorcerer by what is warded against, alternatively at level 3+ can create a warding circle that the warded cannot cross unless they achieve more than [Strength] successes on a willpower roll.
Summoning compels the summoned to appear before the Sorcerer. Summoned beings travel by their own power to the Sorcerer, the ritual doesn't transport them.
Bindings compel the target to obey the Sorcerer to some degree, from not attacking them at basic level, to truthfully answering questions at intermediate level or carrying out a task at adept/master level. Targets may spend willpower to resist a binding attempt, but the ritual can be recast to try again. Some beings are powerful enough that they require extra successes (sometimes A LOT extra) to bind, especially those with Metaphysical Weight 5.
The classic art of calling things up and then running like hell because you botched a binding roll. DF has lots of summoning things and using warding circles. Though this is the compel things to appear and force them to obey Path, cooperative/congenial summoning is Conjuration or Ephemera.
(I would advise adding the Travel Speed aspect to Summoning, as by default you generally end up standing around for long periods waiting for whatever you called to reach you and that sort of thing doesn't happen with DF summonings.
Further Summoning, Binding and Warding suffers from the Exalted Craft Problem where it requires you to pay for an entire Path for each version you want to use. If used in quest I would suggest folding all the variants into one Path. The need to buy rituals for specific classes of target already covers the cost for the benefit of being able to call up lot of different things.)
(Weather Control as written in M20 is problematic, the Intensity aspect (type of weather) remains the same as Revised, but they use the standard Distance aspect to determine Area, which results in those with less than 4 dots being incapable of actually affecting the weather, due to only being able to effect comparatively tiny areas. The ability to remove cloud cover in a 20ft radius isn't really weather control. Further due to dropping the high willpower cost from Revised the high end spells can now be spammed. Even though they cover a bit smaller area, they are still as destructive and unlike Revised there is no mention of changes taking time to happen, allowing city wrecking storms to be called up in less than a minute almost at will.)
Now we could just use Revised's Weather Control, but I like the unification of standard casting rules from M20, so I am kitbashing Revised's Aspects in and forming a Path in line with M20.
Weather Control
Only Spells, no Rituals
Aspects - Duration, Intensity, Scale and Speed
Cost - All spells cost [Intensity + 1] willpower points to cast
Weather created by this Path is fully real and behaves normally once the spell expires and may create effects beyond the area of the spell. Changes to weather can have knock on effects based on the size and speed of the change. This Path does not do fine control, other than some very limited ability to direct phenomena, it deals entirely with large scale environmental changes.
Intensity:
1 - Small changes only. This includes warm or cold breezes and slight but noticeable changes in temperature.
2 - Minor effects. Dense fog, create and clear cloud cover or winds in the direction they wish.
3 - Rainstorms and strong winds. Change the temperature by 15K and calm strong seas.
4 - Storms, command gale force winds, lightning, hail and other damaging weather effects. Heatwaves and coldsnaps (change temperature by 20K). Direct the phenomena of a storm (hailstones, lightning, powerful waves, smashing winds ect.) to target individuals, roll [Casting Attribute] + [Path Ability] (difficulty 7) to target. Damage is 4 + successes (bashing or lethal depending on phenomena). Each additional attack require a new roll.
5 - Thunderstorms, blizzards, great waves and other extreme weather. Elemental attacks deal 6 + successes damage.
6 - The most extreme weather patterns, tornados, raging hurricanes/cyclones, lethal heatwaves and killing frosts. Elemental attacks do 8 + successes damage.
Scale:
1 - 50 yards or so, minor changes only.
2 - About a half-mile area.
3 - Two mile diameter, extreme changes cannot take place in an area this small.
4 - Roughly 5 mile diameter, all but the most extreme changes are possible.
5 - Area with a 20 mile diameter, any kinda of change is possible.
6 - An area nearly 100 miles across.
Speed:
1 - A few minutes for minor changes, days for major changes, a week for extreme changes.
2 - Minor changes occur in a minute, major changes take hours to a couple of days, extreme changes take up to a week.
3 - Minor changes take effect in under a minute, major changes take a few hour to a day and extreme changes take days.
4 - Minor changes are almost instantaneous, major changes happen within a few hours and extreme changes take a day or two.
5 - Major changes happen within an hour and even extreme changes usually take place within a day.
6 - Even the most extreme changes and largest storms come within an hour or two.
The big one, Path Magic's apocalyptic hammer, Weather Control can shatter armies and wreck cities. Of course doing so is incredibly blatant (you can literally see such actions from orbit with the naked eye) and it offers somewhat more subtle effects as well. This Path requires strength of its Practitioners, the greatest magics require enormous effort to cast.
Maria Casselli from the Ordo Lebes has a talent for this path.
Psychic Powers:
In WoD it is explicitly left up to the Storyteller to determine for their Chronicle if Hedge Magic and Psychic Phenomena are slightly different manifestations of the same thing or actually completely separate types of power. In DF of course all human Practitioners are just using varying expressions of their underlying magic talents.
In general Sorcerers use tools, symbols and ritual action to manipulate magical energies while Psychics use concentration and raw will to shape their powers. Sorcerers can with sufficient dedication and study learn Psychic Phenomena and Psychics can likewise potentially learn Hedge Magic.
In general Psychic Phenomena tend have have more linear scaling than Hedge Magic Paths and so have less raw power at higher ratings. However they are often easier and quicker to use.
Powers are rated 1 to 5, the maximum rating an individual may have in a power in [Willpower/2].
The dice pool for all Psychic Phenomena is Willpower.
Usually to use a Power the Psychic spends 1 willpower point and rolls [Willpower] at difficulty [Power level + 3], typically only one success is needed for full effect.
Psychic Powers don't use Aspects, Rituals or by default Teamwork.
The ability to communicate with and command animals.
Does not work on insects or anything that lacks a brain. Getting animals to do things they are not already inclined to do via communication requires a Charisma + Animal Ken roll.
1 - Commune. Communicate with one animal perceived through mundane senses.
2 - Mass Communication. Communicate with all animals of a species.
3 - Mind Link. Create a mental link with a targeted animal that allow instantaneous two way communication and using the animals senses. Lasts as long as Psychic maintains the link.
4 - Dominate. Compel one animal to carry out one command, must be able to describe command to animal adequately.
5 - Swarm. May now use all lesser powers on as many animals in range as the Psychic wants, regardless of species.
The Psychic continuously projects a field that disrupts the use of all mental-based powers of any sort.
This power is always active but can be suppressed briefly by spending willpower. Works against all mental effects, not just Psychic Powers. Radius of effect and difficulty increase determined by Power level. For obvious reasons Anti-Psychics generally don't have other psychic powers.
Not sure if this power is appropriate for DF, people with it are roving anti-mental influence jammers and that doesn't match how Practitioners usually function.
Allows the Psychic to separate their spirit from their body and go wandering for a time.
The Psychic body is helpless while they project. This is not a sensory effect, the Psychic's astral form actually leaves the body and can interact directly with other spirits. Maximum distance they can wander from their body, duration and what senses they can use are determined by level.
1 - Peek. Vision only, max range one mile, [Stamina] minutes duration.
2 - Errand. Adds hearing, range 100 miles, [Stamina]x10 minutes.
3 - Journey. 1000 mile range, [Stamina]x30 minute duration and may manifest as a silent blurry image for one turn a cot of 1 willpower.
4 - Failsafe. May reflexively activate Astral Projection when stunned or knocked out. Global range, duration is [Stamina] hours, may extended duration by spending willpower. May now whisper while manifested.
5 - Odyssey. Range Global+, duration indefinite. May now speak normally when manifested, manifestation lasts up to an hour per willpower point spent.
The ability to consciously manipulate and control the processes of one's own body.
1 - Mindfullness. Alter biological processes in small ways while concentrating.
2 - Healing Factor. Accelerate healing with rest and meditation.
3 - Surge. Boost Attributes in one Attribute category for one scene (one dot to allocate per success, can't exceed attribute cap).
4 - Toggle Nerves. The psychic can adjust the sensitivity of their nerves, allowing them to deaden or heighten various senssations.
5 - Biological Mastery. Complete control of the Psychics bodily processes. Regulate processes with total control, adjust healing (including regrowing body parts and even soak lethal and aggravated damage.
Very much a power appropriate for Chi Masters and others who focus on their own self with magic rather than the world around them.
The way of mediumship, Channeling allows the Psychic to draw upon the Abilities of the dead via a voluntary form of limited possession. Channelers also have a limited power to sense ghosts and see into the Shadowlands.
By default the Channeler can only bring forth one spirit at a time. Successes add dice to the specified trait at one success per dice, multiple traits from one activation require successes to be divided between them however the Psychic wants. Dice bonuses last for one scene. Default duration of ghost sight is one minute per success.
1 - One Ability. Vaguely sense what ghost are present.
2 - Two Abilities. Identify specific ghosts, see ghostly landscape.
3 - Up to three Abilities. Verbally communicate with ghosts.
4 - Any number of Abilities. Ghost sight last for a scene.
5 - May channel two ghosts at once. If channeling the same ability from both ghosts add bonuses together.
While by default this power is about ghosts, variants are also appropriate for worshippers of the Loa, shamans and people who tap into the Astral realms.
Fairly straightforward power, its about borrowing the skills of whatever spirits you commune with. In DF an unwary Channeler is possession bait, but a careful experienced one is likely to have some immaterial friends as well as this power.
The power to project the Psychic's senses to remove locations.
Protections against magic perception apply to Clairvoyance. Clairvoyance forms a sensory link via connections/sympathy, the Psychic's spirit stays put.
1 - Gain sense impressions of target, successes determine clarity, maximum range 1 mile. Requires additional roll and willpower point to refocus on new target.
2 - Mildly distorted sight and unreliable sound (3+ successes for clear sight, 5+ for sound). Range 10 miles.
3 - Clear sight and sound, muffled touch. Range 10 miles per success. Refocusing requires a roll but no longer cost willpower.
4 - Clear sight, sound and touch, muffled smell and taste. Range 100 mile per success.
5 - Clear full senses, range 1000 miles per success, no roll needed to refocus.
Pretty much the standard scrying effect. Totally appropriate for DF, shows up whenever someone uses an effect to observe things they aren't actually present for.
The power to Psychically control electronic devices and computer systems.
Does not give any feedback from target (that requires Cyberpathy). All powers past the first require perception of the device's display or other means of receiving feedback. Does work on technomagical items, though they may resist. Default range is line of sight.
1 - Switch. Turn devices on or off. +2 difficulty to toggle physical relays instead of an electronic one.
2 - Remote. Control device without access to the controls. Does not provide credentials.
3 - Glitch. Disrupt functioning of device, causing lockups, blues sceens and other temporary failures.
4 - Spoof. Bypass or falsify credentials. Can now make a system do anything it is capable of doing.
5 - Overclock. May boost Psychics use of a device at cost of damage that degrading device performance.
The control half of Technopathic ability, potentially very powerful in the modern world. While not something that a Wizard is likely to consider, a Practitioner doesn't innately have their problems with sophisticated electronics.
The ability to read information directly from electronic systems.
Default range is line of sight. Usually powers take several minutes to use. Can be used in conjuction with both normal computer use/hacking and Cyberkinesis. Can be used on computerised systems, detached memory storage devices and media. Does not require target to be powered.
1 - Map Structure. Examine complete directory of all files on device, determines both location and properties.
2 - Read Only Mode. Read files, examine simple graphics and text, determine the functions of executables and applications, does not decrypt files.
3 - Download. May copy files from target to psychics mind. May not execute files in Psychics mind, but can write/edit files. Can download stored files to any device linked to with Cyberpathy.
4 - Remote Access. May now use Cyberpathy on any device on the same network as local device.
5 - Enigma. Psychic can now crack encryption at will. May Encrypt or Decrypt at will, can crack even heavily secured systems or improve digital security of targeted device.
The perceptive half of Technopathy, can be scary if combined with actual computer skills (especially 4 and 5 dot powers). Like Cyberkinesis not something we have seen in DF, but rather suitable for a tech focused Practitioner.
Manifest goop that is a form of raw spiritual matter and thus able to interact with both spirits and the material.
When not otherwise manipulated ectoplasm generally seems to be a weightless cold slick translucent gel. Regardless of apparent material form all ectoplasm is solid and almost immoveable to spirits. By default the Psychic extrudes ectoplasm from their mouth and/or nose. Ectoplasm leaves no physical or spirtual trace once it has sublimated.
1 - Produce a semiliquid mass the size of a softball or a quantity of mist with similar mass, material lasts willpower turns.
2 - Produce one quart per success, ectoplasm lasts willpower minutes. Mist cloud can be directed and shaped by the psychic at up to 10ft per turn.
3 - One gallon per success. Mist has density of cotton candy and is now almost opaque.
4 - Can produce semisolid matter. Creations have [Willpower] points to spend on Physical Attributes and can move 30ft per turn. All ectoplasm last as long as the Psychic concentrates.
5 - Can create seemingly fully animate constructs. May hand a construct to a nearby spirit for it to use as a body for willpower turns.
Bit of an odd power, heavily based on certain forms of mediumship.
Personal defense against mental intrusion and harm.
Minds Shields acts as a free and reflexive counterspell not any hostile mental effect. The Psychic can voluntarily lower their shields to allow others access.
What it says it is, a general personal mental defense. Given the general fear of mental effects in DF this power is very suitable for anyone who has actually trained up their mental defenses. Of course there don't actually seem to be many people with decent mental defenses in DF.
Gain clues about the future and judge probabilities with beyond hum accuracy.
While can be used consciously, may activate at random (ie the Storyteller's discretion) for free.
1 - Intuition. Make highly accurate guesses, fairly accurate for purely random events (lotteries, dice rolls ect), can intuitively know shortest route to destination and has a higher likelihood of beneficial chance meetings.
2 - Insight. Experience highly metaphorical prophetic dreams and visions.
3 - Danger Sense. Automatic free warnings if the psychic faces immediate danger.
4 - Clarity. Short term highly accurate view of immediate future (one turn ahead per success).
5 - Roads of Time. See branching possibilities of the future, including major decision points and their possible results.
It's future sight, though inferior to Divination it provides quicker more immediate insights and much faster use. Like Divination this is a highly suitable power for DF, there are oracles and prophecies everywhere.
Heal and provide medical with direct application of power.
Psychic Healing operates at touch range.
1 - Diagnosis. Instantly diagnose medical problems.
2 - Restorative Slumber. Acts as medical treatment for bashing/lethal damage and stabilisation for aggravated. Take one minutes to use and the patient fall into deep sleep.
3 - Urgent Care. Directly heal bashing damage and reduce the toxin rating of poisons, drugs and illnesses.
4 - Intensive Care. Heal lethal damage and more efficiently reduce toxin ratings. Takes 10 minutes per health level.
5 - Psychic Surgery. Heal aggravated damage. Takes 10 minutes per level. Can also be used to inflict pain in combat.
Healing magic is fairly uncommon in DF, though Psychic Healing acts more like magical surgical skills than most types of healing magic, so does fit a medical Practitioner rather well.
Place people into trance states and implant suggestions.
All powers (other than Trance State and Fast Trance) require the target to be in a trance state. The Hypnotist may us Trance State and Fast Trance on themself. While Trance State may not be used on unwilling targets, once in a trance there is no requirement that the target be willing.
1 - Trance State. Takes 5 turns to place willing target in trance. Target regains one willpower per success, may not benefit again until the target sleeps. Trance breaks in anyone disturbs the target.
2 - Suggestion. May give one command per success, commands may not directly result in targets death or go against their nature. Trance ends only at Psychic command.
3 - Implanted Suggestion. May implant commands that activate outside trance.
4 - Fast Trance. May instantly put willing targets in trance. Unwilling targets may be forced into trance if Psychic wins contested willpower roll, duration is Psychics net successes in turns.
5 - Sleeper Agent. Commands may force target to do anything. Takes 10 minutes to put target in trance, each command or condition take 1 hour to program.
More mind-control shenanigans, everything but the basic power is black magic of course.
Hide yourself from the perceptions of others. The power to cloud the minds of men.
Psychic Invisibility causes others to overlook or fail to notice the Psychic, this is a mental effect. Does work on live broadcasts, does not apply to recordings. Doesn't apply to animals unless the Psychic also has Animal Psychics. May block supernatural perceptions with a contested roll.
1 - Wallflower. Remain unnoticed while still and silent.
2 - Slink. May move but can't meaningfully interact with the world and maintain effect. (no opening/closing doors or picking thing up for instance)
3 - Invisibility. May now take actions that would draw attention. Those attacked by or actively searching for the Psychic may make a contested roll of Perception + Alertness at difficulty 9 vs activations successes to perceive the Psychic. Cannot vanish while directly observed.
4 - Selective Invisibility. May exempt limited targets from invisibility effect.
5 - I Was Never Here. May vanish in front of witnesses. Witnesses roll at difficulty 8 vs psychic, at three or more successes victims forget about the Psychics presence for one past turn per success.
This is a personal veil as various people use in DF. Olivia Deol of the Ordo Lebes has a natural talent for this art, though she has control issues.
The ability to siphon energies from others to strengthen the Psychic.
Gives euphoric high to user. Reduces difficulty by 2 when targeted on Vampires. Effects do not allow a resistance roll. Must be able to sense victims to target them with powers (except with distant drain).
1 - Tap Energy. Drains strong emotions, range 10 yards, gain willpower with 3+successes.
2 - Invigorate. Drains temporary willpower, drained points go to Psychic, range 15 yards.
3 - Leech Vitality. Drains health (lethal damage). heals Psychic, excess becomes 2 willpower points per level, touch range.
4 - Essence Feast. May target multiple individuals at up to 40 yards with lower powers.
5 - Distant Drain. May target those Psychic has fed upon or linked to with Telepathy with Psychic Vampirism at a distance. Activation successes determine max range (500 yards to 10+ miles)
A nasty, nasty power. In DF White Court Vampires seem to use a more restricted version of this power to feed. Further using this power on humans would qualify as black magic of course.
The power to move things with will alone.
Psychokinesis powers have effective Strength and Dexterity of [level -1].A psychic can target anything they can directly percieve. A psychic can manipulate [activation successes] objects at once, with a total mass no higher than what they can lift with their effective strength. Psychokinesis powers last as long as the Psychic maintains concentration. All rolls with manipulated objects use the powers effective Attribute and the Psychics normal Abilities. An individual lifted by Psychokinesis can try to grab a stable anchor point, if one is nearby, with a Strength + Athletics roll.
1 - Strength/Dexterity 0, lift 5 pounds, move objects at 5 + Wits yards per round.
2 - Strength/Dexterity 1, move at 7 + Wits yard per round.
3 - Strength/Dexterity 2, move at 9 + Wits yards per round. May focus their power to make ranged attacks (bashing damage)
4 - Strength/Dexterity 3, move at 11 + Wits yards per round. Can move self regardless of mass.
5 - Strength/Dexterity 4, move at 15 + Wits yards per round. Can make bashing or lethal pure kinetic attacks.
Telekinesis, useful for posing as a Jedi. (In M20 Psychokinesis has no written range, but it is Limited to line of sight in Revised, I am assuming rangeless telekinesis is an error.)
Read the impressions left on objects by emotions and events.
Reading the impression take seconds, even if the visions encompass more time that that. Objects with incredibly strong resonances may trigger a reflexive Psychometry activation on contact.
1 - Impression. Dreamlike impressions of recent events or more distant events associated with strong emotion. With 3+ successes gain an impression of the objects owner.
2 - Reveal Scar. Gain an impression of the event with the strongest emotional resonance associated with the object. With 3+ successes gain more information about the owner.
3 - Replay. Clearly experience the most resonant event and gain general impressions of the day or replay the last 24 hour for the object.
4 - Tether. Track and give current insight into the objects owner. Read the impressions of others who were present at the most significant event.
5 - Catalog. Use lesser powers on all events associated with the object not just the one with the strongest emotional impact.
Postcognition and sympathetic awareness. Very appropriate for DF we see magical and emotional resonances of events examined multiple times in the books.
Teleportation, the power to move from place to place without passing through the intervening space.
To travel to a location the Teleporter must be able to see it via mundane means or powers. Taking more than 100lbs of extra weight with then harms the Teleporter. Psychoportation is instant.
1 - Short Hop. Range 12 + Intelligence yards.
2 - Simple Jump. Range 20 + [3 x Intelligence] yards.
3 - Long Jump. Range 40 + [6 x Intelligence] yards. May double range by spending an extra turn in concentration.
4 - Leap. Range 80 + [12 x Intelligence] yards. May double range by spending an extra turn in concentration.
5 - Leap of Faith. Psychic may teleport to a location they have spent at least a scene studying even if they can't perceive it.
It's Teleportation, pretty simple. This sort of effect actually shows up in Battle Ground, so while not necessarily common this sort of power is around.
Create and to some extent control flame with the power of will.
Does not provide any innate protection from fire or heat, fire created with this power can effect the Psychic. Targets can attempt to dodge, treating activation successes as the targeting roll.
1 - Spark. Generate small sparks within touch range, can light highly flammable things on fire. Can be thrown as a weapon dealing no damage.
2 - Combustion. Light a combustible object within 10 yards on fire. The initial fire is as big as a torch and spreads normally.
3 - Sun's Fury. Generate plasma from the air itself, creating bonfire sized flames up to 10 yards away. Flames deal 2 aggravated per turn.
4 - Pyrotechnics. The Psychic can grow, shrink, direct, shape and extinguish flames in their line of sight. Size of flame that can be effect determined by activation successes (1 - torch, 3 - bonfire, 5 - inferno).
5 - Inferno. Fires can now appear anywhere is the Psychic line of sight and be up to willpower x 3 square yards. Fires deal 3 aggravated per turn and can resist being extinguished for activation successes turns if the Psychic concentrates on them.
The power of setting things on fire with you mind. Really appropriate for DF, if Harry wasn't a Wizard he would have this power.
Umbrakinesis, the power to create and manipulate darkness.
Shadow can dampen both light and sound. The shadows have no physical substance.
Mechanically this Psychic Phenomena works just like the spells of the Path of Shadow.
Maximum spookiness returns, seriously this power and the Path of Shadows are just the Hedge Magic and Psychic versions of each other.
The power to link Psychics together to bolster and share their powers.
By default individuals must be touching to form a link. May link a maximum of [Power level] x 2 people together at once. Provides bonus successes for group to use on powers.
1 - Like Know Like. Sense other Psychic on touch automatically, can scan for Psychics in line of sight
2 - Share Willpower. Linked individuals may spend willpower on each others powers and lend each other willpower points.
3 - Share Powers. Linked may use powers as a group, only one activation roll is needed to entire group with self focused powers.
4 - Power Gestalt. Linked may now combine multiple effects to form one shared power.
5 - Power Network. By Spending 10 minutes linking the group together the group become able to maintain the link at any distance for activation successes hours.
On first glance doesn't seem that suitable for DF, but may be a good supplementary power for someone who is good at getting minor talents to combine their abilities.
The power to read thought and emotion, project things into others heads and seize control of others minds.
Victims can generally resist by spending willpower. Telepathic communication takes place at the speed of thought and requires no actions nor take up any time.
Telepathic Sensing
1 - Sense surface thoughts and emotions.
2 - Read Inner thoughts, gain brief answer to a single question per success.
3 - Read Deeper thoughts, gain short answers to questions.
4 - Read subconscious, detailed answers.
5 - Read Mental states and emotions with complete clarity.
Telepathic Projection
1 - Send a simple impulse or rudimentary thought.
2 - Project a sentence or simple idea per success.
3 - Send multiple sentences, complex emotions or a stream of memory per success.
4 - Send/Receive full conversations. Alternatively link multiple people together at once (this reduce speed to normal conversation however). Send complete memories
5 - Send thoughts with perfect clarity. Implant subversive thoughts.
Telepathic Control
1 - Induce target to make twitch or habitual gesture.
2 - Cause the target to make one short motion.
3 - Force target to take on unusual action in a turn, generate false sensory imput
4 - Seize full control of their body for a turn.
5 - Seize control of target, completely rewrite sensory input.
(Telepathy underwent some changes between Revised and M20. In revised it encompassed sensing, projecting thoughts and emotions and directly controlling others, In M20 they dropped the control abilities and improved the sensory and projection capabilities. Further Revised included the option of splitting the three different branches out into separate powers for balance reasons as having everything together was rather powerful.
I have elected to present this as the optional version from Revised, as the unified versions are more powerful than Psychic Phenomena typically are. As such each branch should be considered its own related power and an individual could have just one or multiple at different levels. For the unified version just combine all three into one (Revised) or combine Sensing and Projection (M20))
While not quite Professor-X, the three branches of Telepathy are fairly potent. The much feared boogeyman of the White Council, Telepathy is pure mind magic and thus anyone with it is going to be looked upon with great suspicion.
Paths from Elsewhere:
These Paths are collected from various other 20th Anniversary Edition books. As the writers didn't standardise the rules for Hedge Magic and Psychic Numina until M20 Sorcerer, the written mechanics varied a bit. M20 specifically notes that paths as written from prior books should be taken as the specific techniques of the Fellowship in question and others should use the more general casting rules from M20 adjusting the Paths as necessary.
I will endeavour to convert Paths to roughly M20 format where they don't match, though I have not done complete conversions. I will not be including powers that are simply a single ritual or merit, Paths that are simply older variants of already covered Paths or that are metaphysically incompatible with DF.
Neither Hedge Magic or Psychic Phenomena, True Faith is its own Numina category
The power of Faith and the ability to preform miracles. (Not actually associated with any specific religion or philosophy)
Each dot of True Faith grants an extra point/dot of willpower, even beyond normal limits. An individuals True Faith rating acts as universal counter magic against all hostile supernatural effects. An individual with True Faith may channel their conviction to preform miracles.
1 - May repel Vampires, ghosts and various other hostile supernatural entities. Can cause aggravated damage to repelled on physical contact.
2 - Add True Faith to all Awareness rolls and may use the Awareness ability if they previously couldn't.
3 - Immunity to supernatural effects that cloud the mind.
4 - Immunity to supernatural effects that alter the emotions. Immunity to enthrallment. Touch can harm enemies of their creed.
5 - Drive opponents of their creed to their knees. Enemies must spend willpower or flee. Preform miracles easily.
6+ - Literally a Bodhisattva or true Saint.
Paranormalists Handbook:
Psychic Phenomena
The ability to interact with the barrier between the lands of the living and the dead.
Powers last one hour or scene. This power does not grant the ability to perceive ghosts (though any Psychic with it is almost certainly going to have powers to do so).
1 - Shroud Sight. The Psychic can perceive the shroud in high detail.
2 - Weaken the Weft. Weaken the shroud rating of an area, may not reduce shroud strength to zero.
3 - Dark Anchor. Wrap the shroud around a small area trapping a ghost.
4 - Strengthen the Threads. Increase the shroud rating of an area.
5 - Rend the Way. Breach the shroud and create a temporary gateway into/out of the Shadowlands.
While DF doesn't have a realm of the dead separate to the standard spirit world, with a slight fluff change this path is appropriate for a Practitioner that deals with the barriers between the material and nevernever.
Hedge Magic
Suggested Aspects - Duration and Ashes
A form of Necromancy that draws power from the remains of the dead.
All spells and rituals of this Path require the use of ashes from the corpse of someone who became a ghost or burned remains of a Fetter.
Ashes Aspect
1 - Khol. Perceive ghosts.
2 - Scorched Minds. Snort ash (yes really) to gain protection from mind influencing effects.
3 - Fireproof. Shield caster from fire and heat.
4 - Ash Zombie. Reanimate a full corpses worth of ash as a temporary servant.
5 - Ash Cloud. Use ashes and a human sacrifice to make a pebble that can create a house sized cloud of burning ash.
More nasty necromancy, though for a change focusing on exploiting the bodies of the dead.
Psychic Phenomena
This power is used by those once possessed to call upon the splinters of abyssal power left behind in their mind.
Botches with this power usually result in a derangement. -1 difficulty (max -3) per derangement the Psychic has.
1 - Obliviate. Wipe the last few minutes of someones memory.
2 - Innocence Lost. Influence one person per success to regard the Psychic as completely innocent.
3 - Shadow Pact. Call forth the dark power in their soul, suffer no wound penalties and add 2 to all psychical dice pools. This power will not end until the use has killed at least once.
4 - Regression. Enter a trance to call up memories, gaining one die per success to all roll in one attribute category for one scene.
5 - Portal. Unleash the traces of oblivion in their soul to teleport to anywhere in their line of sight.
The cycle of abuse in action, those harmed by dark forces use the traces left by their possessor to develop a tie to abyssal forces. Given how dark magic and possession work in DF a very fitting path. Needless to say this power is functionally infernalism.
Hedge Magic
Suggested Aspects - Duration, Metal and Strength
Wield necromantic power fuelled by torturing ghosts via the medium of Metal music.
Capturing ghosts uses rituals not spells for this Path.
Metal Aspect
1 - Back Masking. By torturing a captive spirit with white noise the Sorcerer can gain information from the wraiths shadow. Information gained from this power also allows them to progress their understanding of this path.
2 - Party Animal. The Metallurgist purges themself of any drug, toxin or disease.
3 - Backstage Pass. By relaxing to music in a place of death, the Metallurgist gains bonus successes that can be spent on any social rolls.
4 - Band Aid. By consuming matching parts of the dead the Sorcerer can heal themselves.
5 - Power Trip. Black lightning strikes out at all non Metallurgists near the caster.
More black magic, exploiting ghosts for dark power is very in theme for DF.
W20 Kinfolk:
Psychic Phenomena (technically a form of Hedge Magic but mechanically it works much better using the Psychic Phenomena rules)
Emulate and commune with a specific type of plant or animal spirit. The mystics gains knowledge and capabilities relating to her chosen spirit.
1 - The mystic learns to "eat" the food of the chosen spirit. The proper food needs to be available (water and sun for plants, pasture for herbivores ect) they receives full nutrition as if they were their totem.
2 - The mystic can match their sensory capabilities to their totem, including secondary capabilities like tracking, finding food or reading weather.
3 - The mystic can enter a healing sleep that greatly accelerate wound recovery.
4 - The mystic can access the inner wisdom of her spirit type, gaining knowledge from the spirits of their totem.
5 - The mystic gains access to a unique aspect based off their totem.
A more focused form of animistic shamanism than most Paths. Fitting for any Practitioner with a strong connection to a specific animal/plant. (The Alphas pretty much use a hybrid of this Path and Shapeshifting)
Psychic Phenomena
The power to heal others by taking their afflictions upon yourself.
Use of all powers causes the healer an equal amount of health levels of damage as restored.
1 - Soothe the Spirit. The healer can restore injuries at the Bruised health level.
2 - Knit Flesh. Restore Hurt and Injured health levels.
3 - Mend Bones. Wounded and Mauled health levels.
4 - Organ Repair. Crippled and Incapacitated health levels.
5 - Pacify Madness. The healer can transfer a derangement from the patient to themself.
This power is a bit odd mechanically as it cares about what health box the injury is in rather than total levels. It suits DF fairly well, as it provides complete healing at a cost. It might be mechanically better to have an easy to use version of Psychic Healing with empathic damage transfer though.
Kinfolk can learn Rites and level one spirit Gifts. Further they can have Gnosis/Mana to fuel those gifts. While the list of Gifts available is way to big to summarise here, Kinfolk mechanics do make a decent base for various Practitioners with fairly specific innate talents.
Paths from Hunters Hunted II Revised and Ghost Hunters were already included in M20 Sorcerer. Wraith 20th Anniversary Edition does include updated rules for Project Orpheus, but the rules for Projectors (people who learn to project their soul out of their body and into the Underworld) are a bit too complex for this summary.
Well advanced technology is called out as being more advanced than our own so yeah some level of cyberpunk would make sense and including a spiritual element is very fitting to the world-soul of an infernal
So, I have something like this written-up for "how do they work both magic and technology together". Feedback appreciated, as always.
The most ancient of SUTRAs, though it was long before the modern name was created, were scrolls and tomes inked and branded on still living vellum. The spirits were smuggled out Great Prison by brave and desperate explorers, willing to enter profound pacts, and risk their eternity to escape.
As technology progressed, the spirit vessels also grew more complex. Mechanisms designed to allow them to more easily modify their substrates appeared and developed. The total informational capacity increased and the spirits inhabiting them grew in power and complexity. The lack of reliable sensors in these vessels often led to spirits housed in them undergoing mental deterioration if not regularly interacted with by other denizens of the Courts.
Modern day SUTRAs are marvels of technology, and as manifold in their forms, as are the forms of spirits they house. Incorporating semiconducting, micromechanical, and biomantic solutions, depending on the application for which a given SUTRA is created, it can vary from a nearly conventional processor, to a metalloorganic hybrid between a heart and a brain or a fractal agglomeration of ever-shifting gears, switches and springs.
The capacity for self-modification of stock SUTRAs is limited by technology. As the Wheel turns, and the Machine Spirit gains sapience, they might participate in the design of their own next vessel - a unique opportunity limited to their kind. The vessels of sapient spirits often demonstrate a degree of anthropomorphism, expressing features similar to body plans of the material races of the Court. Whether this is due to how machine spirits grow and get socialized in society, and thus internalize the forms of its members, or if it's some manner of form follows function situation is a hotly debated topic.
The gift of choice is a heavy one. All blessed with it by birth or happenstance of Fates must doubt, question, struggle. For those further gifted with the ability to Shape reality by their will and word, the burdens of choice are heavier still. A moment's hesitation, a flicker of indecision, a flight of fancy, and the light of their soul, burning brightly with their gift and training, would burst out of control. Milk would curdle, gear would grind, and wires would burn out. The art of ferromancy is not for those wielding the subtle practices of magic.
But men wouldn't be men if they didn't strive to transgress against their limitations. Since times almost lost in the mists of memories, when their many-shaped ancestors escaped from Gaol Beneath, and made their journey to the five poles which would later become five cities, the magi and artificiers both labored against the curse of techbane. Great sages would spend centuries and eventually millennia in closed doors meditation to hone their minds and will until only clarity remained. Artisans would introduce redundancies upon reduncancies into their creations, design self-repairing mechanisms and increase tolerances to the point where a stopwatch could be used as a cannonball.
It wasn't, however, until three generations ago, that a true solution was created. A merging of ferromancy and thaumaturgy inspired by the few systems of the Ancestral Prison that the brave explorers were able to tame, SUTRAs – Structure Unifying Thaumaturgy Resistance Attachments, take advantage of a long observed fact – the Burden of Choice cannot affect others capable of choice. A processor with ten or even more levels of redundancy can still burn out in the vicinity of a sufficiently agitated wizard, but neither an ailing mouse, nor a giant ferrosaur have to fear a stroke until expressly targeted. Thus, the reasoning went, if a mechanical object could be granted a spirit somehow, it would be rendered immune to the anti-technology field of magically inclined. And, if the spirit of the device itself possessed a modicum of the Gift, then new and previously undreamt of possibilities presented themselves.
At its core SUTRA is a spirit vessel – a mix between a summoning circle, black box, and a magic focus. Three main properties need to be present:
In order to house a machine spirit, as the type of creatures first extracted from the Great Labyrinth systems are known, an object has to have the capacity to hold and self-modify information. Ancient tomes of forbidden lore possessing their own minds, which can be found in dark recesses of infinite library, can be considered a kind of proto-SUTRA.
If it is to hold a spirit for a prolonged time without driving it completely insane, the potential vessel also has to be equipped with sensors that would serve as the spirit's eyes, ears, and more exotic sensory organs.
Finally, a spirit need an ability to express itself upon the world around it, and its host body –a voice with which to scream into the dark void the words "I AM!".
Modern SUTRAs, which can be found in nearly every device more complex than a mechanical pen built in the last five thousand moons, are all that and more. The precise details vary from model to model, but all of them have certain elements in common. A central processor, and a power-independent memory module forming the physical representation of the spirit's central nervous system. A sensory suit that, at the very least includes proprioception-emulating gyroscopic module, an optical sensor of varying levels of complexity, and a dynamic giving the machine basic senses. An input-output device, and a wireless transmitter, through which the spirit can make itself known. Finally, a micromechanical readjustable summoning and containment circle laid out in black jade that shields the SUTRA from the high thaumic fields in the process of construction, and afterwards allows for easy thaumaturgical expression.
When a blank SUTRA is attached to its body-to-be, and a ritual of ensoulment is enacted, a spirit gets attracted from noospheric cloud invisibly permeating the modern civilized world. It is a descendant of the spirits extracted from the Ancestral Prison or summoned from beyond the borders of the world long ago. As like calls to like, a spirit that gets attracted to a new holographic projector is probably going to be a child of an old TV animus, which, in turn, traces its original ancestry to first radios, while a smart gun spirit might have a parent whose body is a train turret. More complex, smart, and, indeed, old spirits get attracted to higher quality and more complex devices and SUTRAs. Most machine spirits, even should they live for a ten thousand moons, would never become smarter than a common house rat. The numbers of sapient ones is limited. Only such great machines as intercity trains, large corporate and monastery mainframes, and autonomous guardian units might hope to house one. It is projected that this will eventually change, as the complexity of technology and the age of the noosphere-inhabiting entities keeps increasing,
The explorers of the Labyrinth whisper rumours of malevolent echoes heard in its noosphere-equivalent systems. Echoes that grow louder and more complex as you venture forth, deeper into the unknown. Immaterial spirits far surpassing a common man in intellect might lurk within its black walls. However, no definite confirmation has been found as of yet.
Should a SUTRA be damaged beyond its ability to house the spirit, the spirit will escape – into the wireless field of the five cities noosphere, to jump from one system to another until it finds a new permanent home-body, or into the next turn of its personal Wheel of reincarnation, should the damage occur somewhere in the Wastes or Forests.
Not all SUTRA house a machine spirit. Those seeking cybernetic transcension, ferro- and infomancers practice rituals of attunement, in which they extend pieces of their own soul into the SUTRAs of various machines, such as cybernetic limb replacements, mechanical familiars and noospheric uplinks. This is the only way to take augmentations with one's self into the next turn of the Wheel, and, indeed, the only way to safely have a cybernetic implant at all. Similar procedures are performed by surgeon-priests correcting birth defects.
So, basically I am taking HMP and running with it. HMP can be applied to a car with a GPS. HMP in this quest renders the device possesed immune to techbane. So, the solution to techbane in a society with open magic is to HMP-equivalent all of their devices susceptible to techbane.
Where do they get infomorph demons? Some old ones were summoned (in a paradoxical way, because the world itself didn't exist then) into the world. Some were taken from the underground great prison. Then, as the internet of things took off, they started breeding. Nowadays, the Net exists and permeates the whole of society, with spirits existing both inside most devices and in the Net itself.
Most machine spirits are distinctly below human level of intelligence - our Cyberdevils are the elite of the elite, as it was, and can grow more, as appropriate for an Exalted direct servant and a product of an exalted charm. At 5 dots of background they would be well beyond what can be found in any common device.
I also tied this mechanism to how cybernetic implants are made to work. One essentially extends their soul into it, making it metaphysically a part of one's body.
The hardest part was making an appropriate acronym.
Let it not be said that I am completely incapable of taking criticism and suggestions. @bengalqueen suggested that I give some inhabitants of the court flight. Having though of it, it sounded cool, and added a nice things to the setting. So, here is the updated version. Flying magical mushrooms, a mention of some winged crystalline dragons, and spider people utilizing their web making to shape environment. Again, comments and commentary are appreciated. Hope I haven't over-corrected the issue, and am not throwing in too many stuff making the overall picture worse. I specifically left out how many radioactive dragons have wings (might be just a few of them, as a random mutation - I did put in "almost any mutation is possible in almost any population" part from the start). I like the addition of flight to the mushroom people, as it's logical - they start their life being exploded from their parent and drifting in the wind.
Additions are highlighted in bold.
Also, which other aspects should I work on? I think I covered the geography, I covered the technology, I did some interesting things with population. I don't want to get into politics. I'll add some illustration and consolidate everything later, but is there anything people are interested in / think that should be fleshed out that hasn't been already? I'll see what I can do.
The people making up the societies of the five cities are varied indeed. It is, in fact, almost impossible to quantify the total number of distinct phenotypes, as with good enough mystical support, almost any combination of participants is capable of producing viable fertile offspring, often with its own unique and rarely seen before features. Both academic and political debate is never-ending on if this means that everyone is a member of the same species, just differently shaped. That most beings currently alive have in their family tree ancestors of at least two different shapes further confounds the issue, especially with recessive physical and mystical traits sometimes manifesting several generations later.
The Total Indexing Society of the of the Infinite Library, however, posits five main races to exist. These races are distinguished by a set of common and, more importantly, stable physical, biological and thaumaturgical characteristics. They are
Holding the plurality of population at approximately 35%, humans are the undisputed masters of ferromancy – the art of changing the world through artifice and collective distributed rituals known as technology.
While lacking the distinct inherent powers of the other races, humans are able to excel in many areas. The malleability of their souls leads to easy attunement of most implants. As a result, the majority of those pursuing the path of cybernetic transcension start their life as humans.
The age of biological maturity for a human is approximately two and half hundred moon cycles. The full turn of the wheel is between eight and ten hundred cycles, though the advances of modern medicine and certain practices can extend this by over ten times.
While not the most common among professional thaumaturgists, nearly every human has some measure of the shaping gift. With proper coaxing and perhaps some supplementary rituals, almost everyone is capable of at least minor ritualized workings. Indeed, among the higher strata of society it would be hard to find anyone who doesn't have at least a passing knowledge of and skill in the arcane.
The oldest sophont still interacting with society at large is the human head abbot of the Red Hammer forge-monastery, Institutional Might of Forgiveness.
Humans are often the "default" race. I dislike this a bit. In exalted humans are the ones who can take an exaltation. In Dresden Files we are the masters of ferromancy – the science and technology (this is what Jim calls human technology in at least one interview, so I ran with it). Thus, I lored humans to being more easily able to do soul manipulation than other races (attune to cybernetics). I also made a human (with distinctly Alchemical Exalted name, take it as you will) the oldest still publically present inhabitant of the world.
"Turn of the wheel" is the term of the natural lifespan. Because remember, Fivefold Courts of Frozen Fate have Endless Suffering trait, and you can't die, even from old age. I figure that, when you do die of old age, your reincarnation rakes longer, but you get back in your prime. But if you kill yourself, you don't get age reversal. Which leads to all kind of skewed perspectives: do people suffer without treatment, perhaps even worsening their own conditions to rebirth faster, or do they go for expensive life exension treatments? For ten time lives extension - my argument is that in the society of advanced magic and science, Alchemy 4 would be avaialble, if pricy, so it's justified.
With the images I wanted to show that humanity is both a more broad category in five cities where mixed ancestry is commonplace (the first girl's inhuman features are not makeup), and that cybernetics and alien aesthetics are also a part of society (the second girl's nose is a cybernetic implant - an advanced airfilter and chemical sensor).
Second most common race of the world, tocatli, or spider-kin, are a multi-limbed mostly bipedal race, distinguished by the large variation of their body layouts, albeit all following a singular theme.
Similar to the bestial spiders used for silk and poison production in the farms of the golden city, most tocatli are capable of producing long threads of silk. Common employ for lower class tocatli lacking talent or dedication to pursue a career is to produce thread for food and shelter. The dependency of the thread properties on tocatli diet, lifestyle and mystical ability results in its wide implementation and incredible cost range: from suits fit for upper middle class men made by the desperate lower class, to bindings of the most precious mystical tomes, formed by enlightened keepers of the Infinite Library. Some of the tocatli manifest other spider-like abilities, such as the ability to stick to surfaces. Most tocatli take full advantage of their abilities for moving around in the modern urban landscape, which is, in turn, often adapts to tocatli habitation. In the neighborhoods with large quantities of spider-kin giant intricate webs, consisting of both natural and synthetic threads can be seen connecting buildings to each other on all levels.
The common gift of tocatli, thought to be an extension of their web-making ability into the mystical realm, is the power to see the future. In most so gifted it manifests as incredible intuition towards the potential consequences of their actions. With dedicated training, a mystically trained tocatl can glimpse the weave of probabilities connecting objects, events and places via metaphysical threads.
Biologically tocatli are perhaps closest to humans among other sophont races. Aging at the same rate, the full turn of their wheel is a bit shorter than a human one – six to nine thousand
The versatility and relative mechanical simplicity of their multi-limbed body layout makes tocatli the most common pattern for the pursuers of cybernetic augmentation. J
Since this is Fivefold Courts of Frozen Fate, and a lot of stuff is inspired by exalted, I asked the question "how would descendants of pattern spiders and humans cross-breeding look like, warped by reality itself reshaping itself?". This is the result. As a race tocatli (nahuatl for spider) are meant to make the world different and, dare I say, more tolerant? Arachnophobia is a common and biologically encoded in human species. In a world where spider-kin are common, and you can't run away from them, and they are accepted as members of society, to the point where humans pursue their forms through cybernetic augmentation, how would that warp human psychic? They are an indicator of how this is indeed hell, even if it is a functioning advanced society. Unprepared visitors are unlikely to find it comfortable.
The first tocatl image is meant to be an artsy photo on a cover of some journal (possibly an erotic journal).
That they can and do sell their bodily fluids on the industrial scale is a fringe horror aspect. This is, after all, hell.
Gurvel, also called the dragons, are, probably the species most adapted to the Waste environment of the world of five cities. It's possible that they are, in fact, the only natives of this world, unlike the other races.
Gurvel body is covered and partially composed of organic crystalline matter. Their skin acts as a natural armor and a source of nutrition – like some of the Wastes inhabitants gurvel are capable of photosynthesis, or, rather, a light-catalyzed radioactive decay control, which they use to process the stores of unstable elements they consume as food. While their skin crystals also serve as a good radiation insulation and has, in fact, been used as such by other races, it is inadvisable for members of other races to remain close to a wounded gurvel for prolonged period of time. The presence of radioactive materials in their bodies resulted in both significant healing abilities and a highly increased cancer rate. All these factors combined resulted in a statistically large percentage of gurvel taking up medical professions.
A distinct advantage gurvel hold over other races is their ancestral memories. In the process of procreating, a number of most commonly used memories and skills is passed to the offspring from both their progenitors, which will slowly manifest over the course of their maturation, resulting in a significant maturity and experience advantage over the youths of other races. In gurvel hybrids with other races, and in their more distant descendants, this trait can also manifest, but only when said descendant reaches certain levels of mystical power and skill, as the biological components of the mechanism are either lacking or underdeveloped.
Gurvel are the shortest lived of the mortal races, their turn of the wheel taking only 400 or so lunar cycles. Specific treatments can extend this time by more than ten times, however the rate of cancer occurrence increases dramatically after the first thousand cycles, and most gurvel prefer the renewal to life extension.
Radioactive miniature godzilla dragon kings. With cancer, because hell. The ancestral memories is a warping of dragon king reincarnation. Radiation is from Malfean themes. Again, this is about tolerance and suffering and insular societies and all that. Also exploitation - they are at home in the Wastes outside cities, and can be dangerous to those around them, but only when actively harmed. If you puncture a gurvel's (gürvel - lizard in mongolian), you are likely to suffer radiation poisoning. So, don't puncture their skin. Does society push them out into exclaves outside the main cities? There are probably at least some settlements in the forest zones, and even in the closer wastes.
Mechanically, this is where i gave up on trying to make the races with actual traits. I don't know how this would work (armored and hell's hide, probably, and maybe some sort of toxic/radioactive blood effect? Plus regeneration).
Standing at nearly two and a half meters high during their mature mobile period, seta are a fungoid race. Unlike other embodied sophont races, setas are biologically immortal, and keep growing throughout their life, eventually transitioning from a mobile form to a sessile colony, which then spawns its offspring sired through cross-pollination. Seta are born as smallish spores, hurled into the air in a great explosion. While some gurvel have flight-capable wings, and the areas of dense tocactli habitation are a marvel of 3D-landscaping, fully utilizing their threads, seta are the only race that is universally capable of flight. They achieve it through a combination of natural gas bags and instinctual thaumaturgical levitation. Neither is capable of fully lifting an adult seta into the air on its own, and should one be disrupted, they'll lose a great degree of mobility.
To enter a new turn of the wheel is seen as both a great sacrifice and a great opportunity by members of this race. Few take this step, preferring, instead, to interact with the world through remote drones or summoned familiars.
Possessing highly developed optical and olfactory systems, setas are normally deaf. In modern day many young setas use cybernetic audio systems as a path of cybernetic transcension.
Seta are the race with the largest percentage of professional thaumaturgists and priests, professions which, for them, often overlap. Mirror of the Changing Moon, the founder and spiritual guide of the Covenant of the Empress-to-be is a seta from the City of Endings.
So, seta (plural setas, seta meaning mushroom in mayan), are my way of sneaking the potential for both ork type characters (seta-gurvel hybrid could both reproduce via spores and have ancestral memories), and metropolis-type characters. They are literally magic mushrooms. Not much more here, really. I am, however, attached to the design. And to how these benigs are different from all others. Where for other races death and rebirth are a natural part of life, with its own upsides and downsides, seta are biologically immortal. At some point, however, they become sessile and that changes them a lot, it's a different stage of maturity, different mind state. Rebirth literally uproots them.
The newest form of sapient life to join the society of Five Cities, machine spirits are beings of pure thought and magic, lacking a native physical form, and instead possessing various pieces of ferromantic mechanisms. Some of them trace their ancestry to the animating principles of the Ancestral Prison's systems, others to the immigrants from other realms, summoned by magi over the ages.
Similar to setas, the wheel of machine spirits existence does not turn normally. As long as their housing device keeps functioning, they keep living, and, in fact, the mature and experienced spirits can transfer from one device to the other with skill and effort. Only a relative minority of machine spirits have achieved sapience so far, but the trends of nooshperic developments indicate that as time passes, more and more such beings will emerge, and some of the already sapient spirits might achieve greater degree of enlightenment yet. Different projections predict vastly different rate of this process, from a slow linear growth, to an exponential explosion occurring some times in the next five hundred lunar cycles. Even the greatest tocatli augurs are markedly unable to provide any insight on the matter.
The freedom from bodily bindings and a potential of limitless growth machine spirits have led several radical pursuers of cybernetic transcension to pursue the path of complete noospheric transmigration, trying to completely separate their souls from their bodies and to become akin to machine spirits. So far, none succeeded, but efforts continue, marked with insanity and cruel rituals alike.
As soon as I made SUTRAs, I knew that machine spirits had to be a part of the setting. Thematically, they are a young race of slumbering giants. They are a threat of the future. Yes, most of them are not sapient at all, and never will become such. Do they get the same rights as the ones who achieved sapience? What should be done about the potential future rise of superhumanly intelligent godlike AI? Is total upload a form of suicide or transcendence in a setting with magic and souls? Machine spirits are exploited by definition since they inhabit tools, devices, weapons, and wouldn't be present without those. Yet, they also have their own power. These are all the questions that can be played with by including them into the setting.
So, I won't lie and say this was all thought out before I set down writing. It wasn't. Partially, I worked off aesthetics. The explanations are in many parts ex post facto, unless I buy into doing a lot of this subconsciously. I wanted to make the Court society to be hell. It is one by defintion. I wanted it to be alien to modern western society in many ways. But I also wanted it to be something born from Molly's soul. A soul of a rebel, a magician, a modern girl touched and enveloped in powers ancient beyond belief.
So, a lot of themes in the designed five races (yes, it's fivefold symmetry again) are about social acceptance, bodily change, different life cycles, and strange practices.
A lot of it (spider-kin, dragon kings, at least some human aesthetics) are also meant to be inspired by exalted, but put through a twisted mirror.
So, I promised flora and fauna of the Fivefold courts, with illustrations. I am trying to keep my promise, but this is definitely "done is better than perfect" state. The Wastes are pretty much done, and while I would like to write more about the Forests, I think it's good enough. I haven't covered the Cities themselves, and Great Labyrinth remains a blurb, basically. I'll have to go back and expand and redo some stuff over the next week or two. I very much hope for feedback here (and yes, I realize it's hypocritical of me when I haven't even had time to read through Mu and provide feedback). I'll try and do marine life in more detail. Also, I'll admit, I am deadly scared of this being "too much" and taking the setting in the wrong direction, taking the charm away. Please don't consider this as anything final. All is subject to change.
So...
The students of biological mysteries discern five main biomes that together form the world: the Wastes, which are in turn separated into the Inner and Outer Wastes by the ring of Forests, the Cities resting on top of their poles and separating the Forests into five distinct regions, the Storm perpetually raging in the skies above, and the Great Labyrinth at the core of the world.
This treatise is not a full compendium of all life inhabiting the realm. For such, should it be of interest to you, you are advised to beseech Infinite Library or question the nooshperic keepers of knowledge, and to clear several years of your itinerary to read through material provided. Here, you will find examples of the most symbolic species of flora and fauna of your realm, your esteemed Majesty, so you can familiarize yourself with your domain.
The Wastes
They probably should be darker, and more alien, but these are still illustrative.
Covering the largest portion of the world-to-be, the Wastes are vast frozen expanses, cold enough that oxygen cannot fill the lungs of its inhabitants, but flows in great and microscopic rivers framed by bronze superconducting banks. In fact, by volume of free flowing liquid, Wastes lead all other regions of the World-to-Be. Only the lightest of gases compose the air, and at significantly lower than normal pressure: helium hydrogen, neon. Life as it is known in your home world, your Exalted Majesty, is utterly impossible here, frozen as it would be almost immediately. Of your loyal subjects, only the gurvels are capable of surviving out there unassisted; all else require heavy support, be it their thaumaturgical gifts, or sophisticated environmental protection and life support suits.
Yet, the Wastes are far from empty. They are an abundant, near endless treasury of natural resources, featuring nearly all elements of the periodic table, from neutronium to orichalcium. The perpetual iron blizzard above, the leylines thrumming with energy below, and the radiation generated by unstable element deposits provide plenty of power sources for life to feast upon in the absence of conventional light and chemical reactions.
Most forms of life inhabiting the Wastes are incredibly alien to the ones that can be found in the Forests of the cities. Pentagonal symmetry is common, and, for life that utilizes liquid solvents, boranes are most widespread, instead of water or sulfuric acid.
Inner and outer Wastes are separated from each other by the Forests, and are only connected ecologically through the turning of the Wheel and by the connectorms deep underground. As such, despite commonalities in the environmental conditions, distinct differences exist between their biomes.
The Outer Wastes act as a natural pressure relief valve of the World's ecology, balancing the great power of the Wheel and life's endless ability to replicate itself by constantly sweeping the unfortunate life caught in the eternal blizzard off the edge of reality.
The most iconic plant species of the Wastes, is, of course, hukapanui. Also known as the consumer ice, the nature's treasury or simply as crop, it is, in strictest biological sense, not a plant, but rather a colony of microscopic organisms, ranging from bacteria to almost entirely mechanical nanoassemblers, all existing in perfect symbiosis and incapable of surviving on their own. It is a an example, a symbol even, of a perfected principle of consumption, and reproduction. Each part of the colony is specialized on digesting and repurposing different materials into various other species that constitute the colony. Some bacteria digest liquid nitrogen and iron to form nanoassemblers than in turn utilize the energy of uranium radioactive decay to shape virii on a molecular level, which, in turn, decompose corpses of animals caught on the feeder spikes of the colony into more bacteria. In principle, there is no element, and no type of energy that the hukapanui colony cannot repurpose for its benefit.
Outwardly and without special equipment, a colony of hukapanui looks like jagged, multicolored block of ice, not that different from natural landscape of the wastes, if, perhaps, a bit more likely to have sharp edges and needle-like protrusions. These "ice" pillars can reach hundreds of meters in height, and spread over many square kilometers forming deadly forests. When looked at with a microscope or a sufficiently powerful vision enhancement, the surface of the ice blocks can be seen to be covered in micrometer scale fuzz-like growth. This growth, acting as ultra fine sandpaper, gives the surface of colony adhesion capabilities exceeding those of most commercially available glues, causing everything that comes in contact with the colony, including outer skin layers of any animal unlucky enough to touch it, to become fuel for the colony's growth. The objects caught in the adsorption layer of the colony's outer wall are quickly invaded by the protrusion growths and decomposed into their base elements. An average human body, if thrown on top of a large enough colony would be completely digested in, at most, minutes.
The internal structure of a hukapanui crystal may appear chaotic to someone uneducated, however, it follows clear patterning in accordance to geomantic nature of the environment the colony finds itself in, developed iteratively to take in and repurpose the mystical energies in order to strengthen and enliven the whole of the colony. Hukapanui is not intelligent in any sense of the word, however, through the subtle and absolute mechanisms of the Wheelturn, all of the colonies are connected, and capable of responding as a whole to the present dangers. When one growth is destroyed, parts of it will return in the other colonies scattered through the world, and the balance of those colonies will shift in response, producing a defensive reaction against the type of threats more likely to destroy the types of symbionts that went through the turning of the wheel.
Hukapanui, despite how dangerous it might be in its native environment, is incapable of surviving outside of the frozen Wastes. The temperature we might find more comforting would result in its more mechanical parts quickly overheating and breaking down. The presence of gaseous oxygen would oxidize the fine structures of its feeder layers, and corrode its internal support structures.
The massive Crop forests are the fuel of Five City industries. Regular expeditions descend from the great pillars and venture forth into deep Wastes in order to cut down great swathes of the treasure ice and to bring them back to the cities, where they will be processed and the materials present in them extracted.
So, this is straight up Command and Conquer Tiberium. I'm not even trying to hide it. I just fluffed it out, wrote some technobabble that mixes together titanium dust being sharp enough to slice DNA and tungsten fuzz, and put it in there.
The reason I am putting tiberium into the Kingdom is because I really want for there to be a reason for denizens of Five Courts to interact with the frozen wastes outside their cities and the forests. And I don't want boring "we put down a base with good thermal insulation and drill for oil" type of interaction (though that's probably happening too). I want actual expeditions, that are at least somewhat dangerous. I want there to be brave grizzled men and women in protective (power) armor riding giant harvesters into the dangerous forests that would eat them alive at first mistake. I can't have sand worms for lack of sand (though I still have worms), but tiberium? That I could write.
And it actually works fairly well, I feel, including with Molly's history. Don't worry, these don't have [Perfected Principle of Consumption] taint or anything like that. But they are very much life's ultimate harvesters of resources.
Tungsten fuzz, the idea I had for the surface, is a real thing, you can google it. It doesn't work like nanoscale sandpaper, but that's what magical biology gives you.
Lethal as the nakehono forests are to any denizen of five cities, even with the more sophisticated personal defenses available, they are home to a multitude of species. The adaptation methods vary – some constantly secrete potent solvents; others generate static electricity to charge their fur and repel the nakehono feeder layers. Entropic fields, thermal, and even metric sheer layers are employed by more thaumically active beings. One particular species called kanimaki, a type of a small pack oriented guverloid possesses a series of renewable superconducting buzzsaws magnetically locked around each joint of their body, which they can use to a multitude of purposes – from attack and defense, to travel and communication, where modulating the rotation of the saws generates sound and thermal bloom.
Nohongata, commonly known as the wastehut or ascetic's root, this plant is perhaps the one most adapted to the perpetual nature of the Wheel's rotation, and the perfect opposite of hukapanui. The surface parts of this plant consist of a large number of black liana-like branches all interweaving with each other to form a multilayered shell. Oxygen-rich oils glisten on the surface of the branches, completely sealing the insides of the plant in a giant thermally insulating bubble that protects the internal roots from harsh climate of the outer wastes, where these plants commonly dwell. The uniqueness of wastehut lies in its method of reproduction and the cycle of its life. Where hukapanui thrives in its environment by being able to feed on everything, in the course of evolution, the nohongata discarded almost all ability to obtain nourishment from its environment. It doesn't process minerals from the ground to turn them into organic compounds, nor does it generate energy via nuclear decay and elemental transformation, like many other creatures of the wastes or cultivate the power of the storms, whether in the form of electrical energy or photosynethses.
In the proper scientific terms, it is a necrophage and necromorph, drawing nourishment and reproducing by means of its own Wheelturn. Over the course of its natural lifespan, which can last for tens of thousands of wheel turns, the ascetic's root does one thing and one thing only - it forms a spherical shell, creating a warm and insulated microclimate for a multitude of seedlings contained within. As it ages, its body slowly transforms, metabolizing itself, until only thermally insulated shells remain, filled with highly energetic organic compound that can be described as organic thermite. When its time comes, the wastehut undergoes a rapid decay, the shell breaking on the inside, spewing its contents inside the bubble. The ultra-nutritional compounds react with oxygen reach oils in a highly exothermic reaction. If this happened anywhere, but in the deep wastes, this would have led to, at best, a rapid fire, and more likely to a fiery explosion. In the ascetic's root area of habitation, however, the result is just enough that for the next several hundred cycles, the internal temperature of the plant is high enough to support life similar to the one more common in the Forests.
The multitude of seeds grown during the plant's life sprout, nourished and awakened by the temperature increase and a presence of the only digestible food their kind has – the remains of their ancestors. The seeds will grow within the dark and warm hollow shell, until they either break it, run out of nourishment or space, and unavoidably die themselves.
The inevitable turn of the Wheel will bring the plant – both the progenitor and the progeny, back to life in due time. With luck, the wastehut would re-emerge on the site of one of its previous turns, and nourish itself with its and its children decaying remains to grow larger still.
Lack of any natural defenses, besides a relatively tough outer shell, and extreme energy desnity of its soft insides make it a natural target for a number of other species that exist in the harsh conditions of the Wastes. As a result, paradoxically, the less populated the area is, the more likely it is to find an intact wastehut there. They are most common in the far edges of the Outer Wastes, near the border of the realm, where the winds are great and the lights of the distant moon and storm are the dimmest.
It is known that some denizens of five cities, who for one or another reason find themselves in the Wastes and not immediately dead, such as those pursuing the doctrine of escapism, also shape the wastehuts as shelters. Some historical evidence suggests that during the great escape from Ancestral Prison, this was a common practice as our ancestors braved the inner wastes towards the Forests and the Poles on which the Five Cities were founded. Certainly, no other plausible explanation for how our ancestors, who lacked our advanced environmental defenses could have made the journey.
Besides its potential historical significance, Ascetic's root is of a great cultural value. It is considered by many a living symbol and an epitome of ascetic movement. A being so advanced in its enlightenment, that it takes no bounty from the world, instead fueling its life's journey only with its own history and luck. Some extreme ascetics seek to imitate it. The ritual practice of Sokushinbutsu, in which a practitioner repeatedly undergoes purification and self-mummification, undergoing multiple wheel turns while surviving by consuming their previous incarnations in order to symbolically and mystically concentrate their self to achieve further enlightenment is inspired by the ascetic's root. In the most extreme cases, sages on the road of selfishness were known to bind themselves mystically to ascetic root plants so that they are reincarnated together, and remove themselves from the civilization, forever sealing themselves inside black branches.
I think the idea is clear here. I thought to myself "what would weird evolutionary branches be in a world where immortality through resurrection is almost guaranteed"? The answer was "something that survives and grows by eating the corpses of its previous incarnations". If one thinks about it, it's an ultimate survival and propagation strategy. The next question was "how does the system not collapse into a cancerous mess?" and the answer was "very slow metabolism, and its tasty, everyone eats it, and if it gets eaten, it doesn't get to actually reproduce".
Then I noticed how I created an ultimate symbol of asceticism, and there's definitely spirituality in the Fivefold Court. Something that went beyond being vegan for moral reasons, beyond even "eating" sunlight and minerals from the soil. I remembered about a real-life practice of Sokushinbutsu, i.e. living self-mummification, and considered how it would work in a world of immortality through resurrection. And thus it became "ascetic's root" and a symbol and part of some very extreme practices.
It all tied itself together. So, here, giant ascetic arctic holy tumbleweeds that some people use as houses in the deep wastes, and some as tombs and meditation places. With branches filled with a weird mixture of fat, honey, and thermite. I didn't initally connect it to my tiberium idea, and only got to "these are direct opposites of philosophy" after writing both.
No illustration this time, couldn't think of how to make one that's interesting.
Nokehono, also known as connection or link worms, are technically, the only living being observed surviving in all parts of the World, from the outer layers of the Ancestral Prison to the outer fringers of the Wastes. They share some similarities and might be very distant relatives of the demonic feed maggots, sometimes summoned by practioners from several hell realms. They are deceptively simple and fiendishly confounding creatures.
Ranging in thickness from little thicker than an adult tocatli thread to as wide as a grown man's arm, and in length from a couple of millimeters to almost a meter, nokehono are multisegmented round worms, and probably the simplest active thaumaturgists. The primary ability of a nokehono is the one it uses both for travel and as a feeding method.
When moving, nokehono redistribute heat and chaos along their bodies. The area behind them is leeched of heat, freezing to the point of near absolute zero, while the area before them is heated, the ice, and, in some cases, even metal, melting and allowing nokehono to swim through them, all the while filtering its contents through its digestive tracks. At the same time, the heated area becomes more orderly, fractal patterns and strange crystalline structures self-organizing in the melt, while what is left behind as the worm's excretion exists in the state of maximum possible entropy.
Moving in large migrating swarms deep underground, nokehono circle the world in a spiral, starting their existence on the outer borders, and ending somewhere close, and perhaps inside, the Great Labyrinth. They trace patterns of leylines, and counter the rotation of the iron blizzard above the ground. This led scientists to believe that nokehono are sensitive to the magnetic fields and the patterns of essence flow, even if laboratory studies do not show them reacting to artificial magnets, and indicate only very weak reactions to thaumaturgical invocations. The depth at which they travel and the lack of identifying features make it hard to study their relation to the Wheelturn mechanisms. No breeding mechanisms were observed via dissection, leading to a hypothesis that all nokehono found so far are actually larval forms or non-breeding forms of some other, as yet undiscovered creatures, native to the Great Labyrinth.
The best modern thaumometeorological models cannot fully explain the temperature gradient and the temperatures observed in deep Wastes. Based on the amount of radioactive material, the potency of ley lines and the severity of the endless storm, the temperatures should be far higher than observed. One of the possible explanations for the discrepancy that has been gaining ground in academic circles in the last several hundreds moon cycles is that the nokehono collectively act as a sort of energy transfer mechanism, always transferring heat and order towards the center of the world. What this hypothesis lacks is the explanation of where the difference goes. If the link worms are indeed the cause for the Wastes being as they are, and if the heat and order end confined somewhere in the core depths of the Labyrinth, then at least some estimates suggests that a self-sustained fusion reaction should be occurring there, possibly contained through the constant influx of axiomatic order. Further investigation of the Prison would be required to even begin answering these questions.
Separated from their swarm mates and prevented from following them on their endless journey, worms enter a lethargic state. If roused via thaumaturgical prodding, they'll enter a frenzy and start burrowing into whatever is in front of them, using their ability to their full extent, quickly burning themselves out. This is sometimes used by ambitious burglars to burn through locks and safe doors.
I remembered Avatar the Last Airbender, and how people learned magic by observing animals bending, like moles. So, I made bender worms. They do Dresden's trick of "take energy and entropy from one place and drop it into another".
I specifically left a lot of things vague about them, like whether they actually do go into the Caul sphere, and if there's a (green) sun somewhere inside that might or might not be the queen mother of all these worms, or stuff like that.
These are microscopic magical shai hulud that move deep underground and add flavor, and a bit of ecological connectivity between regions. This is me trying to ape Frank Herbert a bit and plot some actual ecology of the setting, even if its mostly (fully) background.
Of course it's possible to actually use them more. For example, say that inside the Sphere they undergo a metamorphosis and become some sort of hell butterflies, perhaps even sentient ones. Or says that they are all parts of one single giant distributed organism and are thus not part of the Endless Suffering mechanics. Maybe they are actual first circle demons of a slumbering second / third circle in the core of our world. Etc.
Wastes are both the largest biome I have in the setting, and the most alien (save, perhaps, whatever might or might not be going in the inner layers of the Malfeas-inspired dyson sphere buried underneath the ice, the giant plasma torus hovering above the world, and the moon, which I am not covering because no one ever got there, and it definitely would exceed the Huge size limitation of the world). So, when writing their flora and fauna I tried to let my fantasy run wild. I wanted tiberium, that I knew from near the start. I also wanted something that would be philosophical / symbolic. My mind gave me the ascetic's root. The worms are where I started experimenting with "thaumic life", ie non-sapients that natively uses magic, to inspire and explain some magical traditions of the courts. They kinda ran away from me. At some point I think I thought about biopunk a bit, with the worms possibly being bred and farmed as living fiberoptics / landlines, but ultimately decided that would be too much.
At some point I tried to write chainsaw-man lizard monkeys in detail, but couldn't, so they are left with only a small line. I have some ideas and a detailed explanation of how they work, but can't bring myself to put it to the text right now.
Functionally the wastes as a whole serve to balance the amount of biomass in the setting. With immortality in place, one has to consider, where the material generated goes, and why the setting isn't a cancerous mass. The solution I came up with is as follows (when I make a consolidated post covering the whole court with updated grammar and illustrations for all parts, I'll cover it in the general explanation too):
1) When you die, you get reincarnated in a place you can survive in, with a high probability of that place having an arcane link to you. So, a citizen of the City of Endings is most likely to return in the city of endings, a bit less likely in some other city, and even less likely (there's a sharp drop in probability, but it's still possible) in a forest between the cities somewhere.
2) Your body and equipment gets left behind. Attuned equipment (see SUTRAs section) get go with you through reincarnation. You can't effectively farm equipment like this, as attuned equipment rapidly breaks down when the user dies (at the rate of body's decomposition)
3) The material that leaves the world disappears. The material that ends up in the Great Labyrinth stays in the Great Labyrinth. These are the two pressure release valves. The waste from the cities and biological material from the forests either ends up underground, where link worms eat it and transfer it into the sphere, or in the wastes, where hukapanui disassemble it, and eventually it ends up blow outside the world.
4) The rules for final death are different for sapient and non-sapient beings. For sapient beings, you only die after undergoing a special ritual in the city of Endings. For animals and especially plants the rules might be different. Like being killed by a sapient being, or being above ground for more than a moon cycle. I am not covering it at all, unless required. This is essentially my handwave - the nature takes care of itself to stay in balance, don't think too much about it (you all are going to think way too much about it, won't you?).
Covering an equatorial ring only around one hundred and eighty kilometers wide, which connects the great city pillars together, the Forests are a kingdom onto itself. A place of wild and untamed life, fighting tooth and claw for its place under the light of eternal Storm above against any and all competition. This is a world of giant blue leaved trees stretching upwards in the fierce competition for light and lightning. Of numerous fast agile beings finding home under their shadowed canopies, from agile climbers sucking on capacitor-fruits and snacking on nuts that weren't fast enough to skitter away, to iron-armored many horned behemoths ponderously treading upon the ground. Near the edges between the Forests and the Wastes, sharp peaks give birth to fast streams of water that carve deep trenches in narrow valleys and end in giant lakes, swamps and steaming pits near the center of the equator.
Each of the five Forests is as unique as each of the Five cities, if not more, separated as they are by great city pillars. One is covered in swamps, the excess of organic detritus from ancient forests resulting in a treacherous plant covered glades ready to swallow an unaware strangers. Another features large swathes of dunes, great mounds of silica and iron dust forming an ever-shifting landscape. Yet everywhere there is life in all its great variety.
Some scattered small settlements exist in the Forests, both as resorts for the rich, and as a way to escape the city life for those who wish it for several turns of the Wheel. Life is hard here, harder in some ways than in the cities, with few supplies and strained logistics.
The Forest rivers and riverbanks are plentiful with a great variety of aquatic and amphibious species. A large number of them possess hard metal shells. They are prized for their taste and for medicinal and thaumaturgical properties of their hemolymph. They are the largest item of trade between the Forrest villages and the Cities.
I didn't have it in me to write detailed descriptions for each, so, here, have some illustrations instead.
thunder trees, are one of the species that comprise the great Forests. Reaching as high as two hundred meters, and covered in blue leather-like scales, they bear peculiar fruit in the large fractal crowns filled with sharp needle-like leafs. A sort of natural air gap capacitor, the fruits can store electrical energy. When lightning happens to strike the tree, its energy is redirected into the fruit through the large vessels filled with electrolytes within tree trunks. The energy is both a means of defense against predation, frying those critters who have not developed defenses against it, and to prepare the ground for a new growth – when the fruit drops from its great height, it discharges all of its energy into the ground, cooking it thoroughly and killing all the parasites within it, while leaving organic material intact enough to provide nutrients for the seeds.
The image I have in my mind is "tropical pine trees". Something that combines the aestetics of great northern forests, and the equatorial nature of the region I am describing, where great dinosaurs roam the ground. The electrical capacitor fruit (pinecones) are just a neat idea, I feel. I do a lot with electricty in the setting in general.
A staple of the outer Forest regions, where the temperatures range from ~250 to ~290 degrees, woolly porcupines are a species that has been of great use to the five cities. Reaching in length about half a meter, the porcupines are covered in long, smooth hair, which covers, and, in times of danger, can transform into, deadly needles. The transformation occurs as a result of special aromatic oils excreted by a number glands below porcupine skin, resulting in a highly disorienting and even hallucination-inducing odor cloud hovering near the agitated porcupine.
Woolly porcupines are a common farm animal, prized mostly for their fur, used for production of clothes and other textiles. Most porcupine farmers are tocatli, who supplement their animals' wool with their own threads. They are a source of many a common saying, like "you don't get whool without needles" and "if you sheer too close to the skin, you'll end up pocked", etc.
I wanted to make sheep without actually making sheep. And, as a poser that I am, I wanted them to be interesting. So, we get woolly porcupines. With needles underneath their fur, a skunk-like attacks, and ability to quickly harden their fur into more needles if agitated. Safe to say, this encourages humane care for them from the farmers.
The undisputed kings and queens of the equator, benehemoth walkers, or simply behemoths are a class of titanic animals that seems to be distantly related to gurvels. Reaching in height up to seven meters, and in length up to thirty, they are walking fortresses often covered in either thick metal plating growth or crystalline scale, they do not usually possess exotic biothaumaturgical adaptations – they simply don't need them, as their might is enough. They exist in a number of shapes – with and without wings, horned ad hornless, with limbs numbering from two to five. It is considered a feat of great strength to slay one in single combat; it is considered a feat of greater wisdom to tame one instead. In some monastic dojos, one or the other might be required to attain a title of grandmaster. A surprising amount of behemoth walkers possess wings, though only very few of them are capable of flight. Some biologists believe that, rather than a vestige of some earlier time, it is a deliberate mutation, caused by the thaumic class-wide resonance, prodding the walkers to adapt and conquer not just the ground, but also the skies.
Dinosaurs! I know that I promised. I ran out of steam around here, but I hope they still read and look interesting. Nothing conveys the spirit of untamed Hyperborean wilderness for me, where Conan-like adventures can be had, as dinosaurs roaming the ground
Generated as it is by a constant ongoing clash of the ferrous blizzard cyclone and anticyclone covering Inner and Outer Wastes, a titanic ring of hydrogen and helium plasma shines its reddish light upon the Cities and the Forests. Yet, even in the skies, which not even the greatest of minds were able to conquer yet, life of a sort exists. Observed primarily through telescopes, starbees are a plasma-based lifeform, using self-organizing dusty plasma as a substrate instead of more conventional solid or liquid organics. Approximately five to ten centimeters in diameter, despite their sizes they are closest in organization to single celled organisms. They constantly move through the edges of the plasma channel, feeding upon the material blizzard brings in. This keeps the central plasma channel clear of pollution, and prevents radiation collapse from occurring, allowing for a steady state reaction to be maintained. As a whole they act as a membrane, a skin of the storm.
This is a personal favorite of mine. I like the idea of plasma-based life-forms living in stars to be very cool. I couldn't really do this here, but I came up with something close. These work as a sorta cleaning mechanism for the great ring of plasma in the sky, eating up all impurities to make more of themselves. They might be cells of a single great organism and thus not subject to resurrection. In this case, the whole of the plasma ring would be.
In truth, little is known about Great Labyrinth's depths. No records survive from the time our ancestors seem to have left it, and even the very fact of such an escape is disputed by historians. If anyone still remains in the world since that time, they are not interested in talking. The exploration of the Labyrinth is made difficult by its many dangers, from inbuilt traps to almost universally hostile primitive tribes encountered in some of the farther great chambers. The mystic nature of the place makes it clear that it is indeed a prison – for even the Wheel cannot let someone escape it. Where normally someone's body failing would result in them returning somewhere they can survive with a higher probability given to the places that are arcanely connected to them, if someone was to be broken while inside Ancestral Prison, they would return in one of the cells somewhere in the great ever-shifting structure. As a result, very few brave or reckless explorer are ready to undertake scouting expeditions.
The flora and fauna of the Great Labyrinth, what little has been documented, seems to exist in a symbiosis with the structure itself. Moss that provides illumination and in some cases poisons the delvers with deadly radiation covers the walls. Glass bugs scurry through the pipes, subsisting on the toxic sludge accumulating on their walls and providing a necessary cleaning service. Great apes with rust-red fur are sometimes seen performing mindless repair-like actions in the damaged areas. Slugs lubricate the gears with their silicone oil secretions.
Great Labyrinth is supposed to be the most mysterious part of the setting. One of if not the most ancient thing, almost unexplored and very dangerous, waiting for an exalt to open it up. It is also clearly supposed to be something artificial, and designed to work as a whole. So, symbiotic creatures. Creatures that work as parts of the great whole.
When writing this, I wanted to satisfy two goals:
1) Make the flora and fauna something actually interesting to interact with. Do we want to hunt a dinosaur? Maybe our monk teacher would pursue enlightenment in his martial arts through self-mummification from which he can actually return, etc. Maybe we learn mana manipulation by observing how worms do it.
2) Make it make at least some ecological, if not biological sense.
I hope I succeeded at least a bit, and this adds, rather that detracts from the setting as a whole. It's definitely a work in progress (if I can find more strength).
The non-english names are mangled maori. I didn't want to use latin. I considered going to E2 and using Old Realm symbol construction guide I am sure I saw somewhere, but couldn't find it, and it was way too much anyway.
Hexus, the wizard casts and all advanced technology, which for the most powerful is defined as anything more complicated than a mechanical clock has a very bad time of it. This is a natural amplification of what younger wizards call the tech-bane, what their elders know as Gremlin's Lure and what the older texts of the White Council called 'the Hubris', that tendency of mortal magic to slip through the gaps between will and soul which is tied to the magic of the world, working mischief and mischance upon those things that 'aught to be magical', perhaps it is the souring of milk in the days before anyone had heard of a bacteria, mayhap it is steam in the days when a ship sailing against wind and current would have been most likely to be thought the work of spirits than artifice or in these dawning days of the third millennium perhaps it is silicon chips with connectors thinner than the eye can see or the mind of the wizard can truly grasp.
This is not technomancy anymore than throwing a bucket of water at something is hydro-engineering.
Technomancy is working with technology, working magic upon technology, with the full understanding of what it is doing and what is being done upon it. Klaus the Toymaker was almost made a Senior Council wizard, though he was quite young because he is a technomancher, if one of gears and pistons not lightning bound to wires. He has the skill and experiance in his arts to work with systems so small fragile a mere generation before his birth they were a target of the tech bane. Now he can make magic puppets that that move with a lifelike grace greater than any golem. Bob has heard, from whom Molly does not know because Harry did not know that, that Klause made an Analytical engine invested with a spirit of logic.
When it comes to things like transistors someone in the White Council is probably doing something cool with them in the lab right now, if only they could make them stop exploding, Three hundredth and thirty third time's the charm. Eventually that person will make it and they too will be hailed as a skilled and pioneering enchanter. According to Bob, who guesses about this kind of stuff as part of his job, not that Harry is very interested in the details the time to manipulate integrated circuits, microprocessors is coming. However the wizards with the intuitive as well as intellectual grasp that they could work magic on them are in Molly's generation or younger and expecting a teenager to work with something this delicate is wildly optimistic. It will take at least another two decades, and more reasonably another five before any number of wizards of the Council are able to cast true technomancy. It did not take that long to master clockwork for Klaus, nor as long for the wizards born in the 30 and 40s to master the magic of Morse Code or the telegraph but with every iteration the time to time to magical adoption gets longer a technological know-how becomes more specialized and ironically more arcane.
There is a work around, just put a spirit into it and manipulate the spirit* but that has several issues. Firstly if the spirit is not willing then the binding spells you put on it as a mortal will invoke the tech-bane and there goes the computer. Secondly if you are out of touch with modern technology odds are you are not very good at understanding and bargaining with the kinds of spirits technology produces and misunderstandings between spirits and wizards lead to angry spirits and occasionally dead wizards so the elders of the White Council do not generally encourage their juniors to mess with such entities. If any of them are not inclined to listen odds are they are not making it public.
The ideal indirect technomancer would be a minor talent with a knack for summoning and binding and a deep understanding of modern technology. Their bindings would count more on finesse than power and so would be less likely to damage the very tech they are trying to infiltrate as the spirit is infiltrating. When it comes to direct applications of magic to technology minor talents run headfirst into the fact that there is no Path for technomancy for them to follow, it is too new and generally speaking a minor talent does not have the magical education and sheer breadth of contacts and resources to make a path so they have to wait on the wizards to catch up.
Non-humans have it easier in some regards, their magic does not have a tech-bane, but in some cases like the fey only very specific kinds of mischief makers are even interested in advanced technology and in others like the vampire courts the elders, those most skilled in the occult, don't really see the worth of bending their efforts to the task. The Jade Court may have something of an advantage since they can bind and control spirits of the Wicked City, but they are fundamentally not very trustworthy or sane knowing that they have to get back there. If only someone could yank it for good....
There is also the matter of ghosts, they can and indeed have haunted computers, server farms and everything else you can imagine that is the work of human hands which gives the aspiring necromancer something of a leg up Bob suspects, you know to compensate for the descent into madness.
*We see Bob be introduced to the internet by Butters in canon so we know that spirits can freely interact with technology
By Bob the Skull [As recorded and then transcribed
by designated scribe Clippy]
It has often been a weight upon the mind of mankind how to defend themselves from spirits and specters, god-kin and devils all, from the crackling campfire to the Proton Pack in Ghostbusters the toolmaker has conceived of tools against the intangible and the immortal and in a sense it is this very conception that gives power and weight to the tools. Why are the fey vulnerable to cold iron? Because in an age far off when first a mortal warrior crossed blades with one of the Tuatha de Danann cold iron came only from the heavens. What could be more mystical, more potent than that which descended on road to starfire to the earth. Why does sliver serve as bane to the most fearsome of shape-shifters, to the accursed dead? Because it is the metal of the moon whose constant cycles across the heavens marked the passage of time, silver then would place those immortals under the hand of time as mortals felt it. This is a far as many sorcerers go who delve in such matters, content that the tools humankind uses in its defense are of its making, though the blind deaf masses do not understand their greatness.
They are wrong.
There exist in the world principles of boundary and geometry which are not dependent upon what mortal men expect them to be, aspects of reality deep-carved, which might be enhanced by the perception of thinking beings, but are not dependent upon them. One of these all magicians of sense know well, though only in the particular, the Seven Laws of Magic. The corruption which breaking them brings is only a aspect of a wider pattern: the use of mortal magic reinforces itself, a wizard who uses magic to clean his home will tend to rely more and more upon spells for the task, just as one who sings his garden into flower would count it dull indeed to return to the work of spade and shovel. Then there are the fundamental aspects of elemental magic: Fire purifies, water wears away, air communicates, earth preserves and life adapts.
[Her Glorious Majesty interjecting: Like Jurassic Park? Jurassic Park held insight into one of the basic insights of magic?
There follows a brief digression as to the nature of the mass media in question of which the entity 'Bob' did not know. This was followed by the philosophical question of whether or not it is worthwhile consuming media which does not include images or other stimuli designed to engage the human libido. Let it be here known that the nature and value of the content 'Baywatch' is in no way cogent to the subject of the lecture]
Then there's circles, circles are one of the most powerful things in the world, but when you come down to it a circle is only the most geometrically even way to invoke a boundary, a way to signal to yourself and to the magic of the universe that you are raising a new boundary. There is no reason why you could not make a magic 'circle' shaped like a square, a pyramid with a hexagon base, a dodecahedron. Indeed people do that all the time, we call those houses, well homes technically there's this whole thing with homes and hearths which we can leave off for another time, but the point is that when you are invoking a boundary you are invoking all boundaries, the very idea of separation of form which is what separates our ordered universe from the Outside in the both literal and metaphorical sense. The Outer Gates are one big protective circle, or at least that was the belief of some of my more philosophically inclined masters. None of them actually went and looked. Anyway it's weird that you can just ignore them. Did I mention it was weird?
I know the question you are going to ask, no Outsiders can't ignore circles and thresholds either at least not any of the ones I know. Some of the higher forms, the more evolved for lack of a better term can break through all but the most potent and carefully crafted circles and the most ancient of thresholds, but that is not the same thing as ignoring them. I don't have enough inputs to even begin to guess why that is, but it is probably the same thing that ensures you don't put yourself, your power into promises. If you figure something out give me a head's up you hear?
[It is at this point that her Divine Majesty murmured in a tone too low to be heard by the Bob Entity, but not too low for my microphone: "I don't know which is worse, the puns or the flirting." Suggestions that she discipline the Bob Entity until it would no longer engage in either behavior were met with a negative response. Supposition: Response analogous to the class of actions deemed 'socially unacceptable'. Unproven Hypothesis: Bob Entity is part of human society, in spite of dwelling within a basement unknown to any but Wizard Dresden and those in his confidence.]
OOC: I was going to make this just a straight info-post, but then the scene popped into my head so I compromised and made it a document authored by Bob but from the perspective of Clippy.
This is what I have for the vampires and wizards, the fey I'll have to think about how to break it up
Creature: White Court Vampire
Soak:
-Bashing: Full Stamina -Lethal: Half Stamina -Aggravated: Only through Disciplines or equipment/magic
Specialities on Soak: Bullets deal full lethal damage
Weaknesses: Conceptual counter love/hope/courage deals aggravated damage can Frenzy from Hunger
Fuel/Powersource: Lifeforce/Chi Equivalent Refill-Method: Draining Emotions, deals WP-damage, followed by Permanent WP-loss or lethal damage, vampire's choice (if they take more physical or mental power)
Supernatural Powers:
-Vampiric Disciplines
-Bloodheal-equivalent
-Heal Bashing at Exalted levels
-Can spend lifeforce like the Kindred spend blood
-Supernatural attractiveness, expressed as breaking the cap on apparence through merits and discipline
Creature: Red Court Vampire
Soak:
-Bashing: Full Stamina, halved past soak -Lethal: Full Stamina -Aggravated: Only through Disciplines or equipment/magic
Specialities on Soak: Bullets deal half lethal damage, Aimed attacks on the stomach do lethal and also drain bloodpool
Weaknesses: Sunlight (Elders with specialized Discipline can hide in the shadow of their Flesh-mask), can Frenzy from Hunger, True Faith
Supernatural Powers:
-Vampiric Disciplines
-Bloodheal-equivalent
-No Passive Healing, they have to use blood intensive methods to heal
-Bloodbuff
-Skinsuit/True Form switch works like a Garou changing from human to Crinos, two successes needed either way on their Stamina+Animal Ken Equivalent
-Narcotic Saliva (Combat use and enthrallment)
Creature: Black Court Vampire
Soak:
-Bashing: Full Stamina, halved past soak -Lethal: Full Stamina -Aggravated: Only through Disciplines or equipment/magic
Specialities on Soak: Bullets deal bashing damage unless aimed at the heart (Dracula in the book did not seem that phased at a headshot)
Weaknesses: Sunlight (Elders somewhat resistant), can Frenzy from Hunger, True Faith, Running Water, Elders need twice twice their successes to access their powers during the day, three times in direct sunlight
Soak:
-Bashing: Full Stamina -Lethal: Only equipment/Magic -Aggravated: Only equipment/Magic
Specialities on Soak:
Weaknesses: Nothing
Fuel/Powersource: None, magic is omni-present Refill-Method: Time and Rest
Supernatural Powers:
-Sphere Magic from Mage
-Death Curse for more powerful magic than usual
-No Path magic, a sorcerer receiving formal training or just through sufficient experience breaching the barrier converts their path dots into spheres
-Can heal even Aggravated damage with time and rest at 3xLethal healing times
Those Usum calls the pari are old, ancient in fact such that their origin has been lost to the turning of the Wheel that grinds history to legend and legend to myth. Man has ever feared the dark, the things that skittered and shuffled beyond the light of the flame, yet among the myriad of horrors that hunted the primeval nights some were lesser and some were greater, some were proud and some were cunning. It was one such lesser thing, a spirit-hunger that first bound its fate to a mortal who walked to light's edge and beyond. House Raith claims it was Aeneas of storied legend when Rome was in ascendant and that in their veins flows the blood of Venus though they do not harken back to Aphrodite Cytherea, but rather from swan winged Turan, whose name still echoes in the English language as tyrant.
Others tell their own tales, the Skavis claim to have ridden down out of the steppes with the Scythians long before Greek or roman set timid foot upon upon the lands untamed, children of Alvasty, the Red Mother all who drove horses and men to ruin, whereas the Malvora claim they were born of the union of Lilith and the Devil Himself, a brood to bedevil mankind
Though vampires of the White Court dwelt in all lands and hunted all peoples it is in Rome and her daughter cities that they became the White Court. Far from the superstitions of the countryside, beneath the notice of warring Hermetics they plied emperors, senators, pontiffs and generals with beauty and grace even as they took their sustenance from the teeming masses of the city grown fat from the plunder of empire. It was there that those who would become House Raith wold learn their most important lesson: There was power in beauty not just of flesh, but marble, there was might unmatched in the poet's pen in shaping the desires of man. They became patrons of the arts, great lovers of culture, to hear them tell it many of the greatest works of the Classical World would never have existed but for them the Aeneid, a true accounting, or true as could be set to words of wars long lost to mortal memory, so claim the elders of the House. If only Virgil's muse had been more careful of his health.
The Middle Ages were not kind to the living vampires of the Old World, asceticism, mortification of the flesh. the withering of cities and the rise of a new White Council concerned with driving back the night and all its denizens might have been the end of all of them, but the ong gulf was bridged, in Florence, in Milan, in Genoa and to the nostalgia of those few elders who endured even in Rome they found heir footing again, but this time the scions of Venus would not wager their fate upon a single crown, not even that of Augustus. Missionaries were dispatched, not of faith but knowledge hard won: how to hide from the eyes of the hunter and make the pray love the sting of your bite. As far east as India they went, some may even have wandered into the Middle Kingdom, though of those the courts in Rome and Constantinople did not hear back. But Where they did hear of the envoys it was with rich profits, new disciplines to manipulate stolen life, new philosophies, new ways of waging war upon their foes.
In this time the families grew and grew again as they travelled and spread to new lands. Old ways to dealing with wicked spirits and witch-folk were little good when the dark ones had learned to wear another skin and grasp the heart in ways unseen. And yet those wise elders who sent out the heralds of the new age sowed the seeds of their personal destruction, they could not adapt to the world that was being born around them day by day. So they fel at the hands of Church Hunters, wizards, the strigoi... at least what is what official histories say. Strange how the survivors of the pre-Fall days are all those vampires who had no interest in playing politics, no inclination to rock the boat.
The present White King is thought to be something of an exception, having been born as the last embers of the Punic Wars guttered out and risen to prominence the chaos of the Fourth Century. 'I lived though the end of the world, so will you boy,' these words he would say to Thomas whenever he would fail to live up to some standard, which he tells you proudly, was often.
Finally the age of mass media, from the printing press to the internet has been a time of almost unimaginable plenty to the White Court as it became easier than ever to leverage the enthralment of one one into directing the gaze and the passions of the many. Yet it has not been all victories for the scions of House Raith, rarely has a blow more profound been dealt to their interests than by Jane Austin in her insistence that true love not only could be found, but should be found. Oh how they tried to quarantine the idea to the nobility, the well-to-do, but as nobility crumbled to little more than a quaint kind of celebrity the notion flourished and took root, making use of those same cultural dispersion mechanisms from silver screen to radio show to television. The lesson a young vampire should take from this, at least according to Isabela is that a strong wind can blow the clods where it wills, but he who tries to hold them in his fist will only hold a fistful of mist.
One storm well steered was against the unliving horrors of the Black Court which had long been not only competitors, but also hunters of the White Court where their territories overlapped.
OOC: So... this turned into a history lesson. Hope you guys enjoy anyway.
Bolded - changed from 1.2. Also added the section on how I think Endless Suffering works. I'll be posting an illustration gallery later, as a separate post. I think I have some good enough illustrations of variuos institutions and at least some architecture.
Main changes are that I expanded to Vast, and added Lord of the Land. In order to afford that, I dropped functional Gaols, and populated the underground prison by hostile tribes of primitves. I put in conditions to overcome their hostility, and I added the ways to get Gaols and Grand Grimoire later.
Vast size – 3 points, 2 points remaining
Difficult Terrain, 2 points remaining
Accessible Terrain, 2 points remaining
Pockets of Safety +2 points, 4 points remaining
Balanced Ecosystem, 4 points remaining
Earthly Fauna, 4 points remaining
Deadly Beasts, +1 point, 5 points remaining
Earthly Flora, 5 points remaining
Deadly Flora, +1 point, 6 points remaining
Human Populace, 6 points remaining
Resident Devils, -1 point, 5 points remaining
Advanced Social structures, 5 points remaining
Archaic Technology, 0 points, 5 points remaining
Advanced Technology, -2 points, 3 points remaining
Loyalty: Committed, -2 points, 1 points remaining
Resistance Movement, +1 point, 2 points
Dangerously Alien, 2 points remaining
Endless Suffering, -1 point, 1 point remaining
Lord of the Land, -1 point, 0 points remaining
Bottleneck - useful, yes, but loses us some possible plot of someone escaping our hell, and loses interactions of others trying to come in. I used terrain and climate as much as I could to still render our realm protected, in case it can actually be invaded. Which is not a given – it's not located in NeverNever, but inside our soul, in our exaltation.
Cauls - not something I want at all, and not the style of character we are playing. They, as well as other "architectural" developments, will be possible to acquire later on, through exploration of Great Labyrinth (see below, the fluff part), if QM allows.
Fruits of Hell - the cost is too much, and the downsides are too much too. Not something I want in general
Grand Grimoire - narratively very interesting, but can be built afterwards without point buy. Hopefully, can be roleplayed as exploration of what's already there, but undiscovered. I certainly left enough possibilities for that. Gaols are in the same niche.
Exclusive Transportation - useful, but can be built later, and with accessible terrain between cities, not that needed.
Time differential - if the differential was higher, it would be worth it. Right now, too pricey.
Overpopulated - I have a strong opinion on this. It's too self-sabotaging.
If someone were to look at it from far away, your kingdom would look like a perfect hemisphere with a radius of 8128 kilometers, most of its surface is buried under multicolored ice made of water, mercury, krypton, xenon – almost all elements of the periodic table known to man, and perhaps, more. If observed from a closer distance, and by a more discerning eye, the nature of the land appears far more complex, and perilous. Jagged, razor sharp forests of ice-like shards extend hundred meters high, forming a near impossible to traverse landscape. As time passes by, they break, shift, change and grow, as if they were alive. And indeed they are, if not in a way that Earth knows life. Many-limbed creatures, eyeless and pentaradially symmetrical, skitter through these deadly forests, chittering in bursts of infrared radiation.
Such is the depth of your domain's unfeeling coldness, that rivers of liquid oxygen flow through it, confined by the banks of superconducting bronze. Strange, alien creatures that derive nutrition from radiological decay of uranium and breath hydrogen-helium atmosphere, populate these rivers, inimical and universally hostile to everything within their reach. Their bioluminescence is the only source of illumination beyond the soft silver light of the moon traversing the starless black skies, each revolution with a new phase and surface.
To venture into this hellscape in an attempt to escape the kingdom of your heart without permission and a guide, is to face an almost guaranteed demise, for even if one was to clad themselves into a space-worthy thermally sealed suit, they would still be fleeced to the bone by a never-ending blizzard of ferrous snow. Electrically charged iron and nickel dust cyclone with the wind speeds far exceeding a hundred meters per second obscures the borders of your realm from outside observation to eye and any electronic equipment. Only those wise in the ways of your soul can dare hope to navigate this terrain.
And yet, not every place within your self is so inhospitable. For even as the iron cyclone rages at the border of the world, a no less ferocious anticyclone expands from its center. Where they meet, in a strip of land 496 kilometers wide, their clash in the skies is both ferocious and life giving. In that narrow space, the titanic magnetic fields generated by them cancel each other, and their particles' collisions generate heat enough that eternal ring of lightning plasma is raging in the skies, unable to escape its natural confinement. The temperature is high enough that liquid water can flow in this equator. The light is soft and bright enough that photosynthesis is effective. And life, or at least life recognizable by Earthborn eyes at first glance, strives there, desperate to occupy this narrow ring of space allowed to it. Dense and ever shifting forests rustle in the ever-blowing winds, their deep blue crowns endlessly shrugging metal dust from themselves. Their trunks stretch ever further in hopes to catch the lightning and fill their underground capacitors with vital energy. Fast and dangerous beasts, iron hided and sharp toothed traverse metal coated land of ever shifting shadows below, seeking either fruit or prey, for life is short and dangerous in this world, and no source of nourishment is to be dismissed.
It is among these forests that civilization of your world exists. It is confined mostly into five great megacities sitting in five corners of a great pentacle, 5747 kilometers from the center of the world. Each city-state is positioned on top of a great pole of metal, large enough to generate its own magnetic field and prevent metal dust from passing into the city, and to serve as a source of free electricity for the city-state's industry. Only the tips of the great pillars protrude above ground, but they are still more than ten kilometers high, extending far enough into the skies that the air pressure at their tops is barely a half of what it is where they enter the ground, and akin to the one you are accustomed to. The size of each settlement is far larger than any that could be found on Earth. Each boasts the population equal to the largest nations of your birth world. They are connected to each other by a vast cavern system, partly natural, and long since expanded with intelligent intent, forming the beams of the pentagram, with great armored trains coursing through the tunnels.
Each city is different, unique, strange and, somehow, nostalgic. Each is perfectly independent, and each is required for others to exist prosperously with their own cultures and aspirations.
In the east stands ruby clad city of law and warriors. Forges and training centers fill it, and all those who seek martial perfection, those who wish to pursue the career in law enforcement and law making, those desiring to sally forth in defense of the realm, gather there.
To the south east lies the city of knowledge, its emerald flags adorning the walls of its libraries, universities, research centers, ritual sites and laboratories. All those who strive for understanding visit it at least once in their lifetimes. Many a secret is hidden behind its walls, some, likely, unknown even to you, its creator. Certainly, its records extend to before the creation of its sister cities, perhaps to before the realm it is in existed at all.
In the south western corner of the pentagram, the city of art stands, its streets clad paved with sapphires. Where silence and focus reign in the libraries of its neighbor to the east, laugher and jubilation can be heard in all parts of this city. Magnificent are its galleries, captivating its theaters, and enthralling its bordellos.
And when the inhabitants of your world tire of jubilation, grow weary of training, become forlorn in their pursuit of knowledge, they travel to the city at the far west corner of the great pentacle. There, under the amethyst roofs of its buildings and ministrations of the carefully selected caretakers, they find the end to their struggle, and beginning of something new. For not all your citizens are human, and none of them know age and death as mortals do, and in time require assistance to move on, to rest, to change, and perhaps to end. It is also there that other guests of your world, souls of the damned are processed and made to atone for their sins, to find salvation and healing before being let out into the wider society.
Finally, in the north, there is a city from which teams of daring explorers venture forth, protected only by their armor and faith in you, to brave the borders of your realm in pursuit of minerals and other wealth. There the services that maintain great transportation arteries linking the five sister cities are located. There the main food production facilities are located. And finally, there stand the great golden gates, beyond which is the only tunnel leading directly to the border of your world.
Great are the cities of your kingdom, each more than a billion strong in number, each with its culture, philosophy, dreams and futures. And yet, they are not the crown of this world. For in its very center, there exists a sixth structure.
A giant statue, or a mountain if a form of statue, an axis of the wheel around which the world turns stands in the middle of your soul. Two eastern dragons, one black as the darkest night, the other all colors of rainbow, both over twenty kilometers long, spiral around each other in a mockery of a human DNA, rising from the ground to challenge the empty skies.
They emerge, frozen at the moment of a triumphant and desperate escape, from a round cracked hill of bronze in the ground. Upon closer inspection, one can find that the hill is but a tip of a giant sphere, almost buried under ice. If one was to brave the darkness and spelunk down into its depths, they would find themselves in a giant labyrinth of concentric brass and basalt spheres. Strange, eldritch writings and grotesque carvings cover its walls, floors, ceiling. Flickering green lights illuminate some, but far from all corridors. Over time, it seems, the layout of the labyrinth shifts, as the spheres composing it move against each other. Whether this movement is slowly winding down or speeding up is impossible to tell.
As one explores more and more of the great construct, a wise explorer would notice two prevailing trends. When approaching what should be the geometric center of this structure, the temperature slowly rises and, should the visitor has appropriate equipment or keen enough senses, they'll note the rising level of background radiation. When venturing deeper and deeper beneath the ground, farther from the surface, the shadows grow somehow heavier, the sounds of one's footsteps become hollow, and the very essence of the air becomes more and more grave-like. It is impossible to reach the deepest layers, much less the core or the bottom - the tunnels have collapsed long ago, some melted, some covered in debris. As such, no one knows what lies there. The calculations, however, indicate that just like the top of the sphere extends above the ground, its bottom might, in fact, dip into the nothingness below your soul's world.
Tribes of universally hostile primitives seem to inhabit the corridors and great halls of this labyrinth. They war endlessly for resources, locations of thermal vents and power lines, utilizing what great mechanism-organs the labyrinth has active with great skill. In the deeper levels, indirect evidence of more sophisticated and advanced societies has been observed.
No one tries to leave, and, in fact, what few prisoners were ever taken and successfully interrogated by the exploration expeditions, indicate that escaping the sphere is considered to be the greatest of sins. The labyrinth inhabitants believe themselves to be both its prisoners and wardens, and oppose every intrusion from the outside. The common belief among the tribes, bearing striking similarities to the Covenant of the Empress-to-Be is that one day a Head Warden will come, to take control over the prison and their lives. Unlike the more civilized citizens of the Five Courts, that future moment is not seen as something jubilant – it is a time of reckoning. They will prove their worth to their future ruler, and make her prove her worth to them in the only way they recognize - by opposing her with everything they have, and making her pave the path to the core of their World with their bodies. Only when she proves her martial might and cunning will they bend the knee.
That the sphere is, indeed, a prison, is not a question. Ample evidence of this was found by the Five Cities explorators. Each of its rooms can serve as a holding cell, its walls lined with symbols old and forgotten, meant to prevent teleportation, transformation, or any other means of escape, including death itself. The passages are lined with titanic vault-like doors barring passage. Each section could quickly be isolated from each other, and then flooded with gas, water, or, indeed, even fire. Brass eyes embedded into ceilings follow the movements of travelers. Soul-locked terminals hold access to the facility's slumbering systems are prevalent. Everything is waiting for its mistress to come and prove herself. The security increases as one progresses deeper and deeper into the sphere, with containment vessel designed to hold incorporeal, elemental and stranger still beings of great power described by survivors of the farthest reaching expeditions. Grand chambers obviously formed to serve to carry out great and terrible rituals in various states of disrepair exist where thaumaturgical mapping suggests the intersections of dragon veins should be.
If the bottom of the titanic twin dragon statue is a thing of brass and darkness, then the top is a beauty of crystal and light. In dragons' jaws, a giant crystalline palace complex rests, its architecture something that doesn't belong to today – only to tomorrow and perhaps to ages long since past. It is a glimmering symbol of hope and might. It is the seat of your governance, and the natural meeting place of the governing parties of your subjects. It is also a church, and a site of holy pilgrimage for them. The only possible glimpse of something that doesn't exist in this realm. Illuminating your throne, and observable only in your throne room is the Sun. Sometimes yellow, and sometimes green. The hidden geometries and enchantments of the crystals lining the walls of your castle are aligned in such a way that when you, and no one else sit upon the throne, the light shining on you, or emitted by you, will be spread, amplified and emitted by the castle itself, creating a rising sun for your realm.
In times past, the palace complex could only be reached by greatest and most devoted climbing the dragon's spine. Nowadays, the ingenuity of your subjects allows for a quick air transport or translocation from the base fortress-station at the bottom of the statue, which serves as the gates to both your palace and the underground labyrinth.
"Life here will begin out there". I didn't write these words, on the velum pages made from my own skin, with ink made of burnt bones of ancient monsters, under the light of candles burning green. In fact, I, nor my parents nor my child and wife, exist at all, as the devils I call forth from the hells unlike this one, and monsters summoned from further still, gleefully tell me. We all are but a backstory to a play yet unwritten, existing as a possibility among an infinity of its peers. They offer me this knowledge freely, gladly, safe in the knowledge that this is not happening. They desire that I despair, break and blaspheme, that I utter oaths unbreakable even if they are, in fact, unspoken, sell myself and all to follow me to their masters for the surety of becoming, and in doing so transform myself into a hidden poison at the heart of my future mistress.
They are fools, who see little, and understand less. They fail to grasp that even as they are safe to speak, so I am safe to question, fearing not to offend the realms they come from by conduct unbecoming, daring to betray ignorance and weakness without terror of discovery. They do not see this time-not as the gift it is, the opportunity to prepare, not one blind chance of history, but the infinity of different past probabilities coming together to craft the perfect future.
From the secret diaries of the Mirror of the Changing Moon, the founder of the Covenant of Empress-to-Be, dated ten thousand and one lunar cycle Before Her Arrival.
The Covenant of the Empress-to-Be is a monotheistic state religion of the five cities world. At its core lie the "Prophecies of Arrival" which state that at some point in the future, a divine figure, "Empress-to-Be" will arrive, and grant her followers life.
This is perhaps the most counter-intuitive precept of the church. According to its mystics, the world of five cities does not truly exist prior to their goddess' arrival, and merely represents one of the infinite possible backstories for the real world to come, ignited by her divine spark. Following from that revelation, lie the doctrine that preaches that their followers and the society as a whole has to live their lives in a way that would make their history be the one chosen by the divine empress in their subjective future. The followers of the Covenant are to better themselves continuously, to improve their utilitarian value, live their lives interestingly, to increase their entertainment value, and to undergo the right of Ending if they "write the story of their life into a corner with no way out".
The different specializations of the five cities are in many ways, reflections of their religious doctrine, where the City of Swords chapels preach that the Empress will need loyal soldiers, while the City of Fountains seeks to please Empress's senses.
Historical research indicates that the concept of paradoxical "existence before beginning" is likely a legacy of the older Cult of Twin Dragons, which existed before the Covenant's rise to power. Other researchers trace the idea of a messianic figure prophesized to come rule the world in the distant future to beliefs of the Core Prison tribes, some of which might have been ancestors of the modern civilization.
The Covenant heavily incorporates scientific research and method into their doctrine, such as using the theory of evolution to prove that humanoid population couldn't have arisen in this realm, and was willed into being by divine power. Historical research into the world's seemingly long and sometimes buried past is seen as a way to enrich the "world building" and keep the Empress interested.
"Unbiased review of the state religion", part of the briefing documents prepared for her Divine Majesty, twenty lunar cycles before her Arrival.
At the level of "committed" loyalty, religion is going to play an important role in the world's life. In fact, it is likely that theocracy would be the order of the day. When combined with "advanced technology" and "advanced society" it is also likely that wide use of magic and scientific research would be present. "human population" choice explicitly mentions history stretching to before creation of the exalt's kingdom. In Dresdenverse, summoning and NeverNever are all very much a part of magic. And there's a giant Oramus statue in the center of the world.
All these facts need to be reconciled. Thus, the Covenant of Empress-to-Be. Basically, it's a state religion that is aware of how history only really begins once Molly arrives.
Lunar cycle = one month. There are no seasons I could think of easily, so, full lunar cycles would be the measure of time.
Wan Kuei are the unruly dead who, through guile, cunning, and, above all, sheer perseverance, escaped on the thousands hells their soul found itself in after death. For the untold billions suffering in the underworlds of Yama Kings, it is no more than a few thousands that achieve this feat. Yet every soul struggles, and every hell can be escaped from. Indeed, if a new hell was to germinate from the chaotic seas of wyld possibility, or to be constructed by even the most godlike of powers, it too, would be a prison imperfect, the very laws of nature preventing formation of a realm truly without hope for escape. Why that is so, is a question unanswered. Some wise mystics believe that it is hope itself that lies as the cornerstone of these realms, and that the perfect hell would paradoxically have no power, and would collapse before it even came to be. Other students of ancient and forbidden lore posit that all hells are but echoes of some Primordial hell, sharing its base fundamental nature common to them all. It is the raw will of its unknown prisoners that prevents modern hells from being inescapable, they theorize. Select few wonder if those first prisoners have themselves ever escaped, or if they still struggle, projecting their effort through all of the cosmos.
The realm of your heart is, beyond everything else, a hell, to which souls of mortals are confined. It is thus its nature to be escapable, and of those souls in your kingdom to attempt escape. Yours, however, is not the world of one of foolish and greedy Yama Kings, and there are paths made intentionally available to each of your kingdom's denizens. They number four in total.
The first, and, sadly, by far the most traveled to its destination, is the path of surrender, leading to the end of struggle and nothing more. When a citizen tires of existence, they travel to the amethyst clad city in the west, and submit themselves to the priests living there with but a single request – to end it all. Should counseling, therapy, prolonged rest and meditation on the beauty of living not help, they are then subject to a solemn ritual. In a quite chapels, silent priests would write strange, arcane symbols on their bodies, give them ice wine fermented from the fruits only growing in the darkest outermost edges of your realm to lull them to sleep, and then, shedding tears of regret, murder them with ritualistic daggers. Unlike any other death under the light of the moon and lightning, this one does not permit returns. The soul slips quietly into the Maw of Oblivion.
The second route is for those burning with the lust for battle, enticed by religious fervor and the promises of glory. To follow it, one must devote themselves to training. Join one of the monastery-forges of the Red City, practice diligently one's katas and recite fervently one's prayers to the Empress-to-Be. Rise through the ranks of monks and win a right to join the honor guard of Her crystal palace – that is the ticket to salvation through servitude. For it is amongst those in her guard that the Empress is prophesized to select the men-at-arms who will do battle in her name outside this realm once the time comes. And if one is lucky enough, skilled enough, distinguished enough, survives enough of these battles, then they can pray to the Empress for a permanent release, to take them into the mortal world and release them from her service.
The third road is the shortest one, and, perhaps, the hardest. If one wishes to escape the kingdom of five cities, one needs but to take a train to the City of Journeys, and to declare it so. No obstacles will be laid before them, and they will be swiftly taken outside the city. From there on, everything will be in their own hands. They will just have to walk to the outer edges of the world, to climb the razor-edged forests, to pass through the iron hurricane and to traverse into the uncertain Ways of the unreality. It is not an easy task. To attempt it is common, for it is human nature to seek escape from the place of confinement. It is a sign of strength to crack one's cell open, rather than bow one's head and succumb to punishment. Many try, and most fail, nurturing the outer fields with their lifeblood, only to draw breath once more in one of the cities. Those few who would succeed are declared Anathema, their names added to the rolls of the enemies of state. For to succeed is to cast away the bonds of family, companionship and faith that define the nations of this world. It is to become a hungry dead, and to forevermore prey on the inhabitants of the worlds.
The fourth and final way branches off from the ones already described. It is not the way of many, rather it is the path of select few, for whom other roads are not suited. If, after throwing oneself against the outer storms time and time again, one learns humility, and yet doesn't desire the ending granted in the silent chapels of the Amethyst City; if they do not have the trust and faith in their heart to dedicate themselves to the Empress-to-Be in the promise of salvation… Then, on a new escape attempt, they can walk in a different direction. Not to storm in the direction of the rim, but to move in the direction of the Red City, evading beasts and traversing forests in the way. Once they reach the next city, their pilgrimage, and the trials accompanying it, truly begin.
In the city of saffron and forges, they are faced with two tasks. First, to master their body, and to prove their strength. To do so, they have to defeat one of the grandmasters of the martial art sects of the city in unarmed combat, demonstrating that they have mastered the first weapon everyone has – their own body. Then, as the second part of their trial, they are to forge and master a weapon, apprenticing. Their creation has to be acknowledged as a masterwork by the Ring of Smiths that control the weapon manufacturing of the realm, and their skill in wielding it by a grandmaster of the art. Only when these two tasks are done, their trial is considered complete, and the doors of City of Rubies open for them, so they can, once again journey the circle of life on the path to the city of Secrets.
Once they reach the Verdant City, their trial of History begins. Its two mirrored parts are to learn the history of the past, and to create the history of the future. In order to accomplish the first task, the applicant must unearth a piece of ancient knowledge, buried somewhere in the realm, and gift it to their peers. In order to finish, they must master and further a craft, a school of knowledge, create new knowledge that would serve as a foundation to those who will come next – on Earth that would be an equivalent of earning a doctorate.
The test of the City of Pleasures is by far the longest. Many of those few who try it consider it the cruelest. The first part is simple. It is, just like in all the previous trials, a matter of obtaining, and then proving, one's skill – this time by creating a piece of art good enough to become known as a masterpiece, to prove that one understands the society of the Five Cities enough that their creations resonate with everyone, not just a select few. It is the second part that breaks most who attempt it. For to succeed one must love, raise, and finally leave behind a child. Whether it be by adoption, or through means more natural, a child must reach adulthood and succeed on their own merits under the tutelage of the one walking this path. And when that child sincerely says that everything they have is thanks to the pilgrim, it is then that the pilgrim must leave them behind, to walk to the next city, without looking back. Thus their Sacrifice is complete.
The Silent City's trial is, in comparison a mercy. It is also, a final warning. First, the walker must participate in all the aspects of the ritual of Ending. They must try and talk someone out of finishing themselves, and when they fail, they must learn what the Final death is like, and grant it with their own hands, for if they are incapable of doing so, then no hope exists for them in the cruel world of outside. And when they understand death, they must nurture the fear of it inside themselves, for only the final death exists in the outside, not the brief embrace of renewal they are accustomed to. And it is out of that fear they must take a sacred vow not to seek their end, which forever denies them the mercies of the Amethist City. Once the vows are complete, they start on the final leg of their Journey.
And when they end it, they stand before the Golden Gate of the First City. They carve their name into it with their weapon – and there's plenty of room left still on it. And after the celebration to remember, they leave, more complete then when they started, and perhaps prepared to what lies next.
To date, no one has completed this road.
…
Or you could actually try and escape this hell of a reality, instead of meekly following the paths prepared for you. How? When they let you out to throw yourselves against the maelstrom, you could turn around and sneak your way to the foundation of Her Majesty's shining castle in the sky. Study every last draconic scale, as you climb upwards, clinging to them. Read and put to memory the blasphemous writings written on the scales of the prismatic dragon that can be seen only in their reflections in the polished ebon scales of its brother, under the light of the changing moon. Spend hundreds, thousands lifetimes learning to read and comprehend the message in one go, as with your every fall, the message changes. Do not speak of it to anyone, for should they learn of your attempts, you will never be able to try again. Discern the painful truths from hurtful lies entwined in this secret writ. Follow that knowledge to unlock the doors nonexistent, and you shall be free.
The whispers in shadows recorded by the acolyte of Her Divine Promise battle order shortly before she abandoned the order to become an inner ring explorer
The rules on kingdom making state that the has to exist a path to escape the hell you make. Exaltations deal with perfect effects. Why couldn't it make a perfect prison? I started to think why, and trying to fit this with a Watsonian explanation.
I came up with two explanations. One from the Dresdenverse side of the crossover, and the other is from Exalted perspective, which can also be used in an ExWoD game. The Dresdenverse explanation is that within existence Free Will is absolute, and exists in some way. A perfect prison with no escape denies the prisoners the choice to escape or, really, any choices. Thus, by the almighty power of the White God, such perfect prison is rejected from existing.
The Exalted answer is that the creation of the kingdom is the power of Infernal Exaltation. It is an act of an exalted growing from human to something like a primordial in their soul structure, and it is a mirror of primordial host making the Creation. However, and it is very important, an infernal exaltation was created by the yozi, not by primordials. We create not just a world, but a hell – the distant shadow of Malfean realm of the ages past. The exaltation carries the charms of its creators, parts of their self. It is, at the very core of itself, their hope for escape. And no yozi can truly abide the existence of a perfect, inescapable prison, for they are the ultimate prisoners, and the exaltation is the ultimate lock pick. To create a hell without hope would run directly counter to the very themes and purpose of infernals existing. And so, the infernal exalt's inner world has to be escapable.
Next, I decided to look into the ways of escape. The rules are clear – walk to the outer edge of the realm, and you are free (and, for the dead condemned to the hell, probably become a hungry dead variant). However, this is clearly not the only way to escape. The realm I made was inspired by the Maidens, and clearly features in-story references to old lore. So, I devised five paths:
1) To die. This is the path of Endings, and, since I used Endless Suffering in the build, requires a ritual. Because this is a world with advanced culture and society, to get to that ritual, one has to pass through extensive therapy and counselling.
2) To join Molly's entourage and get summoned/taken outside. This was discussed before, and clearly the players want to have some option to do so. "Summon a strike team from your inner world" being a possible charm. This path was made to explain how the strike team is selected. I mean, the population of the world is in the millions. Who gets called? Thus, the religious order of warriors, dedicated to the Empress-to-Be on the promise of getting to see the outer world. This is the path of War.
3) Walking outside. This is the path of Journeys. It's the one encoded into the canon text of the kingdom making charm. I simply added the flavoring and social repercussions of how leaving behind the society with "committed" loyalty to the infernal would not be taken well, but trying to do so would be treated as normal.
4) This is the one I had to work most for. This is the path of Serenity, and it is also heavily inspired, as readers might have noticed, by the initiation into sorcery trials. Since I made a door in the north-most city that leads to an easy exit, I had to justify why people wouldn't use it, and how it could be used. I also wanted a way to make heroes in this realm, if really needed. Not Molly's honor guard, but someone independent. Thus, this idea. It is basically a socially acceptable way to escape into the outer world. By following the steps of the path, the applicant prepares themselves (learning to fight, getting education mundane and occult, becoming intimate with the concept of death), and society (creating new knowledge, art, and a member of society) for their disappearance.
The followers of the third path diminish the world by leaving it, while the followers of the fourth path enrich it through their journey and becoming heroes of the people.
5) The final path, presented as an in-story scribbling, is the path of Secrets, and is left vague. It is even harder to follow than the fourth path. It is there, because this is hell. There's a giant twin statue of Oramus and Ebon Dragon in the middle of it. There has to be blasphemous knowledge hidden somewhere and a way to sin against the world.
It is the law of universe that everything that exists, be it a mountain or man,, will one day be ground into dust by the unrelenting passage of time. It is no less a law that in the passage of the ages, no life is ever lost, and everyone broken will be restored. This is the fundamental truth we call "The turning of the Wheel".
Among scholars, one of the definitions of life is "the form of existence that is subject to restoration by the world". To graduate from a university with a specialization in the Wheel study, one needs to take biological, thaumaturgical and physics studies. So far, the following laws governing the Wheel's rotation have been discovered:
Every living thing more complex than a single celled bacteria will be restored by the world if their physical substrate is destroyed. They will not experience passage of time between destruction and restoration.
Upon restoration, the cause of the destruction will be eliminated. If someone succumbed to a disease, they will not be sick. If an organism succumbed to age, it will be restored to its prime. Lethal wounds will be repaired, missing organs restored.
The time it takes to restore a living organism depends on the species, age, manner of substrate destruction and conditions of the realm. It does not depend on how long it has been since their last return.
Restored organism will always be restored in an area where they can survive unaided with no active thaumaturgic effort on their part. They will be more likely to be restored in places which are connected to them – places they and their kin live in, places that have the largest emotional significance to them, etc.
Those that are destroyed within Great Prison will be restored in one of the cells within Great Prison.
Every living being has a way in which they can be permanently destroyed. Sapient beings can only be permanently destroyed through the rituals of the City of Endings. As an empirical law, the more complex an organism is, the more narrow and complex the circumstances at which they face permanent destruction are
Based on the current understanding of the mechanisms that govern rebirth, a number of technologies have been developed. Unlike past ages, it is quite possible to ensure that one will almost always return back if not in their homes, then at least within their city district. Radical medical treatments concentrate on isolating and accentuating the treated conditions to force the patient into their next incarnation. Recent advances in spatial translocation have been rumored to be related to the studies of how physical substrates are inserted into the world upon restoration.
The laws of the Wheel result in a connection between fertility rates and the available living space. Careful observations demonstrate that, as the ecological niche of a given species decreases, the fertility rates drop accordingly. Current prevailing theory posits that this is related to fourth law of the Wheel. It states that birth is considered by the universal laws as no different from restoration. Since it is only possible to be restored in conditions suitable for life, and the restoration occurs in places connected to the restored, if no resources are available, than the cosmic forces would delay the birth. This is a probabilistic law, and cases of local overpopulation are well documented. The extreme consequence of this theory posited by some philosophers is that all beings to ever live in the future exist already in potential, and are only waiting to be brought into the world when conditions for their lives would be met.
While it is treated as a superstition, and no direct proof has ever been found, it is a common practice for those desiring to conceive to participate in housing construction and farm development projects. "Build a house, and plant a tree to father a son" is the saying.
This is how I envision Endless Suffering Trait working. It reconstructs those that die, while repairing the damage that led to their deaths. So, for example, death from old age will restore one to their youth, death from blunt trauma will remove the trauma, etc. This creates a number of issues and consequences. In hell, life can be very, very varied, organic, corporeal and not. Thus, life gets defined as "that, which is subject to Endless Suffering". When one of the first AI asked its creator whether it had a soul, the answer was to kill the AI; and not a malicious answer too - the return of the AI was all the answer needed.
I needed a way for the realm not to collapse into a cancerous mess of endlessly increasing organic remains. To handle this, I waived the rules for non-sapient beings, saying "rules change depending on how close to sapience you are". A post-sapient being would also have different rules. This tied greatly into "fertility is tied to how much resources are available" idea introduced in Godsworn. I only needed to introduce rules 3 and 4 to tie both effects into one "physical law". Essentially, births are treated the same as reincarnation by mechanics. This also leads to philosophical hooks of "all potential unborn children already exist in potentia, and are only waiting to be born" theories, pre-destination, etc. It also creates interesting cultural traditions, like couples who want to conceive joining construction projects to build houses.
It is important to know that, in my mind, you don't come back from death in "perfect health". You come back as you were minus the issues that led to your death. So you can't, for example, treat obesity by jumping from a high building. To treat obesity via death, you would need to eat so much you'll get polyorganic failure. In order to treat drug addiction, you'll need to OD. Needless to say this leads to certain interesting medical techniques.
As with any fundamental law, by studying it, certain technologies can be developed. In this case, arcane links between a person and locations can be explored, including for the purposes of teleportation.
The realms is 2.5 times smaller than Earth in surface area (Vast size: -3 kingdom creation points), and is a perfect circle with the radius of 8128 km (the surface area of Earth is 509600000.0 square kilometers, the surface of our kingdom is ~ 207541262 square kilometers). The radius is a "perfect number", that is a number that is equal to the sum of its positive divisors, excluding the number itself.
There is a moon seen circling around the realm. It is a super-giant magnet.
Most of the realm is unsurvivable, with only a narrow goldilocks zone, and has a hard terrain (Difficult terrain: 0 points, Pockets of Safety: +2 points). The surface temperature outside the survivable area (indicated white in the map) is ~ -200 C, meaning that nitrogen and oxygen are liquid, and argon, mercury and most other things are solid. The atmosphere in those areas is composed primarily of hydrogen, with heavy presence of deuterium and tritium heavy hydrogen isotopes (I'll explain later). The ground is composed of large ice-like crystals, razor edged and perilous to traverse. They are inspired by tiberium from Command and Conquer. They grow, devour material from the ground and reconstruct it into parts of themselves. Essentially, they are very alien, very dangerous, plant life forms (deadly flora +1 point). Some very alien creatures exist in the rivers of liquid oxygen. Those creatures are mindless and hostile (deadly beasts +1 point). They use thermal energy of nuclear decay for sustenance, and feed on uranium dust that is abundant in the rivers. For a reference picture see a tiberium landscape, but far colder.
The landscape is very heavy with metals and heavy elements. Because of how cold it is, several metals, specifically bronze alloys, are superconducting, creating strong magnetic fields and leading to stuff like levitating rocks existing.
Harsh winds ~ 500 km/h circle the outer edges of the world. Essentially, it's a huge mega-tornado encircling the whole realm. The direction of air movement is indicated on the map (blue curved arrow). The air is heavy with electrically charged iron and nickel dust. This, together with the moon's rotation, essentially creates a super-giant induction motor that generates a magnetic field that plays merry havoc with electronics and navigation. Visibility is also very low. The dust is small enough and sharp enough to cut anything unprotected by serious armor down to bones. The alien nature of the landscape makes it hard to navigate (Dangerously Alien trait: 0 points).
Similar winds, but rotating in an opposite direction, are blowing from the center of the realm out. Where the cyclone and anticyclone meat, they collide, generating friction, electrical discharges and heat. The magnetic fields generated by the two winds also negate each other in this area. Because of this, magnetically confined hydrogen plasma is ignited in the upper parts of the atmosphere. Because of the heavy deuterium tritium presence, low intensity fusion reaction occurs, generating additional heat and some radiation.
All these factors combine to make a narrow band of the surface (indicated in white, 496 km wide) habitable in terms of magnetic fields, temperature, illumination. However, the terrain is still hard enough, and there's metallic dust. Because of this, the human-like civilization is confined to the five great megacities.
The cities are separated by dense forests (Earthen flora) of blue and purple leaved plants (colors based on hypothetical exoplant plants, if I got the wavelengths right), that constantly shift in the wind and by themselves, in order to shrug off metal particles accumulating on them. Said particles accumulate on the ground beneath them, and serve as part of their makeup. They also try and catch lightning from the skies for energy, which is accumulated in underground capacitor banks. Because of the excess of metal, animals (Earthen fauna) almost universally have metal shells and are rather heavy.
The city-states are located in five corners of a giant pentagram. They are technologically advanced, with complex societies of human and non-human inhabitants (Advanced Social Structures: 0 points, Advanced technology: -2 points, Human Populace: 0 points, Resident Devils: -1 point, Committed population: -2 points). Each city is located on top of a giant pole of metal, paved over with insulating material. In order to generate electricity one needs just to put a metal rod into the ground and attract lightning from the air. The poles generate magnetic fields that keep the metal dust away. The poles are high enough that the air pressure in the cities is significantly lower than air pressure in the forests. In the cities it's approximately what it is at sea level on Earth, while in the forests it's more than 2 times higher, with an oxygen rich atmosphere more similar to what it was in prehistoric times on Earth. It's possible to survive in the forests, but one needs acclimatization. The cities are connected to each other and the center of the realm by an advanced underground train transportation network. The train network takes advantage of a natural realm-wide cave network which has long since been upgraded and repurposed. Within the cities, public transportation is well developed (Accessible Terrain, 0 points).
The cities are inspired by the Maidens, as people might have noticed.
In the north (Indicated as yellow) is the "Mercury city" inspired by the Maiden of Journeys. It houses the industries needed to maintain transportation networks existing between the cities and in the cities and the "foraging" industry, which essentially runs Tiberian Sun harvesters – operations to venture out into the hellscape and gather valuable resources. It also houses a large golden gate, beyond which there's a direct route to the realm's border – a giant underground tunnel.
In the east there's "Mars city" (indicated in red), dedicated to war. Since the cities are (mostly) in peace with each other, and depend on each other, it wouldn't make sense to make a "war industry only" city. Because of this, police academies and prisons are also located there. There are a lot of martial monasteries working on developing magical martial arts. Weapon manufacturers (including for weapons needed in foraging industry) are also located there.
In the south-east there's "Jupiter city" (green on the map), a center of learning, both technological and arcane. Universities, laboratories, arcane centers, and also spy agencies are there.
In the south-west lies "Venus city" (blue on the map), which is an center of entertainment and arts. Theaters, art galleries, TV studios, brothels. Also kindergartens, because children should be happy. It is also a major center of food production.
Finally in the west there's "Saturn city" (purple on the map). It is a medical and psychological counselling center. It also primarily deals with dead souls sent to our realm, other than those we need imprisoned (those go to "Mars city"). Mortuary centers are also there. Because the population of the world is unaging or at least very slowly aging, it would also deal with "endings", ie a very thorough psychological renewal sessions for very old beings to make them make a new beginning in life. This is also the only place where final death can happen in this realm (endless suffering. -1 point, condition for resurrection "any death except one that happened in special rituals in Saturn City").
Population of each city is about a billion people. The food production is handled via vertical farms, and very efficient and nutritious alien fruits. There's not much meat, though.
The surface area of a city is ~193 thousand square kilometers. Let's assume that roughly 1/4rd of the city is residential districts. Let's assume that 1/30th of the land in the residential areas is covered by housing. This gives us ~1610 square kilometers of housing. Let's assume that on average, a resident of the courts, including children and incorporeal beings, has ~ 40 square meters to call their own. This means that the average number of floors in a residential building is 25. That's well within modern construction technology, much less of a futuristic metropolis. Obviously, depending on the district, the actual building height differs from 1 floor historic estates, to several hundred stories tall arcologies.
In the center of the realm, there's a giant column depicting two ascending eastern dragons. It is meant to be inspired by Ebon Dragon and Oramus. At the top of the column there's a giant crystalline complex. For image reference, see Crystal Tokyo. It is a political and religious center of the realm, and Molly's seat of power, complete with an (almost always) empty throne. It houses the united government of the people of the realm, even if each city also has self-governance. As a special feature, the throne, which is located at the geometric center of the realm, is illuminated by unseen sun. Anyone sitting in it, if they look up, would be able to see said sun, in an effect that is reverse to how one can see night sky from the bottom of a well (and yes, I know that it doesn't work in real life). The sun is sometimes yellow, and sometimes green. When you are sitting in the throne, the light shining upon them, or emitted by them is amplified by the palace and the whole thing lights up like a sun.
At the bottom of the statue complex is a giant sphere almost completely buried in ice, with only a small hill emerging, barely a hundred meters tall, with a giant crack running through it. The dragons can be seen as escaping it. The sphere is inspired by Malfeas – it's a giant magical prison complex of advanced, but slumbering, technology populated by devil tribes. It's composed of multiple concentric spheres of brass. It has a huge number of rooms, each of which can be used as a prison cell, with enchantments preventing teleportation, shapeshifting or other means of escape. Even if someone dies there, they reincarnate back in their cell. Only a very small part of the complex has been investigated. To activate all of it, and possibly take full command, one would need to reach the center of the sphere, braving many an obstacle. The sphere is populated with hostile tribes (Resistance Movement +1 point – I am using Resistance movement as "subset of the population that is actively hostile to us if encountered"; not quite Hostile trait, since it's only a subset of population). The tribe development level ranges from primitive (Archaic technology, 0 points) in the outer layers of the sphere, to advanced, using more intact core systems, near the center. If the sphere is brought under control and restored to full functionality (probably with Prince of Ruin Attitude charm being required), it'll provide Gaols and Grand Grimoire perks.
Where the top of the sphere pokes out of ice, just a tiny bit, the bottom (possibly, it's left ambiguous) dips below the bottom of your realm and into oblivion.
I have left Lord of the Land without fluff description, but one can say that the land is waiting for its misress to come.
1) Arctis Tor – that was the place that redefined Molly's life, like it or not
2) Sailor Moon – both as a mockery of Arctis Tor, and because Molly likely watched it as a kid
3) Dreams of the First Age. Just enough very small (IC) hints are references, based on forgotten lore suppressed deep in our exaltation, on the dreams that allow us to learn Ancient Sorcery that, with a lot of time and effort, we could uncover more.
4) Five cities – inspired and stylized by Five Maidens of Exalted. War, Secrets, Serenity, Endings, Journeys.
5) The Gaol Sphere – the buried sphere under the ice. Inspired by the greatest prison to ever be – Malfeas himself. It held Yozis, the architects of reality. It held our exaltation at one point.
6) Twin Dragon statues – Ebon Dragon and Oramus, two of the Yozi. The architect of the reclamation, the mind behind infernals, and the being that defines paradox.
7) Our shining crystalline palace is meant to symbolize our exaltation itself. Something for which Yozis grasped to get them to freedom and salvation. A shining symbol of hope. A place of rulership
Black areas - unsurvivable areas
White area - survivable "goldilocks" area
blue arrow - wind directions
Blue lines - transportation network
Colored circles - cities
3D model of the main design features:
Colors were chosen from the fluff description.
