A young girl finds the opportunity to wrest control of her fate from a world that would dictate a mundane future. But Fate is not fickle. There is a cost to venturing from the well worn path.
Can she survive a journey from naive youth to adult? And what compromises must be made, principles left behind along the way.
Lilly Silas is an illiterate peasant girl who has spent her whole life in the isolated community of Harmuph. When circumstances conspire to suddenly thrust her into a life of intrigue and spiraling dangers, she will have to fight with all she has, no certain victory in sight.
While Lilly worries over the safety of her family and if she has what it takes to hold onto what's dear, events are rapidly escalating beyond confinement elsewhere in the world.
Humanity needs a Hero, but when the hour of need comes, will Lilly be ready? Will she even want to help?
Hello reader. Your goal is to help a young 12 year old girl, Lilly, survive to the age of 18. The world she lives in is vast and mysterious, almost entirely unknown to her outside her small village. We find Lilly at a critical juncture in her life where she must make a choice that will send shockwaves through all possible futures that lie ahead of her. Still, sometime between now and her 16th birthday, the world itself will go through a tremendous change. Depending on how the dice fall, that could be far off or very soon indeed. Your secondary goal is to resolve the issue that will make surviving to 18 difficult in the first place, I fully expect you to fail this. If you can somehow do the impossible and give Lilly a fulfilling life along the way, props to you.
1.1: Beginnings
The forest is your favourite place.
In the day it is warm in the clearings and cool under the canopies. If you could you would wander for days just watching and feeling everything and nothing in particular. There is life here everywhere around you that you've always felt somewhat connected to. Trees do not have tasks they must perform. Bushes do not have roles they are expected to fulfill. They simply grow up toward the sun that gives them warmth and down toward the water that feeds their roots. A Tree spends its whole life moving freely toward its desires.
It is certainly more free than you.
The moon is full tonight making it possible to navigate even through the thicker parts of the forest now that your eyes have adjusted. The darkness gives your surroundings a somewhat baleful atmosphere, but you like the sense of mild danger that causes your heart to pump harder. It is perhaps the closest to an adventure you will ever come, so you savour it tonight.
Tonight you will choose your Ethos; the destiny that you will cleave your future too. Your family wished to conduct the ceremony in father's workshop, around his tools and symbols of his trade. A pity that you hate working on dead timber. The fact that you have the beginnings prodigious skill at the art of woodwork makes it worse, for making something beautiful out of what was already beautiful before it was cut down seems an ironic mockery to you. You would not dishonour your father or family by sharing such thoughts. You do not want to be seen as a childish silly girl who is overly sentimental about trees. What's worse is that your father might convince you he is right if you actually told him, you don't want to entertain the possibility that you are wrong about something so close to your heart.
You have been a good daughter for so long and you take no small pride in the fact that you have been able to swallow your own ambitions of a bolder life and play the part of the dutiful firstborn all these years. But tonight, you could not stomach the idea of the most important decision of your life being made in the presence of symbols that represent bondage and a chained future to you. You wanted to spend it here, feeling the dew of leaves and the cool biting night wind that makes you shiver through you like clothes. Here you are constricted by nothing, free to move on all sides.
Everyone chooses an Ethos. The conduit through which the magic of the world and life shall have its say upon you. You choose once, only once, and that is that. Sure, an Ethos can grow, can change. But only by small degrees and in subtle directions.
Still, if being here offers you an Ethos that would go against your families wishes, will you accept it? You feel guilty thinking of your brothers who even now must be being rallied to begin the search. They'll think you a runaway by this hour, it was not a short walk here from the village. Perhaps it is best you take one of the Lesser Ethos that almost always come as an option, something that will bind your future to village. A simple and contented life, boring, but secure.
You are sitting now in a clearing, it looks very different to your memories from the daytime. You've never come anywhere near this deep during the night. Everything in quiet and still, wrapped slightly in pale dim light. It is honestly quite foolish of you to come here alone in the night, but you've had bigger things on your mind than any hypothetical danger.
You honestly don't know what you'll do. You hope there is only one choice, so you need not carry any guilt or regret for opportunities lost.
The sensation has begun building, you know on a instinctual level the time has come. As an act of final betrayal to your families wishes but loyalty to your own desires, you cast your thoughts to the life you dream of. A mighty warrior Queen from the stories, powerful and beautiful in equal measure. Loved and respected by men. Free to set her own course through life while still bringing honour to those who raised you. You hope these thoughts bend the Ethos that come to you in that direction.
You are not a fool. You do understand only those with powerful legacies and substantial power have any real chance at unlocking some legendary Ethos, but a girl can dream. Even if it is a false hope, it is a pleasant one.
It will be any momen-[crunch]
Blood pours from your mouth, ears and eyes. Pain worse than any you have ever felt or even thought to consider wracks your body as bones break and reform to then simply break again. Fingers bend backwards in the wrong direction. You float in the air before slamming back into the ground. Your eyes pop and regrow a number of times. You do not scream, for your lungs are already empty of air and perforated with holes. Something reaches into you from a place that is nowhere, gorges out a part of you that you didn't know was there and replaces it with something similar but different in a way you have no words to describe.
The pain is gone as quick as it came, you lay surrounded by your own gore, unharmed. Breathing hard, unable to form anything more than ragged hacking coughs to clear the last of the blood leftover in your lungs. Whatever just happened was not supposed to occur. What was supposed to happen is actually finishing as you speak, the buildup almost entirely unnoticed in comparison.
But you know something innate about yourself already. Something Impossible. Unlike anything you have ever heard in any story. This will not be the only Ethos you ever choose. You shall be able to hold more than one.
It is not possible. But it is the truth. Before you have any more time to process this complete upending of what you considered an immutable law of reality, it is time to choose not your only but your first Ethos.
- - - - - - - -
Namesake (Lesser):
On the day you were born, your mother declared your name to be Lilly for reasons neither of your parents have chosen to share with you in the years since. It was a bit of scandal, a woman insisting on the right to name her child, but your father was a gracious man and allowed it. Besides, your mother never pushed her luck with the naming of the brothers that followed you. To pursue one's own name as an Ethos grants incredible freedom, but often little actual direction or aid. There is perhaps some promise to choosing this given the mysterious origins of your own name, but it is more likely something quite boring you think.
Service to Man (Lesser):
A choice available to any young woman who has not betrayed the expectations of her culture. As an unmarried virgin of good standing within your community, the path of the maiden is available to you as it is to all other such female youths. You honestly can't think of anything worse than to live and die a housewife, living vicariously through the achievements of your children. Still, such a choice would be the perfect option to deliberately cause others to ignore you and look no deeper. Service to Man is the choice women with no better option take, allowing others to assume it was the best you could attain could do wonders for the goal of being left alone. Unless of course your father decides to marry you off immediately, that could cause all kinds of problems.
Nihilist Roots (Lesser):
On your more melancholy days, simply giving up on worrying about the challenges of life has seemed quite appealing. To simply become as air, uncaring and aloof to the concerns of life. It is an answer to your life in a manner of speaking, though you wonder if you could ever actually be happy simply accepting contentment in apathy and meaninglessness.
Dream within the Forest (Common):
You have spent many an hour daydreaming within the idealic clearings and shadowy underbrush surrounding your family home. The thought of this place fills you with warmth and calm, an inner strength and peace rising, flowing inward from your surroundings. You have always felt a special connection to this place, perhaps that can become more than an abstract truth.
Brave Blood (Common):
You have always dreamed of being a noble fighter, wading into lines of horrible unspeakable terrors and being utterly unmoved. A knight of legend. It is only a wish of the heart though, you lack any experience or ancestry in such a thing, leaving you with a tenuous connection at best to such an Ethos. In fact, as a girl of no repute it is a mystery why this is even a common level choice; Perhaps your deep yearning for adventure was enough to raise it from a Lesser Ethos.
Deviant Wanderer (Common):
You have played the part of the good daughter whilst guarding the true feelings of your heart and desires for the future carefully. Though it was never your deliberate intention, you are in fact a well practiced and expert liar. Capable of convincing even yourself that every lie is a necessity and burying any guilt that might expose you. To embrace a life of deception in many forms big and small would be a tremendous departure both from what direction you expected your life to take and from what you consider an honourable path. It would however give you immediate and potent tools to become a free roaming woman beholden to no-one. This is an extreme option, could you even really return home with such an Ethos? Could you break your parents heart by having them behold a daughter holding such an ignoble future?
Duty of Wood (Rare):
Your father is a carpenter. His parents also plied the trade. The line stretches back an unknown number of generations. This is the path you would be expected to take. Your relationship with your ancestral family trade is a cold and distant one, you possess little natural affinity on an emotional level. You are actually quite surprised the choice is even an option, perhaps your deep sense of familial duty and raw technical skill has allowed you to just barely pass the necessary muster. To counter-balance your hesitance, the legacy of family is a powerful source of Ethos itself. You are perhaps one of a handful of children within the village capable of gaining a Rare Ethos through their families' trade. While it would give you little personal satisfaction, it would likely be a comparatively potent and prosperous path to follow. You also would feel far less shame for running off alone on your return home in the morn.
Foṟ̴͍̇m Fr̵̠̂̓ạ̷̾cture (̶̩̲͒͂A̷̡͆pō̵͕t̵̨̃heoti̶̦͛c):
Whatever has granted you your unique nature to choose additional Ethos in time has also linked you to something otherworldly. It calls and stirs at the edges of your mind. It is magnitude personified, limitless in scope, inhuman in nature. To do anything other than resist any further incursion would likely turn you into something perhaps not even recognizable to friends, family or even yourself. Even considering the option seems to minutely erode part of your self-identity. Still, such power, if only you give it just a little more…
Time to Choose an Ethos:
This will have a huge impact on what Lilly does immediately afterward. You haven't had the time to shape her personality yet, but the Ethos you choose will immediately provide or sever opportunities and courses of action she will consider and take. She won't take any irreversible decision before your next vote, but she will definitely be pushed in certain directions. Ethos
[ ] Nakesake
[ ] Service to Man
[ ] Nihilist Roots
[ ] Dream within the Forest
[ ] Brave Blood
[ ] Deviant Wanderer [ ] Duty of Wood
[ ] Form Fracture
There were a lot of rolls for the quest setup, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that a few unlikely things happened by sheer weight of number of chances.
- Sneaking away rather than doing the ceremony with your family was a 50/50 flip but I'm happy you went with the choice that improved your following rolls of Ethos that grant more personal autonomy instead of collaborative synergy (by choosing your more individual motivation over your sense of familial pressure). It did significantly lower the probability of an Ethos unlock chance which you then didn't meet the roll for that was a direct continuation of your family trade (essentially Carpenter+).
- Almost all of the Ethos you rolled high enough to unlock this first time (and meet the requirements for) had a more economic or craftsman trend rather than combat, by sheer chance. Which is the opposite of what I was expecting, as going off by yourself lowered the chances of most of them and raised the chances of most of the ones you didn't get.
- Case in point, Duty of Wood was made less likely to pop by going off alone, but you still made the roll so it's an option.
- You narrowly made the roll for Lilly to be compatible enough to be fully healed from whatever just happened to you by rolling an 87 on a DC85.
- Even with the boost to personal autonomy, You still had a less than 10% chance of getting the Apotheotic tier 'Form Fracture' that hints at the eldritch forces behind some of the events that are going to occur as an option. So now Lilly (and you readers) is aware of the perhaps not quite benevolent benefactor behind things much sooner than I originally planned. Oh well
Half the challenge of this quest is Lilly's ignorance. She is an illiterate lower-class girl in a fantasy historical setting that does not necessarily favour women who cannot enforce respect through strength of arms or association. There are numerous malignant threats growing that she is utterly unaware of. There are dangers to the practice of magic and the process of pursuing ones Ethos of which she has no knowledge.
Much like Lilly, you the reader don't actually know how important or trivial being able to choose more than one Ethos is. Or even what they are except in the broadest sense. You'll find out when she does.
Discover the lore that governs the course of this world. If you run away and try to hide, I guarantee you won't make it to 18. If you run straight toward danger rashly (and the dice are not in your favour), Lilly will die a lot sooner than 18. (Though I would post a sort of epilogue hinting at the potential futures that were not to be)
Can you give Lilly a happy life? Can you go even further and satisfy her desire for an important and memorable life? Can you even make it to 13? I guess we'll find out.
- - - - -
You will vote on Lilly's major decisions. She will make minor choices according to the major decisions that you have guided her into. Instil a caution in her that she currently lacks and that will be reflected in her minor actions. Embolden her already adventurous nature even further and she will gain a tendency to leap headlong into the unknown.
There are a lot of hard mechanics and systems running here that I will be keeping entirely behind the curtain. I'll be running not only what happens based on your decisions, but also developments elsewhere in the world. I don't actually know how hard or easy this quest will be (leaning toward the hard end) because there are numerous events that could pop off next month or in a decade and at varying levels of intensity. Almost every roll in my system is a d100 (or series of them each deciding certain dynamics such as intensity, time to occur, scope, etc). When I do share raw number bonus/malus information, this gives you an idea of the rough impact of said numbers.
Write-Ins are allowed as a default on all choices such that I won't ever bother mentioning it as one most of the time (If a Write-In is impossible or wildly OOC, I'll just go with the second most popular vote). In fact, I'll provide a minor bonus of up to 10% on particularly well written alternative choices (+10 on a d100), which for example would have been enough for a second Rare Ethos that was combat focused that you narrowly missed this time around to be available for unlock. (Although Write-Ins for Ethos doesn't really work mechanically so not the best of examples).
Other than in informational posts. Unless I explicitly state otherwise, any answers I give to any questions in this forum are subject to what Lilly believes and knows, and may be the misinformed assumptions of a girl that knows everything about the outside world from sources of varying reliability.
Misc Info:
Higher Tiers of Ethos are not necessarily more powerful. Some are stronger, some are weaker. They are more specific and unusual; which is sometimes a benefit and sometimes will make advancing in them very difficult. Lily is vaguely aware of this, there is a popular recently retired female hero who did some pretty epic feats with a Common Ethos.
12 Year Old Girls have a poor track record for retaining their sanity when exposed to the unmaking gibbering's of eternity *citation needed. Consider this if you actually vote for the 'Form Fracture' ethos. If at any point Lilly fully loses her mind, that is a Quest Failure Condition and will trigger an Epilogue.
Consider this info my gift to you to stop a horde of votes for Rare+ options on the assumption they are x10 better.
Lily doesn't actually remember the name of the kingdom she calls home. Harmuph is an agricultural village bordering on town with a population of a few thousand. It would have more trade, except that it is quite far from the economic base of the kingdom. As such it is more self-sufficient and has a wider variety of craftsman for the more mundane necessities of early industry.
Lilly's family lives outside the small built up centre of Harmuph, out on one of the numerous farmsteads that surround it sporadically. They are known as carpenters, but also have a small selection of cattle and crop they use mostly for self-subsistence but also occasionally sell the surplus of.
Lilly's family is in fact just within the lower-middle class of Harmuph, mostly due to constant demand for work by a respected carpenter people seek out all year round. The Ethos List Lilly unlocked is actually a much wider selection than is typical, and despite their name, Common Ethos themselves are not altogether that common. Most children would only gain access to one, perhaps two, in addition to a number of Lessers.
Harmuph is relatively near to a goblinoid kingdom to north-east through thicker forests, but there is a human buffer state that is more militarized in the way. Lilly is unsure of what is west or north other than more human kingdoms and she knows there is an ocean to south that apparently there is so little wind in that it is terrible for naval trade.
Lilly has three younger brothers aged 11, 9 and 8. Zachariah, Micah and Marus are a rather boisterous and inseparable trio and tend to exclude her from their cliché mostly by nature of lack of shared interest than any malice. Her mother Sarah and father Yolun are in their mid thirties. Her mother has the 'Service to Man' Ethos, her father has a Common Ethos geared toward long lasting wood constructs that are better than the materials used to construct them.
Overall, Lilly's impression of Harmuph is that is a safe, quiet and boring place she would rather not grow old and die in.
I like both namesake and Form Fracture, not sure I want to go full eldritch horror from the start or whether we can avoid going irreversibly insane. That said, it sure is tempting, especially with the whole finding out more about the underlying system part.
[X] Dream within the Forest (Common):
You have spent many an hour daydreaming within the idealic clearings and shadowy underbrush surrounding your family home. The thought of this place fills you with warmth and calm, an inner strength and peace rising, flowing inward from your surroundings. You have always felt a special connection to this place, perhaps that can become more than an abstract truth.
It's the only option that I find appealing beyond the "oh, shiny" appeal of Form Fracture.
Namesake doesn't grab me. Service to Man makes my skin crawl. When salted with the OOC knowledge that eldritch things are happening, Nihilist Roots and Deviant Wanderer make me think of Adorjan the Silent Wind, and the Ebon Dragon, respectively. Duty of Wood seems to slightly miss the point of running off into the forest in the first place.
Having a touch of decisionosis terribilis SVensis, I'm tempted by Form Fracture (we Nyarlathotep now!) but when I try to put it down as a vote, my mind's ear replays Arte Johnson and Peter Sellers putting on terrible German accents, and my mind's eye shows me sinister bunnycats.
So for me it's a toss-up between Brave Blood and Dream Within the Forest.
@grommile you've convinced me. It seems like the best way to stay true to character and not have an excessively dark quest right from the start. Boring maybe but I'm sure plenty of interesting things are coming and I'm on second thought really not all that keen on minmaxing this with straight horror.
Service to man should make everyone's skin crawl.
It's your mothers Ethos. Among other things, you know it somehow helps your father be a better carpenter and apparently if your mother administers medicinal herbs to your father it works better than if any other person used them on him. Her Ethos also grows slightly whenever your father's does. In essence she has tied her fate to his.
You don't know much else about it, despite the fact that about half the women in Harmuph have it as their chosen Ethos. Choosing Namesake has a pretty big stigma for women too, a lot of people will assume its because you couldn't 'qualify' for Service to Man.
It should make our skin crawl. Lilly only finds the idea mildly uncomfortable (mostly because of babies), because indoctrination is a thing. Though I'm sure you will all lead her to develop a far more nuanced viewpoint.
I like both namesake and Form Fracture, not sure I want to go full eldritch horror from the start or whether we can avoid going irreversibly insane. That said, it sure is tempting, especially with the whole finding out more about the underlying system part.
I figure well...if we're going eldritch horror in my experience it tends to go best in quests when picked from the start. People don't tend to like already established characters deviating over time. That way leads to much salt.
I figure well...if we're going eldritch horror in my experience it tends to go best in quests when picked from the start. People don't tend to like already established characters deviating over time. That way leads to much salt.
Lilly might not know the implications of Eldritch, but she is aware something 'big', 'other' and 'not necessarily friendly' is connected to Form Fracture. But that's about as far as any IC knowledge goes.
Many paths ahead of you, many futures too. Whatever force it is that binds person and Ethos together, it demands complete attention until a choice is made. Your mind drifts over a few of the unexpected options, who promise an unusual and unexpected life. But only one consistently shines above the others, as if forged and shaped to perfection by your own hand. Your favourite pastime embodied in an Ethos. [Dream Within the Forest], the simple wilds have always been a source of comfort to you and now they will provide so much more that you can barely contain your excitement to know what lays ahead.
The choice is made.
Then, you see with new eyes. Immediately you are aware that there is a natural energy that pervades all that lives. Bird, bug or bush matters not, all life shines. While your natural eyes see only the cool diminutive light of the moon where it is not obscured, surrounded by deep shadows that stretch through the underbrush, your new eyes are as if in the bright midday sun. Thick ribbons of golden light flow up and down trunks, into and out of roots and gently bleed off into and around the air itself.
All life is connected on a raw primal level, exchanging the beautiful rhythm of the fibers of life that dance as strands floating upon the air. You lie at the centre of this majestic maelstrom, pulsating deep golden hues like all else that is alive around you. It is breathtaking.
You cannot help but gawk as a child before a wonder she had not thought to even imagine. You are so small beside the great trees of this forest, their solid frames containing vast reservoirs of this natural energy. You lay your hand upon the bark of a nearby tree, from memory you know it has a slightly reddish tinge in the day. You have done this many times before, just to simply appreciate the sensation of the bark as it rubs against your skin. But this time you feel far more. You feel a connection to this tree that is concrete and tangible, a voice calling out to be heard.
Yes, a voice. Barely a whisper. Now that you realise it's there it becomes louder. Not just one voice, but an uncountable number. The voices are not words, not even thoughts, they are the forest itself. The whisper of the forest grows in a vast crescendo and you recoil back from the depth of formless memory and experience contained within. But the voices refuse to be unheard, you are completely surrounded by an ecosystem whose history reaches back century upon century. The threads of life connect everything in this forest and you cannot escape the enormity of that fact. For a time, whatever part of you is Lilly is lost within the greater collective. Bonelessly, you collapse into the Dream.
- - - - - - - - - -
You are a sprout breaking out of the earth, tasting the sunlight for the first time.
…
You are a leaf on the wind, you land and give of your life that what grows beneath you might have sustenance.
…
You are a deep root, pushing aside everything between you and the waters that will give the branches above you life.
…
You are great and old. The earth you first broke free from has all been pushed aside in the centuries since as your now substantial bulk claimed a wider and deeper demesne for itself. You are a canopy in and of yourself, sheltering some of your own kind and the animals of the forest. Some part of you is also the girl. Her form lends you strength to grow higher and greater, but it also calls to awake from the dream. In truth you have no power to keep her, for the only part of you that has any real thoughts is her to begin with. Your dream will continue without her, perhaps with just a touch more colour and vibrance from the short but complex experience with her small vessel that you saw glimpses of. Just as she drifted into you, slowly, she drifts back out.
- - - - - - - - - -
You awake underground. Thick roots grown and woven around your body from the nearby tree. Yet, as you begin to struggle, they move in a most 'not like a root' way, retracting and shuffling loose the earth around you such that with a gentle heave you push up revealing most of your body to the noonday sun. Clumps of dirt slough off you as you stand, still not quite fully awake from whatever it was that you just saw.
You are still in the clearing where you fell to the Dream, though you don't remember the tree closest to you being quite so large. It's added another fifth or so to its already impressive size. As you take in the sight you also realise that the travel clothes you came here in are tattered and indeed even partially eaten by worms. Mother is going to kill you.
Mother! It's noon! They'll have been searching for you all night. You are going to get such a hiding when you get home. This is more than being naughty, you have done something you can't even begin to think of any reason your parents would accept was okay.
After a moment as the panic subsides, you cannot help but laugh. It feels so strange to have had such a mystical experience and yet still be concerned about such normal things. You're not quite sure what being an adult means, but you had kind of assumed that you just wouldn't feel like a child after gaining an Ethos. In retrospect you are still entirely the same person. A totally normal person who just so happens to be able to see and feel the flow of natural energy between all living things and can have scary yet exciting dreams like you're some sort of smart tree. It makes you laugh again. It's going to be so weird seeing your friends and family again after you've had this deep and profound encounter in the woods. If they thought you queer before, this won't help that impression much at all.
Well, you have a punishment to receive and a strange new life to live, best get home quickly.
Unless…
Choice Time:
Rush Home: You are already in so much trouble. It really is in your best interest to avail yourself meekly before your parents as soon as possible. At a light jog it will take a couple hours to reach the homestead. If your youngest brother Marcus has been told your missing, he'll already have been bawling his eyes out.
In for a penny, in for a pound: Realistically, you can't actually get in any more trouble than you're already in. Take the scenic route home, have a great time enjoying the last chance you'll likely have to leave the house unchaperoned for the foreseeable future.
Mystical Concerns: You have only just begun to understand what has happened to you. You are staying here in this clearing and figuring out every last scrape of information you can. You're not actually sure how to figure anything out, but you'll be damned if you don't try! You will of course not risk passing out for another half-day, because you don't want to be bodily throttled when your mother finally gets her hands on you.
Chasing the Voices: Because touching the tree turned out so well already... But you can't help but be curious what this intimate connection with the living growths of the forest means for you. Is it just the trees? What about animals? You're pretty sure you won't get lost in the voices again…
Write In:
[ ] Rush Home
[ ] In for a penny, in for a pound
[ ] Mystical Concerns
[ ] Chasing the Voices
[ ] Write in
- Being overwhelmed by the voices was only supposed to disorientate you and be uncomfortable, but you failed the save so badly I had to come up with the worst possible reaction you could have besides a heart attack.
- You rolled pretty well on a lot of wisdom and perception themed tests, giving you benefits like understanding what the golden threads are and remembering the dream after you woke up. Altogether you have a far better idea of the nature and scope of your Ethos than most neophytes.
- Some worldbuilding rolls happening elsewhere went quite high, which is going to do things
While we wait on the vote, lets do a quick overview of the (very little) that you know about Ethos and Magic in general.
(I'm trying to space out world building as it becomes relevant, I doubt you want to know such riveting details as Lilly's favourite animal or her friend's hobbies until they are at least tangentially relevant to story)
Ethos and Magic: What you know
Ethos
For most of the people you know, their Ethos is basically synonymous with their job. Enhancing or adding versatility to varying scopes of its functions. This is somewhat expected, as most children fashion their aspirations around continuing their family's legacy. In terms of precise mechanisms, you know painfully little. Older friends have become uncharacteristically cagey about a chosen Ethos once they had one and have not been very forthcoming with extended explanations beyond the most fundamental basics.
Ethos grow stronger through some form of tempering. The speed of this growth slows and the restrictions required to advance further become more severe as an Ethos advances up the metaphorical ladder through some form of levels that you are not sure are a real thing or just a shorthand people refer to. Heroic actions apparently are way better than others for advancing an Ethos, maybe. Living up to the inspiration for an Ethos is also very good for growth, especially for an undeveloped one whose restrictions have not tightened much.
What are the limits on what an Ethos can grant? Basically nothing. You gather the impression there is a mechanism behind it, nobles and the upper class tend to be far more powerful so clearly there is some way to ensure at least middling success.
Magic
It lets you do stuff. You been openly laughed at for trying to convince some of the more learned adults to tell you about how it works. A particularly nasty one told you he didn't have time now but if you wrote it down he could write you a letter to answer your questions; which was just cruel, everyone knows girls can't read. It didn't take you long to give up on that approach.
You do know that there are numerous forms of lesser magic that can be done without the aid of an Ethos. You father has in fact taught you a bit of particularly tricky wood carving which he explained was a kind of 'runic' magic to make the wood better. Typical that the only magic you could actually get anyone to explain to you was drawing pictures on wood to make tougher wood… Gosh, carpentry is so boring it can even ruin magic.
There're some kinds of elementalism. You've seen workers and craftsmen plying such cantrips as part of their trade. You can only assume there is much more hidden below the surface. Perhaps even actively guarded to shield it from malevolent eyes. Although that's probably just your imagination at work. Harmuph is a bit too boring of a town for that to be true.
For most people, the only magic they will ever actually use is one they gain innate affinity with as part of their Ethos. Part of what made learning the simplest beginnings of runic from your father so tedious was how he seemed to constantly assume his woefully sparse explanations and demonstrations were apparently all that was needed for you to master the process. Most of his knowledge has arrived along the same mystical channels that gifted him his Ethos, either immediately, or as he advanced it.
Actually, technically, you probably know about a new type of magic now. Whatever 'Natural Energy' is, it was already here before you gained the ability to see it. So its probably some new category completely separate from what you've seen before. Or maybes it's what elementalists use to do their thing, you'll have to find out in time.
[X] Rush Home
It's the most boring action, no doubt, but I don't want to worry her parents overmuch.
I'm also looking forward to uh, actual character interactions.
