Latest Material Index

. It’s once again time to get the latest material index updated and to transfer the material from the old one to the main index tabs at the top of the page. If you want the very latest material, it may be necessary to either scroll down or consult the “Recent Posts” listing-widget on the lower right. The previous Latest Materials Index can be found HERE and – for those who like to rummage at random – the full post-by-post index can be found occupying a great deal of space in the lower right column.

. Eclipse Classless d20 Character Construction Cribsheet / Sample Character List – Character Creation Primer – Compiled Martial Arts.

. Subindexes: RPG Design - Twilight Isles - Battletech – Champions – d20 – Legend of the Five Rings – Shadowrun – White Wolf – Other Games – Battling Business World – Star Wars

. Cumulative General Index.

Latest Material Index

Latest Material Index

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XLII – Laity and Lion Dogs

Charles considered Harold for a moment… Poor kid! Either he was bait or his family was being really mean to him for some reason! Of course, Sidereals could get awfully weird about parenting after a few centuries. After four or five hundred years the often started parenting like gods. While it was quite true that – by then – their descendants could often fill an apartment complex or two, and they WERE absurdly stressed, that was really no excuse!

Could they possibly be hoping that he’d turn the child into an “Akuma of Aden” so that they could analyze him? Oh surely not! Considering what becoming a “classical” Akuma did to you, even for overstressed elder Sidereals that would take a very “special” parent indeed! Still… at least a part of it was doubtless to see if the poor child suddenly acquired an handy booster “artifact” that could NOT be taken away. Of course, that wouldn’t tell them much; his “treasure horde” has supposedly included even more “lesser exaltations” – in his share alone – than had been passed out.

Either way, getting him a good artifact or two could be done pretty easily!

Although it would be best to take yet another unexpected direction about it… After all, even the nicest Sidereals could be really ruthless, were willing to sacrifice a LOT for “duty”, and usually had multiple layers of motives. There were reasons why no one trusted them! The renewal of the Mask had NOT been kind…

Speaking of masks… It was about time to adjust the shapeshift! He was past fourteen now, and was still looking eleven… Up to about twelve perhaps? Being a bit young-seeming was a part of his shtick now after all… Maybe they’d decide he was the Primordial of Childish Idealism! That would be fun!

It was also time to let some of his third-circle souls start doing some good deeds around he earth… Mishinago could start! He could tweak the earth’s atmosphere back into an appropriate balance, and clean some of the pollution out of the worst rivers while Elzeard did some reforestation and started quietly getting some of the ecosystems back on track…

That would probably annoy the pollution gods – but when things were REALLY polluted people mostly stopped noticing and sort of gave up, people would always be making more, and (once it became apparent that the stuff was spontaneously clearing up) it would soon result in all the anti-pollution laws getting gutted… It was hard to say whether doing some cleaning-up would be good or bad for the pollution gods in the long run – especially since their power relied more on the importance of the topic than on actual physical manifestations.

A good thing he could handle multiple topics at once though! Harold was still talking – and it seemed like either something really odd was going on at home or that he’d been carefully set up to appeal to him – and to see if he promptly gave him a “lesser exaltation” that couldn’t be taken away. Of course, given the hidden treasure horde explanation, and the numbers, all that would prove would be that he did, indeed, still have some spares…

He’d have to try to look into that a bit! A direct mind probe would be kind of rude, but why bother resorting to that kind of nonsense when he could simply ask the child directly?

(Charles) “Isn’t that awfully mean? Why would they do that? Especially if it was a present for you!”

(Harold) “We… we’re low on armor right now. If it was a toy, maybe…”

He perked up and started rustling through his bag – and pulled out a stuffed lion dog (the Celestial equivalent of the teddy bear.

(Harold) “Maybe you could enchant my lion dog instead? (To the dog) Wouldn’t that be nice, Shenji?”

(Charles) “Would that be better, or would permanent-just-for-you be better?”

(Harold) “Um… I’m not sure what Papa would think about that. What do you mean by ‘just-for-me?’ If you could make Shenji help my little brothers and sisters somehow, that would be great!”

(Charles) “Oh well! I’ve got some stuff that works like the Lunar Tattoo Artifacts! Trouble is, once you put that on, you can shift the tattoo around and change what it looks like, but you’ve always got a tattoo somewhere!”

(Harold) “Neat! Um… does it take long to put on?”

(Charles) “About a minute!”

(Harold) “Okay… will it help out everyone else too?”

(Charles) “I’ll put that one on Shenji! But… I don’t have anything like that in my bag, so it will take a day or so!”

After all, the child couldn’t be expecting instant artificing unless he knew what was going on.

(Harold) “Okay… be really, REALLY careful with him!”

(Charles) “I’ll make VERY sure he’s safe!”

Still… for Harold, the upgraded version of the Commando Armor – throwing in some of the Behemoth Cloak functions to help out; he should enjoy the shapeshifting one… It would reduce his essence pool by a couple of motes, but it should be well worth it!

OK, it would take a bit of tweaking to transform the stuff into a tattoo, but he’d found a lot of different ways of tweaking things now… A central enchantment to help out a bunch of kids would take a little thought though!

(Charles) “Er, Harold? What kind of help do your brothers and sisters need?”

(Harold) “I want to keep the bad gods from eating them.”

Er… yes, that explained the caution, and the armor shortage, and some other bits. He had the servants at the Orrery check. Had the “bad gods” actually gotten any of Harold’s siblings, or were they just menaces?

Ah; once they’d nearly gotten to the Manse itself. All the kids knew that they’d very nearly gotten eaten – and the mere thought was making Harold clutch Shenji close to him….

OK then! What they mostly needed were more wards! That meant… A link to Aden for working magic over from that end (he could assign a couple of Coatls to monitoring; they were pretty good at thaumaturgy to begin with and had all gotten their Adenic Initiations to help out with that!), making it generate a big ward against deiphagic gods, have it show the kids how they could call for help in an emergency, no attunement cost, an indestructible artifact designed to return to him… Oh, and set it up so it could be possessed by a genuine lion-dog when he found one to take the job; if “killed” that way it would simply return to indestructible stuffed-animal form for a later return… That should be a big help in keeping them save – and remove some strain from the reclaimed territory’s security, to boot.

That was minor enough to finish up quite quickly! And Harold was very appreciative of that.

(Charles) “And if your siblings need some armor I may be able to find some for them too!”

(Harold) “Okay! I’ll let you know.”

(Charles) “OK! You have a nice time!

By that time the god who had dropped him off had come to pick him up – and seemed pretty surprised by how cheery he was now.

At home there was much fidgeting… Even the basic check revealed that Harold had suddenly acquired rather a lot of protective magic and enhancements – enough so that even a preliminary analysis took some time.

The (far lesser) enchantments on Shenji got overlooked entirely in the excitement.

(Harold’s Father, with a good deal of incredulity) “And he did this because you were afraid of getting hit in weapons class?!?!?!?!”

(Harold) “Yes, Papa… Er… Does this mean I have to be in the more advanced classes?”

(Harold’s Father) “Do you really think you’d find the basic ones challenging at all any more?”

(Harold) “Uh… n-no.”

(Harold’s Father, sighing) “If it’s any comfort son… Any blunt-weapon hit on you now will heal up within a couple of minutes even if it gets through.”

That made Harold feel better because at least he wouldn’t be hurt for extended periods. His father, on the other hand, felt better because now he might not try to get out of martial arts training! Even if his skill had suddenly jumped drastically… That really was impressive. He’d have to invite Charles over (however weird it would be to be inviting over someone who was seeming more and more like he really WAS some kind of primordial) for a meeting… Hopefully Charles would not be too offended that he’d had his son out scouting.

The boy needed more friends anyway!

Still… that was going to have to wait a bit. If he was going to be hosting a Primordial, he needed to be sure the territory was secured against deiphages. Not only would it look bad if they broke through, who knew what Charles would consider it reasonable to do to help secure the defenses?

Related articles

• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XLI – The Boy Scouts of Siderea (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XL – Small Gods and Sandwiches (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXI – The Bicyclist of the Unpocalypse (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXVII – Investigating Charles Mansen (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – Gothmug, Aden’s Second Soul (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

Verdan Arcanis – English Economics I, Currency, Wages, and Status

Was it trying to do your accounts that did it?

The English Monetary System on Verdan is – of course – a hodgepodge mess of traditional coins minted across the centuries competing with several different “reform” efforts. Sadly, since the system fundamentally relies on silver and gold coinage valued by weight, with banknotes backed by stockpiles of precious metal, older – and exotic – coins cannot effectively be devalued or withdrawn from circulation. Even the denomination symbols can be traced back to the roman empire.

Foreign coins circulate as well, in an equally confused collection of denominations and origins. Fortunately, when value is determined by weight, and a certain amount of haggling is common, minor vagaries of purity and origin are subsumed in the overall confusion…

Coinage:

• 1 Farthing = The smallest copper coin. The price of a decent snack.
• 2 Farthings = 1 Halfpenny. The price of a filling meal of bread and vegetables with a little meat for flavor – or a sizeable flagon of beer. These are often combined as a penny meal – although the tuppence meal is a lot better.
• 2 Halfpence = 1 Penny, originally a small silver coin, weighing 1/15′th of an ounce but often a much larger coin, minted in copper. A good days wages for a street kid running errands or acting as a guide.
• 2 Pence = 1 Tuppence or Half-Groat. The price of a third-class railway ticket, a good, filling, and very solid meal in a tavern, a gallon of gasoline, a bottle of laudanum, or a half-ton of lignite coal.
• 3 Pence = 1 Thruppence (a “Threepenny Bit” is a subdivided Shilling, but minted Thruppence are preferred). For some reason the usual price of large cakes, pies, and other fancy pastries.
• 4 Pence = 1 Fourpence or Groat. A coin that persists in sayings, but is relatively rarely found in actual circulation. The standard price of cab fair from anywhere in London to anywhere in London.
• 6 Pence = 1 Sixpence (a ‘Tanner’, so called because modern sixpence are usually made of bronze). A weeks pay for a pageboy – although such servants are usually live-in, and so get food, lodging, and uniforms as well. Also a weeks pay for poor children in factories, mines, and other nominally-adult positions – but this presumes that they’re partially supported by their parents. The price of a hatchet, a rat trap, a good thick blanket, a days worth of canned food, a machete, or a lantern.
• 12 Pence = 1 Shilling (a “Bob”). A weeks pay for a housemaid – although, once again, such servants are usually live-in, and so get food, lodging, and uniforms as well. The price of a canvas tarp, a bear trap, a naphtha lighter, a bottle of nitroglycerin – or a stick of less powerful (but far safer) dynamite.
• 2 Shillings = 1 Florin ( a ‘Two Bob Bit’). The price of a long ton of top-quality coal, a pocket almanac or encyclopedia, an axe, a backpack, or a hundred feet of good rope.
• 2 Shillings and 6 Pence = 1 Half Crown. The price of a bottle of decent liquor. As always, the price of the good stuff goes up almost without limit.
• 5 Shillings = 1 Crown. A weeks pay for an unskilled laborer. The price of a good hunting knife, a hundred rounds of pistol ammo, a lantern, or a sledgehammer.
• 10 Shillings = 1 Half-Sovereign (a gold coin). A weeks pay for a semi-skilled laborer. Add half again for somewhat more skilled professions such as sailor, enlisted soldier, or farmhand. The price of a barrel of black powder, a (large hand-ground) magnifying lens, a hundred rounds of rifle ammo, a portable camp stove,
• 20 Shillings = 1 Pound Sterling (a gold Sovereign). A pound is a weeks pay for an adult City Worker, Guard, Policeman, Assistant, Clerk, or Coal Miner. Double that for Skilled Craftsman and Expert Servants – such as a REALLY good cook. Expert Engineers, Foremen, and Master Clerks triple it. A Second Lieutenant makes four pounds per week, a Civil Servant in the Foreign Office makes six – and a Cabinet Minister makes fifty. It buys a large technical book, a set of lockpicks, a sturdy outfit suitable for foul weather or exploration,
• 21 Shillings = 1 Guinea (an annoyingly-valued gold coin). Guineas are considered more upper-class than Pound Notes or Sovereigns. Most folk – tradesmen, laborers, and common craftsmen – usually both pay and are paid in pounds. Upper-class types, such as artists, gentleman-scientists, and military officers are usually paid in Guineas – getting an extra 5% for being further up the social ladder. Of course, upper-class types are also expected to pay someone who’s done an exceptional job in Guineas instead of Pounds – essentially giving them a tip. A guinea will buy a piece of jewelry, a good-quality violin, or an expertly-tailored jacket.
• Bank Notes include the Half Pound (Ten Bob Note), the Pound (One Quid), The Five Pound Note (Fiver), Ten Pound Note (Tenner), and an assortment of larger notes which are generally the province of banks, corporations, and the very rich. After all, when a Tenner might represent a good months wages for an engineer, how often will the average person find one in their pocket?

For the purposes of the Baba Yaga game wealth is handled by the Finance skill, just as social class and importance is covered by Status. Sadly, both are considerably less flexible in England than they are in partisan resistance groups, hence buying them up beyond the level suited to your initial writeup is going to require GM approval and in-game justification beyond just spending some experience. In any case, while large purchases will still require rolls, the basic wealth bonus covers a standard lifestyle. Sadly, membership in a social class doesn’t necessarily bring the “appropriate” level of funds – or Status – along with it.

• -1: You’re destitute, and usually desperate. Your food is poor and scanty, your clothing is the cast-off rags of more successful laborers, your knife is probably stolen, you sleep in whatever shelter you can find, and any money you acquire will go for some basic item you desperately need – or to feed whatever addiction keeps you here. If you need to travel, it’s going to be by foot, by improvised raft, or by stowing away. If you’re at all competent, you can almost certainly easily find a job where your employer will support you at a better lifestyle than this. A few religious fanatics and madmen accept this lifestyle voluntarily, but they’re definitely the exceptions that prove the rule.
• 0: Un- and Semi-skilled laborers, including farmhands and youthful apprentices, usually fit in here. The food still isn’t very good, but there’s generally enough of it, clothing is cheap and mended, but sturdy enough, your knife belongs to you, your lodgings are tolerably warm, reasonably weathertight, and light on vermin, you can spare an occasional coin for fripperies, and the cheapest forms of travel are open to you if the trip is truly important. Unfortunately, your kids will need to be put to work early to help support themselves. Equally sadly, a large chunk of the population is stuck here – working long hours at dead-end Victorian production jobs for little pay with few or no opportunities for education or advancement and every prospect of crippling industrial injuries (or of dying very young indeed, leaving more doomed children to struggle to support themselves and follow the same path to it’s bitter end).
• 1: Craftsman, sailors, enlisted military, policemen, and junior clerks tend to wind up at this level. The food is fairly plentiful, clothing is utilitarian but in good shape, a common firearm can be obtained if necessary, lodgings are probably a cottage or a row-house, there’s enough money to go out and have a few beers a couple of times a week, and you can afford the occasional train ticket or short ocean trip. Perhaps most importantly, if you have kids, they won’t have to go to work to help support themselves and so can get some education. With any luck, they’ll be able to move up into the Victorian Middle Class as adults.
• 2: The Victorian Middle Class; skilled clerks, military officers, engineers, minor agents, and similar characters tend to wind up here. The food is good with occasional luxuries, you may purchase decent arms if you need them, your clothes are formal, well-cared for, and regularly replaced, you can afford to rent a reasonable house or comfortable flat, you may regularly attend lower-end plays and musical performances and take your family to the seaside or other minor attractions, and you can try to move your kids up the social ladder. You travel by train, and occasionally by coach in areas where trains don’t reach. You’ll normally employ a domestic servant or two, a nanny (albeit probably not Mary Poppins) will help look after your kids, and you will live the stereotypical Victorian lifestyle. Special hobbies – such as mechanical tinkering, or magic, or taxidermy – will probably be confined to a desk in your den unless they’re job-related.
• 3: Successful businessmen, civil servants in the foreign office, and very successful members of the middle class wind up here – as do junior aristocrats living off allowances and credit and severely embarrassing scions being encouraged to drink themselves into oblivion. There will be excellent meals, several servants, and a regular dose of luxuries and entertainment. You’re likely to own a house or to rent a very pleasant set of apartments. Your clothes will be reasonably new and stylish. If you feel a need for weaponry you’ll probably have a pistol or two about, and may well have several other weapons. You’re unlikely to own a personal vehicle, but you can travel comfortably – if not quite in the luxury classes. If you have special hobbies, a small laboratory, or library, or similar area is likely to be devoted to them. A companionable servant is practically standard-issue.
• 4: Successful industrialists, aristocrats and gentry tend to fall into this category. At this point you’re likely to own a well-staffed house in the city and manor in the country, an assortment of horses and carriages, have a rather excessive wardrobe (all splendidly cared-for) with plenty of accessories, own a dozen hunting weapons, have a decent library, several well-equipped rooms devoted to any special hobby you may have, and luxurious travel arrangements, up to your own airship. Basically, you’re rich.
• 5: Business moguls, wealthy industrialists, rules of small countries, and the richest aristocrats wind up here. These are the people who can build their own experimental ships, set up major laboratories to support their hobbies, own libraries, and send out agents to get whatever-it-is they happen to want. They own dozens of properties and several major vehicles, command the services of hundreds of employees who work directly for them, and generally have their own security forces. They don’t usually join other people’s expeditions and projects; they just fund their own.
• 6: Characters at this level can draw on resources that most organizations can only dream of. If they need to fund a small private fleet or army, it’s within their means. They can have the best of anything they want, employ small hordes of people, have enough lawyers to get away with almost anything short of high treason (and sometimes even that), and own more properties than they can remember. In general they don’t join lesser organizations; they just fund one that does what they want.

Naturally enough, in Baba Yaga it becomes easier and easier to attain high wealth levels as the games power level goes up. A Normal Adult character who wanted to possess vast wealth could do so – at the cost of having nothing else. A superhero, on the other hand, can attain a +6 score in Finance quite readily – and could even attain higher levels. Go ahead! Own your own private dimension!

Status governs a character’s general social station in much the same way that Finance governs their lifestyle – but it’s a good deal more flexible; if you’re relatively young, inexperienced, or devoting your time to adventure (or to parties, women, drink, and other disreputable activities), rather than to maintaining your social position your effective (purchased) social status may be a good deal lower your theoretical one. If you’re a youthful, inexperienced, adventuring aristocrat all you need to support that is Status 2…

• -1: Criminal Class. Yep. Pickpockets, prostitutes, muggers, counterfeiters, and unstylish highwaymen all fall into this category of undesirables. If at all possible, most law enforcement officials will view it as a public service to lock you up if they can come up with any excuse at all.
• 0: Laborer Class. You’re a nobody – but you’re a useful nobody who does rather a lot of work for very little money. Fortunately, most of the higher classes will pay very little attention to what you might be up to; laborers are everywhere!
• 1: Working Class. This includes enlisted military men, common servants, crewmen, industrial workers, and all the the other people who usually come in semi-skilled interchangeable groups.
• 2: Tradesman. This group includes superior servants (butlers, expert cooks, etc), tailors, and other skilled craftsmen. If you’re an expert in a particular field – but still work with your hands in some practical field – you probably fall into this category.
• 3: Middle Class. The Victorians Par Excellence, the Middle Class are primarily administrators – the people who run the banks, the territories, the factories, and all the bustling businesses and engineering projects of England.
• 4: Gentry. The lower-level aristocrats – the families of sheriffs, magistrates, country barons, churchmen, and lesser landholders who had once provided the troops and organizational background of mediaeval monarchies – make up the Gentry, a group that may be displaced eventually, but who (for the time being) still sustain the rural backbone of the nation. The gentry are well-respected – perhaps better-respected than the Aristocrats, who are often seen as being impractical and insulated from reality by their wealth – and, in return, adhere to their traditional responsibilities.
• 5: Aristocrats. The Aristocrats have been living the good life for many centuries now, and have no intention of stopping… They also tend to distrust “progress”, industry, science, trade, and anything else that might change things – a reasonable enough reaction when things are very good the way they are! Born to wealth and rulership, they may be prats – but they know how to shoot, ride, organize the lower classes, sneer at threats, and run things perfectly well.
• 6: Nobility. Basically this means the few people who still hold major hereditary titles – the wealthiest and most powerful aristocrats, and usually the ones with ties to the actual reigning powers of Europe. They’re the ones who push for treaties, command wars, and otherwise run the House of Lords. (If you want to be actual royalty, you’ll need Status 5, Perception +1, AND a special perk).

Related articles

• Verdan Arcanis – Historical Development (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Arcanis – Technology and Magic II. The Biological Sciences (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Arcanis – Basic Magic (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Arcanis – Technology and Magic I (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Incognita I (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Incognita II – Places of Legend (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

Exalted – Gothmug, Aden’s Second Soul

Gothmug Pyroclast, Lord of the Baalgrogs, He Who Calls Stones to Weep, Second Soul of Aden.

Gothmug, Lord of the Baalgrogs, is an object lesson in “why you should not shape reality while extremely fatigued”. You too might wind up with a bunch of Emo Goth Viking Balrogs wearing elegant black fur cloaks over quasi-Edwardian fashions, formal black horned helmets, battle axes, and dark and/or pale makeup as they cruise the waters of your world-body in their long black ships and flaming auras visiting halfling bars, playing gloomy music, and reciting depressing poetry (Gothmug in person is INCREDIBLY good at this) while they drink up all the beer.

The Baalgrogs in general are roughly equivalent to Celestial Lions – albeit Celestial Lions equipped with Behemoth Cloaks, Grand Grimcleavers (with an added “M” tag), and Dancing Dragon Rings. They serve much the same purpose as the Celestial Lions – policing Aden, helping out it’s residents, and (if necessary) serving as it’s (rather small) army. They’re actually quite friendly and helpful; it’s just that it’s a bit like having a cross between Eeyore and one of those raptors from Jurassic Park helping you out while telling you about how gloomy the world is.

As for Gothmug himself…

• Thaumaturgic Specialty: Attack (+6 Automatic Successes).
• Motivation: Protect and Assist Charles / Aden, Adhere to – and promote – Goth Stereotypes.
• Attributes: Strength 22, Dexterity 16, Stamina 20, Charisma 15, Manipulation 14, Appearance 15, Perception 24, Intelligence 24, and Wits 24
• Virtues: Compassion 3, Conviction 5, Temperance 3,Valor 5.
• Abilities: Athletics 13, Awareness 13, Bureaucracy 11, Dodge 13, Integrity 13, Investigation 12, Larceny 12, Linguistics 13, Lore 13, Martial Arts 13, Occult 13, Performance 12, Presence 13, Resistance 13, Stealth 11, Socialize 10, Survival 13, War 12, all others effectively 8. Poetry +3.

Special Bonuses: +3d (Adenic Thaumaturgy) to everything, another +4d with Thaumaturgy, store four Thaumaturgies, four Terrestrial, and four Celestial Spells, may temporarily learn three spells given time to study, -2 on the target numbers of Twilight abilities, the ability to attack and parry with the Occult skill as if using a perfect weapon of choice, inherent computer services and Aden internet access. +7 automatic successes when casting spells or using thaumaturgy, +1 additional automatic success up to +20 (max) per geomantic relay available to devote to that purpose. Night Sight, Wolf-like sense of smell, May spend 2 motes to pick up 12 points worth of mutations or to revise his current selection, regenerates one level of bashing damage every third action, double ground speed, heals one level of lethal damage per hour and one level of aggravated damage every five hours, regains +40 motes per hour.

Usual Attack: Grand Grimcleaver: Speed 6, Accuracy +2 (34d), Damage 36L/4, Rate 2, Attune 0, Tags 2, 0, P, M, R.

Charms: Adenic versions of everything a Celestial Lion gets, plus Terrestrial and Celestial Circle Sorcery, several Thaumaturgy Boosters, the First Performance Excellency, and 25 additional charms.

Health Levels: 2x -0, 30x -1, 30x -2, 2x -4, Incapacitated. Suffers a maximum of two levels of damage from any effect or flurry. If slain without the use of Ghost-Eating Technique or some similar spirit-slaying attack AND exploiting his unique weakness, Gothmug will reform a day later. If he’s truly slain but the manse survives, it will simply generate a replacement in about a week.

Join Battle: 37, Dodge DV 20, Parry DV 14

Thaumaturgic Enhancements:

• Uses the Advanced Thaumaturgy System.
• May select six thaumaturgical effects which are automatically sustained indefinitely. If dispelled they will re-establish themselves six ticks later. One of these is normally the good-fortune die booster, the others are up to the user.
• Gets fourteen free uses of thaumaturgy per day (ignoring the usual mote and/or willpower cost), with +3 bonus successes and a one-level reduction in the time required.
• Gets three motes to power Thaumaturgy or Sorcery with up to seven times per day. This does not count as an action; the motes are simply available when needed.
• His thaumaturgy and sorcery requires an opposed essence check to dispel with Countermagic; he gains +6d against thaumaturgy and +3d against the Terrestrial Circle, has no advantage or penalty against celestial circle countermagic or adenic countermagic thaumaturgy, and suffers a -3d penalty against solar circle countermagic. His effects are protected against “Spell Shattering Palm” and similar charms; these simply work against it like celestial-circle dispelling attempts.
• May stack one thaumaturgic effect with charms, artifacts, or other sources of power.
• Impervious to messiness; his clothing, hair, and person is always neat, clean, and well-repaired unless he wishes it otherwise.
• May generate minor lightshow effects at will, producing sparks, tiny flames, glowing lights, and even small obvious images at will within a radius of twenty feet or so.

Geomantic Powers (all usable as needed within a radius of 250 feet).

• Know The Guilty: may sense thoughts as per Invisible Theft.
• No Wrecking Up The Joint: may render selected inanimate objects and structures within range indestructible at will.
• Go And Get Them: may grant +6 bonus successes to anyone using Attack thaumaturgy within range at will.
• Go Directly to Jail; Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect 200 Motes: Gothmug may cause anyone approaching him with 250 feet to be entrapped by slabs of stone and transported elsewhere unless they escape within ten rounds (Ultra-Deadly Perimeter Defenses, 4) – but if they escape this, he cannot so affect them again for at least an hour.
• Big Baalgrog Is Watching You: As Advanced Magical Conveniences, Gothmug has a full-scale surveillance system, donut and coffee delivery, can instantly cordon off areas and put up “police line” signs, can produce appropriate police authorization for anywhere he happens to be, and can record anything his surveillance systems witness in his archives for later playback.

There are, in fact, three essentially-identical Gothmugs – allowing “him” to show up in three places at the same time. Normally, however, one will be working in Creation, one around Aden, and one will be guarding “his” manse and be standing by to project his powers though the manse Hearthstone (carried by Charles) if Charles needs his assistance.

Related articles

• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice — Higher Souls (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XL – Small Gods and Sandwiches (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XLI – The Boy Scouts of Siderea (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – The Winding Way (Sidereal Manse **** or any Manse *****) (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XXXVIII – Out of the Umbra (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXVII – Investigating Charles Mansen (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIII – City and Soul (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XXXIX – Gates of the Third Circle (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVII – Hints and Allegations (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – Aden Shining Dream, the Third Circle (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

Verdan Incognita II – Places of Legend

So where is the treasure buried?

Verdan has a long tradition of semi-mythical lands, from the drifting dream-realms of the Dreaming Thunder across the Ginnungagap to the endless underground chasms of Thule. The actual existence of most of these locations is subject to dispute…

The Dreaming Thunder is popularly located “beyond the vault of heaven”, in a realm where Lux dominates instead of matter, and grand ethereal palaces may be crafted from a handful of drifting motes. There a variety of spirits build, contend, and – occasionally – depart for the still higher and greater realms beyond. While there is a fair amount of testimony as to the existence of the Dreaming Thunder, it’s all from ghosts and other spirits – and they often contradict each other on key points.

Thule is supposedly an underground realm, inhabited by the descendants of a progenitor race – although reports vary as to whether or not it simply occupies a series of underground caverns and passages at considerable depths or as to whether Verdan is hollow. Regardless of the details, the people of Thule supposedly rely on the magic of the depths to grow plants, creating underground ecologies. As the lux-reserves of an area wane, they presumably either tunnel deeper or move on.

Tales of Thule gained some popularity recently with the discovery of the remains of a group that was apparently trapped deep underground by a massive cave-in millenia past, and seemingly survived for at least a generation. Objectors note that the evidence of long-term inhabitation may simply have meant that the group considered the trek down to live in what was then probably a safe and secure higher-magic area well worth it, and that they probably died relatively soon after the collapse.

Mu is primarily known through dream-reports. While those are far more credible on Verdan – where dreamers and prophets are sometimes surprisingly accurate – than Earth, there’s still room for a lot of interpretation and doubt. That’s especially true when the distance is so great and the number of individuals reporting results is so small. In any case, reports of Mu usually involve strangely-dressed individuals, bizarre crystalline devices, and inhabited caverns where they carry out strange rituals in the service of unknown powers. The location is variously described as beneath the sea, in an area of uncharted ocean (the most commonly described location is fairly near to Earth’s New Zealand), and “on the astral plane”.

Lemuria has, in contrast to Mu, been fairly reliably sighted off the eastern coast of southern Africa on several occasions. It appears to be a sizeable island or subcontinent, and what little information is available suggests that it is inhabited by some quite belligerent natives. While no one has ever seen the natives, the one recorded expedition that attempted a landing was greeted by a shower of darts tipped with a variety of curious – and rather lethal – poisons. The landing party was annihilated, and the main expedition only escaped by dumping all possible weight – including the main engines – and using wind-spells to slowly blow themselves back to civilization. (For the geographically-challenged this is probably Madagascar).

Yarlung Tsangpo is, according to tales from the distant east, a sacred realm, one of the gates of the underworld and the realm of ghosts, and is a place guarded by strange and terrible creatures. Unlike most of the “lost realm” tales of Europe however, the Yarlung is concealed only by distance and the Himalayas, rather than by oceanic reaches. Unfortunately, the development of the Zeppelin has done relatively little to render the inward reaches of the Himalayas accessible; the altitude, weather, and local conditions are quite enough to make air travel in the area relatively useless.

Other Worlds are – perhaps – the ultimate places of legend. While only the most optimistic see signs of life on the Moon (despite it’s presumably vast, untouched, Lux reserves), reports of signs of life on Mars are far more hopeful. While current telescopes, even with enhancing spells, are unable to resolve the finer details of the Martian surface, reports of odd flashes of light, seasonal color changes, and oddly-straight dark structures, have raised hopes in scientific circles that Verdan may have inhabited celestial neighbors. Most speculation – inspired by those straight line structures which (if artificial) represent engineering on an unheard-of scale – centers on the “elder civilization” theory, while the (numerous) detractors of such theories tend to focus on why – if Mars is indeed inhabited by an “elder race” – they haven’t come to call. Of course, they will have very little lux to work with; the inflow from the sun will be greatly reduced at that range.

Venus, shining like some fabulous pearl, is one of the brightest and most mysterious of worlds – a world cloaked by impenetrable clouds, and with an albedo so high that many dare to hope that it reflects enough sunlight to render it’s surface inhabitable. While skeptics tend to dash such hopes, it’s undeniable that any creatures that did live on Venus would have a great deal of Lux to work with – and so might well be capable of working wonders quite unknown to Verdan.

Related articles

• Verdan Arcanis – Historical Development (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Incognita I (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Arcanis – Basic Magic (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Arcanis – Technology and Magic II. The Biological Sciences (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Arcanis – Technology and Magic I (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XLI – The Boy Scouts of Siderea

All right, now either that's a really good disguise or you've brought me the WRONG CHARLES... Sower-Of-Burning-Tears, God of Acid Rain

Since Adenic Thaumaturgy was working well, Charles promptly initiated his thaumaturgical students down in Atlanta. They could use the extra power and protections just as much (or more, given their lack of alternatives) as any god-blood, spirit, or exalt! Ixiah liked it too, and there were LOTS of his manse-guardians to initiate, even if most of them could make the trip to the Winding Way Manse and get initiated without his help!

Given the affinity of an Adenic-aspected manse for magical conveniences, this version of the Winding Way Manse includes another helping of Advanced Magical Conveniences:

• Residents are impervious to messiness; their clothing, hair, and persons are always neat, clean, and well-repaired unless they wish it otherwise.
• Residents my generate minor lightshow effects at will, producing sparks, tiny flames, glowing lights, and even small obvious images at will within a radius of twenty feet or so.
• The effect of the Initiation is quite subtle: A close examination with analytical essence senses will reveal that the user is linked to some exotic geomancy, but otherwise it doesn’t show up any more than a collection of talismans would.
• Residents have access to a virtual laptop, linked to the Aden network (unless blocked by a network administrator), at all times. There are many MANY educational programs available.
• Residents electrical gadgets work without power supplies, and have Aden network access (unless blocked by a system administrator), anywhere.

Yes, Charles was actually running out of ideas for thaumaturgy-boosting effects there. Given that the initiation provides continuous access to the manse powers of Life-Sustaining (upgraded to the five-dot level), Augmented Thaumaturgy (Wyld Revocation), many Advanced Magical Conveniences (mostly augmenting Thaumaturgy), Bilocation (Wyld Revocation, allowing them to invest part of their life force in the manse, and so be “inside it” – and inside of Aden as well – at all times), and Immunity to Biological Needs (which also enhances the residents health levels somewhat – Wyld Revocation again), that’s probably quite understandable. Twenty-five points worth of manse powers dedicated to a particular goal can be quite effective.

Meanwhile, Mr Montague was considering a second visit… Certainly there was good reason to be nervous about dropping by to talk to a Primordial – even the most benign Primordials had sometimes made horrible mistakes – but he was really curious about the Elsewhere Net – and about that “helping thaumaturgy” bit.

Back at school, several sidereal half-caste children had been hurriedly transferred in – along with some extra funding to help handle the new expenses and some special security… The Sidereals weren’t exactly trusted by the gods, but they weren’t people you angered unnecessarily either.

This time around they were finding the non-half-caste competition pretty rough. Fortunately, being Sidereal Half-Castes gave them a good deal of protection against mistreatment. The Endings kids in particular got treated carefully; Sidereal Bureaucracy could make gods’ lives hell.

Most of them were still in a bit of shock though. They hadn’t all been briefed on WHY – but the ones who had been hadn’t generally reacted well (which had prompted most of the rest of the parents to wait a few days).

(Child) “You’re asking me to change schools to… go to school with a PRIMORDIAL!?!? Why do you want me horribly dead?! Or MUCH worse than dead?!?!””

(Sidereal Parent) “Consider this training for when you join the Bureau…”

(Sobbing Child) “But I’m only eight!”

That general reaction hadn’t been universal – but it was definitely typical among the ones who’d been told (or had managed to overhear) what was up.

At school there was much ducking away from Charles – who found that rather upsetting, and kept trying to pop up suddenly to find out what was scaring them. This did not help.

One little Endings boy in seemed particularly frightened. He didn’t want to leave the side of the god who’d bought him to school – but the god resorted to using some (gentle) telekinesis to deposit the child firmly in his seat before disappearing.

Charles promptly popped up to him after class, and put up a tiny privacy ward…

(Charles) “What’s wrong? It’s just a new school! It’s all right!”

The boy shied away.

(Charles) “What’s wrong?”

(Boy) “I’m scared…”

(Charles) “Why? There’s no need to be scared! It’s just math class!”

(Boy, looking down at the floor.) “You’re… not going to do anything funny, are you?”

(Charles, somewhat bemusedly) “What, send for clowns or something? I could hire some I suppose…”

(Boy) “No! Don’t!” (He blushed) “I… I’m Harold.”

(Charles) “And I’m Charles!”

(Harold) “N-nice to meet you.”

He still seemed a bit nervous, but at least he wasn’t that near-white shade anymore.

(Charles) “School is nice and safe! At your age even the combat classes are strictly nerf! And it’s nice to meet you too!”

(Harold) “Um… are you in the class with Sindri?”

(Charles) “Yep! He keeps smacking me when I’m not looking though!”

(Harold, looking a bit nervous again) “Does he hit… hard?”

(Charles) “Oh! Not very! He’s pretty careful… Tell you what! (he rummaged in his pack and pull out a sash) Wear this! It should help a lot!”

Harold took it with some trepidation – but he put it on.

(Charles, cheerfully) “It includes a function inventory to make it easy to use!”

(Harold) “Oh! Thank you.”

(Charles) “You’re welcome!”

(Harold) “I’d better hurry to my next class… oh yeah. Are you in the evasion club?”

(Charles) “Yup!”

(Harold) “I’ll try to be at the next meeting, then.”

(Charles) “It is good fun!”

Were the Sidereals sending in their kids to try and keep an eye on him? That seemed a bit ruthless, even if they WERE pretty sure that he was safe to be around – and HE wasn’t entirely sure himself! Moreover, some of them seemed to just be new-school nervous and others seemed to be especially nervous about HIM. Had they given them all different briefings? Somehow that notion seemed… very Sidereal.

Harold went off to his next class – although no one else in the hall seemed to be taking notice of him. Well, he was obviously shy, and doubtless had some sneaky charms! That was one way to avoid being called on too much!

Charles’s next class was herbalism, where the curriculum had moved on to antidotes – and, what with the remarkable performances of the students, some of the poisons had become fairly exotic.

Charles was quite pleased by that. Antidotes were valuable information!

Some of the other kids preferred listening to the poisons’ rather lurid effects, but Charles considered that part more than a little icky. He was glad he didn’t allow poisons in Aden!

(Mailian, the instructor) “Today’s poison sample is Inverted Grin Death, so called because it twists the victim’s lips even as it shuts down his or her central nervous system. As usual, we are giving you a simulated sample for this exercise. Your materials are at the tables.”

Siranaya (the poison flower goddess’s daughter) was one of the most in-demand partners for these exercises. She’d gotten a lot better with her poison touch since Lytek had given her that “Lesser Exaltation”!

Hm! Hopefully the Sidereals hadn’t arranged to have someone actually poisoned so as to test what he’d do! Jun would never condone anything as nasty as poisoning people, and so normally they just tested and compounded antidotes for simulated poisons – but you never knew! And his medical skills were better these days – but just Mortal-Better, not Exalted-Better!

The Sidereals did something like that in the Bureau’s academies, although the mortals in question were well-paid for their trouble.

While the Sidereal Half-Castes had been patiently analyzing the school social scene, Siranaya still preferred to work with Charles at times… He might not be as good at sorting out how to make an antidote, but his analytical thaumaturgy was better than anyone else’s in the class!

Charles didn’t mind that at all! Siranaya was kind of fun to work with!

Still, she promised to work with the cute Serenity boy she had been talking with the next time.

Charles, of course, refrained from “cheating” in any way save for the general boosts everyone else was using and his heightened abilities – as usual. Those were, however, quite enough to get through the exercise, although getting the right mix of herbs and chemicals was becoming trickier and trickier.

Charles noted that – and spent some time on small talk, general comments, and queries as to how Siranaya was doing…

She, like most of the other students, had put together rumors of treasure hordes, the fact that Charles seemed to have all the artifacts he liked, and THEM being picked to get Lesser Exaltations together quickly enough – and her boosted powers made handling her food much easier! Charles had been very (well, quite absurdly) nice to her!

Charles was pleased to hear that she was doing well! And to see that most of the people around the school weren’t making wild assumptions! Exalts were few and far between at school!

Next up was Charles’s least favorite class – combat. What was worse was that everyone else had improved faster than he had!

Sindri was glad to see Charles, as usual. Harold was with him.

(Charles) “Allo!”

(Sindri) “Ah, good to see you as always, Charles. I was wondering if you could spar with Harold today.”

Harold was… holding his staff white-knuckle tight. He didn’t look like he had any training at all!

(Harold) “Do I have to?”

(Sindri) “The instructions were rather insistent… and they say I am to watch for something called “Underling Invisibility Practice,” as well.”

(Charles) “Uhm… Well, I’m not sure I’d be good at teaching! I tend to get distracted and trip and things! If you say so though…”

Besides… it looked like someone had noticed that mental influence didn’t affect him… Oh wait! They knew that from the Deva Cutter mess… Evidently SOMEONE was pretty good at putting pieces together!

Charles was VERY gentle with the boy – although Harold was… a lot better than he thought he was. His nervousness did affect his technique, but he did have all the basics down – in skill terms, at least as good as Charles was. He didn’t have as many physical boosts, but he wasn’t at all bad! Good for him!

They rested after a bit…

(Charles) “You’re way better than I was at your age! You’re going to be good at this stuff!”

(Harold) “I’ll never be as good as my big sister… not now.”

(Charles) “Why not?”

(Harold) “Uh… um…” (He looked just as nervous as he did when Charles had first noticed him.) “I’ll tell you later.”

(Charles) “OK!”

(Harold) “But maybe we can visit each other some time. Not now though . . . when we know each other better… Would that be OK?”

(Charles) “Why not? Visitors are always nice!”

Harold looked unusually happy – and Charles gots the feeling that that didn’t happen too often.

(Harold) “Would you keep the armor for me?”

(Charles) “OK! Don’t need it at home?”

(Harold) “It won’t be mine anymore if I bring it home.”

(Charles) “That’s no fair at all! Why not?”

(Harold) “Uh… um… I’d rather not say.”

(Charles) “I’ll keep it for you!”

Hm! He’d have to get the kid something that no one could take away!

Related articles

• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XL – Small Gods and Sandwiches (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XXXIX – Gates of the Third Circle (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXVII – Investigating Charles Mansen (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XXXVIII – Out of the Umbra (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIII – City and Soul (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXIX — Deva Cutter and the Bronze (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVII – Hints and Allegations (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice — Higher Souls (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIV – Fiduciary Divine (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXI – The Bicyclist of the Unpocalypse (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XL – Small Gods and Sandwiches

In the back of his head Charles was STILL continuing to consider Small Gods and Sandwiches… It WAS a bad neighborhood, but they had to be pretty hungry to climb the mountain! They’d been fairly mundane sandwiches too… If small gods needed sandwiches, then something must be done! A Soup Kitchen perhaps! At the base of the mountain! And some renovations in the area!

And sandwiches and extra supplies for anyone who started working on reviving the area themselves…

Hala, meanwhile, was mulling things over… Considering the overwhelming style the boy brought to everything ELSE he did, the “Adenic Essence Attunement” probably turned thaumaturgy into something quite unrecognizable with a dozen over-the-top beneficial side effects all thrown in in the name of “niceness”. Luna forbid that someone who WASN’T “nice” should get a hold of whatever it was before the rest of the cosmos knew how to counter whatever-it-was he’d done.

Put that way… there wasn’t much choice. Oh well! Everything else the boy had done so far had been well-meant, utterly benign, and ridiculously helpful – and if she didn’t want to be attuned to “Adenic Essence” later on, there wasn’t much that could make her stick with it.

Attunement turned out to involve nothing more than… A few moments spent envisioning a walk through the stations of a magical path with a little help from Charles. A sort of miniature sorcerers initiation, apparently enabled by some sort of specialized artifact or hearthstone that he was carrying.

It also turned out to be quite appalling. The end result was… a noticeable power-boost even for an elder Exalt. What it would mean to a youngster, godling, or mortal… It boosted your mote recovery, acted to protect you in a wide variety of ways, and boosted mere thaumatugy right up to the level of… terrestrial circle sorcery, or better. Her bondmate might be horribly naive, but at least he was applying his vast power somewhat wisely! Unless some SERIOUS downside came up, she’d be keeping that one!

The Adenic Initiation actually involved effectively being within a high-powered manse in Aden that had been specifically designed to boost thaumaturgy at all times – which also meant being effectively in Aden at all times, which provided yet another set of manse-based thaumaturgic and personal enhancements. The final result was, indeed, rather over the top.

Charles, meanwhile, was off on a different path… Would Ms Hala like her to initiate any of the kids around the place? It would probably be rude to ask, but at least some of the kids around were likely to be hers, and she might like them to have all the protections, and it would only take a minute!

Hala was a bit dubious to start – but the stuff was very nearly undetectable most of the time (a close examination with any kind of analytical essence sense would show that she was being affected by some form of exotic geomancy) – and it WOULD be a lot of extra protection for her daughter…

(Hala) “Initiate them in this?”

She thought about it for a bit. Well, the Sidereals’ Telltale Symphony might catch it…

(Hala) “Any way you can hide it? I’d rather not have the Sidereals on my back.”

(Charles) “Hmm… It shouldn’t be very noticeable… And I can always pop over and make some adjustments!”

(Hala) “Well then… it does seem to be totally beneficial… How about Liana?”

Liana was one of her non-beastman, but still Lunar Half-Caste, children. She was showing considerable talent with thaumaturgy – although nowhere near Charles’s level. She was also another one of the kids who went to Charle’s school and was over at the children’s table…

(Charles) “Hey! Want to try out a thaumaturgy booster Liana?”

(Liana) “Oh, Charles, it’s you! What are you doing at Mama’s party?”

(Charles) “Oh, I got invited for a little consulting on things! Ms (It was hard to tell with Lunars; their marriage arrangements tended to be a bit more varied than Sidereals’. “Ms” was generally safe though.) Righteous Hala might be ordering an artifact one of these days!”

Hala mostly-suppressed a knowing smile. The boy was so smooth about it that it was hard to notice even when you were looking – but that “Couple two absolutely true statements that have nothing to do with each other together and let people assume a relationship” maneuver was one of the best ways to let people deceive themselves… Eventually that was going to come unraveled of course – but by that time he’d probably be indispensable to half of Yu-Shan, have had years to build up his power – and most of his potential enemies might well be relieved to discover that he was “only” a Solar Exalt!

By Luna… He’d done it to her too! She’d gotten so involved with the “Primordial” front that she was half-forgetting that basic fact! And if there was ANYONE who should be constantly aware of his identity it was HER.

(Liana) “If Mama is okay with it, sure.”

(Charles) “OK!” (He produced a small artifact-mirror – actually just a tool for doing automatic tailoring touchups, but it was a handy prop) “Look into the mirror and concentrate on the gateway you see; it leads to a thaumaturgic initiation… Walk through, and follow the path in your mind… When you reach the peak, imagine leaving a few drops of your blood there, to remain as a link with that place of power… And done! And that should help out in several ways!”

Hala was still considering…

Another gratuitous huge power boost for her daughter… Rather like the sudden boost in her abilities she’d shown recently. Treasure horde her foot! The boy was making his own Exaltations – or at least some sort of MAJOR power-boosting artifacts – all right!

Well, OK; whatever he was doing didn’t seem to provide a new set of charms – but Liana had abruptly jumped in essence, and picked up some extra charms, and had gained quite a few other abilities – including what seemed to be some deeply-buried geomantic defenses. That didn’t normally happen to schoolchildren – much less what seemed to be the entire student body!

Still… It seemed benign enough, and it obviously didn’t trouble Charles that much… She might have to ask him for additional – well, whatever they were – for her older children some time. He certainly seemed willing to oblige!

For that matter, SHE was still trying to evaluate just how much was included in “Adenic Thaumaturgy” anyway! Honestly, a sub-effect that kept you clean and neat unless intentionally overruled? Was it just THAT obliging or had the child actually run out of more important things to put into it?

He’d certainly put in enough raw power… And Liana could still learn Lunar Charms to cover the things the thaumaturgy DIDN’T.

Plus it apparently allowed her to combine the charms without having to actually practice a combo. Even a genuine Exaltation didn’t do that!

(Hala, after shooing Liana back to the other children) “So… you wouldn’t know anything about sudden increases in thaumaturgic proficiency, Essence, and other things, would you? It’s like she’s blossomed in the past few months.”

(Charles, a bit nervously) “Uhm… Lots! One of the earliest on record was the empowerment of the Vrildatha, but they rebelled against The Empyreal Chaos and were cast into the depths of the underworld! I think they’re mostly extinct now! The Creation of the Dragon Kings was several experiments later, but it…”

(Hala, cutting short the flow of nervous erudition – even if she’d never heard of the Vrildatha; that must predate the Primordial War! Where had the boy been studying? Those “Primordial Archives” perhaps?) “Hey, I’m not asking for history. The No Moons crammed enough of that in me. Where did my daughter learn extra Charms, innate thaumaturgical powers, weapon summoning…” (She listed off a few more of the Lesser Exaltation abilities.) “I know the Hidden Twig School teaches Charms, but Liana needs training for those. And she shouldn’t be able to combine them like a spirit anyway.”

Charles wove another small privacy ward, and under it an illusion of an innocuous subject – Ah! He knew! Being quizzed about just how he knew her daughter! Parents were always into that for some reason!

(Charles) “Erm… Well, I made some booster-devices for everyone in school. I thought it would make them safer and get them better prospects!… Er… More noticeable than I thought I take it?”

Hala crossed her arms and stared rather pointedly at Charles.

(Hala) “You think? It is an advantage, though.”

(Charles) “Well, everything but the defenses was pretty minor really.”

At least they were in HIS opinion.

(Hala) “She fell off the fifth-story balcony without a scratch.”

(Charles) “Well, yes… but I could only put in the absolute defense for a few times in any given short period. A little damage will start getting through the armor component after that!”

What, he’d given a bunch of SCHOOL CHILDREN perfect defenses and he was apologetic because they were very limited use? Were ALL Solar Artificers completely insane or was it just him? Even ONE use of a perfect defense could get a mortal out of all kinds of hideous dooms! No one wanted to spend two or three major attacks taking out some fleeing mortal! Half-castes couldn’t even GET perfect defenses any other way, and he was being APOLOGETIC? His discretion left much to be desired, but his heart was in the right place!

(Hala) “Look, I appreciate it. I’m just pointing out that some things were obvious to us after a few weeks. You’re just lucky there weren’t any Sidereal Half-Castes enrolled.”

(Charles) “Well… I did get Lytek to hand them out! They’re sort of part of his domain even if they are lesser!”

Huh! That was actually a fairly clever maneuver! It neatly broke the trail back to HIM – and grilling Lytek was just not in the cards. All you could do was make an appointment and try asking politely…

(Hala) “I thought he was being a bit evasive… So… you made quasi-exaltation artifacts for all your schoolmates in your almost non-existent “spare” time?”

(Charles) “It didn’t really take very long! There really isn’t anything all that potent in the package – even the armor – but it’s just several different items, and using a factory-cathederal lets me make things in fair-sized batches.”

(Hala, sighing) “And I bet you did this because you wanted to help them out, and didn’t expect anything in return.”

(Charles, with some puzzlement) “But I’ve pretty much got everything I need… I was given a gift, so it’s only fair to give some!”

Oh, that was just too good to be true… he really DID only want to make things nicer. No wonder he was confusing everyone! It would be CENTURIES before everyone would stop digging for the hidden motives and getting more and more frantic when they couldn’t find any!

(Hala) “Nothing wrong with that. I’m just wondering what long-term effects it will have. I heard they had to upgrade the training facilities, for one.”

Oh dear. It was utterly obvious that the boy hadn’t given “consequences” or “long-term” a single second’s thought.

(Hala) “Try to think about it, okay? You’ve gotten away with things because the Sidereals have been busy, but they’ve assigned people to investigate you now. I’m not sure how that’s going to pan out-I thought they couldn’t be stretched much further-but they’re watching you now.”

(Charles) “Well… for the most part that’s all right! If they want to watch me fix things it won’t make a lot of difference – and a lot of things I can delegate now. And if they want me to make some things I have all the current order backlog cleared out except the silly plastic boat that sails on a layer of bubbles over land and sea…”

(Hala) “I don’t know what’s up with that one. It smells like a test to me.”

(Charles) “Well, it seemed sort of frivolous… but if it’s really important I guess I could do it!”

(Hala) “If they think you’re a Primordial anyway, it’s within one’s abilities.”

Now THERE was an amusing thought! The Primordial of Bubble Baths?

(Charles) “Oh well! I suppose so then!”

(Hala) “All right then! I’d better get back to the rest of my guests, and you definitely have things on your plate. You’re welcome to stick around if you want, though.”

(Charles) “For a little bit I think! And thank you for inviting me, I’m sorry if I upset you; I didn’t think that most of the parents would worry about sudden coursework improvements!”

(Hala) “Well… I think we were more worried about what was providing them, though Lytek reassured a lot of us. I just thought the ‘treasure horde’ story was a bit fishy… And you’re welcome!”

(Charles) “Well… I did find a really big treasure horde! It was just that I’d put it there a few days before…”

Charles wandered the party a bit. There weren’t any more fellow students; Hala apparently kept her kids well spaced out. The kids table was the most fun though! Elsewhere it was a fairly typical Yu-Shan party; a bunch of gods and supernatural beings drinking tea, concealing their own motives, and trying to get information or favors from the other guests – but at the Kids table Liana was quietly demonstrating her new abilities, to much mutual delight!

OK, there was some jealousy too, but they weren’t going to pick too hard at the powerful kid.

She was running through a quick flurry of illusions. It was pretty obvious that she’d gone for the three Lunar advanced thaumaturgy Charms.

Charles applauded happily! It was nice to see it working well!

(Liana) “Thanks, Charles! I can make real good images now!”

(Charles) “You’re welcome! I’m glad I could show you something there!”

Hala had sternly cautioned her not to tell anyone about exactly what had happened there – but Liana now had her own theory; Charles’s divine parent had to be somebody REALLY powerful. Somebody who was extraordinarily benign, and protective, and had vast resources, and who was willing to allow a mere god-blooded child access to servants and manses and artifacts and help with thaumaturgy and sorcery and clues to primordial treasure hordes and who was important enough that Lytek would pay attention to his or her offspring – and who, despite all that, would have his kid raised to be humble and helpful! Someone who had passed on unfailing kindness and benevolence to go with extraordinary power…

There weren’t many candidates for that! In fact, as far as she knew, in all Yu-Shan, there was only… one.

In the long absence of the Exalted, history had been made, and tales had grown, of mortal heroes who inspired and led. In the absence of the living weapons of the primordial war, had Children of the Sun been sent in peace? There weren’t very many children at the school who’s parents were totally unknown!

Meanwhile, Hala had just discovered something about Adenic Thaumaturgy…

Wait a minute! It prevented aging? Was she going to be stuck with Peter Pan for a bondmate? Perpetual childhood was NOT a reasonable idea! Hopefully it just slowed it for kids, rather than stopping it entirely!

Related articles

• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XXXVIII – Out of the Umbra (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XXXIX – Gates of the Third Circle (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXVII – Investigating Charles Mansen (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice — Higher Souls (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXX – And No, That Doesn’t Mean What You’re Thinking Out There! (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVII – Hints and Allegations (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXIX — Deva Cutter and the Bronze (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – The Winding Way (Sidereal Manse **** or any Manse *****) (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIII – City and Soul (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted: Aden, the World-Body (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

Verdan Incognita I

Why yes, there are some other places you could go...

On Verdan, the “Civilized World” mostly consists of Eurasia – and not all of that. Much of the southern reaches of Africa, and the North and Eastern reaches of Asia, remain partially unknown.

Much of the vast, frigid reaches of Siberia’s subarctic forests and tundras remain the domain of an assortment of dangerous creatures and of nomadic and semi-nomadic tribesmen – primarily reindeer herders. While the area can hardly be said to be unexplored, vast reaches of trackless wilderness with a few local tribes and fur traders wandering about and a constant risk of being eaten by something about isn’t what most people think of as “civilization”.

China is… strange, mysterious, and utterly foreign. While everyone is aware that ghosts exist, and occasionally hang about, most of the civilized world encourages them to move on; the living rarely appreciate having long-deceased elders occupying the best rooms of the house, kibitzing on their private affairs, and sticking their noses into things. Even more importantly, the modern European notion of “progress” is antithetical to ghosts; a conservative mindset seems to be one of the major factors that encourages a spirit to hang about. China, however, has been encouraging ancestral spirits to hang about for thousands of years – to the point where there might well be more ghosts hanging about than there are living people. The labyrinth of customs, etiquette, and traditions is thick enough to completely baffle most outsiders – and the fact that most ghosts are practicing magicians also complicates matters considerably.

Japan and the isles of Indonesia are places of legend – high in magic, surrounded by monsters, and occupied (where inhabited by humans at all) by most peculiar cultures. While much of the area is close enough to the Eurasian continent for boats to occasionally make the trip, or to jump between islands, the cultures there revolve around relatively primitive social systems and deeply-ingrained magical traditions. Those focus on driving a small number of lux-channels so deeply into the mind that they allow humans to match the raw power of cryptids – giving the local rulers (who can afford to thus train their offspring) an almost unquestioned dominance over the “lower classes”.

Australia and New Guinea (if they exist at all) have not yet been sighted or reported in Europe – although there are plenty of rumors of unknown continents.

The New World is only now being explored – and the process is expensive, and being carried out by small groups. Enormous reaches have only been seen from the air, while even greater areas have never been seen at all. Some areas are, however, reported to have higher magic zones than Eurasia has hosted in eons – and the locals there sometimes resent intrusion.

Antarctica remains unknown as well. One expedition did attempt to reach the south pole by air, but it (and several subsequent attempts) discovered that the continent has a great many volcanoes. The eruptions and updrafts – coupled with the magical disturbances related to the ongoing lux-storm resulting from the magically-charged particles from the solar wind being channeled to the area by the Verdan’s magnetic field – make the antarctic regions virtually inaccessible even by zeppelin. A few reports have been made describing a variety of semi-tropical regions beneath a massive thermal inversion layer and constant cloud cover, but the majority of expeditions to the area have been lost without a trace. That same excessive volcanism has built up the antarctic continent to the point where it depresses the sea floor around it; resulting in towering cliffs at the continental edge and some of the deepest waters on Verdan (and the richest, given the constant geothermally-driven upwelling) surrounding the continent. To earthly eyes that neatly compensates for the water which is not tied up as an icecap, thus maintaining a roughly “normal” sea level throughout the rest of the world.

Iceland / Hyperborea – and the mid-atlantic island of Avalon – are highly volcanic, and are infused with fresh supplies of Lux from the deep mantle – making them some of the most magical places in the world. At least some humans are supposed to live in Hyperborea, and are rumored to have provided powerful magical talismans to the people of Sweden-Norway.

Related articles

• Verdan Arcanis – Technology and Magic II. The Biological Sciences (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Arcanis – Historical Development (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Arcanis – Basic Magic (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Arcanis – Technology and Magic I (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

Verdan Arcanis – Technology and Magic II. The Biological Sciences

To continue with the state of the sciences on Verdan…

On the biological side, the structure of the body is reasonably well understood, as are the nature of physically-based diseases (a few seem to be lux-based in nature). Even relatively modest spells can notably improve resistance to particular mundane diseases – making most of them quite survivable. Similarly, a skilled magician-surgeon can fix a great many things, right up to reattaching limbs – although such radical injuries may require weeks or months of exercise and careful healing-guiding spells to fully repair.

It’s even possible to revive corpses, or simply to alchemically pour lux-forces into a body until it wakes up on it’s own – but what you get generally isn’t what you wanted, and rarely seems to have much to do with the original owner of the corpse – or corpses for those going with a build-your-own approach. On Verdan, the various versions of the Frankenstein tale are more cautionary tale than horror-fantasy.

The germ theory of disease is well-established, as are various methods of keeping germs under control – knowledge which has led to a boom in preserved foods, canning, vaccination, better control in the production of cheeses and wines, and many other applications – where simple spells coupled with an understanding of what to do and how to apply them have yielded excellent results. Similarly, few synthetic medicines are known – but small spells allow the easy extraction and purification of a wide variety of natural compounds. A skilled herbalist can provide specific medications for hundreds of different conditions – and moderate their biological activities with more small spells or infusions of lux.

Contraceptive spells and talismans are trivially easy; conception is a delicate process in any case, and often fails all by itself. Thanks to this, and to the fact that most sexually-transmitted diseases can be fairly readily prevented or treated (and often cured) with magic and medicine, and that – unlike a club – magic is just as powerful and dangerous in the hands of a slender young woman as it is in the hands of a hulking brawler, women have a stronger-than-traditional role. A woman with children is expected to spend much of her time taking care of them (and an unwed mother who isn’t well-supported for her trouble is usually regarded as an idiot) – but women without children can go adventuring, take up professions, and even serve in the military (albeit in fewer roles than men) without any great social opposition. There’s even a small tradition of wives accompanying expeditions in search of their missing husbands or offspring.

Attempts to argue that it is a wives prerogative to break her husband out of jail have enjoyed a vogue after a rather lenient judge ruled in favor of Brunhild Einhere, dismissing criminal charges of jailbreak, flight, and smuggling a fugitive out of the country (albeit not the charges of punching out a policeman and destruction of property) resulting from her blowing up a prison wall and knocking out the first guard who came to investigate – thus buying time to get her husband aloft, and on his way out of England, aboard a smuggler’s balloon. Brunhild paid the fine and repair bill for damaging public property and served three months of a six-month sentence for the assault, but was released early on the grounds of being excessively embarrassing to keep around. She emigrated to Germany to join her husband and has since written a book that has been – at least in the eyes of England’s legal system – even more embarrassing.

Evolutionary theory has, however, lagged badly. In part that’s due to an inability to travel and to observe isolated biomes – but to a large part it’s also because Verdan’s flora and fauna is far more diverse than is at all reasonable, includes creatures which are only partially physical, and – on close investigation – shows a number of inexplicable jumps and some new species that seem to appear from nowhere. The fact that supernatural explanations are obviously potentially valid hasn’t helped. The study of inheritance is still bogged down in theories of blended, acquired, transmitted, and manipulated characteristics, complicated by the fact that not a few animals are capable of using small, innate, shapeshifting magics to adapt to changing environments – creating variants and “sub-species” that will vanish with the next generation, modest shift in climate, or migration.

At the moment, the chief challenge to the notion that humans are a special supernatural creation is coming from the common belief that only truly sapient beings can use a wide variety of spells – while recent observations and experiments which have confirmed that several other higher animals also do so – albeit not nearly as many different effects as humans use.

No Smoking Please!

On the agricultural side, the fact that the New World is only now being discovered means that Eurasia has not yet been introduced to Bell and Chili Peppers, Chicle (the basis for chewing gum), Chocolate, Cocaine, Cotton, Maize, Peanuts, Pineapples, Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes, Paprika, Pumpkins, Squash, Sunflowers, Tobacco, Tomatoes, Turkey, Vanilla, and many kinds of Beans – among other things. If a character wants to smoke something, he or she is just going to have to settle for hemp. On the plus side, Syphilis has not yet reached Eurasia.

Related articles

• Verdan Arcanis – Historical Development (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Arcanis – Basic Magic (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Arcanis – Technology and Magic I (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

Verdan Arcanis – Technology and Magic I

Yes, it's this sort of thing...

The presence of magic has had two effects on the development of science and technology.

• It makes it MUCH easier to test things and to sort out what’s going on on an immediate, local, level. You want to look at something very small? A simple charm will do it. Rough spots in a prototype, minor repairs, and the need for precision craftsmanship can all be easily glossed over with simple spells.
• It also means that a lot of talent is diverted into magic – and magical talents are both inherently limited and die with their user. An engineer who uses a small spell to get past a small hurdle in his design may produce a device that works beautifully, but which will be almost impossible to duplicate without equal magical talents and a through understanding of how it’s supposed to work. A “mad scientist”, who builds devices to help channel and amplify magic, may well create “technologies” that no one else can duplicate and few can use.

Pulled by those two opposing tendencies, the technological development of Verdan has followed the same general course as Earths – but with rather a lot of minor differences.

Naturally enough, the place to start off a look at technology is almost always with power sources.

While wind, water, and muscle power fulfill their ancient roles, the driving force behind the industrial revolution on Verdan is steam, just as it was on Earth. The Steam Engine is the true technological marvel of Verdan; a well-designed steam engine has few moving parts, will function at high efficiency on fuels ranging from wood and coal to paraffin and oil (or, for that matter, on geothermal heat, nuclear energy, or solar power), and requires no wiring or electricity. Thanks to the steam reservoir of the boiler, it provides near-constant power throughout each cycle, rather than the series of explosive kicks provided by an internal combustion engine. Its internal systems are not subjected to those kicks, to superheating, or to corrosive combustion products – and so tend to require far less maintenance than an internal combustion engine.

This, of course, is why virtually all commercial power plants use steam engines (usually the Steam Turbine variant) even today.

There’s always a price of course. Maintaining clean, efficient, combustion requires a reasonably large firebox – and maintaining pressure requires a sizeable boiler and a sizeable tank of water. A heat-sink and condenser system – to avoid having to keep adding water – bulks things up even more. Unlike an internal combustion engine, it takes time to build pressure and start a steam engine. Also unlike an internal combustion engine, the boiler and piping needs to he able to withstand high pressure as well as the engine block.

Steam Engines are powerful, efficient, and versatile. They are also large, heavy, and slow to start. There are a few experimental steam cars and steam tractors are available for larger farms – but personal transport (barring the tinkerings of mad scientists and magicians) is still mostly limited to horses and carriages. For all the wonders of the industrial age, the burden of supporting civilization continues to rest on the hardworking shoulders of the humble plowbeasts of rural farmers, and likely will for many years to come.

In many cities steam also provides supplies of running water and pressurized air – used to run a wide variety of small-scale mechanical devices, to speed message-tubes from place to place, to feed small high-temperature furnaces, and for many other purposes. Unfortunately while such a system is remarkably safe and convenient in many ways, it’s difficult to scale up and provides fairly limited amounts of power. Still, if you need more power than that, that’s what Steam Engines are for.

Electricity is known and many of it’s basic properties are understood – but it’s primarily the domain of tinkerers, inventors, and mystics who claim that it’s somehow related to Lux. While there are crude generators and electrical motors of various kinds available, at least as many experimenters rely on various types of batteries. The wildest tinkerers rely on “Lightning Bottles” – basically Leyden Jars constructed of Lux-charged alchemical materials and augmented with a few minor spells so as to be quite literally capable of storing lightning bolts – which is, of course, the only way to really get them fully charged; current generators would take weeks to produce that kind of power and are quite incapable of reaching such voltages. Occasional inventors try to combine Lightning Bottles with various forms of electrical propulsion to create personal vehicles – although such attempts to “ride the lightning” are often incredibly dangerous to operate. Most cities ban such things within their limits; when some foolish tinkerer crashes their new electric “motorcycle” with it’s dual-lightning-bottle power supply into a building at a hundred and fifty miles per hour the casualties are rarely limited to the inventor.

For references sake, a fully-charged Lightning Bottle contains about as much energy as two gallons of gasoline or roughly 100 kilograms of TNT – although it can generally be used in a considerably more efficient manner. Lightning Bottles make relatively poor warheads; while they can blow up a laboratory quite effectively, detonating one expends most of their energy as light, melting of their structure, a modest electromagnetic pulse (which will probably pass undetected), and heating of the surrounding area. As far as powering electrical equipment goes, a Lightning Bottle is about equivalent to a full tank of gas in your car.

The most practical use of electricity (unless you count the speculative “cures” offered by the purveyors of electrical shock treatments and “animal magnetism”) so far is the telegraph – which is in fairly widespread use. There is, however, little call for major generators and electrification projects; light spells are one of the simplest and easiest of all magics, and are used in almost every home and business.

Chemical explosives – most often in the form of gunpowder, dynamite, or nitroglycerin – are in widespread use. With applications in mining, construction, demolitions, road-cutting, and war (among many others), the availability of standardized, reliable, explosives have revolutionized a hundred fields, ranging from archeology to warfare. They make it possible to move vast quantities of stone, to clear away rubble, to open routes to hidden locations – and, of course, to either shoot individuals or to blow people up in large groups. In many ways, explosives are steams compliment; like steam, they place enormous concentrations of force and energy in the hands of their users, like steam they allow works to be accomplished in moments that would take months of hard labor otherwise – and, like steam, they can be exceedingly dangerous to work with.

While trains, barges, rivergoing steamships, shallow-draft coasters (designed to run up on the beach at any sign of trouble), balloons, and horse-drawn wagons provide most of the commercial transport, the Zeppelin is now the go-to vehicle for long-range exploration. Top-end Zeppelins are tremendously expensive due to the use of alchemically-crafted structural materials to cut down on weight – but zeppelins can cross the seas with reasonable safety, travel at fair speeds, don’t rely entirely on magic to stay on course, and have an excellent range. Thanks to the use of steam engines, and consequent ability to burn anything from alcohol to wood, when they’re out of fuel they can restock almost anywhere except over water, ice, or barren deserts – in which case there is always magic to fall back on. The cargo capacity may be limited, but that’s a small thing when the alternative is often being unable to reach your destination at all – or in many MANY times the time. With their development, the race to explore – and claim, and exploit – the world beyond

Armored trains, on the other hand, have proven relatively ineffectual in military affairs; it’s just too easy to tear up the tracks. This has led to attempts to provide armored trains with various forms of treads or recirculating tracks – most of which have turned out to be depressingly easy to jam/so heavy that they bog down/nigh-impossible to turn. The success of such efforts has been relatively limited so far, save for one or two unusual engagements along the border of Germany and France.

Related articles

• Verdan Arcanis – Basic Magic (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Verdan Arcanis – Historical Development (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

Verdan Arcanis – Historical Development

Yes, these ARE obsolete

Mankind’s early Eurasian history on Verdan resembles events on Earth relatively closely up until around the Age of Discovery. Yes, Verdan has some magic, and even relatively minor magic has an impact – but where fewer children died of minor illnesses, contraceptive charms meant fewer were born. Where genuinely functioning curses were hurled at rulers, capable court magicians countered them. People sometimes escaped tidal waves thanks to timely magical warnings, but sometimes perished in fires resulting from mistaken sorceries. Life was a little easier and more comfortable – but the broad course of history barely changed (even if events which were mythical on Earth were often quite literal on Verdan) despite the thousand of details which did.

Yes, that’s pretty weird, even if it is a common conceit of alternate histories and historical fantasies. While it’s true enough that a few small changes to history might have little effect on the overall outcome, you can never know when one small change might build and build, echoing down the chains of causality. With tens of thousands of such changes, some guiding force must be influencing the course of evolution and history to keep things even vaguely on track.

The players may or may not find out what that is eventually, but it is currently centered on a particular site near the Mediterranean – and is the reason why the Mediterranean Sea is relatively safe to sail upon compared to the rest of the worlds seas and oceans.

On Earth, as their resources, technologies, and organizational systems improved, the peoples of Europe began the Age of Discovery – using the seas as highways of exploration. While earlier migrations and voyages had been made, taking human colonists to distant islands such as Tahiti or making contact with far-flung lands like the expeditions of Admiral Zheng He, such things had never become routine – and so their impact at “home” was generally limited to the exchange of a few ideas here and there. Before the industrial revolution exploratory cultures generally did not have the resources or sufficient advantages to impose their will across any great oceanic distance. Even the ruthless military organization of Imperial Rome much preferred to stick with land routes when it could.

Building upon a foundation of industrial production, military might, and social organization that considerably outstripped the institutions of the rest of the world, and driven by a search for trade routes and new markets, the Age of Discovery changed that; European explorers circumnavigated the world, charted it’s major landmasses, and dominated vast areas. Colonial Empires poured wealth back into Europe, and trade burgeoned.

On Verdan venturing more than a few miles beyond the coast places a vessel in terrible peril. While inland seas are usually survivable, only madmen, visionaries, and stormlost mariners brave the open seas beyond the continental shelves. Such individuals occasionally return with tales of fantastic creatures and lands, but the vast majority simply vanish without a trace. Enormous stretches of Verdan – including much of the Americas, New Zealand, Greenland, Iceland, most oceanic islands and island chains, and possibly Australia – remain untouched and unexplored to this day. While Verdan’s “Age of Exploration” was, and is, driven by the same basic factors until very recently it was primarily land-based, and focused on the interiors and more distant reaches of Africa and Asia.

Interestingly enough, from an earthly point of view, the lands, creatures, and cultures become increasingly exotic as one moves further and further away from the Mediterranean basin.

Currently the great European powers mostly believe themselves inherently superior to the rest of the world (adhering to the General Characteristics of Victorian Settings). They include…

England: While the English Channel and much of the North Sea is relatively safe as far as the seas of Verdan go, that’s a lot less safe than it might be. With naval power more or less out of the question, England has developed a long tradition of aerial travel.

OK, admittedly that’s mostly the use of hot-air balloons and minor spells to push them the way you want to go – but English balloonists established a close relationship with the peoples of Ireland, and kept up a regular trade with France and Spain. With relatively little need for defense spending, England has built up it’s industries quite impressively.

With the recent development of powered lighter-than-air craft, and improvements in lightweight structural elements, lifting gases, and other technologies, England has become the worlds first air power – and has used that advantage, and it’s industrial might, to support and help expand troubled regimes in Africa (most notably in Egypt and southwards), China, India, and even Japan – rapidly converting Egypt and India into client-states, China into an ally, and opening limited relationships with the isolationist isles of Japan. Even now, the Queen’s aerial fleet is ranging further and further afield, and may soon circumnavigate the globe.

The Germanic Empire: Under the rule of the Kaiser, the Germanic Empire is a heavily militaristic state – ruthless and pragmatic and with formidable industries (even if they ARE a bit heavily focused on weapons). Until relatively recently it’s energies were absorbed by internal troubles, but over the last twenty years it has come to see the rapid worldwide expansion of the other major European powers as a serious military menace – and has embarked on both a campaign of sabotaging it’s rivals projects and expanding itself, both into Asia (which has brought it into conflict with Russia and it’s Bogatars) and into the middle east. The Kaiser is now hurriedly attempting to adopt – and, if possible, improve on – England’s aerial technologies.

Imperial France under the Napoleonic Line is theoretically a constitutional republic, but that is more fiction than fact since the Napoleons essentially dominate the government, regardless of legal theories. France has currently extended it’s influence over Spain (effectively a client-state) and around much of the Mediterranean, linking it’s colonies with both ocean travel via the (relatively safe) Mediterranean and via aerial transport. While it is, as yet, no match for England’s aerial fleets, it is rapidly developing the necessary techniques and retains a great deal of political influence across Europe.

Russia under the Tsar is entangled with territorial disputes and border conflicts with the Germanic Empire, but – being well behind on the industrial and organizational fronts – has definitely been coming off second-best. Still, Russia has plenty of unexplored territory to fall back on – and has a good deal of influence in the far east. Russia is attempting to import modern technologies, but – at least for the moment – is mostly relying on it’s Bogatars for defense.

The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary is mostly focused on internal politics and on its delicate balance of power with the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman Empire is trying to pull itself out of past centuries by it’s bootstraps – attempting to modernize it’s society, legal system, production base, military, and pretty much everything else within a few short decades. If it’s heroic effort succeeds it may once again become a major power – regaining the prominence that it held for centuries. If it fails, it may be time for the Ottoman Empire to finally fade into history.

Sweden (which currently controls Norway as well) is currently undergoing a religious revival of sorts, rumored to be fueled by some contact with the legendary realm of Hyperborea.

In any case, the recent discovery of the New World – and all it’s reported wonders – has opened an entirely new front in the European colonial competition.

Related articles

• Verdan Arcanis – Basic Magic (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

Verdan Arcanis – Basic Magic

Very symbolic, but perhaps a simpler name could still convey your meaning?

With the Star Wars game winding down thanks to some exceptionally clever maneuvering by the players, it’s time to start setting up the next one – and, thanks to a series of player votes, it’s going to be the Baba Yaga system with a quasi-victorian setting with some magic where much of the world is still unexplored. There shall be lost worlds, mysterious cities in the depths of Africa, and strange creatures in abundance.

Ergo, welcome to Verden Arcanis

Lux – the stuff of magic – is one of the major differences between Verden and Earth, so we’re going to take a look at how it works in the setting. This is rather more detail than the characters will really know – but it’s fundamental to such a lot of the other differences in the setting that not letting the players have a bit of extra information would require tremendous amounts of work elsewhere.

The energy of magic and the mind – commonly known as Lux – is born in the fires of the sun, deep within the core, where the other elements of life also come into being. Unlike the physical elements (most of which will be forever trapped within the core) subtle Lux is an energy field that associates with matter, rather than a form of matter – and can jump from particle to particle, diffusing outwards from the core to charge the corona and the solar wind. Thin as that is, the magical potential of each particle in the sun and corona has built until the immense flow of Lux from the fusion reactions of the solar core is in radiative equilibrium – washing out across the solar system, accumulating in the mass of the planets, and building terrible potentials at the heliopause or during solar flares.

Lux in high concentrations twists and warps the environment somewhat – distorting the interactions between the particles of matter that host it and which make it up that environment – but the vast majority of its potential can only be tapped by a living being with the proper mental channels to handle it (perhaps the mind or soul is an aspect of Lux). Thus, over the primordial eons, Lux built up in the whirl of dust and gas that would become the planets, and anointed the substance of forming worlds – a primal legacy of power, both awaiting and encouraging the rise of life.

Fully-sapient, self-aware life forms can form esoteric mental channels, and vary them – the fundamental basis of the study of magic. Unfortunately, this means that some effects are only available to those who subscribe to particular beliefs, are psychologically disturbed, or otherwise depart from mental stability. Bizarre cults, madmen with powerful supernatural talents, and similar aberrants provide a never-ending source of problems for the authorities – leading to numerous attempts to restrict the study of magic to the “right kind of people”.

This rarely works, but does mean that members of the “upper crust” often possess enough arcane skill to partially justify the notion that they are set apart from ordinary folk.

Unfortunately, that also means that the magic of sapient beings is weaker (if far, FAR, more versatile) than that of highly-developed nonsapients with deeply-ingrained, and highly specific, mental channels. Thus certain higher animals (often referred to as “Cryptids”, in part because of their cryptic nature and in part due to their preferences for isolated and underground areas where there is less human competition for Lux) possess powerful, individual, talents and can be extremely dangerous. Perhaps fortunately, most animals are simply stronger, healthier, and more talented at survival than creatures with no access to magic – which is to say, anything with too small a brain.

Perhaps equally unfortunately, the flow of Lux through matter is slow. Despite the steady influx of lux-charged particles from space and occasional vulcanism bringing up undepleted Lux-charged material from the planets depths, the distribution of magical power across Verden is spotty at best. Over much of the ancient continental surfaces (and for a considerable distance down), the level of available Lux is relatively low. Slightly higher potentials occur on mountaintops (where the atmosphere shields less against the particle-stream from space), near streams which are concentrating sediments from such heights, in dense materials (which naturally – and as a function of their atomic masses – concentrate what magical potential is available), and in very deep and unexplored caves.

The continental Lux-depletion does not apply to the relatively new-from-the-mantle material of the sea floors; the oceans beyond the continental shelves – and especially the oceanic ridges and subduction zones – are places of wild magic and the monstrous creatures that thrive in such an environment. The oceans are terrible barriers to the spread of land-based life, and even creatures of the air cross the seas only with great caution. Thus the continents beyond Eurasia and Africa are often the homes of exotic creatures indeed – and much of the globe has never been reached by men.

The constant influx of Lux-charged particles channeled to the poles by the magnetosphere produces similar dangers – as well as most peculiar weather – there as well. Occasional eras of terrible monsters appear in the geological record where major volcanic flows covered massive areas of land; unfortunately, the geological and paleontological sciences are not yet advanced enough for humans to know this. Unsurprisingly, volcanic islands are often terribly high magical zones – and are also usually places of legend, as human colonies and visitors have an extremely difficult time surviving there.

More localized magical resources do exist; smaller volcanoes may raise magic levels in the vicinity, meteors may contain impressive amounts of magical energy (and have often been forged into talismans – although these have a regrettable tendency to “betray their owners” when their power, at last, runs out), and certain crystals and other materials seem to retain it better – and can be used to store magical power. Such finds are extremely valuable, as most accessible deposits in Eurasia have long since been depleted.

A few – even rarer – exotic metals and materials seem to actually generate Lux; even when drained and shielded from further influx they gradually rebuild their Lux potential – but the process is generally too slow to be of much use. Some magicians have reported some success in experimenting with spells designed to accelerate the process (somehow) – but such magicians tend to die of mysterious illnesses, or occasionally in equally-mysterious fires, or from spells gone mysteriously awry. It’s not generally a popular field of research.

Related articles

• Champions of the Gods (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Worlds of Secret Magic (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XXXIX – Gates of the Third Circle (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XXXIX – Gates of the Third Circle

Are you QUITE sure you know what you're doing here?

Hala’s little reverie hadn’t taken up much time – although she would like to know what caste her bondmate was… After twenty thousand years there was no easy way to find out much about who’d had your exaltation in the first age – or who your bondmate was. Lytek was about the only reliable source, and he usually refused to discuss the matter…

Clearly the child was a skilled craftsman, so Twilight was the obvious choice, but those Wyld connections kind of implied an Eclipse who just happened to be more artificer than diplomat – and the Solar Exalted were supposed to be impossibly good at almost anything.

Charles’s mind, as it turned out, was still on sandwiches. He really was a child.

(Charles) “Well, there are much worse things that someone could be stealing than sandwiches!”

(Hala) “Thing is, I’m not sure it WAS a small god. The Essence signature was weird.”

There was only so much Essence she could use through the falcon though; she hadn’t been able to get too much.

(Charles) “Hm… Well, whatever-it-was will probably turn up again soon! Maybe it was some sort of Yu-Shan raccoon!”

Raccoons were cute! Maybe he could make some with magic powers!

(Hala) “What crazy idea just entered your head now?… Never mind, I’m not sure I want to know.”

Dinner proceeded normally, albeit with some odd looks Charles’s way. Apparently having kids at the adult table was not normal for Righteous Hala.

Well, if she needed an excuse she could always ask him to make an artifact… Charles kind of wondered exactly what and how she knew, but Lunars often knew weird stuff!

(Hala) “Hm… do you have any particularly interesting items that you haven’t absorbed.

(Charles) “Uhm… Any particular field?”

(Hala) “Well… moonsilver, sensory artifacts, stuff that helps with Manses. I do temporary ones when I’m not stuck up here.”

(Charles) “Hm… There’s a moonsilver gizmo around somewhere that I picked up in a junk shop, but what it does is so buried that I haven’t had time to decipher it… Manse boosters usually need to be attuned to particular manses… Is it in the borderlands or near chaos pockets? There are some good tricks you can play there!

(Hala) “Mostly. I’ll pay well… though from what I heard, you don’t want too much of that.”

(Charles) “Hmm… There’s the Necklace of Dreams! Or I could make you a set of graces if you don’t have any already!”

Hala passed on the Graces. She was a bit more leery of the Raksha than Charles – as most people were; he’d been more or less under diplomatic immunity, and immune to most of their powers, in any case, as long as he could remember. She was not – and for all the benefits of Graces, would rather not leave the Raksha that opening. The Necklace of Dreams was more interesting though; it lasted longer than her charm, and didn’t require that she stay in the demesne – even if it did mean giving up a lot of control.

A Necklace of Dreams is Raksha magic – each of it’s dozen or so lovely gems holds a fantasy (whether of a mighty army, an enchanted palace, a welcoming inn, or a dark and trackless forest) waiting to be released in a Wyld Zone. While such fantasies will fade away at Calibration even if they should somehow pass unchallenged until then, few tired travelers feel much of an impulse to banish a convenient inn even if they do doubt it’s reality. A normal Necklace of Dreams is just a thaumaturgical talisman – although you do need the help of a Raksha to make them.

In this case, thanks to Charles and his Mardi Gras manse’s quasi-Raksha (normal Raksha are explicitly prohibited from making manses) the gems of this necklace contain fantasies of manses with the “Immutable” power – which shields them from further shaping, including the imposition of Creation’s rules by the expenditure of a point of willpower. If you release such a fantasy on top of an existing demesne of level 2+ it will manifest a manse – which then becomes immutably “real”, at least until the next Calibration, or until the minor maintenance requirement associated with the Immutable function is not met, or until something happens to the demesne or structure, whichever comes first. Unfortunately, such a manse usually included a variety of more-or-less random features (The game master spends one-half the remaining creation points). Necklaces like this are probably Artifact * or **; even if they are strictly temporary, and limited to working in wyld zones, this can still be extremely handy.

Hmm… That was DEFINITELY an interesting notion! She’d never really considered the possibilities of combining Raksha reality-shaping with some other method of stabilizing the results… Wait; if you shaped a demesne too, you could use that to power a manse which kept it stable, which…

Charles had tried that one; it didn’t work – or at least it took more than a fantasy to create usable dragon lines. For that you had to shape the wyld instead of just throwing a fantasy over it.

All you needed to do was break the link with Calibration – which should be quite doable with either a zone of influence to keep the disruptions of Calibration from affecting the dragon lines sustaining the manse – or to build it with wyld revocation devoted to the purpose – and you could make semi-permanent stable areas, capable of existing within the Wyld for as long as their guardians and maintainers could keep them going.

Wait, that sounded a great deal like Creation itself!

Still, if Charles really could provide artifacts that could produce temporary Manses like that, HER friends at least were going to find him invaluable!

Speaking of which… she asked to see the construct he’d used to fool the Sidereals. It had to be an impressive one, their distraction by infighting, politics, and lack of sleep aside.

Well, since she seemed to know about it, Charles thought that he might as well show her! The privacy wards were quite adequate…

Aden currently included about two hundred and fifty thousand people, a hundred thousand square miles, a similar number of manse-guardians and servitors, nearly four hundred and fifty manses, and the twenty-four “third circle souls”. It was saturated in healing and thaumaturgy-supporting energies, and was spectacularly beautiful, full of “natural” wonders and marvelous creatures.

By Luna herself… It was no wonder that the child had fooled the Sidereals! The place… blazed with youth and health and good intentions… and power. She sat down – only to realize that the place was so hospitable that it had hastily created a chair, a table with drinks, and a small pavilion to accommodate her sudden desire to sit down.

Impressive and unnerving! If this was what a Solar who had been Exalted for only a few years could do, she could not imagine the unknown wonders of the First Age!

(Hala) “So how long did this take to build?”

(Charles) “Uhm… Lets see… It takes an hour or so per each block of territory, and another hour or so for each manse… and a little planning time… It’s taken most of my spare time for the last five months now! But now the manse-guardians can handle a lot of little stuff for me!.. Oh! Sometimes I got sleepy while I was working and things got a little silly! That’s why the Baalgrogs!

(Hala, with more than a bit of startlement; the child had been shaping reality while half-asleep?) “That explains THAT, then. At least they’ve found a useful niche… Any other unintended arrivals in here I need to know about?”

(Charles) “Uhm… Probably! I haven’t really gotten a good accounting… About a quarter of a million people have moved in though! That’s actually turned out to be pretty helpful! A fair number of them have been saying “thank you” a lot – they seem to think I’m a patron god or something – and that provides some ambrosia to work with for making more things!”

(Hala) “Okay, you’re going to have to explain that one… though ambrosia’s never a bad thing.”

(Charles) “Well, some of the newer manses, like the two from the other day, are still generating their creatures, and some I haven’t seen yet since I’ve been busy since I built them, so there probably are more oddities there. The people were from villages and things that were going to be blown up and such.”

(Hala) “Nice of you. That would definitely make most mortals think you were a god. I take it you’re letting them go about their business here?”

(Charles) “Pretty much! The manse-guardians are mostly handling the organization, and there’s lots of room and supplies!”

(Hala) “They look like they should be able to handle most things, then, even if there are a few troublemakers.”

(Charles) “Well, if there’s any serious problem I can always re-edit the landscape!”

Hala wondered briefly… wasn’t that kind of stunt usually restricted to elders? On the other hand, he WAS a Solar, and looking at the place…

(Hala) “That’s helpful… and looking at your Essence flows, I think you can do that or similar tricks from pretty much anywhere.”

(Charles) “Well… It is all me really! I don’t really know if anyone in the first age tried this sort of thing… or was really capable of it. They seemed to be much more externally-focused, and much older, and I’m pretty sure that Lytek and Devon were doing some extensive meddling with things when it came to me! I don’t think the first age Solars ever tried rebuilding their own souls to make them bigger and happier and more welcoming!”

(Hala) “That IS pretty niche… so, what do you know about this Devon?”

(Charles) “Uhm… He made an artifact-tome that automatically recorded his life. Usually at about a fifty pages of details per day – and then he went and lived for better than thirty thousand years! I know enough to say that I know very little of all that stuff! Because a few hundred pages of that are quite enough to drive me up a wall! And there are nearly five hundred milllion of them…”

Damn. She’d been hoping that Charles’s memories would be better than hers. Still, a detailed biography of…

(Hala) “What, you found something that important and you didn’t… oh, wait, kid. I understand, but I’d still skim it . . . or at least speed read. I think thaumaturges can do that.”

(Charles) “I was hoping maybe I could make a “summarize” spell or something sometime!”

(Hala) “Well, tell me if you do. We seem to be equally in the dark about him.”

Charles was actually somewhat afraid to pry into Devon’s seemingly-endless chapters… Just how much of his life had Devon set up in advance? A thirty-thousand-year-old Solar Exalt Arch-sorcerer… There might not be much of his life that WAS his own. If he didn’t have much of any free will, he’d at least prefer to preserve the illusion!

Also, of course, because exploring the lifetime of his Exaltations prior bearer – beyond the mystery of why he had inherited no memories of Devon at all – hadn’t been much of a priority in the limited game time available. Secondarily, because the game master has not yet revealed what kind of role Devon was taking in the campaign.

Hala was considerably more eager. All she really knew was the name, that they had a platonic relationship… and that her incarnation at the time found him simultaneously frustrating and fascinating. On the other hand… if the boy was serious about five hundred MILLION pages… How many mind-manipulating effects might be hidden in that mass? Even if it was just the skillful writing of an Exalt that old the psychological impact might be considerable… and the kid was… pretty nervous about it.

Well, frustrating as that WAS, it was also pretty understandable! She might as well change the subject!

(Hala) “So, tell me more about your other abilities. You probably do more than make things and use thaumaturgy.”

OK, Exalted-tier thaumaturgy was pretty versatile – but surely he’d studied something else? Even if he HAD obviously been pretty focused on “build”…

(Charles) “Other than thaumaturgy? I mostly do manses and artifacts and sorcery – and lots of hearthstones. Oh! And running a religion that helps the people in it, and a few other bits and pieces.

(Hala) “That’s… very useful. No wonder the Sidereals were fooled.”

What, no combat? Surely the boy had to know a LITTLE! Sure, he had plenty of passive defenses – some remarkably good ones it seemed – but Exalted combatants had their ways of getting past those! Owning a huge pile of hearthstones and artifacts was indeed very useful – but you still needed SOME combat skills!

(Hala) “Are you sure you don’t need more combat training, though? I’m happy to teach when I can spare the time.”

(Charles) “I put in a little – although more wouldn’t hurt of course. Last time was awful!”

(Hala) “I think I can handle that. I won’t go any easier on you than your teachers, though!”

(Charles) “OK! I’ve got more Crystal Arenas if you’d like some though!”

(Hala) “Huh, so that was you. I shouldn’t be too surprised, but thanks. They’ll be useful for special scenarios.”

(Charles) “OK!”

Charles was actually pretty relieved; she hadn’t asked WHAT was horrible about last time. They’d DIED. Why couldn’t it have been like the fight in the water manse?

Hala, of course, was assuming that he was talking about his dislike of his last combat course, not a fight with three Abyssal Exalts… She, of course, considered having to kill regrettable but sometimes inevitable.

(Hala) “I’m sensing all kinds of Essence around here, by the way – including Nocturnal, and that’s pretty hard to get a hold of! I assume the weird type is whatever you’re using to trick the Sidereals?”

(Charles) “I made a new kind to power better thaumaturgy and manses and things!”

(Hala, laughing) “Can you get that outside of here? I’d like to see if I could emulate that one!”

(Charles) “I can set up a link!”

(Hala) “Is that traceable back here?”

(Charles) “Only if they can pretty much tie you down and study you!”

(Hala) “I just thought I should ask. I’m eager to see what I can do with this – I assume “Adenic”? – essence-aspect. And while we’re on Manses . . . how did you get Nocturnal Essence in here? That’s pretty obscure.”

(Charles) “Uhm… I tried creating a demesne and a manse to focus it to see what it was like! I studied it for a bit, then let it revert to Sidereal – but it looks like it’s out again now! It must have been hiding! It must be able to change types back and forth when no one is watching! That’s pretty cool!”

(Hala) “My friends and I are curious about them. There’s some similarities to us… but the Sidereals have been keeping a fairly tight lid on information involving them. If you could get me in touch with the one at your factory-cathedral, I’d appreciate it.”

(Charles) “Well, that’s easy!”

Huh… WAY obliging. Jose was a much harder sell when she was talking to him. That was going to get the kid in MASSIVE trouble someday, she just knew it! You couldn’t oblige EVERYONE!

She had to admit that all the mythological and fantasy creatures running about were amusing, if a bit frivolous. Still, a hundred or so rank-five manses gave him quite a selection of Hearthstones to choose from.

(Hala) “Could I meet one of your “Third Circle” stand-ins? Or haven’t you got any yet? You’re going to need some if you want to keep up the front!”

Charles called in Mishinago the Philosophical Storm, Master of Alchemy – a pleasant young man with spectacles, and tea… (Even if he did occasionally take the form of a colossal alchemical serpent).

Mishinago the Philosophical Storm:

• Essence 10, Willpower 10, about 220 motes (base), ~70 Divine Charms, Resources N/A.
• May selectively provide protection from environmental effects to those within 250 feet.
• May selectively grant temporary access to +1 Essence and +3 Charms similarly – although this does not stack directly with similar powers.
• May provide supplies and equipment instantly as purchasable by his N/A resources for up to 2500 people at a cost of four motes.
• May use Occult in place of all crafting skills.
• Before Charms roll 30d for all tasks, 34d for mental tasks, 38d+up to 33 autosuccesses for Occult and 39 for Alchemy – easily enough to perform transmutation on a global scale.

(Mishinago, bowing elegantly with 22 successes on performance) “And good evening madam! I was informed that you wished to meet one or more of us?”

(Hala, returning the bow) “Good evening to you as well. I was curious about how Charles was arranging things around here. This is nothing like the world bodies I’ve seen before.”

(Mishinago) “Well, I suspect that most of those are rather badly messed up!”

(Hala) “Like you wouldn’t believe… Anyway, I get the feeling you’re skilled at helping people out.”

(Mishinago) “Well yes indeed! Vast destruction and such is within my power of course – but I much prefer to work in other fashions!”

(Hala) “Sounds about right… if you would indulge me, mighty one, could you demonstrate?”

(Mishinago) “What would you care for? Perhaps give a barren rocky planet a breathable atmosphere and fertile soil? Thats one of Charles’s pet projects!”

Even his souls were that obliging? Well, it was HIS soul hierarchy… though his dedication to adding life to Creation was admirable. And the sheer power he was willing to throw around… the elders were not nearly that cavalier.

(Hala) “Nothing that big. In a couple of days, I’m returning to the borders of the universe. There’s some communities over there I need to make a trading post for. Think you could make some supplies for that?”

(Mishinago) “Most certainly! What sort of things would you like?”

(Hala) “I can build the Manse for that on my own. How about goods? Building materials, tools, cold iron, and seeds are always handy!”

Mishinago called on another specialist for seeds – but that took mere moments.

Hala was definitely impressed. If she didn’t know better, she’d say that was a true Third Circle. Considering things, it might well be…

(Hala) “How’d you make him? I’m pretty sure the lower souls are Manse servitors and guardians, but he seems like something special.”

(Charles, wondering if he should keep that secret) “Well… There are nine fifth-rank artifacts, and ten fourth, and seven major manses, and four other guardians, and some other things helping him!”

What, he was funneling a geomantic network and enough artifacts to equip a dozen Exalts into an individual being? Still, at least the boy had SOME caution about revealing his secrets. Considering the amount of sheer raw power involved, that was a very good thing to be a bit circumspect about! It still said that his resources were quite impressive – and fully explained the shortage of sleep. No wonder he was up all the time, he had to make the stuff to keep up his cover… and help people.

(Hala) “Thanks for your time, Lord Mishinago. The people of Satries Prime are going to appreciate this stuff.”

(Mishinago) “Oh, you are quite welcome! Since Charles wishes to oblige you, so do we all! If they should need anything else, there are our various powers and a dozen factory-cathedrals scattered around to call on!”

What a dozen? Were there that many still functioning in the rest of creation put together? Maybe the boy wasn’t being entirely unreasonable in trying to fix everything he saw.

She opted to return to the dinner party. She needed time to think about all this. Her guests were probably beginning to wonder what was going on anyhow. How could the boy POSSIBLY have so much power – and still be so naive?

Could he Sidereals possibly be RIGHT? She was going to have to try to get an appointment with Lytek.

Related articles

• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XXXVIII – Out of the Umbra (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exaltd – Aden, The Lost World, and Mardi Gras (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – The Path of the Smiling Tiger (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – Seed of Worlds (Manse *****) (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIII – City and Soul (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – Aden Shining Dream, the Third Circle (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXVII – Investigating Charles Mansen (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – Let’s Take This Elsewhere! (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXII – The City of Crystal Dreams (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXX – And No, That Doesn’t Mean What You’re Thinking Out There! (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XXXVIII – Out of the Umbra

Bigger on the inside is it? Well, it would HAVE to be wouldn't it?

Sadly, despite Mr Montagues calling them in, the Nocturnals hadn’t been able to help out with the analysis much; there was just no way of knowing what WAS “normal” for a young primordial! Nobody even knew how they came into being outside of “they appeared in the Wyld”. Still, Jose had been quite relieved when Mr Montague called for some help with the analysis, rather than for help with surviving…

He’d have ordered an assault if he had to – or if Montague hadn’t come back out (albeit not without asking whether he’d be along in a few minutes first, and not without regrets in any case) – but he was certainly glad that he hadn’t had to try it. A new aftershock war in the middle of Yu-Shan might not have gone at all well! It had taken most of the Celestial Exalts in existence to deal with one well-prepared primordial last time, and, while Charles might be a pacifist, everything they had on him implied that he was ANYTHING but unprepared!

And most of the other Celestials were gone, many of the Sidereals were unavailable, and the boy probably had plenty of allies of his own! With the gods still subject to the primordial geas such a conflict could easily have torn Yu-Shan to shreds…

He thanked the Maidens that the child’s world-body appeared to be utterly benign, and free of Yozi taint, and that he hadn’t had to order an attack.

Now, of course, he’d have to find some way to get an analyst into “Aden” and survey the place… It was still all too possible that the “child” was up to something underhanded! And there would have to be monitoring… As if anyone had ANY time to spare for that!

Oh by the Maidens… Monitoring one Jouten just wasn’t going to be enough! Monitoring a Primordial called for monitoring dozens of souls, in a wide variety of locations! Some things could be trusted to mortal and semi-mortal followers and children – even if they WERE terribly easy to avoid – but they’d all be lucky to get any sleep at all!

Oh DAMN IT TO OBLIVION! The boy was…. a top member of the school evasion club too!

“Prepared” was NOT the word… Could a Primordial possibly have an aspect in Contingency Plans? An overview was probably going to be the best that they could do… How many third-circle souls did the boy have anyway? Presuming that he’d finished creating them? That MIGHT give them some indication of his power level if they could find out – and a potential target if they HAD to go after him.

Gaia, Autochthon, and all the Incarnae… They’d faced better than thirty of these things during the primordial war? How in creation had they won? Just how much had they lost?

Charles, meanwhile, was very pleased… His third-circle “souls” were working out quite well! Sure, they’d be foci of study once people started really investigating, but they were GREAT in their fields of thaumaturgy! And, while thaumaturgy might not be the biggest power in creation (at least not unless you boosted it beyond all reason, in which case it was like anything else boosted beyond all reason) it generally didn’t damage the universe! He had enough things to fix already!

With as much geomantic power as his “souls” could back it with, they could perform thaumaturgy on a planetary scale. That meant he could do terraforming of barren worlds! And, even at that level, thaumaturgy was unlikely to show up in the loom! That way it wouldn’t bother ANYBODY!

Adding more people was just a tiny bit more trouble – but as long as you weren’t interfering with established destinies, there were more people around all the time. They just got added in! And that meant that no one would mind it if he made more room for people…

Hm… If you named places that were reasonable matches, and then opened the portals, could you put the territorial gods back to work too? Ooh, wait! The Stargate project would be good for the Sidereals and exploring the larger universe, but all he needed for prayer and paperwork and such to flow into Yu-Shan (and put some gods back to work) would be some manses on each new planet with continuously active gates there! After all, that was how stuff got from Earth to Yu-Shan… He could even use weaker gates, since if you set them up to transmit essence patterns only you’d have to be dematerialized to use them… And he could repopulate those planets with many extinct species, so that – when he hooked them up with gates that the interstellar dragon lines could use them as shortcuts – those worlds would feed into Yu-Shan and put various gods back to work like Three Toes had been put back to work when his portfolio was restored!

Now, if he set up some colonies… How much infrastructure? An awful lot of people seemed to find the slightly-pastoral or woodlands lifestyle pretty attractive… Hm. A few service-healing-and-utility manses around should cover a lot of what was needed, and a little basic thaumaturgy training and his artifact-granting charm would cover a lot more. It would probably be best to see how well that worked out before he did too much intrusive meddling!

And if the “frontier”, “backwoods”, and “small town” lifestyles didn’t work out for people he could always intervene some more! He had a LOT of intervention available after all!

As other Sidereals found out about what was going on they would, naturally enough, develop their own ideas about that to do about it… A few, of course, would feel that they had a weapon of mass destruction wandering through the streets of Yu-Shan, but quite a few others would want to try to influence his development…

The falcon returned a couple of days later, to once again be welcome – and to find snacks and such waiting (even if it didn’t say who got all the sandwiches).

It ate – but it also had something tied around it’s neck… When it realized that Charles wanted to look, it actually held up the item. It seemed to be a small bag… full of shavings of cold iron? That was odd! Was it worried about the fey? And did it want him to have it or was it for it’s own protection?

The falcon was holding the bag open and looking at him – and didn’t seem to be bothered by him being nearby with it open either. Charles picked up a filing, held it up, and pointed to himself questioningly; he could have used telepathy, but that seemed so unsporting!

The falcon did absolutely nothing to stop him when he took a filing – and moved closer to him when he pointed to himself. It definitely seemed to want him to have or carry some iron filings… Well, he didn’t really think it was necessary, but he was willing to be obliging!

(Charles) “Uhm… for protection against the fey? I don’t really need any I think – I already have some very strong protections – but OK!”

He tucked some away. He had no great objection to carrying some iron filings; you never knew when you might need to track down an alien corpse with a massive magnetic field! And there were several other uses!

Hm… He’d bet on another messenger from the Silver Faction or a group of Lunars showing up soon!

A messenger with an aerial rickshaw driver turned up at the base of the mountain a few hours later. If this kept up he’d have to install an escalator – or possibly a ski lift. He popped down to see what was up!

(Charles) “Hello?”

(Messenger) “Ah, Charles Dexter Ward? I have a message from a Righteous Hala for you.”

Righteous Hala? Oh yes! The Lunar lady he’d told about Deva Cutter!

The messenger handed over a warded scroll – which informed Charles that Righteous Hala would like Charles to visit her at her Celestial residence sometime, when he could manage it.

Well that was easy! He was having trouble with the elsewhere fishing net anyway! He’d go and visit! He sent her a message that he would be along that evening…

It was odd though… The invitation was simple and civil – but the impression he was getting from the calligraphy was less comfortable… It seemed like the message she would RATHER be sending was something along the lines of being hit with a hammerspace mallet… That and “What in OBLIVION do you think’ you’re DOING!?! In the secret Name of Ligier which destroys cities do you have any idea of how much attention THIS “secret identity” will attract? It’s like pretending not to be a pickpocket by dressing up as Jack the Ripper!”

A civil invitation to somebody’s residence should not have those connotations!

A Hammerspace Mallet is Raksha Artifact-0 – a trivial aspect of dream, the equivalent of a minor thaumaturgic talisman. When invoked into reality it produces the impression that some offending individual has been smacked with a big hammer and briefly flattened, complete with little birds (or some similar manifestation) circling their head. This costs one mote, unless the user is genuinely upset with the “target”, in which case it’s free. If the user wishes, he or she may roll Manipulation to see just how annoying the “target” finds the impression. In any case, there’s no actual attack roll, or defense possible, because there’s no actual effect.

Righteous Hala’s residence was across the city, in the Lunargent Ecological Protectorate. It was an exquisite compound with plenty of hunting room… And he could see what appeared to be dinosaurs running around in one of the preserves. That was neat! Those were hard to find!

He was conducted to the central building – a tall wooden tower. There was a modest crowd there to see him, including several children and falcon-humanoid hybrids. But the most distinguished one was the Middle Eastern woman, well over six feet tall, and heavily muscled.

Ooh, Beastmen! Those were rare – at least around Earth and Yu-Shan – these days too! He’d have to send some presents!

(Charles) “Allo!”

(Righteous Hala) “Ah, Charles. I see you received my message… and that Azure Glider reached your Manse with no trouble. Come in, I’ve prepared refreshments.”

(Charles, over whom refreshments had power…) “OK!”

Hala… was surprised by the sheer amount of naivete, above and beyond what she wanted to discuss with him. Had the child no sense of caution at ALL?

Inside, the tower was open; living space seemed to be on balconies and various birds of prey were everywhere. There was a massive feast set up in the middle of the central chamber, featuring a staggering varieties of meats, stews, fruits, and vegetables – nearly all of it natural, rather than made from Quintessence or Ambrosia. A good deal of it was extraterrestrial.

Hala set up the children at their table, and served them appropriate meals. Charles, on the other hand, was set up at the grown-up tables, where a falconman servant placed a lavish plate of meat in front of him. It was exquisitely cooked, with a wide variety of spices…

Charles, of course (and to the despair of his servants) was much more used to hamburgers and peanut butter sandwiches, and had a rather young palate for the spices… There was only so much that events could compensate for. He wound up quietly transmuting himself a little ketchup… That got him raised eyebrows all the way around – and Hala looked a little confused.

Still, the section of the table where he and Hala are sitting was throughly privacy warded.

(Charles) “Can I help you with something?”

(Hala) “You don’t have any idea what’s going on, do you?

(Charles, somewhat puzzledly) “Uhm… Dinner party?”

Hala slapped her forehead. She had to be as tough as she was strong, judging from the force there.)

(Hala) “I meant with the Sidereals investigating you. It’s not every day they pop in on young children.”

(Charles) “They’re just all worried cause I puzzle them! I should’ve put better shields up, but I fell asleep while one was visiting! And she peeked – which was totally NOT FAIR – and they got all bothered!”

(Hala) “And why is that? You’re working more hours than there are in a day. You didn’t think one would notice eventually? They SPECIALIZE in being snoops! Though I’ve got to say, that was an inspired bit of trickery there.”

Aw! He didn’t trick people! He just let them trick themselves… Of course, that was the best way – especially against entities as arrogant as Sidereals.

(Charles) “Well, they were already worried about Lytek, and the gizmos the kids at school got, and a lot of other things…”

(Hala) “They should be. You’re going to grow into power they can’t even touch. So… what do you plan to do with it? I’ve got a good idea, but I figured I should ask you personally.”

(Charles) “Lots of things need fixing! There are all those out-of-work gods, and the dragon lines are a mess, and there are damaged manses, and… (the list went on for a bit).

Hala listened with some incredulity… Did the boy actually think he could fix the universe? There didn’t seem to be any limit on his good intentions! Even for a child answering a what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up query that was a bit over the top!

(Hala) “I see. I’d heard you already started with a couple of the gods. That stuff was going to be easier when they didn’t think you were a Primordial. But that’s what happens when you let them in your house, isn’t it?”

(Charles) “Well, I needed them to help with some parts of fixing things anyway – and them watching won’t stop the fixing anyway now. And I doubt they have any actual plans for this sort of thing, so it will take them a long time to sort it out. Sidereals are GOOD at endless debate.”

(Hala) “They’re also good at sucking other people into it. What happens when they learn the truth? Granted, the Gold will be on your side, but they’ll want to… channel your abilities to their goals. Same for the Silver, though they’ll give you a LOT more leeway.”

(Charles) “By that time… who knows? It might be true!”

Well, it might be true now! Who knew? The lady did obviously know that he was a Solar Exalt though! Well, Lunars apparently knew those things sometimes…

(Hala, shrugging) “Maybe. I just know the Bronzers will try something, crippled as they are. Good move on befriending a couple of them, by the way. That MIGHT save your butt.”

(Charles) “They needed help more!”

(Hala) “You really are naive, aren’t you?”

It didn’t seem to anger her too much, though.

(Charles) I suppose! But being nice has to start somewhere!

(Hala) “Incarnae know Heaven could use more of it. Don’t forget to watch yourself though. I’d hate to see another small god steal your sandwiches because you didn’t have wards up.”

In all her seven hundred years Hala had NEVER felt such an immediate response to someone as she had when Charles had turned up in her office to talk about a yozi-touched weapon. She’d… felt exasperated and affectionate even before he’d opened his mouth.

Over twenty thousand years, and – in most cases – a dozen or so incarnations the Lunars had almost forgotten the Lunar-Solar bond. While Devon had been active over that period, he had hidden himself so well that Hala’s Exaltation had not encountered its bondmate in thousands of years.

It had taken her quite a bit of research – asking older Lunars about it, reading through ancient archives in Yu-Shan, and pulling in a few favors to get one of the No Moons to do a couple of demon-summonings – to sort out what was likely going on.

It was still hard to believe. The Solar Exalted were returning after twenty thousand years of absence? This polite, unassuming, boy was one of them? AND her bondmate? And seemed to be… utterly naive and unaware.

And now THIS. She apparently had a natural mystic bond with a child who thought that pretending to be a PRIMORDIAL was a good way to avoid attention?! What horrible thing had she DONE to deserve that!?!? OK, so they wouldn’t suspect him of being a Solar – but “Primordial” was one of the few things that would draw even more attention than a Solar!

To be fair, it looked more like he was trying to keep the Sidereals too busy debating to interfere much – which was a SLIGHTLY better plan (evidently even HE was not THAT naive) – but why a PRIMORDIAL?! As a way of building up power and resources while avoiding direct confrontations the colossal bluff seemed to be working tolerably well – but what would happen if and when someone DID try to confront him? They’d bring an army and overwhelming force!

Related articles

• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXVII – Investigating Charles Mansen (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIV – Fiduciary Divine (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIII – City and Soul (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXX – And No, That Doesn’t Mean What You’re Thinking Out There! (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXIX — Deva Cutter and the Bronze (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXI – The Bicyclist of the Unpocalypse (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIV – Annotations of Anonymity from Emergence Campaign Weblog (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXII – The City of Crystal Dreams (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXVI – In Which We Catch Up With Everyone Else (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVIII – Speculations on the Coming Darkness (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

Variant Eclipse Shapeshifting – The War Forms

Not so helpless as she appears

The query here is how to build a shapeshifter who more closely resembles the version found in the Player’s Handbook II – or, for that matter, Pathfinder and several other sources.

The basic version of Eclipse shapeshifting involves a serious transformation into another form – taking on both it’s abilities and limitations. Turn into a fish, and you’ll be able to “breathe” water. Turn into one with the ability to detect electrical fields nearby and you’ll get a whole new sense. On the downside, you won’t be able to breathe air, your eyesight will be drastically restricted, and you’ll suffer from many other limitations. After all, you’re a fish.

In a way, that’s what shapeshifting is all about – and it’s why a character can usually only do it a limited number of times per day. This kind of shapeshifting is a pretty serious change, and may well be a substantial strain and take a while to get used to.

Of course, that can involve a lot of complications for the game master and a major rewrite of the character sheet for each new form. If a game – and the applications for shapeshifting – revolves more around combat than around breathing underwater, or turning into a bloodhound to sort out who was at a party by the traces of their scents, or becoming an earth elemental so that you can ignore the terrible thirst and heat of the blazing desert, or turning into an arctic mouse so that your meager handful of grain will keep you fed for a month while you await rescue, or becoming a cobra to provide a sample of its venom for your alchemist to work with, or gaining the swimming abilities of an otter, then this kind of shapeshifting may not be for you. You don’t need a lot of detailed statistics to use shapeshifting as tool – but most games do need them for combat.

This takes us to a more game and combat-oriented style of shapeshifting – one that focuses on providing a specified series of bonuses rather than on “truly” turning into another creature.

This is the route that Pathfinder, the Player’s Handbook II, and a variety of other sources take. Personally I find it a bit jarring that – in such games – you can turn into a fish and still drown, or into an earth elemental that has no stomach and still need to eat, but to a certain extent that IS just me. Why SHOULDN’T shapeshifting just be a set of modifiers? It’s not like there are any actual magical shapeshifters available to compare “real” shapeshifting techniques with.

Ergo, here’s one way to build a shapeshifter like this in Eclipse. This character:

• Can shapeshift all he, she, or it wants to.
• Simply gains bonuses which are added to his or her base abilities, rather than modifying them.
• Has a limited selection of actual bonus packages to pick from, regardless of what the form they’ve chosen at the moment looks like. Thus, if they take the “big predator” package, it doesn’t matter if they look like a tiger, a wolf, a carnivorous ape, or a dinosaur; they’re all going to be using the same package of abilities.
• Cannot cast spells, speak, activate magic items, or use gear (it all vanishes and only comes back after the shapeshifter resumes his or her normal form) while in “animal form”. Ergo, any abilities purchased this way are at least Specialized – involving as they do a transformation with all those problems built in. That will reduce the costs of the entire package.

This, of course, is specifically designed to eliminate several headaches – the character sheet rewrite problem, the problem of shapeshifters combing through sourcebooks to find creatures with unbalanced abilities to turn into, and to eliminate the “Wild Spell” loophole that let a druid take a powerful form and still be a full spellcaster – and use gear that some associate helped him or her don after shapeshifting.

Eclipse handles the last two in other ways, but the first is a problem with any true shapeshift – and thus the way to eliminate it in Eclipse is to use something other than shapeshifting to simulate what you actually want. In this case we’re mostly going to go with Innate Enchantment and some Immunity.

Innate Enchantment; Specialized for Double Effect, Corrupted for reduced cost/only available in specific combinations for various forms. In general each ability is Spell Level One (the special abilities of animals generally equate to fairly low-level magic), Caster Level One, Unlimited-Use Use-Activated (x2000 GP) x .7 (personal-only where applicable).

• Barkskin/+2 Natural Armor (1400 GP).
• Bonus Strike (The user gets one extra attack at his or her full BAB, 1400 GP).
• Breath of Air (User need not breathe for three minutes, as a continuous enchantment he or she need not breathe at all, 1400 GP).
• Enhance Attribute/+2 Str (1400 GP).
• Flesh Ward (DR 5/Slashing, 1400 GP).
• Grant Simple Physical Feat/Cleave (1400 GP).
• Grant Simple Physical Feat/Improved Critical (Natural Weapons) (1400 GP).
• Grant Simple Physical Feat/Improved Overrun (1400 GP).
• Grant Simple Physical Feat/Flyby Attack (1400 GP).
• Grant Simple Physical Feat/Mobility (1400 GP).
• Grant Simple Physical Feat/Great Cleave (1400 GP).
• Growth (The user goes up one size category, 1400 GP).
• Lesser Shield (Only a +2 Shield Bonus but usable on others, 1400 GP. Technically what we want is natural armor – but since our shapeshifter is specifically prevented from using shields, this has the same effect – and will accommodate massive armor class bonuses for high levels).
• Mage Armor (+4 Armor Bonus, 1400 GP. Technically what we want is natural armor – but since our shapeshifter is specifically prevented from wearing armor, this has the same effect but will accommodate massive armor bonuses for high level forms.
• Magic Fang (Natural Weapons become +1, 1400 GP).
• Natural Weapons (1d8, Crit 20/x2, may make a full attack using two limbs at full BAB, 1400 GP)
• Quickness (+10 Movement, 1400 GP).
• Resistance (+2 Resistance Bonus to Saves, 1400 GP).

That’s a 25,200 GP effective value – for a total cost of 17 CP after the Corruption.

Now, this is an obvious supernatural ability – but we don’t want it to be readily dispelled. Ergo, Immunity/Dispelling, Specialized and Corrupted/only to protect innate enchantments, only those used to simulate the shapeshifting ability (Common, Minor, Major, 2 CP after Corruption and Specialization).

We don’t want this to cost XP either – it is emulating a class feature after all – and so we’ll want Immunity to the XP cost of buying Innate Enchantments, only for first level effects at caster level one (Uncommon, Minor, Minor, 1 CP).

Now, we will need a few other things for some forms:

• Celerity/New Movement Mode/20′ Flight, Corrupted/requires physical wings, room to spread them out, and so on (4 CP).
• Immunity/Extra Damage from Critical Hits (Common, Major, Major – protecting against the first thirty points of critical hit damage, 4 CP after the overall specialization)

That neatly covers the usual list of combat enhancements at a total cost of 28 CP. Of course, the original package is designed both to replace the Druid’s shapechanging ability and animal companion and to be slightly more attractive (while still being more manageable) than those two abilities. As it happens, Druids normally spend 21 CP on Shapeshifting and 6 CP on their Animal companion – for a total of 27 CP. Not quite a perfect match, but plus or minus one point is pretty trivial.

This being Eclipse, of course, we don’t have to stop there. This is a good package for land-based combat, but what if you want to shapeshift to be stealthy? Or to function underwater? Or to track someone by scent? None of those abilities are a part of the standard package.

Fortunately, all you’ll have to do is to replace a few of those innate enchantments or spend a few more points buying a some more; for a mere 6 CP – one Feat – you can add six new “1400 GP” functions to your forms. Don’t forget that you can double their effects if necessary to match up with the kind of creature you want.

You want to be able to turn into alert critters with sharper-than-human senses? Add a few of the following innate enchantments.

• Advanced Hearing: The user can hear extremely high and low frequency sounds, and can target unseen creatures within thirty feet without penalty with a successful listen check. (The doubled-up version eliminates the check or functions as sonar).
• Low-Light Vision.
• Scent.
• Skill Mastery / +3 Competence Bonus to all Wisdom-Based Skills.
• Tracking Mastery: Gain a +5 enhancement bonus to Survival/Tracking checks and an immediate reroll if a Survival/Tracking check fails.
• Underwater Sight: You can see normally underwater.

You want to be smaller, sneakier, and quicker? Add…

• Camouflage: Gain a +10 Circumstance Bonus to Hide Checks.
• Catsfoot: You may move silently with a +5 bonus while moving at normal speed.
• Reduce Person (1400 GP). You may become one size category smaller.
• Skill Mastery / Gain a +3 Competence Bonus to all Dexterity-Based Skills.
• Vital Strike: Add +2d6 Sneak Attack
• Weapon Mastery / Gain +3 BAB with Natural Weapons.

You want to be tough as nails?

• Endure Elements: Become immune to ordinary weather effects.
• Glimpse of Rage: Gain a +10 Morale bonus on Intimidation checks.
• Immortal Vigor I: Gain +(12 + 2 x Con Mod) HP.
• Relieve Poison: Gain a +4 Enhancement Bonus on Saves versus Poison and a -2 on the damage resulting from failed saves (From the Hedge Magic spell list on this site).
• Relieve Illness: Gain a +4 Enhancement Bonus on Saves versus Disease and a -2 on the damage resulting from failed saves (From the Hedge Magic spell list on this site).
• Wrath: Gain a +2 Morale Bonus to Str and Con, +1 Moral Bonus on Will Saves, and a -2 to your AC while active.

If you want to communicate with animals, or lead a pack, or some such, you’ll just have to buy those abilities separately; they aren’t really a part of a physical shapechange.

Related articles

• Minidrakes and Eclipse (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Eclipsing Wealth, Part II (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• “Ghost”, Level Two Shadowwalker (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• “Ghost”, Level One Shadowwalker (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Viva Le Revolution! Realms of the Banefire (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – The Behemoth Cloak (Artifact ****) (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXVII – Investigating Charles Mansen

So where's the aura of soul-killing terror?

Over the next several weeks there was much frantic Sidereal scrambling to fit surveillance on Charles in between their usual duties – and immense amounts of frustration with the results of that surveillance.

It was embarrassing enough that the blasted schoolmaster seemed to have some charms that let him know when ANYONE was up to ANYTHING in his school as a perfect effect – sure, they could have overridden him, or done lots of other things – but each and every one of them would have been hideously embarrassing! “Yes, we ARE multi-century old Exalts, masters of sorcery, and martial arts, and charms, and terrible astrological powers, and we ARE sneaking around a children’s school in secret and lurking in the bushes and spying on the students, but we’re doing it for… for… for reasons which we do not care to explain!… NO! We are NOT paying special attention to gym class! How DARE you even… OH DAMN IT TO THE YOZI’S!!!”.

Oh YES. THAT would be a WONDERFUL rumor to have circulating around the Celestial City!

Worse, the blasted man had been quite unreasonably difficult to evade and he’d gotten the staff and some concerned parents involved! And they’d had to listen to several grade-school music classes! It had been quite horrible! Anselem Voice-of-Harmony, their Chosen of Serenity, was STILL talking about children’s music classes being an overlooked plot of the Yozi’s to torment all creation and about petitioning the Maidens for a charm of selective perfect deafness to aid in the defense!

The youngsters were surprisingly competent actually – but the expectations of thousand-year-old Sidereal Exalts could be unreasonably high.

Perhaps worst of all, the infuriating child didn’t seem to DO anything of any serious interest whatsoever! Sure, he handed out rather a lot of minor artifacts (even for someone who ran a factory-cathedral and who was supposed to have found an immense treasure-horde) and he was endlessly polite and helpful and used lots of thaumaturgy – but you had to dig past several layers of thaumaturgy and minor artifacts just to see that he had more essence than he should!

He disappeared into Dudael a lot, and emerged late, and sometimes couldn’t be located inside – but the blasted place had powerful privacy wards and those mysterious archives… It had been easy enough to discover that the place was operating at or above it’s full capacity – but that didn’t really tell them anything except that the boy was really good with manses, which they’d known quite well already.

It wasn’t even easy to tell if he was in or out of fate! He seemed to act as if Creation had a revolving door that he liked to spin as quickly as possible!

But WHY would a Primordial – one of the Elder Titans – be a thaumaturgic prodigy but be doing poorly in music class? Or be slowly improving (but still pathetic) in weapons class? Or behave so MUCH like a fairly ordinary child? Shouldn’t a Titan have some motives beyond random whimsies and trying to help everyone who asked them for something? And where in Oblivion were those little essence flares off him going?

Was it some incredibly deep and complex plot – or could it really be complete artlessness? Or could it possibly be both?

Charles did indeed have a deep plot! If you brought enough niceness and honesty into reality, sooner or later they would come to dominate and everything would be much nicer!

Still, while he was a terrible liar and rather poor at opposing direct questions, he was certainly willing to misdirect by VERY selective truth-telling – which led to LOTS of investigation. They might get fed up and ask eventually, but – with any luck – by then they’d have so many incorrect assumptions buried in their thinking that they would just lead themselves further astray…

More temperate Sidereals might have wanted to gather more evidence before they swallowed it… Sadly for them, that particular Virtue restricted lying – and so most Sidereals weren’t big on Temperance. Besides – “self-doubt” often went right out the window when someone Exalted, and that was ESPECIALLY true of Sidereal Exaltations.

Even Charles had very little self-doubt; he just preferred to help more quietly – and would very much like to keep doing so without too much interference.

Back on Earth, Charles’s thaumaturgical students were beginning to find Charles’s automatic answers to proper appeals extremely handy… even more so than the Coatl companions he’d lent them. When they had a good reason – an extreme personal emergency, or something that would help other people – they could ask Charles to intervene with HIS thaumaturgical powers even when he was nowhere near them. That wasn’t quite “miracles on demand” – but when a bus went off the side of a bridge, and drifted down to land safely instead of hitting and detonating, it was quite close enough.

OK, there were only about twenty of them – almost all in Atlanta – but they were gradually spreading out. High school students did…

That soon drew some attention too – but it was just… thaumaturgy. Thaumaturgy of quite extraordinary power, true, but the Loom was capable of compensating for thaumaturgy. It wasn’t anywhere near as disruptive as charms or sorcery.

Eventually – after half a month of ineffectual surveillance – they decided to bite the bullet and send someone in to talk…

It was Mr Montague who – metaphorically at least – drew the short straw. He was the youngest, and it WAS his theory….

(Elder Sidereal) “You were right! You handle it kid!”

(Mr. Montague) “Hey! No Fair! What in creation am I supposed to say to a Primordial?!?!”

(Another Elder) “How should we know? You’re the one who had him in your kitchen being fed cookies by your wife!”

(Mr Montague) “Oh… !@#$%! That’s right!”

(Elder) “Just treat him like a normal person… who can potentially grow to gigantic size and kill us all. Have fun!”

(Third Elder) “Oh stop that you two… (to Mr Montague) We’ll be nearby to back you up if you need it – but compared to us you’re relatively non-threatening, and he HAS spoken to you before – and, for that matter, has stopped by to bring you magical presents on his own initiative. You’ve been watching him too; do you really think that you’ll be in any serious danger? We’d just like the initial approach to be by someone he’s already acquainted with – and you already have a reason to go and see him; you’ve done it before. If you need to stall the boy… well, try asking “Is there anything you’d like to tell me about manses?”; judging from his behavior so far, that should keep him occupied for hours on end.”

Drat it! That was perfectly reasonable!

Well, at least the boy seemed to be an extremely benign… whatever he was.

Mr Montague made his approach while Charles was at home at the Orrery. It was moderately remote and VERY isolated. There was no need to unnecessarily panic the boy’s schoolmates – or even to suggest to them that Charles was being investigated. Besides… hadn’t the place been sealed?

Well, that probably wouldn’t have been a problem for a thaumaturge of Charles’s skill even if he’d been entirely mortal. The place had just been a mildly embarrassing failure with a location so bad that it wasn’t worth keeping open. It wasn’t as if it was especially dangerous – and no one had bothered to try to find the long-lost hearthstone.

How had he gotten that back anyway?

Ah, obvious enough! With his talents with manses, he’d probably just disrupted the essence flows in the hearthstone chamber enough to shatter the stone – wherever it had been – repaired the disruption, and let the manse create a new one.

Mr Montague dropped by a few days later after checking out some of the better-concealed protective devices in the armory – including a rather neat and remarkably subtle protective sash that the Celestial Lions had asked be examined. It might as well get a bit of field testing!

The first bit of testing was to see what had been done to THIS manse – and that was once again impressive… The place was… performing well above it’s rating, and was now part of a manse network, and providing comfortable life support, and had several other functions, and was… cloaked so that you couldn’t tell ANY of that from more than twenty or thirty feet away! The incoming power was… going into various effects that enhanced thaumaturgy.

None of that matched up with the records of course. How in creation was the boy making that happen? This wasn’t a primordial manse! It was an old Sidereal design, and shouldn’t have much in the way of latent abilities to bring out! Much less something like this… None of that should be POSSIBLE without an upgrade of the Demesne and a complete redesign!

The network was… peculiar too. There were links to Dudael – but most of the other links went… Elsewhere. It was understandable that he’d boost his workplace. But what were those Elsewhere Manses for? And how did he build Elsewhere in the first place!? A smokescreen for the manses real locations perhaps?

Huh… he’d just have to ask.

Charles was busily trying to figure out what the readings from his prototype elsewhere-fishing net meant (he’d decided not to test it inside himself!), sending out the research assistants to check for more endangered villages and such, and fishing through a pile of books he’d checked out of one of Yu-Shan’s more cooperative libraries when the servants informed him that there was another Sidereal at the door.

Charles sent them to invite him up!

When Mr. Montague arrived the boy was messing about with a couple of dozen books floating in the air opened to various pages, a chalkboard, a computer, and a lot of weird colored lights flickering in the air in complicated patterns while eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

(Charles, poking puzzledly at a series of purple flickers) “Hello!”

(Mr. Montague) “Hello Charles! Er… I couldn’t help noticing on the way in… you’ve got this place on a network, but most of the links seem to go through elsewhere? Why is that?”

(Charles, with some surprise) “Well, Yu-Shan is a sanctum suspended in Elsewhere! So links to anywhere else have to go through Elsewhere – even to get to Earth – and pretty much all the places for manses in Yu-Shan already have occupied manses in them!”

(Mr Montague) “Yeah… that’s what I’d like to ask you about. Where are they going?”

(Charles) “Well… some to Earth, some to some chaos zones – which aren’t quite earth really – and some to other pocket realms! (Distractedly) there’s a lot of stuff no one else is using in Elsewhere… Speaking of which, what does the purple radiance here mean? I THINK it means that whatever is entangled in the Elsewhere Net is anchored somewhere outside our universe! I need to set the exclusion parameters a bit more narrowly… As an N-dimensional plenum, Elsewhere seems to be common to multiple universes, even it it’s somewhat restrained near established metric frameworks!”

Wait, what was the child meddling with now? That sounded like… He’d actually managed to construct something that probed into Elsewhere… Well, never mind!

(Mr Montague) “Neat! I’ll look at it later… See, I’m here on business. The servants told me another Sidereal visited you recently, and that you fainted in front of her. She was worried that you were sick, so she checked out your Essence flows… and the results were WEIRD. Did you know you’ve got a mixture of nearly every untainted type of Essence, and at least one unknown type, in you?”

(Charles, with some indignation) “I was just sleepy! No fair peeking! But I have lots of artifacts and hearthstones and manses and things…”

Mr. Montague was now somewhat on the lookout for that style of non-answer.

(Mr Montague) “Okay, chew on this bit. Did you also know you’re partially Elsewhere, and have your own geomancy? People, even God-Blooded, just don’t have that. And your Essence leaves your body and goes… places you’re not.’

(Charles) “Oh that… But I LIKE geomancy! Why shouldn’t I have some of my own if I want? And the Essence-packets are just going to help people! It was much easier to put a lot of that on automatic; that way it still helps whether I’m paying attention or not! Besides… Adenic Essence likes to go help people…”

(Mr. Montague) “Helping people’s fine, but you’re doing it in some bizarre… wait, that was YOU?”

(Charles) “What was?”

(Mr. Montague) “From what you said, you needed to put helping people on automatic, and it works whether you were paying attention or not. That suggests you’ve become a god… one who’s free of that restriction on their actions. THEN you mention Adenic Essence, which suggests that you know what that unusual Essence in you is. I never heard of Adenic Essence before. And what else would you need to automate helping people like that for but rescuing entire villages of them at once? It’s probably a stretch, but you KNOW your Essence is weird, and it matches up with your behavior.”

(Charles) “But they would have died! And it wasn’t supposed to make any serious disturbances…”

(Mr. Montague) “Wasn’t anything serious at all. A lot of the Violet Bier’s people just figured things went normally… but one of the elders spotted the subtle differences. It was much the same result, though, so almost nobody was worried. What happened to them, anyway?”

He was rather glad that no one had to die this time… Destiny planning was destiny planning, and hard decisions had to be made, but at least those people likely didn’t have to suffer the consequences.

(Charles) “I set them up in a pocket-realm; there’s plenty of room and stuff there!”

(Mr. Montague) “Huh.”

That kind of made it hard to stay calm… Tens of thousands of rescues, pulling people entirely out of creation wholesale… That would require some serious power! He’d almost think the kid was a powerful Exalt, but the mix of Essence his senior colleague found went against that theory…

(Mr. Montague) “You’ll have to show me and some of the other Sidereals that place sometime! But… yeah, your Essence is weird. You know you’re not a mortal or God-Blooded I’d say.”

(Charles) “Well… I was kind of supposed to be keeping some things a secret… (Still, he did kind of want an opinion; was he genuinely becoming a Primordial?). I suppose (obviously torn) that it might not hurt to look…”

Mr Montague was momentarily boggled… Could the boy actually be UNSURE? Still… He knew what he’d come to get.

(Mr. Montague) “Kid… Look… we’re concerned. We’d like to know just what you are.”

Charles really wasn’t entirely sure. He HAD gotten a solar exaltation, but Lytek had been meddling with it for some reason, and he certainly wasn’t doing what Solars usually did, and he wasn’t particularly sure of his parentage, and he really thought that he might have wandered a bit outside the usual categories what with building his own world-body.

(Charles) “Uhrm… Don’t know! Does it matter?… I could ask the Raksha! They might remember more that far back – but they lie a lot…”

(Mr. Montague) “No! You stay away from-” (he was much more virulent than Rosa on that matter.) “Sorry. Yeah, it does matter. I’ll come clean with you… from what I’ve told you about your Essence, what do you sound like? You’re good with this magic stuff, so I think you’d have some idea.”

(Charles, doubtfully) “Primordial would kind of fit, but they – pretty much by definition – are really ancient, so that doesn’t work!”

(Mr. Montague) “Yeah. That does damage that theory.” (He seemed somewhat disappointed.) “Well, how did you learn to channel Essence? Most kids who aren’t God-Blooded can’t do that. It’s supposed to take years of meditation. Or were you born with it?”

(Charles) “Earliest I remember is six or so!”

(Mr. Montague) “Could you channel Essence then?”

(Charles) “Yes…. Or at least I could see the spirits and attune manses and things.”

(Mr. Montague) “Huh… I’ll have to ask your grandfather about that, if I can even get a meeting.”

It… sounded like the boy might have been born with the ability. Huh. That STILL wouldn’t explain why a Primordial would take the form of a small child and do these things. They’d normally go for more impressive forms, or at least remember that they were Primordials. Could the boy actually be a young Primordial? WERE there young Primordials? He’d to have to meet with Richof if he wanted to untangle the kid’s early life!

(Charles) “Anyway… I only made the Adenic Essence type recently; it works much better for some kinds of things!”

(Mr. Montague) “Wait, you MADE a new Essence type? You don’t know what you are, and you can do that…”

(Charles) “Why not? There’s a point at which it sort of comes naturally.”

(Mr. Montague) “Oh, no problem, whatever you are.”

He’d sort of been expecting to have to ask for some analytical backup, although he’d rather hoped to avoid it – but he hadn’t expected to feel sorry for the kid. The boys foggy memories – a very human feature – were making it that much harder on them both and the boy really seemed to not know who or what he was. That was existential uncertainty on a level that even Exalts generally didn’t have to deal with.

(Mr. Montague) “Can you tell me about it? First, though, I need to send a message.”

This was probably it… Charles quietly got his multiple-image charm set up – seeming to shimmer for a moment. If the Sidereals were going to do something completely irrational, he might need to have it ready – and there was more than enough power floating around him and the manse to cover up that modest essence-pulse.

(Charles) “Well… when you’re running internal geomancy, eventually your own personal energy-flows get strong enough to resolve into a new essence type specific to you! It isn’t very complicated! You just have to guide things a bit!”

Mr Montague sent his message by writing it, then burning it.

(Mr. Montague) “I see. So, you said it’s for helping people. What else does it do?”

(Charles) “Oh, it makes better manses and it helps with thaumaturgy mostly! It might do other things later, but I haven’t had long to experiment with it!”

(Mr. Montague) “Hey, a lot of people would like that.”

He did seem interested, if only to bide the time while his request got answered.

(Mr. Montague) “Is Adenic just a cool name you made up for it, or is it related to the source?”

(Charles) “Well… from Aden.”

(Mr. Montague) “What’s Aden?”

(Charles, with some enthusiasm) “It’s where I sent everybody! Internal geomancy calls for a lot of extra room!”

It was sounding more and more like the child really WAS a Primordial… but Montague wanted to be absolutely sure before he made his final decision. The elders would make his VERY long life hell if he jumped to conclusions!

(Mr. Montague) “What’s the geomancy in?”

(Charles) “Oh well, let me see… Ah! Over this way!”

He took Mr. Montague down the stairs, and into a broom closet, then into a cave, then out on to a mountainside near a small waterfall. They were on one of Aden’s higher mountains, overlooking a spectacularly beautiful section of wilderness, with brightly-glowing luminescent birds – with colors that pulsed in time with their coordinated songs – illuminating it’s ravines and grottos. There was a small branch of the sea of chaos lapping against a section of rugged cliffs, and a small town made mostly of crystal and trees.

The locals were Noldor and Hobbits, although there were some human guests – and the entire area was saturated with life-sustaining and healing energies as well as… magic that would cheerily provide many services.

(Charles) “Here we are!”

(Mr. Montague) “Just an hour or two in here… I’ve got results coming.”

Mr. Montague found that very relaxing! And he could use it right now… There were mountain ranges. And enough negative curvature to let him see that this “pocket world” was no simple divine sanctum dug into Elsewhere… There were tens of thousands of square miles here, at the very least.

A genuine world-body. And an incredibly beautiful and welcoming one. That… didn’t leave HIM with a lot of doubts.

(Mr. Montague) “Uh… I was expecting something smaller. Wow.”

(Charles) “Well, geomancy takes a lot of room!”

(Mr. Montague) “Yeah… so everybody who disappeared is in here?”

(Charles) “Well… some people may have disappeared on their own.”

(Mr. Montague) “What do you mean?”

(Charles) “Well, people do! They find old hideaways, or wyld pockets, or artifacts and such and disappear on their own sometimes. I’m quite sure that EVERYONE who has disappeared isn’t in here! There’s only… 252,814 in here now!”

Huh! The rescue crews had been busy over the past three months! He hadn’t been supervising much past the initial trial-and-error stages, and it looked like… they’d been using wyld gates to do the rescuing! That was a GREAT way to do it! There had even been a few births – and they’d made sure that all of those had been at manses that were linked to fate enough to ensure proper ensoulment…

That meant that he could focus on the Stargate project!

Of course, that left a lot of small wars going on with almost no civilian casualties at all – which was not making the Crimson Panoply of Victory happy, but then it covered STARTING fated conflicts, not the casualties. It was weird, but it was also a bit out of its jurisdiction.

(Charles) “Everybody is much happier here!”

It was about then that someone – a Tolkien-styled “Elf” – on a rather beautiful (but quite normal) horse came to greet them… An essence-seven spirit being according to his artifact-enhanced senses. That would make it… high second circle if it WAS a Deva or Demon!

(Elf) “Hello Charles! I see you’ve brought another guest!”

(Mr. Montague) “Hi. I’m not sticking around too long. Just surveying the place… How long have you known the kid?”

(Elf) “Hm… Hard to answer! It’s not like we’re entirely separate! It’s about six months since he decided to aspect this region!”

(Mr Montague) “Huh. And before then?”

(Elf) “Before then… I was more of an unconscious potential I’d say! Then he aspected the area, and created manses to focus his personal geomancy, and then that resulted in actualizing us!”

Huh… That wasn’t exactly how he’d understood Primordial Souls to work – but Charles did love manses, and there was hardly anything more fundamental to a Primordial than doing things in their own bizarre fashions.

It was too bad he hadn’t learned a few Occult excellencies! He’d focused on crafting… Still, it wasn’t like anyone really KNEW all that much about the detailed internal structure of the Yozis, much less Primordials. A child-primordial who was still creating his internal hierarchy?

Mr Montague actually managed seven successes without an excellency – and there was some knowledge about Primordial soul-structures out there. The elf certainly did seem like a second circle deva… And given what evidence he had, there wasn’t anything that seemed to fit Charles better than a newborn Primordial still forming.

He didn’t seem to be inside of fate either, which cut off his usual communications though – and also fit. Primordials were always Outside of Fate – even if there were some curious traces…

That was a curious point… Charles was currently Outside of Fate; he possessed a Hearthstone that let him take on that quality – and had been spending a lot of time in Hoenheim and in the deep wyld questing for the artifacts he was using to make his third-circle “souls”. Since Charles was Outside of Fate, so – for the moment – was Aden, and time spent there reinforced that position. If and when Charles was bound by fate once more, Aden would be too – and time spent there would no longer help keep him out of fate.

(Mr. Montague, to the Elf) “Would you mind if I scanned your Essence structure? It’s for the survey.”

(Elf) “Not at all!”

The entity certainly LOOKED like a second-circle entity – and an Elf, not a Raksha.

(Mr Montague) “So… Charles is a friendly little kid who likes to build things and help people. A lot. Is that a good basic description of him?”

(Elf) “I’d say so.”

(Mr Montague, sighing) “And he has built a private universe full of pop-culture entities with vast power.” (Which, at the least, implied an awareness of Creation better than the standard Primordial’s – but then Charles went to Creation a lot. Even if he hadn’t, Creation’s media was a popular import.) “Do you think he’ll keep that up as he matures?”

(Elf) “Well, I believe he watches a LOT of movies… He has, after all, made a rather extensive media library available throughout Aden! He does tend to run himself ragged trying to fix everything in sight – and I suspect that it will take a very long time for Charles to truly mature.”

Oh dear. A primordial world-body with cable TV.

Mr Montague spoke to a few other inhabitants as well…

The human didn’t really understand much of what was going on – but was certainly most appreciative that the spirit of this world had let them take refuge in it.

The Hobbit wasn’t too worried about much beyond brewing, baking, and otherwise running his inn. Pretty archetypal behavior; definitely First Circle. The Elf’s observations on Charles running himself ragged agrees with those findings – and Mr. Montague could readily sympathize with that problem.

Charles himself was happy to talk about his movie collection, and books, and RPG’s…

Just as a note, the World of Darkness has been published in the setting, as well as the very earliest version of Exalted – the one in which the Solars were NPC monsters and the Terrestrials were the base player characters… A bronze Faction Chosen of Journeys had put it out… It hadn’t been anything personal against solars though; he’d thought that they’d disappeared for good – and it was at least as sensible as MOST sidereal plans!

At least one game master had Exalted as a Twilight yelling “THIS IS A LIE!!!” (“Chill dude… it’s just a game”). Attempting to edit and rewrite an EARLY White Wolf game system was, after all, certainly a heroic task of legendary proportions!

When they re-emerged from the broom closet there were several Sidereals and gods around the place… Omniscor, God of Surveillance Cameras, had managed to locate the door in the closet – although, while he wasn’t about to admit it, neither he nor the Sidereals had been able to open it… He looked like a cross between a surveillance camera and a statue.

(Omniscor) “Ah ha! I found your hidden portal!”

He wasn’t about to admit he couldn’t think of a way to open it; breaking and entering was not his domain.

(Charles) “That’s good! I fairly often lose them cause they move around a lot! Could I put you on retainer?”

It looked like he’d blinked his single lens-eye there.

(Omniscor) “One moment, child. I see Montague is safe. What was in there?”

Montague told him. The lens-eye blinked again.

(Charles) “It was in the back of the wardrobe once, but that was just silly!”

(Omniscor) “And not a trace of Yozi Essence?”

(Mr Montague) “No, not in the slightest. I wouldn’t suspect Charles of being linked to THOSE anyway. He found THAT weapon and gave it to us!”

(Omniscar) “You never do know.”

(Charles) “Hey! Who ate all the sandwiches? We weren’t gone THAT long!”

(Jose, Chosen of Journeys) “What sandwiches? The table was empty when Sailor and I got here.”

Maybe it had been the hawk? It was nowhere to be found at the moment… Still, flying off to perch nearby was a perfectly sensible thing to do in the face of a sidereal invasion. He’d try to find it later if it didn’t turn up again in a day or so!

He used his Dancing Dragon ring to make another pile of sandwiches!

(Charles) “Oh, did you guys need anything?”

(Jose) “Nothing right now, son. I can tell Sasa’s learned some interesting stuff. You ready to report back to the Bureau?”

(Montague) “Yeah, Mr. Cisneros. I don’t think it will answer everything, but it might help… But Charles, would you like to meet with me sometime in the next month or two? The message I got while you were looking for your bird said you needed to be physically present.”

(Charles) “Uhm… Physically present where?”

(Montague) “It depends on how my negotiations go. Definitely up here though. I’ll send a message when I know.”

(Charles) “OK!”

(Montague) “Thanks for your time, Charles.”

(Jose) “Yeah, you have no idea how important this is. I wish I could tell you.”

They departed aboard the alternate form of Jose’s familiar – a small but sleek spacecraft quiet enough to operate in the Celestial City without legal trouble.

Related articles

• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXIX — Deva Cutter and the Bronze (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice — Higher Souls (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – The Winding Way (Sidereal Manse **** or any Manse *****) (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXX – And No, That Doesn’t Mean What You’re Thinking Out There! (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVII – Hints and Allegations (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIII – City and Soul (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – Aden Shining Dream, the Third Circle (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – Exaltation Research (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXVI – In Which We Catch Up With Everyone Else (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIV – Annotations of Anonymity from Emergence Campaign Weblog (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXVI – Titanic Misperceptions

Flowers in Darkness

A couple of weeks after Mr. Clearwater and Cipher Child had visited Charles – and about the same amount of time before the Bureau of Heaven would be announcing the results (someone HAD to be expediting that) there was a knocking at Charles’s door…

(Charles) “Hello! Could you let yourself in and come upstairs? I can’t set this down at the moment!”

When Ms. Cress came in she found Charles involved with a complicated netlike piece full of crystals and wires made of magical materials, with a hearthstone socked in the center – into which Charles was carefully inserting a hearthstone while tweaking the connections to it.

(Ms. Cress) “Good evening, Charles. That looks… complicated. I’m afraid artifice isn’t my strong suit. What does that do?”

(Charles, cheerfully) “It’s sort of a fishing net! There’s all kinds of interesting stuff lost in Elsewhere – mostly from the Balorean Crusade I expect – and I wondered whether I could fish any of it out! There should be all KINDS of historical stuff in there! I’ll have to anchor it to a manse to get it enough power, the Hearthstone is just for the recall link… Oh! I’ve locked out living things for the moment, so as not to get the Eyeless Face or anything like that – although IT’S almost certainly too big for the net anyway!”

Ms. Cress regarded him with some bemusement and surprise there; it took a moment for her to remember THAT. The Eyeless Face was… well, it’s servant limbs were certainly known to the more skilled sorcerers and older Exalts, but the Face itself was considerably more obscure without Solars to invoke the portal.

(Ms. Cress) “That’s rather ambitious. Many Exalted artificers have tried to reach Elsewhere, and none have succeeded… I wouldn’t worry about the Eyeless Face too much; even if you manage to reach Elsewhere – and I don’t think I would put it past you! – it is far better bound than its limbs. Anyhow, I visited Maella. She had some presents for you.”

(Charles) “Ooh, Presents!”

It was a collection of manga. Not all of it to Charles’ tastes, but a good selection of genres.

(Charles) “Neat!”

He rummaged around for an amulet of knowing Japanese and looked really puzzledly at a card that fell out advertising quite… ANOTHER type of Manga.

(Charles) “Thank you! And Ms Maella!”

(Ms. Cress) “Oh, goodness…” The card disappeared quite quickly. “I’ve already spent half my sabbatical with her, and I should be sleeping, but there’s so much more to do. Do you have any celestial coffee? I’ll take the standard kind if you have it.”

A one-day sabbatical? That was no good!

(Charles) “I think there’s a little… I don’t drink it, but I get visitors who do! And… (he rummaged around and pulled out a little pyramid of multi-colored swirling spheres, with nothing apparently holding them together, and set them spinning) there! Now there’s more time to talk and I THINK you can nap and dream; it only rests your mind, not your real body, but you’re an Exalt, so that should help anyway!”

Ms Cress examined the artifact, and smiled – albeit with some startlement. A… Conversation Piece. Those were quite hard to get a hold of since you needed a cooperative Raksha to make them!

A Conversation Piece is a Raksha device of about rating **. It rather resembles a Crystal Arena in some ways, but it invokes a limited aspect of Shinamaic narrative time – a sort of shared dream, so you could do more talking and such in a very limited amount of time. It made for an odd sort of doubled consciousness, with the real world going on in very slow time by comparison. Social and mental charms and effects worked nicely in the rapid-narrative time, but physical was in real time. Basically it came down to “We can take some time out to talk without it really counting for much”.

(Ms. Cress) “That’s a rarity, I believe. One I’ve been meaning to acquire for some time. Where did you get it? I can think of at least five colleagues who could use them.”

(Charles) “Uhm… I know some Raksha who also like to make stuff, and we all always need ingredients! They rather like using Degaussed iron in some things; it anchors dreamstuff once you’ve got rid of the magnetic field that normally absorbs it. Very handy for some of their gizmo-making! They’d probably be willing to make a few more! Those aren’t too complicated I think.”

(Ms Cress) “That’s dangerous… do your guardians know of this? I would hate to see you a husk of a child.”

She seemed quite genuinely concerned, but then the Chosen of Serenity and Raksha often didn’t get along. They did use captured artifacts though.

(Charles, doubtfully) “Gramps never minded me playing with them… And I do have some good protections!”

(Ms. Cress) “Hmph. I hope they are VERY good protections. Mere cold iron isn’t enough. And you are having someone check them for oneiromancy, right?”

(Charles) “Oh yes!”

Oh, wait; she didn’t mean that they wanted to trade… But that stuff was still shaping really.

Wait… “playing with them”?! And his guardian didn’t mind and he’d survived? And… He didn’t seem to think of it as at all risky… In any other child she might have ascribed that to youthful stupidity, but from all she’d seen the child was… sensibly cautious, highly intelligent, and very well prepared indeed!

(Ms. Cress) “Charles… what protections ARE you using? Playing with Raksha is risky business indeed.”

(Charles) “Well… A manse actually. It provides protection from shaping, and raksha magic, and healing from most nasty effects just in case.”

(Ms. Cress, arching an eyebrow.) “Ah! No wonder you were treating it like a mundane playdate. That must be a wondrous Manse. Is it one of your grandfather’s?”

(Charles) “ It was! He let me have it quite awhile ago… I think it made him a lot less worried about me!”

(Ms. Cress) “I did some research on you after our first meeting. That’s how I learned who your guardian was. No wonder you were so fearless. I would still be quite careful around the Raksha! You never know what tricks they have up their sleeves, and considering what happened in the Amazon, who knows these days?”

(Charles) “That is a worry! And whatever Damion’s become, I think he still has that Hearthstone that teleports him to his manse here! I hope it’s well-guarded!”

(Ms. Cress, looking sad.) “I hope so as well. I’m too far from Seven Whispering Winds to send the Lions assistance, but they have millennia of experience in these matters. And thank you for the artifact, and the coffee. I’m afraid my manners suffer when I’m busy.”

(Charles) “You’re welcome!”

She had to wonder… what in creation had the gold stars been THINKING to give a Sidereal that young a stone that powerful?

(Ms. Cress) “But I must admit, I am curious about something else.”

Oops! Hadn’t entirely diverted her after all! Well, she had a reputation for being one of the more no-nonsense Sidereals in the Cerulean Lute of Harmony, though meeting Maella seemed to be eroding that a bit.

(Ms. Cress) “I’ve heard some odd rumors – namely that you were assisting an unemployed god in finding work. That’s rather commendable. Can you talk about that?”

(Charles) “I think so! Why not? I think that human activities have gotten a LOT more complicated, and that now a lot of jobs that used to be one-god things now call for two or three or a full staff – and that would get a LOT of unemployed gods back to work, and that would be a good thing! So I tried to get it started by helping out Gri Fel and Terapishim!”

(Ms. Cress, her eyes widening a bit) “Gri Fel… I remember an incident where a couple of the younger Sidereals turned him away from their territory. They didn’t know their pre-Reshaping history. Sri and Gus made sure that will never happen again. But that is beside the point. From what I’ve been hearing, his and Terapishim’s performance was strong. They said it was because of a simulated Manse grown from a seed. Do you know anything about that?”

Hm. Sri? Ah! The Bronze Faction’s other “official” Chosen of Secrets, concentrating on the martial arts.

(Charles) “Oh, I went in the simulation with them and used a Manse Seed. Those are really handy! I surveyed Arcosanti before suggesting that they apply for the position of course; no point in working unprepared!”

That was an awful lot of planning for a boy his age! And an incredibly valuable item to donate to a charitable effort! Why would he go to that much trouble and expense? For that matter… he’d just given her a minor, but quite useful, artifact… His resources had to be incredible, what with the factory cathedral’s treasure horde, and look at how generous he was being! Still, she had a very important question to ask – and was building towards it.

(Ms. Cress) “Handy doesn’t describe it. Those would be useful for many, many groups! That leads to another rumor I’d heard… apparently you can design Manses of the level seen in the simulation. I know it sounds strange, but I’m fairly certain I heard that correctly.”

(Charles) “I like manses! They can do all kinds of things if you make them properly!”

(Ms. Cress, looking straight at him gravely) “Oh yes. But can YOU make them that way?”

(Charles) “Only with help!”

Well, he did have to use artifacts and other manses!

(Charles) “But I have lots of that!”

Well, the child didn’t seem to be even trying to mislead her… Help or not though, that was still pretty impressive for a child! Having all the required skills at his age was no small feat! Even for a godblooded!

(Ms. Cress) “I’m curious as to who. Raksha don’t raise too much scrutiny as long as people are careful and don’t do… what Demien did.” (She sighed) “Is there anyone else you need to tell me about? You’ve been very helpful to me, and I suspect to someone else – or many someone else’s. I would hate to see you in trouble for childish impulsiveness. Heaven is not forgiving of that.”

She really did seem kind of worried.

(Charles) “Uhm… I was looking into using an adaption of the Manse Gateway effect for speeding up interstellar travel, but I need to compare it with some of the Sidereal travel charms; Could I maybe get a few hours with someone who knows them one of these days? Maybe in exchange for one of the Conversation Pieces? And.. Er… What ANYTHING else I need to tell you about? That could be a lot of things!”

That effect? He was meddling with VARIATIONS on manse effects at that power level?

(Ms. Cress) “Well, do you have any helpers that would bother the Bureaucracy? There are many entities hostile to us. While the Raksha are far away – and the ones in Wyld pockets are usually content not to interfere – there are closer threats.”

(Charles) “Hm. Manse guardians mostly… Some thaumaturges. Some Raksha… Some Gods… Some I’m not sure what are (that was Korbase mostly), Some Dragon Kings… Some Nocturnals help sometimes… Some Terrestrials and Masons… I haven’t been able to get a hold of the Jadeborn at the moment… And some scientists and medical people…”

Well, most of that was innocuous enough. Anyone employed in the Celestial Bureaucracy could get the help of Creation based thaumaturges, including Masons, easily enough. Terrestrials were trickier, but not by much. Gods were east as long as they were subordinates. Nocturnals… well, he had Catherine as a subordinate. She and Maella were old friends. Dragon Kings implied interstellar travel at the very least. But Jadeborn?

(Ms. Cress) “Charles… Jadeborn haven’t been seen in Creation since Autochthon left.”

(Charles) “Oh, they used to live under the Imperial Mountain; some of the cities are still there very deep down, but I think they’re warding things to look empty! Even if they WERE empty for awhile, I think deepspawn would move in – so they probably aren’t really empty. But if they’re not letting me look, they probably don’t want to be bothered. I was looking for another group, but they are kind of shy!”

He could look that far? That wasn’t out of the question for a thaumaturge, and certainly not for one of his apparent skill… but she was reserving judgement on the Autochthon theory, mostly because she didn’t want that apprentice Montague to be right!

(Ms. Cress) “Do you seriously think you can find them? They would be quite helpful.”

(Charles) “I can keep trying! I thought about trying to ask the Elders, but they can be pretty weird about things, and it’s usually best to just see what they do on their own first!”

Elders? Presumably the Sidereal Elders of course…

(Ms. Cress) “Living for over a thousand years will do that, I’m afraid. I am glad none of your other current helpers would raise alarms… though I am concerned that you say you don’t know what some of them are. Could you tell me about those?”

Wait. That startled look… He HADN’T been thinking about the Sidereal Elders at all – and, come to think of it, they probably wouldn’t fit in with “see what they do on their own first” anyway.

Charles was currently describing Korbase and a few other odd spirits.

(Ms. Cress) “Your nagaesque friend sounds like… I will admit that I don’t know what that is. But the odd spirits sound like obscure gods. Nothing harmful to Heaven, though I would like to investigate further… Now what did you mean by ‘Elders’?”

(Charles, blinking) “Hrm? Gaia and Autochthon mostly. They’re the only ones still hanging around really. But they mostly do their own thing!”

By the Incarnae… he really HAD meant the Primordials! Surely he couldn’t actually expect…

(Ms. Cress) “Of course. Have you ever spoken with them? I haven’t heard of anything less important than an outright Exalt talking with them… certainly not a mortal child.”

(Charles) “I don’t really know… Sometimes there are responses to things, but that could be subaspects, and I don’t want to just go and pester them directly.”

(Ms. Cress) “That’s prudent of you. (She rubbed her head; was it really within the Child’s abilities TO “go and pester them directly”?) Well, thank you for answering my questions. I’ve just been hearing the oddest things about you, and I wanted to ask the person who knew best.”

Everyone in the Celestial City had SOME secrets – but there hadn’t been much of any sign of stretching things there. There had been a few small cover-ups and hesitations of course. Mostly… Oh dear. Mostly with respect to the “I don’t really know” part about Gaia and Autochthon! She’d have dismissed that as being out of the question a few hours ago – but now…

Could Montague actually be RIGHT?

(Ms. Cress) “And thank you for the artifact. That definitely saved me some time. I might even be able to eat with Alvan and the children if I can get home fast enough.”

Aw! It sounded like that didn’t happen often at all! Par for the course for Sidereal families!

Charles WAS very tired…

(Charles) “Would you like a quick lift?”

(Falcon, bringing him a toothbrush) “Err… Charles, are you certain? You look like you need to go to bed.”

(Charles) “Hrm? Oh? Er, yeah… That might be a good idea! It is kind of late isn’t it?”

(Ms Cress) “It’s… I believe, 4 AM Eastern Fulgent Time. Do you stay up this late regularly?”

(Servant) “Much more than he should Mam! He’s been working much too hard for a boy his age these last few months!”

(Ms. Cress, eyes narrowing “How hard?

Changis debated for a moment – but speed doubling did count as far as he was concerned!

(Changis) “Er…. I think he’s been averaging about thirty-four hours a day. He keeps cheating on the time.”

(Charles, yawning) “Is not cheating! It’s just stretching it a little…”

(Ms. Cress, sternly) “You need to go to bed, Charles. A child SHOULD NOT be on a Sidereal schedule! Here… where does he usually sleep?”

(Changis) “Well… usually wherever he nods off. We make sure there are beds in each of his establishments. Right back here in this one…”

(Ms. Cress) “Thank you. I don’t want to overstep my boundaries more than I have… could you put him to bed? He’s a thaumaturge, I’m sure it won’t hurt him to not brush his teeth tonight.”

(Changis) “We usually do wind up putting him to bed!”

Hm… The servant was obviously a manse-guardian. Quite an impressive creature to have as a baby-sitter of sorts! Either his grandfather spoiled him or he had very deep secrets indeed.

Part of the reason she’d come was to check on what he was. If they WERE dealing with something out of the normal ken of Yu Shan (such as THAT was), she wanted to know… At a glance he’d looked like just a god-blooded – but the manse was humming with extra power, which made it hard to tell anything more, even with all the magical-sense equipment she’d checked out of he armories for this little mission!

Which was incredible in itself. Where did all that extra power come from?

Still, the child had nodded off (the player had decided to start the avalanche; being totally undercover had started to get old) – and that let her get close enough to cut through the essence-fog.

He still LOOKED god-blooded, but…

(Ms. Cress, in a shocked whisper) “Five Maidens! How on the Omphalos did he get so much Essence?!?! And what in all the Wyld are all those internal nexi?”

Artifacts perhaps? She focused the lens in further…

Essence seven at least, and perhaps more; there were some VERY odd things going on there… He seemed to be… only partially present? She was better than two hundred years old – an Exalt of the Revolutionary Generation – and she’d NEVER seen anything like it!

(Ms Cress, quietly, as the boy was sleeping soundly) “By the thousand unspeakable names…”

Even asleep there were constant essence-flares darting off to go and do things in various other locations. He was… somewhat shapeshifted? Thaumaturgy again of course… to… look OLDER than he naturally would? He only looked eleven or so when he was supposed to be thirteen! And that was ALREADY artificially aged?

The manse-guardian was trying to distract her – but they were hardly subtle. Besides… her senses were running in conversation-time, while the putting-to-bed was in physical time. For the moment she held the advantage.

And the servants were… preparing to tuck him in with a fuzzy teddy bear.

And that was… could that possibly be… Internal Geomancy? An insane mixture of all kinds of essence, with an… unknown… primordial?… essence signature woven through it all.

By the souls of Gaia… Was young Montague RIGHT?!?!

She was no green Sidereal, even if she was nowhere near the top. Should she discreetly tell Montague? High Lord Kristoff insisted that the Bronze Sidereals minimize nonmission contact with members of other factions to prevent leaks, but these are major findings – and could have a major impact on all creation! Did she have any RIGHT to hide something like that for mere faction-political ends? Most of the other Sidereals thought that Montague was crazy to suggest that a Primordial could have such an unimpressive jouten. Hrm. This was HARD. At least he didn’t seem to be a hostile Primordial.

She almost laughed despite it all as the image of Charles, the hostile primordial of cranky teddy bears who weren’t getting enough sleep flashed through her mind… Still, the bear was only a toy, and not even an animated one or minor artifact – even if it WAS ambrosial. She’d seen those before… She’d clawed her way up to Salary 4. It hadn’t been easy, especially for a professed member of the Bronze Faction, but it was oh so worth it.

(Ms Cress) “Well… I understand why you were protecting him now. I’m not sure what to do.”

Changis sighed. It was out of the bag now! Hopefully Charles was ready for it! At least the what-am-I game had brought him six months or so to prepare!

Drat it… She wasn’t going to get to eat with the children. Still… she’d have to call in an occult specialist for further analysis; it might as well be Alvan!

It was a bit of guesswork – but somehow she suspected that even if Charles woke up he wouldn’t make a fuss.

Besides… the boy seemed to be completely exhausted.

Alvan found… that any kind of detailed analysis was far beyond him. It was like trying to analyze the earth from the view through a peephole located over a single town. Still, he COULD tell that the boy had a tremendous number of internal manses and power nexi, including many artifacts and dozens of hearthstones.

He could also – after extensive study – determine that the major functions of the boys internal geomancy was… to heal all possible injuries, cure diseases, eliminate toxins, and keep residents there from aging. The primordial of… healing? Heaven knew, Creation needed a LOT of that.

Should she keep the boy’s secret? She could certainly see the temptation to just let him get on with it! The meddling of the Exalted in general, and the Sidereals in particular, had a very mixed track record…

But what if she was wrong? And – even if she was right – the boy was already running himself ragged trying to fix everything at once! Perhaps she should let a small group in on it? If he was benign they could run interference and organize his efforts a bit – and if he wasn’t, there would be a far better chance of surviving finding out.

High Lord Kristoff would have to be told at any rate. Charles might be able to help them more than anyone had thought.

Related articles

• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXX – And No, That Doesn’t Mean What You’re Thinking Out There! (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXIX — Deva Cutter and the Bronze (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIII – City and Soul (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIV – Fiduciary Divine (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXI – The Bicyclist of the Unpocalypse (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice — Higher Souls (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXII – The City of Crystal Dreams (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXVI – In Which We Catch Up With Everyone Else (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVIII – Speculations on the Coming Darkness (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVII – Hints and Allegations (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXV – Fishing in the Land of the Lost

Manifestations of the Loa

Charles was musing… When someone stored stuff elsewhere, and got killed, the stuff was usually lost forever. OK, sometimes a new incarnation – whether of soul or incarnation – would manage to pull something out, but that was rare, and it wasn’t uncommon not to have a “next life” anyway.

Most of the stuff would be Raksha junk of course. The Raksha stowed all KINDS of stuff in Elsewhere – and HORDES of them had gotten zapped in creation (mostly during the Balorean crusade) with no reincarnation for them.

There really should be SOME way to fish it out!

Hm… He’d probably need to use a manse to get the necessary power and anchorage.

Changis – his assistant for the next few hours – could just see THAT one…

(Imagined-Charles) “Oh yes, I have this huge pile of random junk… Oh, hey! Here’s the Sword of Balor! Very historical! Neat! Hang that up somewhere in the museum! It will be educational!”

After all, Charles wouldn’t have any use for the thing. Tourists would be taking pictures of the Sword Grace of Sword Graces, and (having been wielded by an Ishvara) it would no doubt be very impressive indeed. – but there was no knowing what kind of effects having a thing like that around would have! It probably embodied a good chunk of Balor’s story!

Zap! “What happened?” “I was dusting, but now I am the new Attila the Hun!”

Maybe he should carefully try to suggest to the boss that he set up a storage facility for things like that somewhere OUTSIDE of his soul? Charles was just too impulsive about a lot of things! He just tended to assume that it would either be all right or that he could improvise some solution to any problem! Sure, it had worked so far, but then he also hadn’t attracted too much official scrutiny until recently… And he was so tired that he kept letting people see more than they should! Look at those two financial investigators! He’d let them see that he was obviously capable of designing high-order manses – AND had let them conclude that he had a supply of manse seeds! That could make all kinds of trouble for him later on! It might even cause a major stepup in the investigations – if only to find out just how a child learned that so fast and so early.

That would take them to Mrs Rosa Cress – and “he was already a skilled thaumaturge at five, and could attune and work with manses before he can really remember that far back”.

She’d probably been doing her own investigations already. That level of geomancy would sound a bit beyond even most adult thaumaturges – at the very least!

Hm… Was Charles LOOKING to get at least partially exposed? It would let him be a lot more honest, and work a lot more openly – and he might want to get things breaking his way by having things start to come out before any of the investigations could dig TOO deep.

Oh well! The boss was amazingly good at finding ways to turn anything that happened to his advantage somehow. It didn’t even seem to be any kind of magic… just a knack.

Mrs Cress actually had been investigating, albeit in her (strictly limited) spare time- and that had led to her going to her student, Mr. Montague, to find out about his meetings with the boy – and to Mr. Montague telling her that HE thought that Charles might be a Primordial, or at least a Primordial Half-Caste. It wasn’t just his talents, and the way that Dudael had responded to him, or even his resources! That “I’m not allowed to use the big forge yet!” comment had been so offhand and assured…

And not a week ago, the child had casually stopped by with some booster-artifacts for his own manse – six fourth-rank boosting devices individually and specifically designed to fit the manse and to boost it in the most convenient possible ways! Those hadn’t come from any primordial treasure-horde! His manse wasn’t that old – and the Primordials didn’t have much of a need for artifacts like that in any case! Even if the boy had had “special help” getting them made, he had to have analyzed the design of the manse during his brief visit – perhaps while eating cookies…

Yes, he’d asked if any more could be obtained – and had been told that making them required very special help, although “I might be able to get you a set…”. But so FAST. And with hints of all kinds of energies about them, including the wyld… Had the boy actually gone to Autochthon – or at least to some of Autochthon’s higher souls – to have them made? Was he using a gate and some lost art to pull them directly out of the Wyld?

He’d told his Sifu about that as soon as he could, only to find that she too was looking into the mysteries surrounding the child – and that he seemed to stand outside of fate and to vanish from creation every so often

The Silver Faction – and the lunar representatives – had been unhelpful, but it was obvious enough that they were taking an interest in the boy as well. The Bronze wanted the kids help – and even the Golds were taking an interest.

It was too bad that surveillance in Dudael was so difficult! The boy seemed to center an awful lot of his activities there! Very soon, they’d have to start sending in some non-employees to purify themselves and have a look around. That would make watching the boy a LOT easier!

Sadly, Charles had carefully left so many different (and probably incorrect, but fascinating) answers lying around that it was going to take quite some time to sort things out – unless someone made a breakthrough – or got a lot more methodical in their analysis than was at all usual. Even then there were so many unknowns that it would be a heck of a big guess!

By the time anyone was sure… he hoped to be indispensable to half the universe. Still, he DID want a little Sidereal assistance on his Stargate project. That was a mutual interest anyway! Many of the Siereals would like their interstellar missions to have a minimal time of less than ten days.

Charles, meanwhile, was expanding Aden again, completing his circle of third-circle soul impersonator manses, continuing to tinker with his elsewhere-fishing, and working on his assorted projects. He’d decided to wait for a Sidereal to ask to see him; that way he’d have a small distraction at the ready! Mrs Blossom had wanted to talk about the Nocturnals and Catherine anyway – and might well suspect that he had something to do with the one who’d vanished, turned up briefly with Catherine saying that she’d been rescued and was going into hiding, and then vanished again.

They would be coming, backlog or not. After all, the news that he’d designed high end Manses was out – albeit still not public. Setting up the simulation-Bazaar for Arcosanti had given that away; even if the plans were in the archives, they have to be customized to the site; manse seeds didn’t do that… Ergo, Charles was at least capable of designing fourth rank manses in relatively little time – and he was connected to Gri Fel, an old Bronze Faction ally.

Related articles

• Exalted – Aden Shining Dream, the Third Circle (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIII – City and Soul (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIV – Fiduciary Divine (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXV – In Which There Are Many Manses (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXX – And No, That Doesn’t Mean What You’re Thinking Out There! (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXVI – In Which We Catch Up With Everyone Else (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXII – The City of Crystal Dreams (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVII – Hints and Allegations (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVIII – Speculations on the Coming Darkness (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXIX — Deva Cutter and the Bronze (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

Exalted – Aden Shining Dream, the Third Circle

Look, I keep TELLING you, we're looking for the hellish inner landscape of a primordial demon! What do you mean "this is it"?!?!

Manse Servitors equate to first circle demons, and Manse Guardians to those of the second circle – but to impersonate a third-circle demon you need something more.

Fortunately, Charles has found a solution:

“Aden’s” “third circle souls” are, in fact, manses of awesome power – designed to generate a set of avatar’s with the power necessary to stand in for third-circle primordial souls. In fact, at the moment, they’re probably more powerful than Charles himself. He’s building twenty-four – one focused in each Thaumaturgic Art / Science, and capable of working effects equivalent to those of solar circle sorcery within those arts.

Charles is beginning to wonder though… He’s creating his world-body, and it’s manses and various inhabitants, from infinitesimal fragments of his own soul – and they really do seem a lot like first, second, and third circle “demons”. Is there really any fundamental difference between a subsidiary “soul” forged from a fragment of your own, and a primordial’s subsidiary soul? It’s not like anyone really knows how primordials OR their souls originally came into being anyway.

In any case, their basic design looks like this:

Available Construction Points: 10 (Rank-5 Base) + 4 (Maintenance from the Guardians) + 3 (uninhabitable) + 9 (Integrated Enhancement Artifacts) = 26. If and when he has a few experience points to spare he’ll be installing permanent upgrades via the Dragon Vortex. Sadly, until he gets a chance to finish up with that, they’ll just have to use points from Aden’s network of Geomantic Relays to power everything. That will limit them a bit since they also need those points to boost their thaumaturgic powers – but Charles does need some time to develop.

Basic Manse Powers:

• Exotic Aspect/Aden (no cost since they’re built in Aden): Aden-aspected manses favor Magical Conveniences, Integrated Artifacts, Thaumaturgic Enhancements, Wyld Revocation, and Life-Sustaining functions.
• Network Node (1): All of Aden’s “third circle souls” can instantly communicate and share information with each other.
• Geomantic Nexus (1): As foci for geomantic energy, these manses can channel the power from geomantic relays into a variety of powers.
• Immutable (2): The manses, and those within them, are impervious to unwanted shaping effects.
• Unbindable (2): The manses, and those within them, are immune to Unnatural Mental Influence.
• Guardian Force (4): Each manse has a guardian force of 650 second-circle demon equivalents. These are fairly high-end in that range however – with Essence 7, Virtues 5, 4, 3, 2 (assign as suits the type), Attributes totaling:49 (none above 12), 28 Spirit Charms, Willpower 10, and a base Essence Pool of 120. Health: -0, 7x-1, 6x -2, -4, Incapacitated, Abilities 35, Backgrounds 5, +6L/6B Inherent Soak – and six bonus points to spend. Their purpose, of course, is to aid, protect, and work for Charles.
• Guardian Loa (three Guardians who are merged with the manse and need not buy physical attributes, 3) and have control of attunement to both the manse and its hearthstone (+1).
• Staff Artifacts x4. For the sake of sanity, three levels of this power are ONLY for the Manse Loa (-3, for a total of 5): This provides the Manse Servants and Guardians with the benefits of ten dots of effectively-inherent artifacts rated at up to **** and the Loa with the benefits of forty.

All the manse guardians gain the benefits of a Behemoth Cloak, and four dots worth of artifacts appropriate to their type. That’s quite enough to make them pretty tough.

The Manse Loa gain – and share with their guardian hosts – +8 to each attribute, +8 to each ability other than Occult (which gets a +12), +4 Will, +2 Essence, the ability to store four Thaumaturgies, Four Terrestrial, and Four Celestial Spells, three spells that they can swap around given time to study, a -2 on the target numbers to use Twilight abilities, the ability to attack and parry with the Occult skill as if using a perfect weapon of choice, +6L/+6B Soak, and inherent computer services and internet access. Most will use a +3d thaumaturgic boost to whatever they do – and gain +7 to +27 automatic successes when casting spells or +13 to +33 when working in their chosen field.

Yes, this is absurd. Eight optimized four-dot artifacts designed to work as a set, powered and enhanced by a manse pumped up with nine five-dot artifacts and a bunch of geomantic relays, all applied to a high-end second circle demon equivalent, are going to be that way… In general, when working through one of the manse guardians, the Loa get +21 dice on anything they do and +(25 + Conviction) dice on Occult – putting them neatly in the third circle range even without charms or other boosts. Their abilities with Thaumaturgy/Sorcery will fall neatly into the upper end of the range for third-circle demons signature powers.

• Thaumic Resonator (2) with the specific field (+1) and geomantic relay (+1) upgrades. This grants +4 bonus successes for Thaumaturgy or Spellcasting, +6 more in a particular art or science, and up to +20 more if enough geomantic relays are available to power them.
• Thaumic Puissance (3). The residents thaumaturgy is unnaturally potent. It requires an opposed essence check to dispel it with countermagic, the caster gains +3d against Terrestrial Circle Countermagic (but suffers a 3d penalty against Solar Circle Countermagic) and residents will find that they can stack one thaumaturgic effect with charms, artifacts, and other sources of power. Their thaumaturgy is cast using the Advanced Thaumaturgy System, whether or not the character would normally have access to that system, and with a +(Conviction) die bonus.

When Charles is enhancing the manses and/or enough geomantic relay points are available, they also have…

• The Loa may exert their own powers and those of the manse through the hearthstones (+1). Most of the Loa are somewhat selective in what powers they can extend through their hearthstones, but that’s not a big enough problem to get a price break.
• Archives (2). Actually the manses each have extensive archives in them – but unless they’re powered up, they’re just rooms full of books, computer disks, RAID arrays, and other media. If they’re powered up, the archives become self-repairing.
• Lesser Dance of the Dragon Lords (3): The Loa (and only the Loa) of each manse get +1 Essence and +3 Charms. This neatly brings their effective essence up to 10.
• Extended Zone of Influence (4): Extends for one mile per point of the manse rating – or, when the Loa are working through the hearthstones, to cover a radius of up to 250 feet from the stone.
• Invisible Theft (4): As disembodied consciousnesses, the manses Loa may freely sense thoughts within range.
• Indestructible (5). When the manses are fully empowered, the currents of essence running through them shield the physical structure of the manses absolutely – leaving them vulnerable only to geomantic sabotage. Moreover, as powerful, sapient, essence-users who can tap into geomantic relays, the manses can usually handle their own geomantic repairs – and substitute power from the relays for any reduction in their demesne.
• Unique Powers (5). Each manse has five points worth of powers unique to itself – abilities that make it distinct from the other manses. These will be listed with the listings for the individual Loa.

In the tradition of giving the Devas of a Primordial their own designation, Aden has twenty-four Guardians of the Third Circle (each of whom, thanks to the triple consciousness of the manses and the hundreds of available manse guardians/bodies associated with each, may appear in up to three places at a time), many thousands of Second Circle Sentinels, and a similar number of First Circle Citizens.

Related articles

• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice — Higher Souls (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – The Winding Way (Sidereal Manse **** or any Manse *****) (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – Seed of Worlds (Manse *****) (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIII – City and Soul (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVII – Hints and Allegations (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXII – The City of Crystal Dreams (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exaltd – Aden, The Lost World, and Mardi Gras (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXIX — Deva Cutter and the Bronze (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted: Aden, the World-Body (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVIII – Speculations on the Coming Darkness (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIV – Fiduciary Divine

But now with modern offices!

While Charles was busily building more manses to impersonate (or perhaps become) his “third-circle souls”, working on the Stargate project, mapping the earth’s dragon lines, running rescue missions, and otherwise keeping busy, several investigations were gathering steam – with some of the investigators coming up with scenarios that even he hadn’t thought of yet. Similarly, some of the Sidereals of opposing factions were beginning to wonder what they’d do if their colleagues started cozying up to him – or started major, formal, faction-level investigations. There seemed to be some very useful resources there.

Naturally enough, one of the first investigations to get formal revolved less around Charles and the mysteries around him and more around money.

Isn’t that always the way of it?

Ixiah had informed Charles that the head of the Bronze Faction and at least one silver faction operative had been in the audience during the Arcosanti test – and were almost certainly aware that he possessed some quite potent artifacts indeed. Charles was mildly concerned about a possible investigation into his affairs – but, as usual, figured that there wasn’t much he could do about it without provoking more trouble, and so was ignoring it outside of updating his various smoke screens…

Besides, if the Sidereals hadn’t figured out that he possessed plenty of artifacts long ago they wouldn’t be Sidereals. It was surprising that any had had the time to attend though – and that they had been able to get tickets what with the amount of divine interest at work. Had they pulled favors or rank?

Still, the possibility of someone in the audience focusing on him was why he’d used the manse seed, and mostly worked while the focus was on Gri Fel and Terapishim, instead of just constructing the place directly. They would have seen the bit with the Fey though. Pesky audience… There had only been two competing teams for diversions too; after all, Arcosanti WAS a very small city at the moment!

Just as gods often found mortal attempts to awaken their Essence entertaining, the employed members of the Celestial Bureaucracy often found unemployed gods’ attempts to find purpose entertaining – or just informative. It was always wise to scout out potential allies and competition.

Charles would have considered it a rather sour pleasure, but then he was generous to a fault.

Hm, come to think of it, the competition apparently hadn’t tried anything underhanded either. OK, it would have been pretty hard to do that during the test with everyone in a separate arena, but there had surely been lots of bureaucratic chances before… Ah, of course; there probably had been such attempts – and they hadn’t told him; Gri Fel knew perfectly well that intrigue was not his speciality.

Ixiah had heard some grumbling about that as well. Ostensibly it was about Celestial tradition, but Heaven had had a long time to get cutthroat, and that in itself was an unofficial tradition at this point. And Gri Fel did look a bit tired.

Well, his new effective “cult” and salary should help with that!

The first formal investigation was a joint sidereal one – but it got pushed off onto subordinates while the elders handled bigger problems.

Those subordinates pushed it off on others until they were down to… a couple of youngsters in training.

He was having a sandwich while doodling more designs for things – magical umbrellas, weird manses, an elsewhere-sifting net – when someone came knocking at the door of the Orrery to see him.

(Charles) “Oh, hello!… Can I help you? I have more sandwiches!”

It was a rather pale man in a dark suit and a girl in her late teens – from the eyes, respectively, Endings and Secrets. They weren’t showing any clear factional identification, but then that stuff was rarely really discussed officially anyway.

(Man) “Ah, yes. Some reports had come in and we were wondering if you could answer some questions.”

(Charles) “Don’t know! It depends on what they are I suppose…”

(Girl) “Thanks for lunch! I’m Cipher Child, and he’s Clarence Clearwater. Do you know a Gri Fel or a Terapishim?”

Huh… He could place her! She was a native of Yu Shan and was physically the youngest currently incarnated Sidereal Exalt. She still had two years of actual time in the role on Salvatore Montague (the most newly incarnated Sidereal) though.

(Charles) “Yes! Nice fellows!”

(Clarence) “We were wondering if you knew anything about their current activities, other than their recent bid for employment.”

Well, he had appeared in the records as an assistant, of course.

(Charles) “Uhm… Mostly trying to get a job I think? Isn’t that one of the major preoccupations of most unemployed gods who haven’t gone mad or been killed?”

(Clarence) “Oh, most certainly. Every god needs a purpose for those reasons you mentioned. But we were curious because of some reports coming from the Office of Dispensations.”

(Charles) “I haven’t heard of that one! What’s it do?”

(Cipher) “It’s a subdepartment of a subdepartment of the Bureau of Heaven. It controls salaries, earmarks, and awards for Heavenly service, including the dole. Clarence and I were asked by it to check out some of Gri Fel and Terapishim’s finances. All the gods who apply for jobs get evaluated by it.”

(Charles) “Sounds busy!”

(Clarence) “Oh, yes. It’s one of the more productive parts of Heaven. Anyhow, as my younger colleague said, we were assigned to investigating that particular team’s finances. We’ve gotten some unusual information on them recently.”

(Charles) “Well, they were pretty broke until recently!”

(Clarence) “And that is actually what we wanted to ask you about. As far as our research has shown, few in Creation recall Gri Fel’s existence, and those who know of Terapishim worship him because of his wondrous, multi-forked beard. Yet very recently, they have been seen with restored ornamentation.”

(Charles) “Oh! That’s simple; I turned up a prototype in with some very old stuff! It seemed to work, so I set them up so they could buy a few things to suit the job they were applying for!”

He had too! The fact that he’d put it there didn’t make it less true that that was where he’d found it when he went looking a few minutes later!

(Cipher) “Neat! I mean, what kind of prototype?”

Interestingly, she seemed to know exactly what Charles meant by the “very old stuff.”

(Charles) “Uhm… One minute!”

Charles started cheerily rummaging in his pack – eventually leaning into it waist-deep, which looked quite ridiculous, as it wasn’t anywhere near large enough for that. He’d strewn a dozen weird items around the floor by the time he came up with the Ambrosial Chalice, which – instead of being mounted in magical material – was serving as the mount for a thin band of magical material itself. It shimmered like a black opal, and radiated an ever-shifting corona of magical power…

(Clarence) “Oh my.”

They both seemed to know what that was.

(Charles) “It seemed like it would be handy for them!”

(Cipher) “Was there any information on the Manse with the stone? It’ll take a while, but we might need to watch it.”

(Clarence) “True… it could help with certain relief efforts.”

(Charles) “Nothing with the stone… But there’s probably something in the archives!”

That was true! There were lots of things in the archives!

(Cipher) “Hmm . . . we’ll have to do some more investigating, and I think I need to do some more research. But there’s nothing illegal about this. It’s not like the Bureaucracy can stop Hearthstone attunement, and it’s not even part of the treasury anyway.”

Oddly enough, Charles got the feeling that, even if any of those three conditions were true, she wouldn’t have a problem with it.

To be fair, on a large scale, it wasn’t too important. It took one Rank-5 manse to support three Rank-3 cult effects – and after a few initial experiments long long ago it had been judged an inefficient use of geomancy; you could just have the construction crew worship the gods you wanted to help – which was generally enough to provide a rank-three cult for four or five gods – and build a manse that did something more useful.

(Clarence) “We’ll have to make sure they’re not skimming, of course. But that would be highly unlikely for an unemployed deity in the first place.”

(Cipher) “And at this point, it’s a formality anyway… but the forms need to be filled.”

Skimming? From what? Random fountains?

The two also had a few inquiries about the manse seed; they had some of the readings on the testing since they were investigating the before and after. That was of some interest to Cipher; it had been really neat how the place just grew!

Charles gladly explained many of the technical complexities of the manse seeds… She didn’t actually understand one word in three – but evidently Charles knew how they worked in detail. And yet, according to Clarence, such things had not been used since the Balorian Crusade – and then it had been by Lunars, not the Shogunate.

(Clarence) “Where did you get all this information? I believe you attend a school in the city, but I don’t recall that being on the curriculum.”

(Charles) “It’s in the Archives of Dudael – and there are some references in other libraries around the city!”

Cipher looked thoughtful… It would be a pain to get into the archives, but if a kid not that much younger than her could find such cool stuff, what could she dig up?

Clarence appeared to be more practical, although he was curious as well. After all, getting approval would certainly be a pain! Generous though he was, Charles would surely have to wait for authorization and they did have work – including this task – that neither of them could get out of.

They didn’t ask quite yet. They had more people to interview, although they took a statement and gave Charles their contact information.

Cipher wanted to want to talk about Manses a bit more – even if her time was limited. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) for her, Charles LOVED to talk about manses! (Which was blatantly obvious) – and Clarence was also interested in the occult, although in different areas. He dids have one last question for Charles, as Cipher boxed up the sandwiches…

(Clarence) “Did you know of anyone else who was supporting Gri Fel or Terapishim? Their support team was notably light.”

Charles considered that. There was the Drunken Shedu, and perhaps Kiko – but she was still being incognito at the moment. Of course, if Gri Fel got the position, that might well change. Besides… he wasn’t sure what, if anything, she’d been doing to provide support! Bodyguarding? She hadn’t participated in the actual testing anyway.

(Charles) “Uhrm… There was the Drunken Shedu, and I think a fair number of people would like to see the deadlock on Arcosanti, and on getting multiple gods on jobs that have gotten more complicated, broken – but they’d support the competitors as well as Gri Fel and Terapishim! And I was helping of course! Or do you mean in the test? I think that was just me, but I did bring a bunch of stuff that might have been useful!”

(Clarence) “Ah, yes, the test. The records did include those items… and they weren’t recorded as part of their previous panoplies, unemployed or not.”

Hm? Charles had been talking about the stuff in his pack… They’d meant the staff and rod! He cheerfully acknowledged finding those for them too.

(Clarence) “Well, thank you, Charles. Cipher and I must be going, but we will contact you if we have any more questions.”

(Charles) “OK! If I’m not in, the servants will take a message!”

(Cipher) “And thanks for lunch. You saved us a lot of time.”

(Charles) “You’re welcome!”

They departed by air, since Charles DID live in a bad neighborhood. Cipher had seemed like she wanted to stay a bit longer, but duty called.

They should have said! Hm… having more time for conversations in the same amount of external time… Charles added some notions to his doodles! Many people would appreciate that one!

“His” new falcon, sent by the Lunar Righteous Hala, watched with some interest. Charles made sure that it got a snack too!

It appreciated that – although, while it had come with a perch and some gloves, Charles hadn’t bothered with the gloves – and had gotten it whatever it seemed to want; it was a guest after all! And it wasn’t like it needed to be watched; after all it had arrived on its own!

It had sat on its perch and kept an eye on things throughout the interview – but now it was more relaxed.

Related articles

• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXII – The City of Crystal Dreams (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIV – Annotations of Anonymity from Emergence Campaign Weblog (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXIX — Deva Cutter and the Bronze (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXVI – In Which We Catch Up With Everyone Else (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXX – And No, That Doesn’t Mean What You’re Thinking Out There! (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIII – City and Soul (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXI – The Bicyclist of the Unpocalypse (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVII – Hints and Allegations (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVIII – Speculations on the Coming Darkness (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXV – In Which There Are Many Manses (ruscumag.wordpress.com)

Exalted – The Behemoth Cloak (Artifact ****)

OK, lets face it. The normal artifact armor in the basic Exalted book… sucks. The technomagic power armor is better, but quite a lot of players don’t want to be Iron Man or have to deal with the maintenance and repair of their armor even if they vary it’s looks. For them here’s a much more primal type of armor.

As the order of creation first rippled out into the pure chaos of the wyld, many creatures of chaos were entrapped by it. Some, sapient and bound up in their own narratives, crystalized, bound into changeless forms like tales preserved within the pages of a book; trapped seeds of consciousness tales that would, eventually become the Jadeborn. Others – things that spawned of chaos, existed for a time adapting to meet it’s changes, and then dissolved once more, with no narrative to lend them continuity, adapted as best they could.

Thus were spawned the Great Beasts – the first great Behemoths, singular creatures that were the bane of the first peoples of creation. Against them, in the Time of Glory, marched the legions of the Dragon Kings at their peak.

The Great Beasts were mostly slain, although a few were driven back beyond the borders of the world. Fragments of their chaotic essence were captured – undying flesh, adamant scales, and bones of jade – and were shaped into many wonders – the foundation of the crystal and vegetative technologies of the Dragon Kings. .

A Behemoth Cloak carries a shard of the essence of a Great Beast, and infuses its wearer with some small share of the powers of one of the ancient terrors. Their base form is that of a massive, fur cloak, suitable for your standard barbarian warlord – but the lingering echoes of the adaptive, shapeshifting, talents of the ancient Behemoths, allows the cloak, and it’s user, to take a variety of forms.

Physical Basis:

• Armor Basis: Superheavy Plate Armor, +12L/+12B, Mobility -4, Fatigue 3.
• Perfect: +13L/+13B, Mobility -2, Fatigue 2.
• Orichalcum: +15L/+15B, Mobility -2, Fatigue 2., +1L/+1B Hardness

Class-A Artifact Powers

• Adamantine Scales: The user’s effective Hardness rating equals one half the armors net soak, rounded up.
• Endless Endurance x3: The cloak provides three levels of Ox-Body Technique.
• Eyes of the Beast: The user gains Nightsight
• Harmonic Essence: Any wearer who attunes the armor gains the magical material bonuses.
• Heart of the Wyld: Self-Powered/reduces the attunement cost to one mote.
• Hearthstone Sockets x2 (for a total of three).
• Nose of the Beast: The user gains a sense of smell as keen as a wolfs.
• Unbounded Rage: +1 Valor.
• Warding. The armor can subtract three levels, to a minimum of zero, from the final damage the user takes from any effect up to three times per scene – albeit only once per effect. This will not, however, stack with similar defenses (Class-0 Fortune Effect).

Class-B Artifact Powers

• Adaptive Flow: Any Crippling, Desecration, Shaping, Sickness, or Poison effect which an attack or flurry would normally inflict may be converted to the loss of two motes – even if it would normally take effect more than once due to a flurry or involves more than one of those keywords.
• Breath of Peruza: The wearer is immune to general environmental damage, albeit not to directed effects. He or she can wade through lava, breathe underwater or in a vacuum, and otherwise endure extreme environmental conditions.
• Cloak of the Wyld Lands. This ability allows the user to assume temporary mutations. That’s Thaumaturgic Lifeweaving: Six tick casting time (+2D), Duration of up (2x Essence) Days or until dismissed (+3D), Single Target (+0D), Induces Temporary Mutations (+5D), Personal-Only (-2D). As a Class-B effect, this gets 20 automatic successes, providing 12 Mutation Points at a cost of two motes. As with all thaumaturgy, it does not stack with similar effects (Class-B).
• Creation’s Ward: Thaumaturgic Science Effect/Force Shield (+6L/+6B Soak, negates the first six dice of ping damage.
• Flesh of Bronze: -2 to the Armor Mobility Penalty. If both the mobility and fatigue penalties are reduced to zero, the armor no longer counts as wearing armor for the purposes of charms and abilities that will not function if the user wears armor.
• Form like Mist: The Behemoth Cloak can look like any kind of armor or clothing.
• Lesser Invulnerability: +4L/+4B Soak
• Skin of Iron: -2 to the Armor Fatigue Penalty. If both the mobility and fatigue penalties are reduced to zero, the armor no longer counts as wearing armor for the purposes of charms and abilities that will not function if the user wears armor.
• Tides of Life: The wearer regenerates one level of bashing damage every third action.
• Tireless Stride: The user gains double ground speed.
• That provides an overall soak bonus of +25L/+25B without penalties and not counting as armor. Now that’s relatively useful for the price.

Artifact Design

• Power 10 (10 x Class-B powers, 12 x Class-A powers), Usefulness 4 (extremely useful), Plot Impact 3 (major impact), and Script Immunity 1 = 18. The original versions were Troublesome (the user tended to absorb a few characteristics of the source Behemoth, -2). Charles’s versions usually just use exotic ingredients (-2). That gives a net artifact rating of 16/4 = 4.

Related articles

• Exalted – The Winding Way (Sidereal Manse **** or any Manse *****) (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – Exaltation Research (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – Let’s Take This Elsewhere! (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – Charmed Lives and Constitutional Religions (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – Will Into Wonder, Wyld Shaping Technique, and The Primal Forge. (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXX – And No, That Doesn’t Mean What You’re Thinking Out There! (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• [Emergence Campaign] The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXIX — Deva Cutter and the Bronze (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXVII – Hints and Allegations (ruscumag.wordpress.com)
• Exalted – Seed of Worlds (Manse *****) (ruscumag.wordpress.com)