The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice, Aikiko’s Search, Prelude I

The Solar Guardians have been active for a number of years – and most have been a good deal more conspicuous than Charles has. That’s good – because that’s the only thing that gives Aikiko a chance to find them.

On the other hand, they’re young – and are not inclined to build empires, overturn governments, and dominate. They’re far more inclined to quietly bring their dreams to life and hang out with their friends…

Perhaps fortunately, none of them except Charles are using manses to remain really young children, or are quite so far along the primordial path of power – but most of them have at least stepped upon it; it is the nature of children to build their own inner worlds.

The Solar Guardians currently run anywhere from 100 to 200 XP and mostly share a few common features:

• A high Conviction (4+), the better to drag their dreams into reality.
• The Veiled Exaltation Merit – a freebie provided by Lytek’s meddling.
• The Basic Solar Guardian “Inner World” package – at a cost of 3 Charms, 16 XP, and one Freebie Point (to buy the Essence Aptitude Merit/+2 to effective essence when it comes to learning Inner-World related abilities).

The package includes…

• Chaos Repelling Pattern.
• Dreaming Narrative Conquest – Giving them a Raksha Noble “Imaginary Friend” who can be counted on to provide various resources.
• Gate Of Dreams. At Conviction **** the user may spend 16 XP to increase the size of his or her inner world to 100 waypoints or more – and to gain four charms that are only usable inside it. These will normally be…
• The First Occult Excellency.
• Terrestrial Circle Sorcery. In the setting this automatically comes with Terrestrial Circle Countermagic.
• Celestial Circle Sorcery. In the setting this automatically comes with Celestial Circle Countermagic.
• Will into Wonder. A replacement for Wyld Shaping Technique, used to landscape their inner worlds.

Those who wish to add manses to their inner worlds – which will probably be most of them eventually – will likely wish to purchase three more charms (or possibly buy some of the previous four and replace them with others.

• Geomantic Empowerment – to allow them to channel power to and from manses.
• Geomantic Sphere – to allow them to generate manse-effects (which will allow for some VERY odd developmental paths).
• Geomantic Seed – to grow the manses they need. While this will cost 1-4 XP to grow a manse, it also doesn’t require a massive investment in manse-building and crafting abilities. It wouldn’t be an efficient way to produce a lot of manses – but it does bypass the normal prerequisites and other problems of building them. If you just want a few, it works pretty well.

Idihawa Shpaiki (Flowing Sunlight Moon)

Night Caste, Peru, Male, Age 14. Idihawa Exalted at age nine while his Archeologist-Thaumaturgist parents were having a hard time dealing with an angry mountain spirit that had – long, LONG ago – been told to guard an ancient site. He’d been dreaming of exploring everywhere – and of deciphering the entire history of the world.

Since then he’s had a LOT of questions for the spirits of the world – and has been finding that the history of the cosmos is very different from what he’s always believed. At the moment, he wants to ensure that the mortals and spirits of creation live in a mutually balanced accord.

Idihawa uses the Geomantic Sequence and a trio of manses to carry his own Wyld Revocation effect along; near him all Little Gods wake up when spoken to – and normal conversation (that is, enhanced by no charms beyond the first excellency) takes no time.

Yes; this means that he can talk to the little gods of incoming attacks to try to get them to turn them aside, to artifact-blades to persuade them not to hurt him, to doors to open, and to manses to get them to explain themselves.

Otherwise he has a series of athletic charms that function best in nature, some awareness charms, and some spirit-interaction occult charms. Sadly, at least for a Solar Guardian, he has developed a few charms which use Unnatural Mental Influence, and so is suffering from some accumulated Limit.

His manses provide him with several extra charms, a selection of spirit-aides, archives that record his findings, and various other services.

His artifacts – derived from the ancient site the mountain spirit was guarding – include a rather powerful Diplomatic Sash ***** (functions as light artifact armor and provides a variety of minor boosts – and a large boost to verbal communications and influence) and a few minor trinkets.

And further information will just have to wait for Aikiko’s attempts to find him…