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Gloves of Fate Defending

Artifact 1, Commit 7

The plans of the Maidens are complex and at times must be changed. Sometimes they have already woven the threads into the loom and must cut some free. These offcut threads can be made into many useful items for the Chosen of the Stars.

These particular gloves take the form of thick white cables sewn to a backing of black leather with starmetal. The fate used to make it was that of a mortal elite champion of the Hundred Kingdoms, his ability to weather a storm of attacks with only his blade was legendary until his last fight. His miscalculation of distances brought his enemies blade to his own throat. As a result, the kingdom was destabilised and the new goal of encouraging expansion by a neighbouring kingdom was met.

System: Has 1 Hearthstone setting. The bearer may reflexively parry any incoming attack. Each time this is done, make a Paradox roll with a pool equal to the number of parries made with these gloves this turn. If a hearthstone is set in these gloves, a number of free parries per turn may be made equal to the rating of the hearthstone. The parries granted by this artifact are still considered actions and, as such, cannot be used while casting Sorcery.

Any non-Sidereal will gain a Paradox track as a result of attuning these gloves. While there is still Paradox in this pool or they are attuned, this Paradox pool will stay with them. They follow all the normal rules and can use the normal rituals and prayers to remove Paradox, if they can learn them.

These gloves are not considered a weapon and do not prevent the concurrent use of Brawling Aids.

Comments

These gloves seem of limited usefulness without a hearthstone. I believe this is intentional. At the same time, while reading it, I came up with some more flavor text that might be interesting - to me, the very fabric of fate itself is raw essence flows. The 'biggest' threads on the loom are the elemental poles, and every manse, demense, and other essence source is all represented as a thread being spun out of wyld essence itself. Almost anything involving essence (pretty much everything inside fate) has a thread, be it big or small. The reason you weave them is to prevent the raw wyld energies from going out of whack, and turning Creation back into wyld-soup. Weaving, unfortunately, isn't easy, so you're stuck with weird things that have to happen, such as a man leaving a rose on a womans' doorstep, ensuring that the threads themselves align just right, and keeping creation as we know it intact. But you're talking about cut threads, to prevent snarls. In my book, that means you took one of the many wyld-wells that flood energy into creation, and had been bleeding off energy in the nice organized form of this guy that could block like a madman. Thus, energy was woven into this super parry thread. When the thread was cut, the energy supply was redirected to some other, now larger thread (that of the opposing kingdom). By reconnecting it to a power source, you give some energy and power back into this cut thread, with fate allowing you to block nicely now. When you draw upon too much power, you drain it from the surrounding region, shrinking nearby threads ever so slightly, and thus causing more problems for the spiders. Hence, the paradox track.

Having said that (which has been a pet theory of mine for a while), there is the issue that unless you know the wrapped fly ritual, these gloves need a hearthstone. Without a hearthstone, then, they're not that great. But at Manse 3, you can get a wind-hands gemstone, which is in many ways superior, without paradox, and you get a hearthstone, rather than need one. Hence, my gut reaction is that these need some other, basic artifact effect, such as the effect of a hearthstone bracer, or some other simple thing they do other than parry. Just my thoughts. -- GreenLantern

Can you give me a reference for the Wind-hands gem? I still can't remember half the crunch in the books. As you may remember from one of my previous artifacts I tend to underspec a little on Artifacts, this one is obviously no exception. Does it help mentioning that you still get the Hearthstone effect? Probably not, but I'll point the ST here later and let him make the call.

And, lastly, I really like that flavour text. -- Somori

The Wind-hands Gem follows the 'main rulebook Hearthstones are superior' rule, giving a free parry against any ranged attack made against its bearer in exchange for a meagre hearthstone rating of 3...DeathBySurfeit

Hmm, yeah. That's rather nifty. -- Somori

The ST has allowed me to use this as a 1 dot artifact. So, I think I will be for that game. -- Somori