Revision as of 08:06, 5 April 2010

Dharma, Dissolution

" The Shinma Dharma defines corrosion, ignorance, and desire... As the progenitor of coruption, Dharma is, himself, pure; as the definition of ignorance, he is, himself, all-knowing; as the forerunner of every desire, he is, himself, free of hunger. Thus, Dharma is, in all ways, righteous, self-sacrificing, and wise. - Exalted, the Fair Folk, pp. 159.

His Aspects

Dukkha, The Thorn What Does Not Kill

Dukkha, in the simplest of terms, is the world's tendency to include strife and suffering. In this, he is a true aspect of Dharma, a facet of nothingness created to define nothingness. Like his father, Dukkha is not so much a being as he is a law of being. Whenever a man takes another man as a slave, Dukkha is there. When the Sidereal Exalted forcibly sever a student's ties to her old life, Dukkha is there. When the Dragon-Blooded mistreat mere mortals, Dukkha is there. Lo, Dukkha was there even as the gods plotted against his Primordial aunts and uncles and Dukkha did nothing to stop them, for it is not in his nature to alleviate suffering.

Dukkha does not care who suffers, so long as they do suffer. He is colder than Saturn, more ruthless than Mars, and holds his secrets more tightly than Jupiter. He cannot be reasoned with; how can one reason with the laws of the world? Could one beg the stone not to fall? Or the cycle of seasons to halt in their course? Dukkha's course is even more strictly ordained than these phenomena of Creation, for he derives authority from himself alone, not some automaton weaving Essence in heaven.

When he chooses to manifest, which is rare and, even then, occurs only in the deepest Wyld, Dukkha can be felt as an air of tension, or a sudden jolt of desire, either lusty or violent, depending on the results of the Thorn's arcane calculations. Where he wills, creatures turn to infighting, sadism, rapine and bloodlust. Where he walks, the roads of the Wyld run with blood and tears and liquid pain.

Dukkha does not smile. He is the Thorn What Does Not Kill, and nothing will turn him from his proscribed path.

Maya, She Who Blinds the Truth

Maya is deception and falsity. She is illusion and ignorance. She is the thing that holds back seekers of enlightenment, that deters would-be saints and buddhas from the path of righteousness. Her whispers soothe and arouse and blanket and blind; they draw the comfortable fabric of reality around the eyes of men and Exalted, raksha and gods, obscuring the truths of Essence and the soul. She is not cold, like her elder brother Dukkha; rather, she is warm, inviting, and comforting. She is everything you could want, everything that brings you to doubt. She brings joy and she brings frustration and she brings the turmoil in a man's heart that leads him to shun the path of enlightenment.

And she greatly enjoys her work. On the surface, at least.

Maya is manifest at all times. She has treaded the paths of Pure Chaos as often as the slopes of the Imperial Mountain. To all eyes, she is a shallow, callous creature, blown from port to port by the mad winds of desire, mindless and full of hunger. But, like her brother, she is a true aspect of Dharma.

Maya maintains this mask of innocent hedonism carefully. Sometimes, the mask slips, and a man, or woman, or god will see something great and dark and terrible, something larger than all of Creation that harbors a mind as vast as the infinite Void. But they always forget. She Who Blinds the Truth sees to it.

Ananda, the Conscious, Extant Bliss

Deep in the Wyld, far from all things, there is a fallen sun, all hollowed-out iron and rusted steel that burns no longer. But there is a certain radiance to it, though not from the sun itself. Nay, this radiance comes from the creature who dwells in that toppled solar orb, who dances to the primal pulse of the universe and sings the praises of her father-mother.

This creature is Ananda. Her song has no words and her dance no proscribed steps, for she sings and dances out of the sheer joy of God-consciousness. This joy is what drives her and what defines her. Every sweep of her arms or fall of her feet is bliss, every passing moment is indescribable ecstasy. She never ceases in her whirling revolutions, for to stop is to die, to the Conscious, Extant Bliss.

Ananda was birthed from the womb of Dharma soon after the defeat of her elder siblings in the Primordial War. She has no knowledge of any of these happenings, however, for her mind is too enraptured with her dance to notice. The Yozis know of her, but they consider Ananda to be a petulant child, unfit even to use as a pawn in their schemes. The Malfeans do not know of her, for they are too blinded by their mad thirst for revenge to acknowledge true bliss. But she doesn't care. She has her dance, she has her song, and she has her freedom. Her souls are vestigal, infant consciousnesses that orbit the center of her being like tiny suns, but Ananda knows they will soon develop and she will have partners in her endless celebration.

The Conscious, Extant Bliss bides her time, ignored by her imprisoned brothers and her dead sisters, waiting until she is strong enough to enter their great work. Then she will remake it into a better place.

In Ananda's presence, all things are taken by her joy. They dance and sing in step with her, until their throats are raw, their feet are torn, and their hearts stop. Not even the dream of Venus' light shines in Ananda's realm; she does not tolerate the Celesial Whore.

Manas, the Mind Which Lacks Faith

Far from Ananda's fallen sun, the clouds darken and rain begins to fall. The raindrops are not of water though; they are the skeletons of birds. A single monument to this macabre storm rises to pierce the sky, a tower of red iron and the blue petals of forget-me-nots. Inside this tower there dwells a pitiful creature.

The Mind Which Lacks Faith is, indeed, a Primordial, but he has none of the arrogance of his elder siblings. He spends each, eternal moment of his existence alone in a vasty throne room, looking out across the bone-white fields of twisted bodies that surround his bastion. He knows, deep in his soul, that nothing can improve his lot. He knows what has happened to his siblings. He knows that the gods cannot be trusted, that men are vicious parasites living off the great work of their betters, that the Exalted are petty thugs, unable to comprehend the vastness of a creature like himself, yet still able to kill him.

He ripped his way, screaming, from the womb of Dharma immediately following the Primordial War. When he saw the terrible indignities forced on his kin, he was vindicated. Right then, moments after his birth, he lost faith in the world. He realized that nothing works properly, even the machinations of Primordials. He retreated, then, to his iron and flower mansion, there to sit and brood and lament the crushing despair of existence. He is there still, deaf to the Yozis' talk of escape and the Malfeans' talk of revenge. He will have nothing to do with his elders. Manas knows and, because of this, he is the Mind Which Lacks Faith. It is the only logical conclusion.

Kamandalu, the Pleasure-Jar

Kamandalu was once a raksha, a noble Entertainer older than all of Creation, who became so utterly pervasive that none could look upon him and not fall in love. However, it was raksha love, not the tender love of drear reality, and therefore more comparable to mutilation of the spirit than any sort of affection. But that is not the point of this narrative.

Kamandalu delivered himself bodily into the hands of Dharma, having experienced all he felt he needed and having garnered sufficent power to make contact with one of the terrible, silent gods of the Wyld. He gave himself up to Maya and she changed him. With delicate hands, she sheared away his Heart; she sundered his Ring; she tore out his Sword and Staff. Then, taking all those aspects of his being, she sculpted the fabric of his being like clay, molding them all into the Cup.

When she finished, Kamandalu was no longer a raksha. He was a spell of Glamour Sorcery, more powerful by levels of magnitude than anything formed from the drippings of an Unshaped's virtue. Maya kissed him upon the forehead and whirled away, leaving only the pleasant scent of boiled child and sex.

True to his name, Kamandalu generally appears as an exquisitely carven jar, decorated with oddly writhing patterns that twist lewdly. He brims with crisp, clear water that tastes of sweat and late nights. It is difficult to tell what material he is made of, though he is always warm to the touch and soft, supple, yielding; in fact, to touch Kamandalu is to feel the most exquisite joys mortals can feel. To drink of him is to lose oneself in glorious sensation. To know Kamandalu is to need him, desperately, passionately, and to the exclusion of all else. This would greatly please the Pleasure-Jar, had he any self-awareness left. But he knows only desire and desirability now; he is in the hands of Dharma, who will not touch him.

Employed in Cup combat, Kamandalu is a clinch enhancer with Speed +2, Accuracy +7, Damage +12, Defense +3, and a Rate of 2. At the expense of 2 motes, its wielder can convert all post-soak damage dice to automatic successes. Any shaping weapons of the Cup used to parry Kamandalu are instantly destroyed and their owner's Cup Grace is dissolved into the Pleasure-Jar himself. It is not destroyed, but the owner of Kamandalu counts as being attuned to any and all Cup Graces dissolved within the Jar without extra mote cost. A victim may barter for the return of her Cup, or she may attempt to steal a drink from Kamandalu. In the Wyld, this requires the victim to Vex Kamandalu's owner. Once the owner has been Vexed, the victim rolls Willpower, difficulty 5. On a success, they regain their Cup Grace. On a failure, they drink the wrong Cup and receive a new, randomly-determined Cup trait. On a botch, they regain a random Grace but it is malevolent. Treat this as a Throwback Flaw with a point rating equal to the Cup rating of the consumed Grace.

Kamandalu cannot be invoked in Creation. He can, however, be persuaded, with vast amounts of Essence and gossamer, to extend his reach across all lands of shape for a brief moment. A wave of intense pleasure, greater than anything experienced by mortals and almost all Exalts, washes across the entire world. The exact effects of this wave are left to the Storyteller, but one may assume that one in five mortals will die from sensory overload. This includes animals and even some plants, especially sentient ones. Weak-willed Exalts may acquire derangements, but certainly won't die. Weak spirits, especially elementals of wood or spirits of joy, may die, but greater gods, Essence 4 and above, are treated as Exalts.

Anava, the Veil of Duality

Anava is a woman, her shapely form hewn from coal and tempered with cream. She does not move of her own volition. Her lips are red, her hair is ashen-gray, and her teeth are sharp. Four wings extend from her back; they are placed at right angles from each other and are useless. A pair of horns erupt from her brow, glowing with colors that hurt the mortal eye. The tail that sweeps and writhes at her feet has a human face. Her own face, while superficially human, is illuminated by a halo of softly-shining light. When the halo's light falls upon mortal women, their skin twists and extrudes screaming mouths before erupting into a corona of fire and orchid petals.

A halo, wings, horns and a tail. Sometimes, you can see her, shoveling coal inside your dreams, for this is the form that the Veil of Duality prefers, on those occasions when she deigns to have a shape. But she does not need a shape at all, in fact.

Anava is the lie that all things are not one. She is male and female, hot and cold, compassionate and cruel and every pair of opposites that exist in all the worlds of shape and un-shape. She is smaller than her sister, Maya, but she is no less pervasive. She draws herself in swathes of charred linen, draping herself between the past and the present, the present and the future. Every recognition of difference, of disharmony, stems from Anava. This is the iron law she enforces upon reality and none may gainsay her.

Malaparipaka, The Maturation of Impurity

Malaparipaka has but one shape. It is, fundamentally, a guiding principle for its brothers and sisters; Suffering, Illusion, and Duality. It cannot move, it cannot think, and it cannot question its purpose. All it can do is tend the seeds that are sown by its siblings in the hearts of men and gods, beasts and exalts. It nurtures the hatred that simmers behind a killer's eyes, it carefully monitors the lust that roils in the gut of a rapist. Every manner of sin and vice can be found in the serene gardens of the Maturation of Impurity, if one were able to survive the trek beyond even the Courts of Pure Chaos, and there, it takes some form of happiness.

In many ways, Malaparipaka is closest to its father of all the Aspects of Dharma. The Maturation of Impurity is not, in and of itself, impure, unlike Dukkha, Maya, and Anava. However, Malaparipaka is by not virtuous by any stretch of the imagination. It is completely impassive and imperturbable; nothing can shock it, for all things shocking are contained and grown in its garden. It is this sin that prevents it from attaining Dharma's level of existence, the sin of apathy.

In the garden of Malaparipaka, mortal creatures are safe from the warping effects of the Wyld. But their minds are ripe planting grounds for the seeds that the Maturation of Impurity nurtures and they often leave as murderous sociopaths, worse than any Ravager.

Comments?

I like how you used a somewhat less materialistic application of Dukkha-as-suffering. Its position as social strife and ill intent is really more stylish. Hurry up and finish these so I can make stuff with 'em. *shakes fist* ~ BerserkSeraph

*cowers* Yes, yes. Finish they will. Some of the Aspects'll be more concrete than the above two. I'm thinking Anava and Kamandalu are really just über-spells, with Malaparipaka, Manas, and Ananda being embryonic Primordials. -- OhJames

Seems like all I can do today is express inarticulate wonder and joy at what others have made and shared here. This is amazing, OhJames. --MF

Ah, Hitherby Dragons. -Random_Nerd

Oh ho ho. You've found me out. I did, indeed, steal the term "The Thorn What Does Not Kill" from Ms. Borgstrom (whom I idolize, by the way). I sort of kind of stole "Dukkha" too, but she stole it from Buddhism, so I think it balances out. Plus, my Dukkha is not nearly as silly as her Dukkha. Anyway... yeah. -- OhJames

BTW, OhJames, I'm statting out an NPC for my game who has a legendary-scale adjuration, which I figure is probably a minor aspect of Nirvikalpa. I would really like to collaborate on it with you, if possible. In particular, if you could apply your mad Sanskrit skillz to come up with a name for it, I'd be in your debt. I'll put up what I have at MetalFatigueDharmaShinma/NirvikalpaAspect for now. --MF

I'd love to! But... do you want to know the secret to my sanskrit? It is here: http://www.worldebooklibrary.com/eBooks/HimalayanAcademy/SacredHinduLiterature/dws/lexicon/a.html -- OhJames

YOUR POWERS ARE NOW MINE! ~ BerserkSeraph

Thanks for the Sanskrit link; I did use it to name my creation. But I'd still like you (and everyone else, of course) to take a look at it and make suggestions, now that I've finally actually put it up on the wiki. --MF