TranscendentCharms

CharlesGray TranscendentCharms

= TranscendentCharms =

Beyond their basic charms, the Transcendent mortals had no “native” charm abilities, hewing far closer to mortality than the exalted. This was, however not a state of affairs that lasted long. The exalted had long known about the ability ot martial arts to focus essence and they took advantage of this—focusing around their knowledge, the Transcendent mortals and even some thaumaturges could create “martial arts” trees with considerably different effects. The exalted could learn these to, but seldom bothered—their ability to develop new charms suited them effectively.

The Transcendent Essence Manipulation Patterns, as they were called, were considerably more focused, based on a single ability or sometimes even specialty. They comprised literally dozens of patterns, ranging from the common to the esoteric in the extreme—an entire order of Transcendent mortals possessed a pattern involving prayer, to better serve the gods. Learning these patterns was difficult and required focus—a Transcendent mortal who tried to study more than one pattern had to pay a one XP surcharge on any charms he learned, going up one more point for every other pattern he tried to learn. For those Thaumuturges who tried to learn TEMPs, the problem was even worse—some of htem had capstone charms that he could never master due to essence requirements, meaning that he could *never* eliminate the penalty as he tried to learn other patterns.

In addition, it was impossible for most Transcendent mortals to ever modify thir charms—the patterns like martial arts were fixed, making it impossible to adjust them. There was one exception—those Transcendent mortals with essence five who had completely mastered a pattern could expand on it—four double the normal XP. Even better, they could train other’s in the new charm, in effect making it an “official” part of the pattern, or even create new patterns (which was less costly for them, but took longer to develop and learn, obviously).

In the age of sorrows, many of these patterns no longer exist, are lost or honestly have no more relevance. The Transcendant Flower Arrangement Kata’s, allowing displays of incredible beauty and meaning is a pattern, whose use, sadly, is strictly limited in this harsher era. Those Transcendent mortals who have mastered patterns are eagerly sought out by others, and rumors of caches of such patterns bring many running to learn. Beyond Transcendent Mortals, heroic mortals who can use essence also can learn these charms, which is why many TranscendentCharms have essence minima of three or below. However, the limited amount of essence heroic mortals can use and the slow rate of recover reduced the usefulness of these charms for them.