BerserkSeraph/WayGrace

Way Grace

The Way Grace is the space between all things, but most tellingly is the journey between the creation and actualization of the raksha's desires. It is space - the space inside the Cup, in which the Staff rests, which the Ring divides, where the Heart rests, and through which the Sword arcs - and it is motion, the movement from want to satisfaction. Defined as motion from Desire to Actualization, it is crafted from the mystical tones of the Heart, the Ring, and the Sword - thusly, it feeds on Conviction while being fueled by Valor. Softly, the Way offers the Passion of adventure, while the uncertainty and rootlessness of travel can be used to cause Despair. It feeds on the ability to move - those who have been ravished by the Way Grace find themselves unwilling to take risks or attempt to fulfill desires, overcome with trepidation and listlessness. This is not pining, nor terror, but rather an apathy of self, a wish to be nowhere. There are no castes tied to the Way Grace, as it is a personal rather than common manifestation. Manifested as an object, the Way Grace is often sinuous and fluid in form. Weapons are long, with thin trails and tiny hazards. Armor is vast, peaked with mountains or pockmarked with caves that offer adventure and challenge. Items have patterns, sliding around themselves to a focal point that draws the eyes about it and towards the final objective.

The Way
The Way Grace channels a Raksha's Valor and feeds on the Conviction of others, representing a Journey. It is narrative force, the space between What Is and What Should Be, encouraging the wish to make strides for the self or impeding the will to strive in others. The greater the Way Grace, the more motive power the raksha has. The Way Grace, in addition to functioning as a normal Grace, can be used to speed travel in the Wyld (as defined in the Forging the Way Grace charm in E:FF, though I suggest that Ride or Athletics may sub for Sail) with an appropriate roll.
X - You have not formed a Way Grace, remaining blissfully unaware of the illusion of spatial limitations and the narrative of the journey.
• - You are a creature of motion with an understanding of the transience of space and time, sliding along the lines of the world towards your goals.
•• - You have become aware of limits and their irrelevance to you, travelling at the speed of dreams and moving along the lines of stories instead of through the physical realm; you often appear exactly when you need to.
••• - You are defined by your movement, sliding through your existence with deliberate ease. Where others flounder through their lives within the boundaries of their dimensions, you bend them with impunity, or enforce your own concepts of space on others.
•••• - Your potent Way Grace spins the world around it, becoming an axis for motion around which your Self orbits. Others simply cannot comprehend how you mold travel about yourself, deliberately imposing the hardships of the road on yourself out of an insight into the nature of the trials required for self-actualization.
••••• - You ARE motion. Merely being near you twists the flow of narrative and demands the flow of your person through elaborate and wondrous journeys that, while difficult, lead infallibly to what you truly desire. May you live in interesting times.

Raksha with Way Graces that have those Graces broken or are stripped to Way 0 by someone attuned to the Grace suffer the Curse of Stagnance - like creatures without Conviction or Valor, they see no reason to take risks, seeing only danger in extending themselves. They withdraw inward, forgetting that what they have came from efforts, losing track of the names of their possessions, their rivals, their triumphs. They lose the ability to 'sprint' waypoints, and begin to abandon long-term projects, discarding them out of fear and worry.
They will cancel or abort a number of long-term plans (such plans that would have impact on the raksha if completed and which have cost the raksha resources to put into motion) equal to the raksha's Temperance. This may take moments as the raksha recalls servants and breaks alliances, or years of timid withdrawal, remaining huddled in what is familiar and slowly cancelling all attempts to improve himself until forced to take strides in new directions by an outside force or old oaths.

Way Shaping
Way Shaping imposes travel and motion on others, redefining distance, time, hardships, and hazards that must be overcome to move forward. It does not impede motion - which would be constrictive Ring shaping - nor create deadly challenges - the way of the Sword - but rather synthesizes the two - it merely creates the travel, which in turn is filled in by whatever seeps into the narrative, scaled to the subject's own desires. This is the greatest strength and the foremost weakness of Way-shaping - it is scaled to its subject, so the grander their designs the more dangerous it is, but similarly, a meek target will provide only meek challenges.
The Way is paved with Valor and is associated primarily with the attributes of Dexterity, Charisma, and Wits. The Abilities associated with the Way are Ride, Sail, Endurance, Athletics, and Survival. It lacks a color and is best defined by the forward direction - it moves unceasingly towards a new horizon and a new goal, incapable of turning back or denying the venture. Raksha that seek and quest, those that suffer hardship in order to gain something or claim some victory, are travelling along the Way - and those who realize the unity of distances come to understand and wield that Way in its pure form, an end as opposed to a means.
Way contests are tests of resilience and desire, interweaving trails that bring the combatants into conflict or cooperation as the path spirals towards the final point, where one of the raksha will seize what they seek and the other will be sent spinning along unmapped paths of despair. Way shaping bends the space around others to impede their motion or keep them from their goals - those wrapped in these spiteful labyrinths of emotion and dimension are mazed, rendered incapable of realizing what they sought after.

Way Combat

Raksha can craft routes and impossible obstacles from nothing, weaving from chaos-stuff a structure of dramatic and temporal flow upon which the subject must ride to realize their goals, then tightening the vice of the shaping, wearing the subject down with the duration and trials of the journey until they give in and submit to the despair, allowing themselves to fail in a quest crafted and lovingly maintained by their opponent.

The dice pool for Way-shaping actions is selected from the most appropriate definition set below. If a crafted journey crosses multiple definitions, the player selects the most likely one, subject to ST approval. As the power of a Way narrative is reliant on the ability of the shaper to visualize the trail in question, the dice pools are all reliant on the primary Attribute of Wits, pulling themselves from the ability of the creator to think in terms of quickness and reaction to the path.

Wits + Athletics: The raksha crafts or maintains a path that requires one to push their body to overcome obstacles - a trail caught in a storm of endless whirling blades, or a craggy mountain path. These obstacles differ from those of Endurance in their brevity and severity - they are sudden hardship as opposed to laborious struggling.
Wits + Endurance: The raksha crafts or maintains a path that requires one to push the limits of their resilience with its grinding toils and banal length - endless winding trails or massive mountains form in the subject's way, daunting them with the prospect of the mountains beyond, pushing them to simply give in to the difficulty of the journey.
Wits + Ride: The raksha crafts or maintains a path that moves at breakneck speed but is subject to unseen dangers - the subject rides astride a fearsome stag that would drown them in a moment, or rests on the back of a hateful horse, fiercely bucking and carrying them anywhere but where they want to go.
Wits + Sail: The raksha crafts or maintains a path that fluctuates in difficulty and character over time, moving with terrifying frequency from soul-crushing slowness to frantic activity - a ship in still seas, wracked with scurvy, that soon becomes storm-tossed.
Wits + Survival: The raksha crafts or maintains a short but trying path, one that requires the use of one's wits and surroundings to survive. A starving caravan moves through a desert barren of wildlife, or a weary traveller finds the oasis empty.
The default description of Way shapiing is in the realm of "the path spreads before him, millions of miles in length," or "his vessel is cast off-course by a sudden storm," with further description - especially of the circumstances and difficulty of the travel - earning stunt dice.

Way Damage
The fundamental limit on the effectiveness of a Way attack is not the raw scale of the path itself but the scale on which the subject is thinking - the more hardship he expects, the more he will find. More impressive paths demand more grandeur of thought from the subject (read: Successes to damage), while undaunting paths by their very nature do not provoke much worry. To win a contest of Way shaping the raksha must grind the foe down with their own dreams, arraying before them the difficulties - insurmountable - that must be passed for them to be realized. To measure the success of a Way shaping, the raksha's player rolls damage, with the base damage for a Way attack being the TARGET'S Valor, plus extra successes. Narrative power in the form of shaping weapons can bolster or hinder this damage by their nature. The victim receives a damage soak equal to his Temperance + Willpower, which functions exactly as normal soak does and as such cannot reduce damage dice to zero.

Weapons of the Way
Damage from Way attacks depends on the nature of the path or the obstacles it offers. Most Way-shaping weapons are methods of travel with attached, inferred difficulties - a path will naturally (in the dream born world of the raksha) have bandits, a bridge will invariably have its troll. Costs are based off of the Gossamer background, representing the maintenance required to keep the dramatic crescendo from fading and losing power. These are the short-range weapons of the Way, requiring intimate closeness with the subject to apply themselves to the world - they shape the subject's immediate circumstances - they are the Sword of the Way, the bandit who actively ends the traveler's journey.
Rough Terrain the raksha defines a path that is difficult to overcome, offering unseen challenges over the next bluff or extending mercilessly into the distance.
Temptation the raksha makes a path of deceptive pleasure, one that offers numerous side-attractions and distracts the subject from their true goals with simpler, easier pleasures.
Woeful Impediment the raksha defines a natural or unnatural obstacle, such as a bandit troupe or a sudden storm. These hazards would normally dwindle to nothing, but the trail draws them along well-beaten paths of narrative to beset a traveler along his way - dramatic rule applies its logic over that of the world.
Entanglement See pages 138-139 of E:FF. In Way combat, these are paths that lead nowhere or those that bend space to return to themselves.
All-Places Labyrinth cunningly crafted from Essence and welded together from gossamer, these elavorate structures of motion bend space, time, emotion, and perception, all into a tangled morass that turns a path that would normally provide a challenge into a massive maze that exists in all places and none, a spiteful hell that is almost impossible to escape.
Seven League Boots these wondrous devices are plucked from the dreams of creatures of fantastic speed and woven with those slow dreams of the mountains and glaciers - they define the flow of speed for the target, speeding them to dangerous rapidity or slowing them to stillness. Few travelers can withstand the strain of such rapid changes in motion.
Phooka Steed these statistics represent the use of a Phooka or Kelpie, a mystical steed formed from the concept of movement that drags its rider on soul-jarring hell rides that lead into the mouths of storms or to the bottom of the ocean - the steeds take great joy in the pain of their riders, and never tire. These stats may also provide a basis for the use of a Familiar as a Way-shaping weapon.

Additionally, some Way Weapons can be cast, thrown forward to ride the eddies of the Wyld's wind and the raksha's will to find their target at range - these weapons are less intimate but safer to use than the others of the Way, allowing a raksha to force a foe's travel decisions and make them chose or discard plans from afar. These weapons primarily deal with focusing attention and choice on the opponent, winding them into a journey that brings them to a final unsatisfying conclusion - they are the Ring of the Way, the impositions of the road and the misgivings of the world itself that turn a traveller back. All of the ranged weapons of the Way have a speed of +0 and a defense of -6, with ranges measured in Waypoints. Most have a limit on the maximum Valor they can apply as damage - the subject's dreams may be vaster than what the weapon can offer as a challenge.
Impassible Terrain: The world blocks the known way and denies the traveller's motion - he must go around, facing the unknown consequences of an unbeaten path.
Society's Edge: The raksha casts the concept of a frontier into the path of his foe, whose own danger increases markedly as he moves from the familiar into the uncharted.
Dark Heart: Corrupted from the World Hearts used in Ring-shaping, these define a hidden allure to the realm through which the travelller moves, an impediment to their leaving that urges them to take a new and comfortable position of security - the praise of a village offers the target the identity of a god, for example. The illusion must be fed one gossamer per scene of use as the Dark Heart offers what the subject most desires to stay where he is.
Path-Dividing Signpost: These mundane-seeming items are large staffs of wood or metal, marked with inscrutable standards of Gossamer. When cast, they take root in the way of their target, dividing the world into paths - by chosing one, the subject defines his own fate as one of travel. Using a Path-Dividing Signpost costs one gossamer per scene of use.

Name                   Spd     Acc    Dam    Def    Rate    Cost    Other 
Rough Terrain          +2      +0     +0     -1     2       -       *      

Temptation             -3      +1     +3     +3     2       -       *
     
Woeful Impediment      +0      +3     +1     +0     3       -       -       

Entanglement           -6      -2     +0     -2     1       -       *     

All-Places Labyrinth   -5      +0     +2     -3     1       2       C,P     

Seven-League Boots     +4      +1     +1     +0     4       3       *     

Phooka Steed           -1      +2     +4     +2     2       2       P     

Name                   Acc    Dam    Rate   Range   V. Max  Cost    Other 
Impassible Terrain     +1     +2     2      4       3       -       *

Society's Edge         +0     +3     2      3       2       -       *

Dark Heart             +1     +0     3      6       5       2       P       

Path-Dividing Signpost +2     +3     2      8       4       2       -

Effects of Damage
Raksha mark Way damage off against their Conviction + Way (or Conviction + Essence if they do not have a Way Grace - this means that characters with newly-forged Way graces will be more susceptible to Way damage than they would be without the Grace, and is intentional). When they have taken more Way damage than this total, they lose the shaping combat and are mazed
Mazed characters are incapable of realizing one goal or desire of their own, defined by the attacker. The prohibited goal cannot put the character in direct danger nor force him to give up that which he already possesses ('You cannot realize your goal of defending yourself from my Sword attacks', for example), but can prevent the character from taking a crucial step in a plan or fulfilling an obligation (In the case of a character who is mazed in a fashion that prevents an incumbrance, the attacker with the highest Essence takes precedence, the other effect being subdued until one or the other ends.) A character that attempts to work towards the prohibited goal must expend temporary Willpower equal to the attacker's Way Grace and roll Valor versus a difficulty of his own Temperance. Should the roll succeed, the character may work towards the goal for one scene. Should it fail, the character has squandered the effort, losing the Willpower but not overcoming his misgivings. Should a character not have enough temporary Willpower to expend, they simply cannot resist the mazing for that scene. A mazing is lifted when the goal is achieved (by resisting), when the mazer deliberately withdraws his limitations, or when the character resists for a number of scenes (not subsequent, total) equal to the attacker's Essence.
Some example Mazes include -

     • Give up your travels, you shall not leave this Freehold. 

     • You will not attempt to feed on the people of the town of Whitewall. 

     • You will no longer seek to wrest my behemoth from me.

     • You shall not accept gossamer offered to you by those you have burdened.

     • Give up your attempts to seduce the Czarina of Terrible Winters.

     • You will no longer seek to understand the shinma Nirupadhika.

Mazing Places
Mazing a waypoint twists it into a chaotic form of space and time that is alien even to the Wyld. The raksha must commit 3 motes of Essence to the waypoint to maintain this structure. Characters that enter (or attempt to 'sprint' over) the waypoint are trapped there for a number of scenes equal to the attacker's Way Grace, and the attacker may sense when the waypoint is entered. The attacker and those he designates may move freely past the waypoint. Characters may make a reflexive Perception + Awareness roll, against a difficulty of the attacker's Essence, to sense the state of the waypoint before attempting to enter or pass over it.

Mazing the Unshaped
Mazing one of the Unshaped defines them in a callous fashion, twisting them in a fashion that causes their entire beings to scar and blemish. By divining the map inside the lacerations on the emotions and body of the unshaped, the raksha can find a pathway that will provide him a retinue, a store of Gossamer, or patronage at a Freehold, a journey that directs him to a three-dot Background or increases an existing three or four dot background by one dot. The unshaped merely points to the Background - the raksha must seize it himself, either by simply harvesting the gossamer from a rich vein or, as the case may be, wresting it from a rival - the Way creates an adventure with a payoff, instead of instant gratification. A given unshaped can only be mazed once per story.

Mazing the Creation-Born
The creatures of Creation are vulnerable to the entrapment of a mazing, but do not have a Way damage track. Instead, the victim's player rolls Willpower+Essence against a difficulty of the raksha's damage successes, with exaltation conferring the normal bonus dice. A character that succeeds takes no ill effect from the damage, while one that fails suffers a mazing as normal. Note that the Creation-born are generally more fragile than the raksha, so certain mazings must be carefully considered if they deal direct harm to the character ('You will no longer attempt to eat', for example, would offer no harm to one of the raksha, but would likely kill even an Exalt). Charms and effects that reduce the subject's Way soak instead reduce the resistance pool, as normal.

Comments

Good stuff overall; just a note and a question. First, the benefits gained from mazing the unshaped seem a little high. An artifact 3 is only about half of the Artifact background at three dots, given the minor items also possessed; thus, you can get more Artifacts from mazing than other shaping combats. While the fact that it only shows a way without providing one is a substantial limiter, I think that's balanced by the incredibly versatility of a background that can increase your permanent Gossamer resources, net you allies, or even buy Charms (through the Birth background). I think making the highest which can be gained outright a Background 2 will balance this out a bit more.

A small question: mazing can interfere with adjurations as well as incumbrances. How should those interact? -Vargo Teras

My reasoning on deciding between two background and three background was because of the difficulty of finding something in the Wyld that isn't owned by a bigger fish - the way the Way works means that you have to move pretty deep into the Wyld to assure that the map isn't going to point you right back to the store of gossamer owned by the lord of your Freehold. It demands a quest for the payoff, so I think it's justified in what it does. I would never let a player increase Birth in this fashion - Birth is rather implicitly something you get at character creation or not at all. You can't retroactively be born under more opportune circumstances, after all (Or, at least, not easily). Remember that applying the tools gained from the other methods of shaping the unshaped can, after similar effort, offer more benefits - the time in which the Way shpaer is questing for his Gossamer, the guy who vexed for a Behemoth has used his new pet to shake down other raksha for THEIR artifacts.

I'd say that a mazing can overcome an Adjuration of level lower than the attacker's Essence (But not equal to). This is a touch spiteful but given that the alternative is being vexed and having the oath - and more - removed from you, I think it's alright. ~BerserkSeraph

Fair enough. -Vargo Teras

Um. Is this the same Way Grace Combat that was originally posted on RPG.net? Cause I remember it a little differently... DS

No, it's not. Wasn't even aware such a thing existed. Is it a good different rememberance or the bad sort? ~BerserkSeraph

Wow. Seriously, you weren't aware of the one on RPG.net? Cause you've got a lot of simliar ideas...

Honestly, however, it's a bad rememberence. The differences I noticied seemed to be inclined towards making Way Combat either another form of Ravishment and/or Burdening, or outright superior. Mazing the Unshaped in particular made me blink- the RPG.net version of Mazing the Unshaped resulted in a 3 dot Freehold, which made /perfect sense/. Instead, you can suddenly get anything.

The original thread can be found at http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=163729&highlight=Grace DS

I don't go to RPG.net except when people bring stuff to my attention. Note that outright ownership of a level 3 Freehold is actually about Background 4-5 (Unless I misread the thing and it just somehow manipulates politics to get you an in with a local Freehold owner), placing the result at a power level significantly above every other shaping of the unshaped, and that I consider the method of describing the use of Way combat to be somewhat...pedestrian?

Making someone lost is one thing, making them abandon their goals is, in my mind, far more lasting to the fair folk- they are defined by mental and emotional, rather than physical, properties. And it's not suddenly getting anything, any more than suddenly Sword shaping gives you a behemoth - I consider the concept of creating the opportunity for a quest both more balanced than suddenly owning a freehold (which would require sizable reallocation of local Essence flows) and more in tone with the 'stories-as-law' theme of Fair Folk. The comparison between burdening and Mazing is fine by me - the Way isn't a Grace in its own right, it's something cobbled together from the Ring and the Heart and the Sword, so it DOES bear similarities to all of them. ~BerserkSeraph

Meh, that sounded a little more critical than I probably intended... I appreciate the works of others in this vein, but I don't know if an easy comparison can be drawn - I think I'm taking 'journey' in a slightly less literal sense than they are, and applying a different interpretation of what a journey entails given my view of the raksha. Your mileage may vary. ~ BerserkSeraph

Okay, I've had some time to think about this, and while I still think it friggin' rocks, I would like to point out that you haven't defined what happens to a raksha whose connection to Nirupadhika is severed by someone who holds his Way Grace--a question left unanswered in the book. --MF

The first thing I said when I posted this was 'somebody's going to notice that.' The second thing was, 'I'll have my ninjas slay that person.' Please leave your windows unlocked. Unreason and I are still puzzling it out - we'll probably have separate bedlams to better suit our different approaches to what the Way does - but this was my tentative thought: it would fade after the raksha abandons a number of important projects equal to his Temperance and impose a +2 difficulty on all balance/travel checks (sympathetic magic - if you're bad at moving your own will you're bad at moving your body, because the two are so linked for the raksha) ~ BerserkSeraph

Hmm. Kinda weak. I would have thought it would be more like the Curse of Namelessness in scope and intensity, to provide a nice downside for forging this splufty new Grace and gaining access to a host of kewl powerz. --MF

I dunno - it's another thing to have to throw XP at, and until you raise it - admittedly, cheaply - you're more vulnerable to Way-shaping than you would be without it. Add in that you've purchased a charm to make it, presumably have to purchase other charms and maybe new abilities to use it well... I think it works out to be no difference than having a weak other Grace - the access to new tricks is offset by the fact that you have to, y'know, pay for 'em. I'm always open to suggestions, however, and my grasp of the Bedlams isn't very strong. ~ BerserkSeraph

Berserk! I can't comment on your Lords and Ladies page, but I really want to! My browser, for some reason, won't let me type, or even view, for that matter, any text beyond the first paragraph of the Nirvikalpa bit when I try to edit the page. I really love what you've done, though, and could you also tell me where you're getting your translations? I'm thinking of doing write-ups for some of the aspects of the Shinma, when I can get around to it. -- OhJames

Google-Fu! The Shinma use Hinduism terms for Brahman and so forth - those things that they transcend as they reach perfection. I was already, as a devout Kindred of the East junky, familiar with the term Dharma- a quick search for 'nirakara' and 'nirupadhika' led to my other finds in various internet glossaries. Thanks for the compliment and I hope you can figure out the Lords and Ladies issue, I'm always open for ideas there and here and so on. ~BerserkSeraph