FairFolk/ShapedSociety
Shaping A Society
The Mountain Folk
by willows
So, I have been thinking about this for a while, in response to some of my misgivings about these two splats. In general, I don't think that it was too great an idea to bifurcate them; a less dramatic departure from the starting point of "these are earth-aspected fey" would have resulted in greater mechanical consistency (something I hold in high esteem) and opened a broader spectrum of options for Mountain Folk characters, while intelligent design (which Exalted clearly shows no lack of) could easily have made it so that particular Mountain Folk are still the rigid, unforgiving creatures they are made out to be. Eh? What? Why aren't you talking about Fair Folk too? I am! Mountain Folk are Fair Folk.
So the initial conceit of this effort is that an Fair Folk by any other name will still smell as sweet...unless he is all crusty with ooky shape like the Mountain Folk are. Since the Fair Folk are as well-developed as their calcified cousins, my plan is to try and fold their power-sets together, so that one can make a full spectrum of characters ranging from crazy Pokémon-taming Scheherezades to subterranean space marines, including everything in between. The idea here is to set it up so that a fey can buy a power package that turns him almost exactly into a Mountain Folk, retaining all the factors that make Mountain Folk different and interesting.
Nuts & Bolts
The first step to doing this is to make a list of their unusual attributes. Where there is italicised text, it's something extracanonical I've added to make the opposition better.
||Fair Folk:||Mountain Folk:|| ||Have no default body. ||Have a fixed body. || ||Respire in the Wyld. ||Respire in Creation. || ||Shape. ||Sculpt. || ||Nobles don't specialize well. ||All specialize in Craft. || ||Commons specialize extremely. || ... || ||Don't die in the Wyld. ||Don't die in Creation.|| ||Have Graces. ||Don't. || ||Base Charms on Graces. ||Make Charms in Patterns. || ||Build sorcery. ||Kill Sorcery. || ||Take oaths. ||Are Geased. || ||Are freehold architects. ||Are architects. || ||Breed kaiju. Are kaiju. ||Fight kaiju. Are not kaiju. ||
So, what can we do with this? In general, I think that we can draw the generalization that the Mountain Folk special qualities are drawn either from their connection to Autobot, or from their adaptation to Creation (assuming that these are distinct, which is not necessarily true).
So, naturally, we turn to the gate Nirakara, and the Charms of assuming shape and name. Later, we'll talk about the Great Geas. We begin with the Charm that provides Mountain Folk with a fixed shape:
Tenuous Earth Breath
- Cost: 2 gossamer
- Duration: One Story
- Type: Simple
- Min. Sword: 2
- Min. Essence: 2
- Prereq. Charms: None
Swallowing a Hearthstone, the raksha makes his body understand structure. He is able to respire in Creation, to an extent depending on the level of the stone. In addition, he is able to recieve the benefits of Hearthstones, but no longer does he enjoy the advantages of attuning to a Cyst. This Charm cannot be normally deactivated; it must be permitted to run its full-story course. At the end of the story, when the Hearthstone is fully digested by the raksha's Essence, a new Hearthstone begins to form at its Manse.
||Hearthstone: ||w/Activity:||at Rest:|| ||1 ||0 motes/hour ||2 motes/hour || ||2 ||1 mote/hour ||2 motes/hour || ||3 ||2 motes/hour ||4 motes/hour || ||4 ||3 motes/hour ||6 motes/hour || ||5 ||4 motes/hour ||8 motes/hour ||
Buried Dragon Heart
- Cost: 2 mutation points
- Duration: Permanent
- Type: Reflexive
- Min. Ring: 0
- Min. Essence: 1
- Prereq. Charms: Assumption of Elemental Shape (all)
Some raksha learn to untangle the nodes of Wyld in their systems, ordering their Essences after the patterns of Creation. This Charm may only be learned while the raksha has some version of Assumption of Elemental Shape active; it restores the Essence, mutation, and/or gossamer costs of that Charm, while making the Charm impossible to deactivate by any means; its effect becomes a non-magical, intrinsic part of the raksha's being.
Eternally Rejuvenating Principle
- Cost: 4 mutation points
- Duration: Permanent
- Type: Reflexive
- Min. Heart: 2
- Min. Essence: 1
- Prerequisite Charms: Any Assumption-type Charm
With this Charm, the raksha turns his Heart Grace inside out, so that its adamant shell encloses all the worlds of shape and unshape. Next he breaks his Ring and consumes the pieces. Stretched so far, the Heart shatters into oblivion, and the raksha gathers its vapors to forge himself a soul. This evanescent spirit nexus it too fragile to reform itself in the Wyld; a raksha with this mutation is utterly destroyed if he dies in the Wyld. Further, the raksha who has become one with his Ring cannot attune to bonefires and other elements of freehold architecture; they are too external and disordered for him. Note that the raksha has not lost his Ring; it has simply been reconfigured in a way that radically changes its nature.
On the other hand, the structure of Creation provides the soul with a scaffolding to reconstruct itself, and a point of reference to calibrate itself from. If he dies in Creation, the raksha will re-form, having forgotten all his Charms but the requisite Assumptions and whatever Charms he has taken as mutations. The raksha also retains any adjurations he bears.----
With these three Charms, we have a basic Creation-adapted raksha. He has good Essence economy, a stable body, and, most importantly, he is not permanently destroyed by dying in the world of shape.
The next thing to do is to encapsulate the things that make Mountain Folk masters of their particular domain: their unusual ability to craft, the Great Geas, and their unusual Charm structure. Assume for the moment that the Geas is an adjuration.
Prodigal World-Encrusted Hand
- Cost: 1 mutation point
- Duration: Permanent
- Type: Reflexive
- Min. Heart: 2
- Min. Essence: 1
- Prerequisite Charms: Buried Dragon Heart
With this Charm, a raksha extinguishes his creative spirit, and channels its energies into his material body. He chooses one Ability within his elemental aspect's purview; experience costs to raise this Ability and buy relevant Specialties are reduced by half. This supercedes the reduction provided by Favoring an Ability. Furthermore, the raksha must train his Traits as the created do, rather than automatically gaining Traits each story. He may buy 5 Specialties for the chosen Ability, but the bonus they confer to any single roll is limited to +3.
In exchange, the raksha loses the ability to shape.
Mind-Stilling (Grace) Shackles
- Cost: 10 motes, 1 Willpower, 1 gossamer
- Duration: One Story
- Type: Reflexive
- Min. Staff: 2
- Min. Essence: 1
- Prerequisite Charms: Oath Gossamer
This Charm is actually four different Charms, each corresponding to a Grace-Virtue pair. There is no variant corresponding to the Heart. While his Charm is in effect, the raksha unabridges one of his Graces to form a cage that settles around his mind. In this form, the Grace is stable and self-sustaining; rather than continually tempting him with the patterns of shape, it imposes its harmony on the raksha from within. The raksha does not suffer the Bedlam or Lure associated with the Grace he has expanded. Except in the specific ways described, the raksha is treated as not having the Grace the Charm affects.
This has a price, however. The raksha is unable to attune to great works of glamour that correspond with the Grace he has decompressed, but she does not lose attunement to any that she is already attuned to. The raksha must also choose a set of injunctions. Injunctions are principles that his Grace requires him to follow; they should have something to do with the Grace. Staff injunctions, for example, restrict the ways that the raksha may interact with society. He distributes as many points as his Grace plus his Essence between as many injunctions as he wishes; no single injunction may have a larger rating than his Grace. Injunctions with higher ratings have more extreme penalties.
The raksha gains a pool of Divergence, which is analogous to the Limit rating of the Solar Exalted; each time he breaks an injunction, he adds as many points as the injunction's rating to his Divergence pool. When the pool reaches 10 points, the Grace lashes back at the raksha, inflicting his own Essence rating in catastrophic botches, as though the raksha had broken an Eclipse-sealed oath. The pool resets to 0 at this time.
The raksha must own, attune, and possess his Grace to perform this manipulation. If multiple variations of the Charm affect the raksha simultaneously, he may choose to distribute points from multiple versions towards the same injunction. The maximum rating of an injunction is the highest rating of any Grace for which this Charm is active.
Expediently Fulfilling Flame
- Cost: 5 motes, 2 gossamer
- Duration: One Story
- Type: Reflexive
- Min. Staff: 4
- Min. Essence: 3
- Prerequisite Charms: Mind-Stilling Staff Shackles
While this Charm is in place, the raksha can devise and learn Charms based on an adjuration and Essence alone, independent of Graces. She may only use these Charms while she is sworn to the oath that she derives it from, and under the effect of this Charm.
These oath-linked Charms allow the raksha to expand her abilities in very specific directions, granting her the specific ability to fulfill her oath more surely, and obey its tenets and injunctions with style and aplomb. Generally, they are no better than an Exalted Charm with a maximum Ability requisite of the oath's rating (6 for N/A adjurations), and have an experience surcharge equal to the oath's rating to learn. Unlike ordinary raksha Charms, oath-Charms do not always require gossamer to operate in Creation. A raksha whose Caste is especially well-suited to the pursuit of her oath may develop Charms associated with this Caste; the experience cost of these is reduced by 2, for raksha of the appropriate Caste. Raksha using this Charm who are sworn to a common oath may teach each other Charms based on that oath.
Some raksha scholars postulate that the Charm cascades derived from oaths have a deep and primal structure, which can be seen in the shinma Nisthirapratijña, the one who is easily convinced. They claim that, no matter who develops Charms for a particular oath, the final set of Charms they arrive at will be identical. The Patterns of the Mountain Folk seem to support this hypothesis, though it is unknown how White Shale rearranged them.----
With the help of injunctions, we can build a comprehensive and precise account of the Great Geas's restrictions. Expediently Fulfilling Flame is a little more handwavey, but at the same time, it opens a broad avenue for new development that raksha do not ordinarily have access to.
But, what kind of crazy oath can encapsulate all these Charms? That's 15 mutation points up there! We'll have to do something.
Vaikarya Oaths: (Artifact N/A):
These, the strongest oaths of the raksha, are not as true and deep as the srishti oaths of the Heart, but they have a broader power. In shaping combat, a vaikarya oath takes on the qualities of a one-dot artifact weapon, as described in the section on samhara oaths, but with an unusual special power: All those attuned to a vaikarya oath may use it as a weapon simultaneously; none need possess the Grace-forged nucleus of the oath. In shaped worlds, they often manifest as terrible cruciform mandalas that crystallize the chaos around them.
It costs zero motes to swear a vaikarya oath, and it provides 15 mutation points' worth of powers. The raksha sworn to that promise recieve the associated mutations until the oath is broken or fulfilled, but suffer from no mutation point cost. Raksha sworn to a vaikarya oath may not attune any other oaths, and cannot assume any other mutations; the oath becomes their core, defining their intentions and form just as it defines their abilities.----
Finally, we can set up a Birth-analogue for fey that want to be Creation-adapted. This allows you to easily create fey that bridge the gap between the People of Adamant and the raksha.
Hatching:
Some raksha are born into the world of shape, already besmirched with its static effects. These raksha bear the Hatching background. Those who are strongly adapted to Creation may begin play with certain common Charms without spending Charm slots. ||x:||You are a creature of freedom and the Wyld. || || •:||You know Buried Dragon Heart or Tenuous Earth Breath. || || ••:||You know both Buried Dragon Heart and Tenuous Earth Breath. || || •••:||...and Prodigal World-Encrusted Hand and Eternally Rejuvenating Principle|| || ••••:||...and Mind-Stilling (Grace) Shackles (two versions)|| || •••••:||...and the other two versions of Mind-Stilling (Grace) Shackles and Expediently Fulfilling Flame. You are sworn to a vaikarya oath that binds you to these Charms. You are probably a Mountain Folk. ||----
The last problem to deal with are the matters of Jade Sense and Wyld Resistance, which are among the special powers of Mountain Folk. I will assume that these are benefits conferred by Autochthon.
So, in the interest of full disclosure, this was all done as an effort to provide a straightforward cosmological reason that the Mountain Folk are the way they are, and also to provide more robust options for Creation-adapted fey. In the process, it's vastly improved my opinion of them; while I'm still not too happy with their Charms, in terms of their flavor, examining them under the lens like this has given me a lot of respect for how they work. And now, with the mechanism of vaikarya oaths, I have a lot of freedom to make other shaped societies, something which I thought was oddly omitted from the FF book.
My hope is that, using rules like these, we can broaden the usefulness and variety of the Fair and Mountain Folk, by creating them as points on a continuum of shape, and having the tools to find points between them. It might be illuminating and entertaining to create shaped societies based on the Courts in the book; the code of conduct for each Court naturally serves as a foundation to set the tenets of its oath.
Comments
This is ASTONISHINGLY cool. I heap praise! -- Kukla
Seconded! Very awesome stuff. - Caelene
Thanks, both. I appreciate. - willows
