HearthstoneRelay/Pomegranate

The thirty-seventh theme is pomegranate.

Pomegranates are fruit that grow on small deciduous trees or shrubs. They consist of a leathery outer shell, with a partitioned interior packed with many seeds; each seed is surrounded by a juicy red casing. In Judaism, the pomegranate is a symbol of righteousness. In Greek myth, Persephone was condemned to spend half the year in Hades' kingdom after eating six seeds from a pomegranate he offered her. Because its juice resembles blood, it has historically been associated with birth and death, and was often ascribed medicinal properties (modern science has found that it is rich in antioxidants).

The pomegranate also has a very cool-sounding name.

 

Bloodstaining Seed (Telgar)

Wood Manse 1

Trigger: Contact with a seed.

Touching this small ruby oblong to any living seed will cause the seed to quickly turn bright red and transform into a juicy, ripe pomegranate over the course of five minutes. This ability functions even when the Bloodstaining Seed is not socketed into an Artifact. When it is socketed, it gives the ability for the Artifact to transform any seeds it touches as well. Pomegranates produced by this seed are normal in every possible way.

Calendar of Seeds - willows

Water Manse 1

Trigger: uh yeah triggers sure

This Hearthstone is a black sphere with a little protruding crown on one end, just like a stemless pomegranate. Peeling back the shell reveals that it's full of hundreds of golden seeds with a milky-white flesh capsule. It's fairly difficult to remove these, requiring a Dexterity + Craft (or Larceny, or some other appropriate Ability) roll at an external penalty of 1. This will produce one intact seed per success, and crushes the remainder. The stone must be placed in a setting for approximately a day for it to refill with seeds, although it will reconstitute noticeably faster (half a day) if its bearer chooses not to regain Essence from it.

The seeds remain fresh for three days. Anyone who voluntarily eats an intact seed must graciously accept the bearer of the stone's hospitality for one day per seed, provided the bearer offers it, and obey the social conventions of a well-behaved guest in that time. The seeds of this Hearthstone have a distinctive appearance, and unless unusual measures are taken (i.e., the use of Charms), a guest will be able to remove them from his food if he deliberately chooses to.

Touchstone - FlowsLikeBits

Earth Manse 1

Trigger: Touching the earth

Sages know this rock as the "Touch of Gaia's Daughter", but most just call it a touchstone. It generally appears as a dormant seed, although the exact type depends upon the manse it is from.

When this stone is touched to the earth, the any excessive cold or heat is sucked out of the ground for a six yard radius and into the seed. This causes the seed to become covered in frost or to become quite hot, while plants or animals within the effected radius behave as if spring has come for the rest of the day. The effect isn't visible, although percipitation in the affected area will tend to seep into the ground rather than evaporating or accumulating as snow or ice. The stone cannot be used again till it returns to it's normal temperature, which normally takes a scene, although apropriate methods of heating or cooling it may speed this up at storyteller discretion.

If applied to a area once per day, this stone can be used to extend the growing season of plants. A Int+ { Craft(Wood) or Survival } at difficutly 2 roll would reveal that it may be used to kill pests by causing them to emerge during the cold season(Generally, several days of application are required to convince a plant it is spring). Similar rolls could reveal other uses.

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Orb of Many Righteous Things (Ikselam)

Solar Manse 2

Trigger: breakdancing

This pearly white orb contains several hundred ruby-red seeds, each of which contains the name of one of the Thousand Righteous Things. If its owner casts it to the ground, it will crack open and the seeds will spill out, each one shouting forth a word of righteous power as it bursts. There are quite a lot of seeds, and it can take up to half an hour (one scene) for all of them to speak.

A character attuned to the Orb of Many Righteous Things receives a one-die bonus on prayers made to the Unconquered Sun, and on attempts to resist the blandishments of creatures of darkness. This latter bonus does not apply to unnatural mental influences.

When the stone is broken, all creatures of darkness within earshot of the seeds are deafened for the remainder of the scene, and take all actions at an internal penalty of their own Essence. If the creatures are extras, they automatically flee, cower, or are otherwise incapacitated. After being broken, the Orb reforms at its Manse as normal.

Sweet Fragrance Stone - Madoka

Wood Manse 5

Trigger: none

This stone's color and shape appear different depending on who is observing it's characteristics, even though it never actually changes. It has this unique property to look appealing and pleasant to all tastes. This stone is very useful in social endeavors, seduction and manipulation. The stone exudes the sweet fragrance of pomegranate, making the bearer alluring. This stone adds 4 dice to manipulation and seduction attempts. It also makes the bearer appear to have an appearance 2 dots higher than they normally would.

The Biitter River - willows

Water Manse 5

Trigger: Continuous

This Hearthstone is a flaky white sphere, but it is rarely seen, because a stream of water follows it from its Manse to its setting. This only occurs when the stone is set, and not when it's carried independently. When set, the stream appears immediately, as though it had begun to flow forth days ago, in anticipation. When the water reaches the stone, it enters it and vanishes.

This water is no ordinary water; it is cold and bitter. It touches and insinuates itself into everything within a mile's radius of its bearer, rendering all foods unpalatable permanently; no one gains sustenance from eating them, because simply keeping such vile stuff down is such a task. The only solution is to season contaminated foods with the powder of dried pomegranate, whose enthusiastic sourness combines with the river's bitterness to make a surprising, aromatic flavour. It is highly pleasing, and tenderizes meat.

Comments

This theme is on the bizarrely specific side, but I'm confident that, at the very least, willows will be able to come up with something interesting for it. _Ikselam

Edit conflict! That wasn't even hard, Roger. - willows

I'm unsurprised, pomegranates are very you. _Ikselam actually had willows specifically in mind when choosing this theme.

I just made pomegranate ice cream last night but it was really gross and nobody ate more than three spoonsful. Too much guar gum.- willows

Mine seems a bit banal, but I sorta like it anyway. - Telgar, who likes pomegranates.

It has it's uses. Stuntasticness for one thing. I kinda like the idea of someone batting a bunch of seeds to the the hungry masses. Imagine if stuck that in your sword and smacked a watermellon. :) -FlowsLikeBits

We are now three stones into the relay and we're still on level one? Um. Someone needs to do something about that. - Telgar

Decided to roll with it. An entire level 1 relay would be different. -FlowsLikeBits. (Perhaps, we should have done it that way originally. With the inital person picking the theme and level and contributors doing 5 stones of differnt types. It would make the relay stones much easier to index, as they would all be the same level. It's nigh impossible now. )

The reason I structured the game this way is that it provides a natural way of keeping the length of a round fairly short. It also provides a sense of progression and variety to each round. All these things (ideally) conspire to keep things interesting, and moving along at a decent clip. The point of the game isn't to produce "finished product"; it's intended to just be a somewhat structured brainstorming exercise. _Ikselam

What's wrong with being catagorised the way they are now? ie: by theme? You know that you're looking for a Hearthstone related to 'x', so you can go to that theme and see a stone for each level... just curious is all... - nikink

The main reason I called the righteous orb level 2 is that its strong power only works for one scene per month. I could see it being level 3 if you think it's too powerful. _Ikselam

And it can only be used by Michael Jackson?!? (check the trigger). It effectivly gives CoD an internal penalty for the scene equal to their own Essence once per month. I'd tend to call it a level 1. If you want to be level 2, I'd give an external penalty at least. -FlowsLikeBits

I wouldn't call what Michael Jackson does "breakdancing." :) I'd also be of the opinion that making the penalty external would be pretty overpowered, since it scales up with the target's power -- +Essence to difficulty of all rolls is a not-insurmountable inconvenience for something like a blood ape (Essence 2), but if, say, Ligier (Essence somewhere in the 8+ range) gets hit by it, he gets completely shut down for an entire scene.

The main reason I call it level 2 instead of 1 is that it can affect an enormous number of targets at once, and has a pretty enormous effect on the enemies you really want it to._Ikselam

The solution to the imbalance of your penalties is to use a better scale for the penalty than Essence, I think. - willows

I was originally going to do some kind of crazy overcomplicated shit with Perception + Essence, or a Willpower roll, or something like that. The basic idea with the current Essence thing is that more powerful "beings of darkness" are more strongly opposed to pure righteousness, thus feel their effects more strongly.

I suppose I could always just bump up the potency of the add-on prayer/social defense effect, and make the Holy Hand Grenade effect a goofy add-on, rather than the main point of the stone. _Ikselam

Well, it falls into the same catagory as the Gem of Light. It's REALLY dependant on the game. It's incredibly usefull in some sistuations, and really useless in others. One thought would be to scale the penalty with BEARER's essence. Another idea would be to make the effect work 1/day or something, rather than 1/month(and in some games, having the gem reform makes it a one-shot item). Honestly, I don't really have that much of a problem with it being an internal penalty 1/month. +8 Difficulty on all Liegers rolls just makes him actually fightable. It's not like he has actual stats.

You could up the first effect, although it's hard to see how to make that usefull. Praying to the UCS is pretty pointless, and even giving a large bonus to resist tempations by CoD isn't all that usefull. Actually, it's even harder to make that effect usefull than the second one. You probably fight Creatures of Darkness more in normal combat vs Social Combat. I can't see another way of scaling the penatly with the "darkness" of target other than Essence though. -FlowsLikeBits

Like the second effect, the first effect's usefulness will depend greatly upon the nature of your particular game. With rare exceptions, I am strongly opposed to making hearthstone effects scale with the user's Essence or other traits. It feels wrong to me. _Ikselam

Well, there is that too. I like your idea of scaling it though, as a fixed penalty means it doesn't do much to interesting foes, but is nasty to mook hoards. -FlowsLikeBits

Ta da...the fifth stone. I like the smell of pomegranate. My fiance uses this pomengranate hair conditioner and it smells amazing. The next theme shall be "Battle Prowess". Madoka

I was thinking about getting in on this little relay, until I saw the organization of this theme.... Level 1,1,1,2,5,5, NEXT THEME, and got seriously disappointed. I can't imagine its all that difficult to scale power levels. Madoka's scented stone could easily be shifted down by tweaking bonus numbers. Why move on to the next theme without 3 and 4? I just don't gets it, not even after understanding the problem of someone posting while one edits. --UncleChu

That's because that's not really how it happened. It's like this:

1. Level one stone.
2. Edit conflict. I post my level one stne anyway.
3. Someone who shall remain nameless decides to post another level one stone, apparently hoping that others will follow suit.
4. Someone apparently rolls a d5 to determine what level stone he will post and posts it.
5. Someone posts a level 5 stone, returning to normal relay structure, and, following established practices, posts the new theme. Hooray!
6. I was working on a stone I liked, a level 5 so as to close off the relay, so I posted it on the archived relay. Whoop dee do.

Basically, uh, the relay is robust. It's better to post new stuff than to bitch. - willows

B-but... and the... *chastened* --UncleChu