Darloth/Thingy

Facet of Otherness - Darloth

Manse N/A

Trigger:

The manse from which this stone springs has never been built, and never will be. The people who might have built it once no longer exist, even in the memories of the oldest gods. That being true, noone can truly say why it still manifests, appearing from time to time at Calibration, each year fading into existance at a random place. The manse chooses who it will appear to by some unknown criteria, although it is also possible to find it by possessing the stone and tracking it at Calibration, but noone can enter it at other times, not even its attuned owner.

When it appears, it seems to be an upside-down tower, jutting out of the sky through a hazy portal of wavering oily hues. Through this portal, which varies in size from a few dozen paces to a rent miles in diameter, an unknown civilisation can be seen, although never touched. These people, of a race unknown to man, would eventually have evolved had they not been eaten by Autocthon before the First Age and converted into soulsteel. In due time, they would have built this manse, and for some reason it has separated itself from that merest sliver of possibility and escaped into the streams of time and destiny.

Climbing through the window of this tower, one can see above oneself an endless labyrinth of staircases, twisting and spiralling in every direction heedless of notions such as gravity or even physical possibility. Set right-side up into the 'floor' is a hearthstone dias, made of opal, on which the Facet forms. Any observer is instantly aware of the fact that this would be set into the ceiling of the building, out of reach, for its original occupants, a fact which is quite disturbing.

The bearer of this stone may choose to disregard the strictures of fate, stepping outside their bounds, and cast their soul adrift on the oceans of what will never be. They are thereafter treated as outside fate at all times, with all of the benefits and disadvantages that causes, and things that are certain cease to affect them. Anything that has a chance of not effecting them will work as usual, but perfect effects and things that they could not ever successfully resist fail (treat this as a perfect defense against such things). Their own ability to affect others is not affected. Wherever they walk echoes with the potential for things that never could be, and by the next calibration they have faded entirely into the millions of worlds that did not come to pass. By spending a point of willpower, they may reflexively reverse any effect which changes reality or proves to have been "only a vision" - this explicitly cancels and counteracts Avoidance Kata, the alchemical simulation charm, the Vision Drops in the ArtifactRelay/Drugs, and similar effects - these cannot be used again in the same scene. By meditating on plans which were made and then discarded, the bearer may cause them to take effect anyway - this can change creation as a shaping effect as if it were deep wyld, and allows the bearer to shape in the wyld as if they were a fairfolk. Pure chaos is immune to their blandishments however, as the concept of "things that never came to pass" does not truly exist there.