Chain of Isekai
Alternative Power Sources
Last Updated: 2023:03:18
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[Savestate]
Soft Science, Primal Sorcery, Geomancy, Experience, The Pulse, Conceptual Workings, Slavemancy, Charmed Aspect, Conceptual Mage, Indulgent Cultivation
[Subrosian_Smithy]
The Pulse Upgrades, Hard Science, Divine Breath Upgrades, Imagogenesis, Worldly Thaumaturgy, Brede Disciplines Upgrades, Motive Wings Upgrades, Iron Sequence Upgrades
[TheLastOne]
Alchemy
[OhNoMySanitea]
Anima
[BobtheNORMALguy]
Aura
[FlameOfTheVoid]
Nullity, Vitae, Elementalism, Corruption, Inner Worlds, Chaos, Metal and Flesh, Being, Soul Spirits
[Nervaqus987]
Cultivation
[larslolxz]
Eidel Physique Upgrades
===
Universal Access: Ability to share the Power Source and use it effectively, wherever you go.
Booster: Fairly straightforward power-up and/or growth booster.
Special: Something weird, that sidesteps the normal way of things.
Limit Breaker: Something that unlimits your growth, mitigating restrictions or raising the ceiling.
Capstone: Something big, agnostic to the Power Source but still heavily synergistic.
===
[Savestate]
Soft Science:
Requires Hard Science to be most effective, don’t need people with powers (Halfmad) to make a tech possible or make major improvements, but you can’t expand the tech tree willy-nilly.
Primal Sorcery:
Everyone has their own source of magical power. Through training, they can shape that magic, allowing it to express in new ways. Each new power takes longer than the last to develop, but can be customized fairly free while it is being developed.
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Geomancy:
All humans are capable of binding portions of the world to themselves, so that they might draw upon its nature and power across any distance. Only competition limits what they can achieve from this, as no land can be bound to more than a single person. A great emperor who is unable to prevent their citizens from claiming territories within their domain might exact very little power from their lands indeed. Effectively, this process of ‘land bonding’ provides people with powers appropriate to the territories claimed, which they may use through their physical body or through any piece of territory under their control.
Natural lands might allow a person to draw upon verdant life to accelerate crop growth or summon animals to battle their enemis, to draw upon a glacier’s cold to conjure and manipulate ice and snow, to call upon a volcano’s heat to wield fire and call down molten rock from the skies. Yet artificial structures can be built to yield specific powers, or greater powers- vast furnaces kept roaring at all hours, granting their lord mighty pyromancy, barracks filled with soldiers that a king might call upon to summon ghostly armies, centers of learning drunk down to accelerate a vital scholar’s studies. Wielding other power sources in assembling these constructions, yet greater and more exotic powers can be produced.
However, all power drawn from a lord’s land has a cost- every spark of heat drawn from a fire cools its source, every phantom soldier slain in battle causes a wound to appear on a warrior in training.
–
Experience:
Those who face and overcome great challenges are magnified by the act itself. In defying the limits of what is possible, new potential is wrested away from the uncaring vortex, iridescent power drawn down into the physical world. Poured into any attribute of a person, this EXP allows them to become better, stronger, to achieve in minutes what would otherwise take years- or forever.
Yet EXP is by its own nature formless, and can only change the world if fed into a suitable vessel. One can steadily accrue a great supply of EXP by pushing themselves each day, yet if they do not attempt to do great things, they will never grow stronger than any other mortal could. Only through truly legendary feats can you stamp an image of yourself upon the uncaring vortex, a perfect vessel for EXP to fill and bring you beyond your own limits. Thus, a heroic warrior stamps an image of a greater warrior upon the future, fills it with power, and then continues, imprinting successively greater images of themselves upon the fundamental nature of reality.
The tools used by a hero often grow alongside them. A weapon of common metal used to kill creatures from beyond time will be magnified by the experience. EXP cannot simply be traded between people, but a warrior’s armaments are in many ways a part of them. Perhaps the item receives a simple boost in power and capabilities, perhaps it develops unique qualities. The sword used to seal away an ancient evil may forever become the bane of all of that demon’s ilk.
Explained a second time:
Completing a sufficiently grand action- a singular, triumphant accomplishment- stamps an image onto the uncaring vortex, carving out new metaphysical territory to fill with iridescent EXP. The nature of this image, this imprint, is defined by What you did to form it, How you accomplished that, Why you chose to do it, and Who you are- which is itself a trio of what you want to become, your current self-image, and your prior development (not potential, but ability present and manifest; essentially, what you spent EXP on). Awareness of how the Power Source functions, willpower, self-mastery, and plans and preparations contribute to greater control over the shape of the new image. Only in very rare circumstances would it be something the victorious wielder found wholly undesirable.
This is ultimately a forwards progression, towards the eye of the vortex. Each step, each new image, is more difficult, not in relative terms, but in harsh, absolute requirements- exponentially so. Without some outside source of strength, the requirements to proceed rapidly outscale the power Experience provides. Allies, vastly extended timeframes, the relics of past champions, or even other Power Sources might be used to push further towards the center.
Each new image is more potent, ‘deeper’ than the last, but not substantially vaster; you can unlock a T20 ability as you push one step inwards, but not 20 T1 abilities. To a degree, this encourages specialization- when you can increase the limits of a single attribute by a significant margin, you would rationally get the most absolute benefit by building upon existing strengths. A focused build is the knife that lets you pierce further into this source of strength, but sometimes you don’t want a knife.
Universal Access: If you seek it out, you will inevitably find trials appropriate to your stature, ways to earn EXP and forge a new Image. You can set people on the path to trials of their own, so that they might wield Experience themselves.
Booster: Each time you achieve a legendary feat, you stamp two images of yourself on the vortex. Specialize as a warrior and as a mage simultaneously.
Special: You can expand your pattern outside of the Vortex, in the opposite direction of its normal progression. Pour your EXP into reality, fueling grand feats at great cost. Do what would otherwise be impossible, regenerate from the brink of death, forge powerful magic items.
Limit Breaker: In studying under another user of Experience, you may copy portions of their Image onto your own. Pick up new abilities, lower-level copies of high-level powers from completely different builds.
Capstone: You may convert your self-improvement, in whatever form it takes, into undifferentiated advancement. This resource may be reserved indefinitely, in unlimited quantity. You may pour advancement into any trait you could improve by your own efforts alone, manifesting that potential growth instantly.
–
The Pulse:
Somewhere apart from normal, physical reality is a boundless expanse known as the Pulse. This expanse can be thought of as containing limitless amounts of life and energy. Until it is freed from the Pulse and brought out into reality, however, this energy only theoretically exists.
Almost all living beings are innately connected to the Pulse. Their feelings and beliefs flow into it, enriching it with information, and their presence in reality stabilizes it, allowing time and distance to have some meaning within its confines. Even the thinnest connection to the Pulse provides benefits- snippets of knowledge gathered from the past, present, or possible futures, a subtle bolstering of one’s vitality. The tiny trickles of Pulse energy that seep into the populace at large are responsible for a not-insignificant portion of the arousal and sexual pleasure experienced by said populace.
Some beings are born with powerful connections to the Pulse, enough to let them feel it consciously. Though all who have any connection to the Pulse at all have the potential to deepen their connections, those who possess this minimum threshold of power- from birth or through great effort- grow stronger in the Pulse many times more quickly. A Pulsar’s capacity to commune with the Pulse (speaking to it and drawing knowledge from it), their capacity to manipulate the energies of the Pulse (including those energies not drawn into reality through their own connection), and the depth of their connection make up the most essential factors in determining their strength in the Pulse. Depth is often the greatest limiting factor, as it controls the rate at which energy and information alike can flow out of the Pulse. That said, the energies of the Pulse do not disappear when pulled out of the Pulse and left unspent (though they may diffuse over large areas), and nor do they forget what information they hold.
As the Pulse is a thing of life, these qualities are improved in corresponding ways, involving other living beings connected to the Pulse. All of these qualities benefit more significantly from exercises performed with a greater variety of others. Communion is strengthened by interacting with other living things, and benefits more from interacting more intimitely and openly. Manipulation is strengthened by influencing other living things, and benefits more from causing lasting changes in behaviour and mindset. Depth is strengthened by the creation of new life connected to the Pulse- either siring it for a small benefit, or birthing it for a larger boost. Though there is no limit to the degree of growth one can achieve in any of these areas, and growth does not tend to slow down as long as the necessary exercises are maintained, one’s ‘talent’ in each of these areas tends to act as a multiplier for their growth rate.
The ideas of those connected to the Pulse have saturated it over time, resulting in the formation of a great number of powers. These are not great obvious structures within the Pulse, but concepts diffused throughout it, present in their entirety within even a single droplet of Pulse energies. Powers thus cannot be learned from any sort of book (though they can show you how to find the power you seek in the Pulse), but must be obtained from deep meditation on the nature of the Pulse. Though distance is only somewhat relevant to the Pulse, sufficiently disconnected communities may find themselves with access to different sets of powers. Some effects are always possible, even without access to relevant powers- these mostly consist of a direct bolstering of one’s vitality, an arousing infusion that makes sexual acts easier and more pleasurable, a sense for the locations and emotions of other Pulse-connecteds nearby, very short-term precognition, and a limited capacity for prophecy.
Once a power has been studied and a Pulsar can wield it reliably, their exact level of mastery tends to be less important than their strength in the Pulse. Pulse Powers tend to be both more and less versatile than one would expect- each has a certain concept or purpose ingrained within it, and becomes weaker and harder to wield the farther a Pulsar strays from that purpose. The power of telekinesis might allow one to lift buildings and fling their opponents about like ragdolls, but to crush someone’s heart in their chest is far beyond it, just as the power to conjure lethal lightning is almost impossible to use to safely boil water. As the Pulse acts upon the user’s intent, with a literally precognitive awareness of the result they would prefer, it can often produce effects that surpass the limits of the user’s mental faculties, such as burning every enemy, and only the enemies, on a battlefield. Often, a Pulsar may find they have been using a power without conscious awareness of that fact, as it has ceased requiring any mental effort to maintain.
As principles saturating the Pulse came together with those they did not conflict with, while repelling those they did, it became divided into a pair of mirrored aspects. These are often described as the Light and Dark sides of the Pulse, but neither is necessarily good or bad. The Light side is logical, pure, submissive, harmonious, orderly. The Dark side is emotional, impure, dominant, conflict-prone, chaotic. While a Pulsar can always choose to draw upon nothing but the balanced energies of the Pulse, with only minimal mental influence, it is always possible to draw upon energies attuned to a particular side. Doing so can cause significant mental influence, with both immediate and long-term effects.
The benefits, however, cannot be understated. Fueling powers with Pulse energies of the appropriate alignment magnifies their effectiveness, and the approppriate mental state can cause a Pulsar’s effective depth (for a particular alignment of the Pulse) to be increased several times over.
Those who study deeper manipulations of Pulse energies may step beyond the limitations of powers. Through careful manipulations of Pulse energies and infusions of precisely-mixed concepts and emotions, Pulse Artifice of various kinds may be crafted. Most often, conduits for and vessels of Pulse energies, from wands and bottled power to ritual sites and great pyramids that gather up the sorrows of entire cities. More rarely, stable patterns of Pulse energies bound to physical objects, capable of causing exotic effects without actually using up any power. Even the darkest and most twisted applications of the Pulse wield the energies of life, and so the effects that can be created most easily are expressions of life’s power. Armor of living metal that flows back into perfect order when damaged, golem cores that produce automata with minds that seem almost human, artificial organs sustained entirely by the power of the Pulse.
Pulse energies that are not expended to fuel powers do not vanish from the environment. As Pulsars draw upon more energy than they require to enjoy the pleasant sensation, and those with weaker connections subconsciously drip Pulse energies into the world, it accumulates. Pulse energies, filled with emotions and ideas and desires, form their own sort of weather system, flowing and shifting continuously. And as with any other weather system, storms are inevitable. Great vortexes of invisible Pulse energies, enough to shatter mountains if wielded to full effect, wreak unseen chaos on the world below. New materials are formed with properties ranging from the useful to the dangerous. Metals that rust more quickly the more you rely on them, crackling red dust that can yield energy, motion, and even thought through the proper mechanisms, crystals that interact with ambient Pulse energies in myriad interesting ways.
–
Conceptual Workings:
Concepts innately hold power. Just about anything can exist as a concept; they range in specifity from [Existence] to [Dough] to [Mr. Joe Ericson the Sales Clerk who lives at 953 Park Place]. Mastery of a Concept is achieved through comprehension, though putting that mastery to use may have additional requirements. Comprehension in both relative and absolute terms is important- total comprehension of a specific knife has limited power and utility to offer, while even incredible comprehension of reality may be limited in effectiveness if reality is an infinite and infinitely variable expanse that one can never comprehend even a single percent of.
It is possible to tap into a concept to support a working. This could be a mundane action, a spell, a martial arts technique, a psionic effect, a mystical artifact, even a piece of enlightened technology forged with a deep understanding of the concept. Bodies, minds, even souls can be adjusted- through careful training and cultivation, through powerful rituals and artifacts, through grand technological creations- to make use of specific concepts. The concept of [Fire] might be drawn into a body to make it naturally burn away disease, poison, and other filth, into a soul to provide a wellspring of burning energy, and so on.
Concepts can be harder or easier to access within a given area. Many concepts are effectively universal, present unless actively excluded by some means, part of the basic structure of all realities. Concepts not inherently present within a reality in some way are simply not accessible save where a conduit has been opened by some means; potential conduits including sufficient knowledge of the concept to attempt to access it. Some concepts, such as those of specific entities, are finite, tied to the existence of some source, and lack the nigh-unlimited power of greater concepts.
Concepts can be used as a source of materials. This requires some form of supernatural technique, which itself requires a deep understanding of the concept just to grasp. The user’s connection to the concept shifts when the technique is mastered, allowing the user to draw physical material from a nonphysical idea. Each time it is tapped, the connection is temporarily warped; it is useless for this purpose until the user’s energies are cycled and refreshed, such as by a night’s slumber or a period of meditation. The deeper the user’s understanding of a concept, and of the practices by which the materials so conjured are worked, the more and better material they can conjure at a time.
Any technique that allows materials to be conjured from a concept must include mechanisms by which the materials produced could be worked in order to function, even if such mechanisms must be derived from pure theory. These are supernatural methods of crafting, not only useful to forge these specific supernatural materials but to some degree aiding all forms of crafting tied to the concept.
Materials pulled directly from a concept are naturally malleable, high in potential, and bear some level of innate power. They are useful for a wide variety of purposes, especially when the crafter uses supernatural practices and other reagents to guide the changes of the material. Even mundane items, combined with conjured materials, can lend them shape, form, and complexity- a simple tomato combined with Raw Dough might easily become a plate of spaghetti with marinara sauce. These materials are not, necessarily, perfectly matched to their concept- you might be able to pull either Raw Noodles or Raw Batter from the concept of Dough, more specific manifestations of their origin. Some materials may even come from multiple different concepts in varying combinations.
By product of their nature, conjured materials lack several important qualities. Being conjured whole-cloth from a concept rather than naturally developing or being forged by an ensouled being, they lack history or a connection to the world. When first conjured, these materials are extremely conceptually pure; which can hinder some possible applications.
Essence is part of a concept, seperated partially from the whole, dredged into physical reality. Essence acts as a natural source of the energies of a concept, a conduit of its concept and a lever to manipulate things linked to the concept.
In places where a concept is strong- where the environment is highly conducive to the concept, perhaps steeped in its energies- essence can gradually form, or perhaps seep in. The essence of war might grow within a battlefield, the essence of fire in a volcano. A contained mass of the energy of elemental fire might bear a spark of the essence of fire at its core. Similarly, opposed environments might gradually or rapidly destroy essence. Normally, neither of these things are self-reinforcing: a glacier’s accumulation of the essence of ice slows as its structure becomes more and more suffused with it.
Essence is incredibly variable, even when nominally of the same concept. Every piece of essence has a multitude of properties that can change for a multitude of reasons- including the simple passage of time- in a variety of ways. As essence accumulates a history, its metaphysical weight grows, providing a sort of general empowerment. The precise nature of the energy produced by a piece of essence varies with the nature of the essence it comes from; more powerful essence can and does produce more “powerful” elemental energy.
Even from the moment it first enters physical reality, essence is often impure in one way- formed of multiple concepts, tainted by whatever is already present as it develops, bound near-inseperably to physical material. Impurities are not necessarily bad- they help to define how a concept is expressed within a piece of essence, and can improve the essence in a variety of ways. Some forms of impurities, however, do lessen a piece of essence: imbalances, pollution by some forms of supernatural filth, and other flaws. Some may not lessen it, but may render it less useful in certains ways that are hard to fix.
An interesting property of essence is that of condensement; environments that would otherwise produce more essence instead empowering existing essence. Though unchanged in metaphysical “size”, the essence grows in metaphysical weight, becoming denser, pound per pound more powerful so to speak.
–
Slavemancy:
Placing yourself above other people, as a master above a slave, places you in a privileged metaphysical position. Your height, in this metaphor, determines to your slavemantic power, and building up that power is akin to raising a structure. To climb higher, you need more slaves, and stronger slaves, and to keep hold of your slaves, just as any building needs materials, and sturdy materials, and to not have those materials ripped away. Your structure might be as an imposing pyramid of the mewling masses, or a sky-piercing pillar of enslaved paragons. Setting people within this metaphysical power structure imposes a domineering pressure upon them, reducing their ability to elevate themselves- to grow and learn, to escape their subordinate position, to better themselves by their own means in any way.
Above the root of your power is set the slave lord’s throne. It is built from the wealth of empire, the treasures of your oppressed. Straightforwardly, you strip choice bits of strength and will from your slaves to construct and improve your throne. Wrought in fondest memories, gilded with the capacity to hope, studded with such stunning jewels as all a once-great superheroine’s powers. The more you build it up, the more crushing weight it imposes upon all below you.
Developing your throne allows you to fully harness your slavemantic power. Progression, here, is a matter of unlocking new ways in which your power may be expressed. You cannot make one of your powers more efficient by peculiarities of design. If you want more strength, enslave more people. Ever greater resources must be poured into your throne to improve it further, to unlock each new form of tyranny. It remains possible to rebuild your throne, or even tear it down entirely.
Slavemantic powers manifest as transformation. They are the power to alter the sexual characteristics of those you have enslaved, or to rewrite memories, or to grant hulking muscles that maneuver the body without its mind’s consent to fulfill your commands. All these powers are most effective against your own slaves; only a fraction of your theoretical strength can be used against those who still stand tall. Some enable direct transformation of the environment, or transformation of the slave lord themselves into some elevated state. The tyrant becomes a great horned devil who sets the sky on fire.
Some portion of the slaves making up the root of your power will inevitably be elevated to some degree. They may be studded with metaphorical jewlery, lesser forms that echo the slave lord’s throne, so that they may wield some slavemantic power. Item crafting, for slavemancy, is an extension of this delegation. Potions and cruel weapons are not whole and complete once forged, but rely on some unfortunate slave to tether their stored power or channel their abilities. The process of crafting items never strains the slave lord much, even when they seem to do everything themselves, manually.
Universal Access: ‘Unbreakable will’ or ‘no free will’ or ‘no will’ isn’t an obstacle. You may bring out the capacity to choose and change in anyone, anything, you care to… so you can enslave them!
Booster: The pressure you put on others is less crushing, so your slaves can loft you higher!
Special: Your throne becomes as a ‘biblically accurate’ angel, carrying out your will without any direction on your part. You can have multiple thrones. Convenient!
Limit Breaker: That which you dominate and oppress grows in response to that oppression. Your slaves will rise… to better support your regime!
All-Encompassing Effect: It doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. You can stand side by side with a peer, and both be uplifted for it. By the power of friendship, you will be redeemed!
Alt Capstone: The scars you leave on the world cannot be simply erased. They can be paved over, forgotten, but what you have done to the world will last until the world is undone. What you have done to a person will linger within until they are undone. (Ex: people can increase their max sanity, but never recover lost sanity.)
–
Charmed Aspect:
I would say the setting of Exalted has ~3 power sources in the CoI sense ([Gracious Chaos], [Worldly Thaumaturgy], and [Charmed Aspect]), which define the existence of Raksha/Shinma/Unshaped, the technology and rituals of non-Essence-using Creation (including the manufacture of artifacts), and all the various beings that use Essence and develop Charms, respectively.
Charmed Aspect indicates you have some appropriate nature, which you can use to absorb/store Essence, build your Essence Rating, and create Charms. Natures vary in both quality and identity, impacting both the efficiency/potency of your abilities and the sort of abilities that you are allowed to get from this power source.
Universal Access: You gain Enlightened Essence, and a minimum Essence Rating of 1. Even in locations devoid of Essence entirely, you respire spent motes at full speed. If you do not have any other aspect, you may develop basic Charms as if you were a spirit of your own Essence Rating.
Booster: You may substitue Essence Rating for Willpower, and vice versa, in all situations except when learning new Charms. When using Charms, you may spend motes of Essence to increase your base Attributes and Abilities; this has no upper limit, and raises the limit on Excellency dice.
Special: You gain your own Aspect, customized freely when created. You may use this Aspect to develop Charms appropriate to its potency and nature. Initially, it is inferior to the Aspect of a Terrestrial Exalted. Each time you kill a being whose Aspect is more potent than your own, your Aspect becomes as potent as theirs was. Kill a Solar Exalted, and you may develop Charms as potent as Wyld Cauldron Technology.
Limit Breaker: Your maximum Essence Rating is tied to the number of Charms you have learned; age and mortality are no longer factors. Charm requirements escalate rapidly for each new threshold of Essence. Should you learn enough Charms, you may potentially exceed Essence 10. Each Charm you know increases the size of your Essene Pool by one mote.
Capstone[All-Encompassing Effect]: When dealing with simple problems or weak enemies, all actions you take to resolve them are less draining. Killing a crippled mortal with a Charm that normally costs a single mote might cost nothing. This is not affected by the number of problems or enemies at hand. When fighting an enemy who is more powerful or dangerous than you, every action they take to oppose you is more draining.
Basically Mage:
Based on WoD Mage stuff.
You master a concept, and thereby have power over it. Simple. There are endless specialized permutations of these concepts to explore and master, but only so many ‘fundamental’ spheres within any coherent paradigm. Mastery requires, or is otherwise entangled with, actual comprehension, such that you can’t really improve your strength by just amassing more energy. Wherever that seems to be the case, you’re just leveraging existing resources or preparations- your intrinsic mastery is unchanged by such circumstance.
Universal Access: You can derive truth and meaning from the appearance of truth and meaning. You might stand at the peak of reality, and doubt the existence of any higher realm, yet hold there to be some higher realm anyway and thereby call down supernal truth regardless. You can treat that which looks like life as alive, and that which looks like magic as magic, however superficial or actively deceptive that seeming. You can share this power by sharing an assertion that there is more to the world than merely is.
Booster: Everything is connected. Mastery of one sphere contributes to some degree to your power in all others, and also to your basic attributes. Mastering Life will leave you stronger, faster, smarter. Mastery of specialized permutations and rote techniques contributes to the effectiveness of all such techniques, and to your more basic abilities, though in a less complete way. Learning to call forth a ray of light as easily as breathing may allow you to run faster.
Special: You may intertwine your mastery of spheres and aspects thereof with any of your abilities. If you have False Wizardry, you may develop Fate Velt, Death Velt, and so on. As a mere mortal, you may develop new reservoirs of stamina and vitality. As a swordsman, you may learn the Life Cut and heal those you stab. These conceptual outgrowths of your basic abilities are no narrower in their expression, only turned towards particular processes and particular ends. Death Velt is as versatile as normal Velt, though everything it can do relates to Death.
Limit Breaker: Your power over concepts grows with experience, in addition to comprehension. This cannot bring you to new thresholds of power, will not allow you to do what was otherwise impossible (rather than merely very hard), but will see you able to achieve the same feats faster, more easily, from greater distances.
All-Encompassing Effect: You wield a higher truth. Your abilities cannot be negated or suppressed, copied or stolen, drained or stripped away. They must always be actively contested, or studied with understanding.
Indulgent Cultivation:
Reality is suffused with Eternal Qi, a bridging medium between abstract qualities and material existence. Under normal circumstances, it is neither created nor destroyed, an immutable constant. Cultivators wield it to impose their selves upon reality without an equal and opposite reaction. At the highest levels, cultivators reduce themselves down to a single grand Dao and a single grand Attribute, and become utterly unpeturbed by any threat that cannot pierce all the way to the core of their being.
Stages One through Three are of Ego.
Stages Four through Six are of Will.
Stages Seven through Nine are of Fate.
Stages Ten and beyond are of Identity.
Stage One begins when a cultivator starts to absorb Qi into their body. By sheer force of personality, they may stir this Qi into motion, dragging the body along for the ride. Instead of their own strength or agility or endurance, the cultivator may rely on pure ego. As saturation of Qi rises, this grows more effective. At the peak of Stage One, a cultivator can generally demonstrate superb but still human physical performance, and ignore outright a broad range of effects that would degrade the performance of their body, from blood loss to the complete destruction of the nervous system. Killing even a Stage One cultivator requires attacking their ego or destroying enough of their body that they can no longer plausibly act- reducing them to less than a withered arm.
Stage Two begins when a cultivator starts to assemble their cultivation structures. Formed from dense Qi, these structures align body and ego in harmony, allowing their strengths to be combined instead of overriding one with the other. This might be a mesh of fine Qi filaments woven throughout the body, or a dense and solid core from which emanates force. They must be designed and implemented with great care to be of maximum quality. A cultivator must develop three seperate structures, each enhancing a different attribute- strength, agility, and endurance developed independently. Ego may still be used in place of these basic physical attributes- instead of stacking ego with strength, a cultivator might choose to stack ego upon ego. At the peak of Stage Two, a very mediocre cultivator can generally demonstrate physical performance four times beyond a baseline mortal, and leverage their physicality in superior ways, exerting force with less counterforce or regenerating more perfectly from injury.
Stage Three begins when a cultivator has finished their cultivation structures and starts to fill in the conceptual space between them. The relationship between Qi and body shifts until a turning point is reached, such that the cultivator’s physicality is embedded within their Qi. Properly formed and properly tuned, the three physical attributes produce an amplifying resonance and compound upon each other.
Formed improperly, they might damage or destroy the cultivation base. Strength lends to speed and endurance, speed lends to endurance and strength, endurance lends to strength and speed, and the basic impact of sheer ego is compounded upon itself thrice over. At the peak of Stage Three, a very mediocre cultivator can generally demonstrate physical performance 1,000 times beyond a baseline mortal, and will be biologically immortal by virtue of sheer regenerative capacity. Killing a Stage Three cultivator typically requires attacking their ego or their cultivation base- at this level, they can reliably regenerate from a drop of blood half the world away.
The Stages of Ego increasingly enable the development and use of special Techniques. These are known for the mutilation and spindling of the user’s physique, for the simple truth that they would cripple any normal user. A cultivator might alchemically petrify their flesh for greater endurance, or remove their bones for greater mobility. Dredge forth petty elemental manifestations and amplify them into useful effects, or train until they can take action in unnaturally powerful yet costly ways, moving dozens of meters in a single step- not leaping, /moving/- and ripping apart the flesh of their legs in the process.
The body can be honed to the point of ruin, and that ruin quietly ignored.
Treasures may be crafted that are bound to a cultivator’s life, forged with blood and Qi as an extension of the body. Even the lowliest such treasure may be wielded as an extension of its masters’ body, in the way of flying swords and contraptions activated by intent. At Stage Two and above, they inherit the enhanced physicality of their creator.
The resonance achieved in Stage 3 allows a cultivator to interact with a higher form of Qi. This is what enables the next Stages of their cultivation- lesser ‘physical’ Qi, in any quantity, is no longer sufficient to progress. Mental Qi may be harvested from the world, though it is a less common resource, or refined with great effort and tedium from lesser Qi.
The Stages of Will repeat the process layed out in the Stages of Ego. The cultivator’s mind is saturated with Qi, allowing it to be driven by sheer force of will instead of natural intelligence, wits, and perception. Structures are constructed to allow mind and Qi to act in harmony, boosting the cultivator’s mental attributes instead of overriding them. The cultivator’s mind becomes component to their Qi, and an amplifying resonance is established that increases the impact of willpower and allows mental attributes to mutually reinforce each other.
The Stages of Will enable the pursuit of Dao. Alterations to the mind allow distinct areas of skill and expertise to be folded together under a single label. Much as with Techniques, this would be crippling for any being unable to ignore severe mental afflictions outright, insanity or worse the only possible result of altering your most basic logical processes in this manner. Within the scope of a Dao, all skill and all knowledge is applicable to all things. If a Dao includes ‘personal histories’ and ‘agricultural methodologies’, you can learn about your neighbours by learning how to properly grow turnips. Even for an inhumanly capable cultivator, broader Dao are exponentially more difficult to form- something like Melee or Crafting would be a worthy accomplishment, and dissimilar elements are even harder to bring together.
Where the summative skill provided by a Dao exceeds natural limits, supernatural skill manifests as supernaturally effective action. This is critical to further development- rather than grow more physically capable as a natural consequence of their continued cultivation, cultivatrs of Will and beyond must actively reinforce their foundation. Even an astonishingly mediocre cultivator could increase their physical parameters by another factor of 50 before finishing the Stages of Will. Similarly, the cultivation of Dao is necessary to establish beyond-perfect cultivation structures.
Treasures crafted by cultivators of Will are of unnaturally high quality. They take the functions and attributes of ordinary items and extend them upwards in a straightforward manner. Concealing cloaks that seem to make the wearer invisible, blades that can cut through lesser metals, mechanisms that operate without fault or failure. Bound treasures at this level may extend their creator’s consciousness, allowing them to cast their senses out across the world or attempt to continue cultivating after losing both body and cultivation base.
The Stages of Fate continue the sequence. They rely upon a yet higher form of Qi, which is yet rarer and yet more tedious to refine. The Stages of Fate draw upon the cultivator’s destiny to impel and augment their spirit, in wisdom and integrity and life (which is to say, the quality of being alive, that distinguishing factor between frail fading ghosts and active powerful persons). Soul becomes component to Qi, and the resonance is established that would allow yet further progression.
The Stages of Fate enable the pursuit of Sorcery. By breaking down the distinction between the cultivators spirit and the world they inhabit, they can impose themselves upon that world directly. As cultivators, they again bypass the dissolution of their spirit, the imposition of the world upon themselves in turn, and worse fates aside. Used in its simplest, immediate form, Sorcery greatly expands the range of actions a cultivator can take. They can act in locations far removed from themselves, and and act in the manner of the world- casting out their senses, manifesting raw force to shatter bones from a mile away, summoning elemental fury as easily as punching. Sorcery’s true power shines when it is used slowly, when a working can be built up over hours or even years. Like raising a dam or diverting a river, a cultivator that takes their time can achieve results far beyond their apparent personal ability. Extended sorcerous workings almost automatically benefit from world-spanning reach, in the manner of a butterfly causing hurricanes on the other side of a planet.
Treasures can be crafted with Sorcery. A torch that carries the potential to illuminate hundreds of miles of terrain for several continuous days, metals as dense and sturdy as a mountain’s heart, a puddle ten miles deep and half a meter wide in a shallow basin to store your treasures. Treasures can be crafted as Sorcery- the currents of the world made to cycle through them like a river in your hand. A sword that carries the force of a hurricane, a volcanic rod, a monument that bends causality towards its nations’ prosperity. Bound treasures at this level may extend their creator’s spirit, allowing them to influence and possess anyone who tries to steal them, or extend their sorcerous reach.
The Stages of Identity break this pattern. With a full set of transcendent resonances, the necessary tools are available to directly manipulate those same abstract attributes that had been substituted, amplified, compounded upon themselves before. This is costly work- each further Stage marks the creation or destruction of a single attribute, and requires hyper-exponentially more Qi of all types. A cultivator could establish a new driving force, ‘behind’ their ego, as abstract as ‘Apocalypse Sun’, and compound the attributes ahead in a cascading manner that results in an immediate 4,000 times increase to all physical attributes for even the most mediocre cultivator, and likely more than 15,000,000 times over for anyone likely to achieve such incredible cultivation. By destroying portions of their conceptual foundation, excising ‘ego’ or ‘willpower’ or ‘fate’ (or more shallow attributes, if one is to be less brutally efficient about their growth), a cultivator can subordinate more of themselves beneath a single label. The previously described cultivator might become a creature for whom ‘will’ is meaningless, and place intelligence, wits, and perception on the same level as force of personality, increasing those only a dozen times over but increasing their physical attributes billions of times over at barest minimum- more likely sextillions of times over, and easily far more than even that.
Breathing Eternity
You may generate more of the Eternal Qi from your body, mind, and spirit, in proportion with their scope and potency. This will typically be enough to fuel cultivation at an ‘ordinary’ pace. Other people who take in your Eternal Qi may learn to cultivate it, and will themselves be capable of generating more of the Eternal Qi.
Higher Ideal
Your body automatically improves as you improve your mind, and your mind automatically improves as you improve your spirit. Studying Dao contributes to the development of Techniques, and studying Sorcery contributes to the development of Dao.
Indistinction
You may treat all forms of the Eternal Qi as interchangeable. You may use lesser forms of Qi to develop higher levels of cultivation, and pursue the highest levels of cultivation before even finishing the Stages of Ego.
Uncaged Spirit
You may extend the sequence implied by the Stages of Ego, Will, and Fate onwards. Further cultivation enhances increasingly esoteric and profound aspects of yourself, with no strict upper bound. Each new trio of Stages unlocks a new methodology on par with Techniques, Dao, or Sorcery.
Shattered Solipsist Encroachment
You may treat any persistent negative effect as an injury to or affliction upon your person. With sufficient healing, you may regenerate a stolen sword, or mend the loss of a loved one. External resistance to your will may be treated as an internal penalty.
===
[Subrosian_Smithy]
The Pulse Upgrades:
LIFE EQUATION (Universal Access – 4 CP)
A living being may channel the Pulse, and channeling the Pulse may help keep them alive; in this way, a self-reinforcing connection is forged, and may be extrapolated unto axiom.
In addition to the ordinary benefits of a conscious connection to the Pulse – for you now possess the bare minimum of power that marks a true Pulsar, if you didn’t already – the presence and flow of the Pulse within you also guarantees you access to all the abilities of complex biological life, including but not limited to ruggedization and flexibility of construction, metabolic self-repair processes, effective heuristic information processing, and the capacity for sexual activity and reproduction. (As long as you haven’t reached true cessation of existence, it’s no matter if you’ve been disabled, cursed, rendered unto conceptual form, uploaded into an automaton, or corrupted into an undead monstrosity.) Making use of lifelike traits beyond the remit of your natural physiology may force commensurate eccentricities upon you in return, such as the need for digestion and respiration, but you may always leave your Pulse metabiology to hibernate in stagnation if your circumstances or preferences make it unbearable (and, of course, you may eventually surpass the vulnerabilities it demands from you with this and other Power Sources).
By expending a minor amount of Pulse energy as you interact with, create, or manipulate other physical systems, you may awaken them to a similar semblance (or fully-fledged state) of life (if they weren’t as such already), and give them the minimum spark of connection to the Pulse that makes them useful for your training as a Pulsar. By expending orders of magnitude more Pulse energy similarly, you may even bolster living and lifelike systems to the minimum threshold of Pulse connection they require to act as Pulsars.
EMANATION (Booster – 6 CP)
Your level of communion with the Pulse, level of control over Pulse energies, and depth of connection to the Pulse are now interlinked with each other such that none of these attributes can “fall behind” each other as you improve – as you increase one (by interacting with, manipulating, or creating other life-forms), the others will follow after.
In addition to more-or-less ‘tripling’ your training speed for these attributes, this also allows you to train all of these attributes in the manner for which you have the greatest talent (thus bolstering your growth rate even further).
SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS (Special – 8 CP)
You are guided at all times by a uniquely precognitive awareness of the possibilities for your own future growth and development in power.
This prescience is most tightly entwined with the Pulse from which it is distilled, allowing you to perfectly intuit the existence and ‘location’ of any and all powers within the Pulse, precisely identify which Pulsar abilities would be most useful in your immediate future, and more easily suss out opportune places and times for growth as a Pulsar. However, this prescience may also be applied (with moderately reduced effect) to your advancement in other Power Sources. You could determine in advance how a Pact would interact with your other abilities, identify which sacrifices to Unbeing you would find the least unbearable (or most rewarding), and intuit the developmental trajectory and possible outputs of a given Legend Chrysalis.
This prescience may never be used to directly access knowledge which itself counts as a Power Source (such as a spell of False Wizardry), but may still usefully guide your learning in such a body of knowledge; you might, for example, determine at a glance which spells of False Wizardry in a given archive or spellbook would be most useful in your immediate future.
UNION OF OPPOSITES (Limit Breaker – 10 CP)
Your consciousness is partitioned and ‘unfolded’ such that your mental processes and personality are embedded in the ongoing interactions of two subsidiary selves, in much the same way that your unitary self as a mundane human once emerged from the interactions of two separable-but-united brain hemispheres.
Your two subsidiary selves are attuned to the Light and Dark sides of the Pulse, respectively, and each one possesses only those elements of your personality which are compatible with its respective aspect of the Pulse (but otherwise possesses your full body of knowledge, skill, and awareness). If you naturally possess a greater affinity for one aspect of the Pulse over another, your subsidiary selves may be ‘imbalanced’ as a consequence, but you never suffer from mental imbalance or influence as a result of Pulse channeling; in attempting to draw upon one aspect of the Pulse, you naturally also draw upon its opposite, your subsidiary selves each channeling their respective aspect of the Pulse at the same time in such a way that the effects of the Pulse upon your whole personality cancel out to zero. (Naturally, your ability to draw upon both aspects of the Pulse simultaneously is of great use in its own right.)
Your subsidiary selves are constitutionally incapable of truly turning against you, or of turning against each other; they do not struggle for power and control in this way (or in the obvious way implied by the crystallization of power dynamics within the aspects of the Pulse), for each is ultimately content in its nature as one half of your greater whole. They may, however, offer their own input and counsel with you, and obey your will to the spirit of the law, without any detriment to your own attention, focus, or mental bandwidth. In this way, they serve as a potent tool for self-reflection and mental multitasking, as your own private council of three: your Light and Dark aspects, and your own integrated whole.
OVERFLOW (All-Encompassing Capstone – 12 CP)
Your ability to store fungible resources within yourself – including but certainly not limited to stamina, nutrition, willpower, Worldblood, Starlight, Velt, Faith, and Pulse energies – supersedes the limits implied by your own finitude.
Whenever you would obtain or produce such resources in excess of your own ability to usefully store (including even those energies not normally capable of being stored), you may allow them to ‘overflow’, aggregating around you in an abstracted form somewhat reminiscent of liquid within a gravity well. You maintain tight control over this extended stockpile such that you can take it with you as you move through the world, keep it from interacting with anything or anyone else, and generally treat it as an arbitrarily extensible expansion to your own internal reserves.
However, you may relax your control over this stockpile, releasing or redirecting it to various ends. You may selectively or universally allow others the opportunity to grasp and seize its energies, such that a wizard could cast spells with your excess Velt, or an exhausted soldier might get his second wind by breathing in your excess stamina. You can even direct the resources in this stockpile to flow into people or objects not equipped to draw it in themselves, suffusing a mundane scroll with Worldblood and Velt to elevate its Rank and bolster its script against the weight of ages, or filling a Stage 0 army with Faith In Them such that they could more easily use Unconscious Excellence.
You may even release your control over this stockpile entirely, jettisoning as much or as little of it throughout the environment as you so choose. In this state, anyone capable of interacting with the liquidated resources may make use of them, but they may also discharge themselves into specific objects, creatures, or systems in the environment, with all manner of exotic and unpredictable effects. (Such perturbations never permanently disrupt the homeostasis of the World, but are still potent and potentially quite lasting.)
Hard Science:
HARD SCIENCE
Many philosophers have at times postulated the existence of a realm of forms above, beyond, or otherwise outside the material world, containing innumerable abstract objects and conceptual entities. This theory, however, is at least partially incorrect, and not simply because such abstract objects do not exist. Instead, theories of forms and mathematical realists neglect the observable truth that even the lowly material world can itself be identified as a series of embodied mathematical objects – chiefly including a fundamental collection of ‘particles’ and ‘fields’ inhabiting ‘manifolds’.
In theory, Hard Scientists can be said to fall into two categories. Firstly, there are those known as ‘scientists’ and ‘theorists’, who seek to cultivate and advance their mathematical understanding of reality through rigorous testing, deep contemplation, and ritualized discourses. Secondly, there are those known as ‘engineers’ or ‘applied scientists’, who effect great changes upon reality and forge wondrous creations by carefully exploiting the known behaviors of the quantized world they inhabit. In reality, however, this is a great simplification, and more a matter of practical specialization than a true distinction between the two fields; scientists often cannot proceed in their testing without engineering new tools, engineers often advance their own understanding of reality through the testing process they call ‘prototyping’, and there’s nothing stopping a sufficiently dedicated person of means from mastering both.
The truths that engineers exploit are timeless and unchanging within the context of Hard Science; there are only so many truths to be exploited, and they are neither brought into reality by the genius of a scientist nor returned to unreality by their passing. However, the truths scientists discover are ‘mere’ truths, and can be recorded, copied, and propagated freely; such mathematical truths are no less a part of mere physical reality than everything else. The truths of Hard Science are also usually very simple in terms of pure information content, although usefully conveying their full content in a format such that they can be internalized and acted upon by ordinary humans almost always requires a deal of exegesis as well as some degree of hands-on instruction and initiation into the mysteries.
The actual powers offered by Hard Science are both awesome and mundane. On the smallest scales, by carefully rearranging the spatial arrangement and ‘bonds’ between the particles that serve as quantized units of matter, all manner of exotic substances may be created, and substances can be alchemically transmuted from one form into another within the confines of the ‘fundamental elements’. With an understanding of the alchemical interactions that occur within and sustain a living creature, one can synthesize or distill the key particles which unlock and trigger its various functions, interfering with them constructively or destructively so as to heal or to harm; with even greater understanding and skill, one can locate the chemical scriptures which dictate the development and maintenance of a life form’s functions, and then read such scriptures as well as revise them. At the height of skill in this regard, one may even write entirely new scriptures, devise new chemical ‘languages’ for similar purposes, and engineer alchemical phenomena so as to blur the line between created automaton and living creature.
On greater scales, all manner of elaborate tools may be constructed both to extend one’s reach and to expand one’s ability to manipulate matter; specialized automata may gather and shape matter en masse for the collection of material and the production of products beyond the remit of mundane speed to mass-produce, the remit of mundane strength to forge, the remit of mundane flesh to safely handle, and the remit of mundane dexterity to calibrate. Elaborate mechanisms may ferry objects from place to place at great speeds, both for logistical purposes and for purposes of individual transportation. With knowledge of mechanics, weapons and war machines may be constructed to forcibly disrupt the precisely calibrated structures both of living humans and of other machines. Self-interacting devices make data processing possible on a scale no mundane human can match, and by manipulating large groups of particles in the appropriate fashion, one may even create controlled excitations within the fields that mediate interactions between particles, allowing for such feats as the transmission of energy through prepared channels and the transformation of energy from one form into another.
With the resources of entire civilizations and an absolute mastery of the truths of Hard Science, even further miracles may be possible. However, the unique limitations of Hard Science must be emphasized. Engineers and scientists have no more ability to physically manipulate or measure the quantized substance of reality than their physical bodies permit; an engineer’s ability to build tools so as to expand his ability to manipulate matter is, in fact, a requirement for those human practitioners of the art who have been deprived of access to other Power Sources, and often spirals into recursive absurdities as an engineer is forced to build the tools he needs to build the tools he needs to build the tools he actually requires for his projects. Beyond certain thresholds of complexity, precision, and scale, certain manipulations of matter may be flat-out impossible through Hard Science alone, and certain arrangements of matter can never be created or usefully stabilized through Hard Science alone; the engineer’s body and tools simply crash against the absurdity of all his attempts as a creature of the desert to impose his desired order upon the shifting grains of sand he calls reality.
Finally, the symmetric truths of Hard Science absolutely forbid ‘breaking even’ or obtaining a ‘free lunch’ within their logic – the processes which an engineer exploits always obey conservation rules that foreclose, for example, the creation or destruction of ‘matter’ and ‘energy’ as Hard Science defines them, and all creations of Hard Science trend towards their own unraveling over time. In this way, all an engineer’s devices must make use of energy sourced from somewhere else in order to function, releasing less useful forms of ‘waste energy’ such as heat and slowly breaking down unless they are maintained.
Perks
Observer Effect (Universal Access – 4 CP)
You may assert the truths of Hard Science so as to carve them into anything your power touches upon, and in doing so, to ensure that anything possible under Hard Science may be realized anywhere under your power. Moreover, you may train your body’s natural ability to measure and manipulate the quantized reality around you until it is the equal of any tool you could create yourself.
You are capable of codifying all of these abilities as teachable practices which you may share with others, and those you teach may teach them to others in turn, for good or for ill.
Mathesis Universalis (Booster – 6 CP)
With an exertion of focus commensurate to the amount of information you’ve already consolidated in this fashion, you can shift any unit of your declarative memory into or out of a special mental archive. It never consumes any amount of your time or attention to reference or cross-check archived information, and you may review all such memories simultaneously, allowing you to discern correlations and patterns that would otherwise be impossible to see.
This consolidated register is axiomatic proof against tampering and decay, and it likewise suppresses the harmful effects of any information encoded therein.
Gedankenexperiment (Special – 8 CP)
Your sense of imagination – and your power to evoke an internal model of the outside world thereby – is enhanced in sophistication and applicability to an incredible degree. When engaged in any sort of creative, intellectual, or technical labor, you may directly substitute internal consideration for real experimentation, at a rate limited only by your intelligence and relevant true knowledge, with no loss of effectiveness.
By the same token, you are no longer dependent upon productive interaction with the outside world for purposes of intellectual stimulation and development, and your ability to compensate for detrimental interaction is unbounded.
Hidden Sectors (Limit Breaker – 10 CP)
Even the dictates of truth and law are only a special case in a much larger phase space. With an amount of research, development, and industrial investment commensurate to the utility and divergence of your intended subject from the world as it already exists, you may discover and then actualize arbitrary new physical phenomena, permitting technological development of nigh-unbounded sophistication and scale.
All such phenomena, despite the apparent and inherent contrivance of their existence, still extend logically from the physical and mathematical nature of Hard Science: they take the form of quantified and reducible objects with reducible effects and reducible properties.
Peer Review (All-Encompassing Capstone – 12 CP)
When cooperating with others – or facilitating cooperation – the absolute effectiveness of the working group so formed is increased for all creative, intellectual, and technical purposes, scaling with the total number of participants, the diversity of their perspectives, their ability to check one another, and their actual organizational efficacy.
This compounds with, but is distinct from, the principle that the benefits of teamwork and collaboration are never inapplicable to the creative, intellectual, and technical pursuits of such a working group, even in realms of otherwise individual achievement, and that the replicability of any individual achievement is enhanced within such a working group to an incredible degree.
PRANAYAMA (Universal Access – 4 CP)
With the proper focus, you are able to unravel fonts of power in the world around you, metabolizing them into a commensurate amount of Divine Breath for your own use. Mere radiating energy is not enough to suffice; only a source of radiating power in itself can be used in this way, and the thin Breath you might draw from a transient flame, however intense or profound, is inevitably bound to dissipate in time along with all it actively supports. Only a true font of infinity can be converted into lasting Divine Breath in this way – though the nature of that infinity matters little, such that a mad scientist’s perpetual motion machine will serve just as well as an occult pit which endlessly births monsters or one of the shining souls so often called ‘immortal’.
You have to be able to actually interact with whatever it is you’re imbibing in this way in order to succeed, and it must, essentially, be an unattended object, a cooperative subject, or a subject no longer capable of meaningful resistance, for certain conceptual limitations on this ability prevent it from being used as a direct attack or defense vector. With a few minutes of direct instruction, you can engrave your comprehension of this process in others, allowing them to catalyze the Divine Breath within themselves as you do.
What? No, you can’t use Divine Breath to create more Divine Breath, no matter how much of it you have.
SECOND WIND (Booster – 6 CP)
In high and distant echelons of the cosmos, lords and ladies whisper from their thrones that there exists a flame far more profound than even the breath of the gods themselves – but more the fools them, having forgotten or never learned that breath, too, is a kind of flame.
You will find that Divine Breath naturally wells up from within yourself, increasing in rate as death approaches you – your ‘life’ and ‘death’ not being defined by the state of your embodiment, your physical and spiritual metabolic patterns, or any such cues too often distorted by this and other Power Sources, but rather as the true and meaningful cessation of your existence. Likewise, merely living, and therefore being capable of some day coming to die, is insufficient to produce appreciable gains, as are most all near-death experiences held under controlled conditions. It is the real and imminent risk alone of losing everything which causes your Breath to surge, and this cannot be faked – though it can be used, if you are bold enough to burn, and in this way you can
If you’re taking these perks with the Defiant Flame – which is your prerogative, though I reserve the right to be snooty at you because combining magic systems in the Chain of Isekai should take a bit more creativity than “and then I threw them all on the bonfire together” – then ignore the above two paragraphs. Instead, you birth each new Mote of the Defiant Flame N years after the last, where N is the amount of Motes you’ve birthed so far (i.e. it takes one year to birth a second mote, two more years to birth a third mote, three more years to birth a fourth mote, etc). This replaces the previous progression of your Mote earnings (and associated rebirths).
EXHALATION (Special – 8 CP)
Though you aren’t immune to diminishment, degeneration, and degradation, it has little hold on you in your own way, deleterious effects falling off asymptotically as they draw closer to the point of your true ruination. You’re able to exert a great deal of control over how such maladies effect you, making complex trade-offs in order to preserve functionality you care about at the cost of things you’re willing to discard, even if the results should fall out of the normal realm of possibility for victims of your afflictions. Most significantly of all, this ability applies not just to maluses imposed from the outside – including those as straightforward as blood loss and those as outrageous as ancient curses – but to those arising from within, including the depletion of abstract or metaphysical resources. This massively increases the window of viability for your effective operation, and increases the window of viability for your existence indefinitely, assuming you don’t suffer anything as discontinuous as a direct lethal blow.
You’re even able to resist the deleterious effects of power drains more sophisticated and complicated than the loss of a few drops of a regenerating resource like stamina or Velt, allowing you to get exponentially more effective mileage out of long-term sacrificial abilities and transfers, your existence adapting to make the best of what it has left with lessons learned at the height of its power.
TO RULE THEM ALL (Limit Breaker – 10 CP)
Any objects of power you craft to channel the Divine Breath – be they traditional artifacts of physical artifice, or more complex spiritual formations and blessings – retain an infallible connection to yourself, far above and beyond what the Divine Breath itself can traditionally facilitate. You are passively aware of all such formations and their basic status without distraction or strain, and can recall any such formation to yourself at any time, with but a thought. You may always treat any formation of yours, and anyone who bears one of your formations, as being within the applicable range of any abilities you possess.
When you call back one of your formations to yourself from the hands of another who has used its powers for their own, you may automatically rip any or all of their own Divine Breath out of them and take it with; this happens automatically when any such person who bears a formation of yours dies, tithing all of their Divine Breath to you, unless you deliberately choose otherwise. If you have Pranayama, you may make a deliberate choice to imbibe any appropriate fonts of power in their person at the time of their death or ripping and transmute those fonts of power into more Divine Breath. If you have Interdevouring Eucharist Appetites, you will automatically take any other resources from their person that you’re capable of absorbing, unless you deliberately choose otherwise.
INTERDEVOURING EUCHARIST APPETITES (Capstone – 12 CP)
A thousand thousand thousand god-monsters writhe through the grey waste of their own corpses, racing to the apex, and those who pretend to be wise will blame their abominations upon the cruelty of a world where all they had to eat was each other; and all of this is true, for a thousand thousand thousand god-monsters drown even now in the barrenness of silt and salt, but those who pretend to be wise have no understanding of what horrors would descend upon the world were those who eat or be eaten not suffocating now and forever in their cradle.
Just as an ordinary man can seize the lion’s share of the Divine Breath of those he kills, you can take all of the Divine Breath of those you destroy, and you can take the lion’s share of all the other impelling forces that drive them, metaphysically supping upon their fungible resources for your own gain. Worldblood accumulation, Faith, Velt – all of these and more are yours for the taking, if only you’re able to hold onto them once they’re in your hands. With greater practice, you may even begin to claim other aspects of your victims, including liquid abstractions like skills, stamina, willpower, knowledge, memories, and so on and so forth.
Finally, you may invert this power, bleeding out any or all aspects of yourself that you could steal in order to transfer them to others. This may, of course, lead to irreversible and potentially disastrous consequences if you don’t have a way to take back your gifts without killing their recipients.
Imagogenesis:
(With apologies to Rihaku…)
Any amateur can grasp for power and might on the coattails of the incidental, and the cosmos is glutted on the trappings of such paths to power. To grow strong instead underneath the auspice of necessity, and not just of contingency, requires a greater force still – the power of the Energy of All and Nothingness, the intrinsic essence immanent in all that which exists. Successful exploitation of this Energy may effect miraculous transformations of the self and cultivate abilities of surpassing metaphysical depth, but aspiring practitioners must be warned: by the same token, the extreme fundamentality of the Energy opens its wielder to dangers and costs above and beyond the reach of contingency or correction.
Most experts who study the Energy of All and Nothingness have come to chart a particular pathway through the dangers of its cultivation, a seven-part process by which any practitioner might avoid deviation and reach the apex… given a massive amount of time, effort, resources, and talent. Each stage of this process comprehensively enhances the practitioner’s entire being, reinforcing their existence with ever-increasing quantities of Energy, in addition to laying a foundation for future development and establishing a variety of stage-specific benefits.
This is not the only potential route to power. Only the most reliable one.
The Ego Barrier stage is the first. Through a series of grueling mental exercises, a cultivator must accrue the substance of their will and shape it into a coherent barrier around their physical and mental selves. In addition to fortifying the mind, a completed Ego Barrier metaphysically disjoins its owner from the outside world, allowing them to spontaneously catalyze the Energy of All and Nothingness within themself. It is a testament to the demands of the practice that even this self-sourced well of Energy is insufficient for most to cultivate.
The Organ Refining stage is the second. Through a series of grueling physical exercises, a cultivator must refine and perfect their body as a physical vessel and channel for the Energy of the realm within their Ego Barrier. The process of Organ Refining greatly enhances the body, but the benefits are largely quantitative without the use of highly specialized – and dangerous – body-modifying cultivation techniques.
The Soul Chrysalis stage is the third. A cultivator must fully complete the disjunction which began with the Ego Barrier, distinguishing their soul from the outside world and realizing an absolute metaphysical distinction between self and other in the process. As with Organ Refining, specialized cultivation techniques may be used to alter one’s spiritual traits, but mediocrity is more rewarding than overreach by far…
Dao Cleaving is the fourth stage. Having become a self distinct from the other, a cultivator must decide who and what that self is meant to be – simultaneously cleaving to a personal way of life and cleaving away the ways of the outside world. In exchange for their binding commitment to a Dao, a Cultivator of this level finally begins to develop personalized magics, known as Reality Effects. Such abilities are versatile and powerful, and rarely cost anything to use, but are always few in number.
Reality Forming is the fifth stage. As the Energy contained within their being grows beyond their natural ability to contain, a cultivator must make their Dao into the foundation of a new world, channeling their growing might into the formation of a complete reality within themself. Reality Formers continue to manifest new Reality Effects as they progress, but these new abilities are now informed more by their internal geomancy than their philosophy, expressing the nature of a world rather than a man.
Grand Solipsism is the sixth stage. To fully break the shackles of scale, a cultivator must unmoor their inner world from all inherited preconceptions until it stands alone, existing without reference or relation to any other realms. Raw might is the ultimate and foremost benefit of this stage – or rather, raw coherence, massively enhancing all of a cultivator’s existing Reality Effects in applicability and stability.
Titanic Ascension is the seventh and final stage. As the Energy contained within their being grows beyond all constraint, a cultivator must dissolve the shell of their own Ego Barrier, allowing their power to spill back out into the outside world without also dissolving themself in the process. Fully realized, a cultivator’s Titanic power influences the world around him by its mere existence; fully unleashed, it strikes with the power of an entire universe; fully mastered, the self is elevated by its might. These expressions are known as the Emanation, Extrusion, and Incarnation, respectively.
Perks
Absolute Territory (Universal Access – 4 CP)
Your individuality is incredibly, impossibly secure. Unless you will it otherwise, you are categorically immune to any effect which would subsume or aggregate you into a greater being, and you cannot be distorted by means of intermixing existences; with even passing awareness of and focus upon this distinction, you may precipitate an Ego Barrier with ease.
Simply by making another aware of the distinction between yourself and them, you can awaken them to a similar distinction between them and the rest of the world.
Panoply Exoself (Booster – 6 CP)
That ‘you’ begins and ends where it does is arbitrary. With an exertion of will commensurate to that which you’ve already claimed, you may subsume or release any discrete object which is not itself another self-willed being. Objects so subsumed count as extensions of yourself for all intents and purposes, including for their interactions with other powers and abilities.
Your natural faculty for proprioception is only one such ability, as is your capacity to grow, change, and heal.
Depth Of Recursion (Special – 8 CP)
You contain a projection of your own self, a shadow traced by your strength and being. By examining this metaphysical space in your mind’s eye, you may apprehend the complete structure of all your power, obtaining tremendous insight into the nature of your own abilities and Power Sources.
Should you ever reach the Reality Forming stage, this framework will further substantiate your inner realm. Unlike other cultivators, you may directly interact with the contents of your inner world, using your Ego Barrier as a doorway to and fro the space that lies within yourself.
Chrysalis Age (Limit Breaker – 10 CP)
Repurposing your advancement into the crucible of your rebirth and not the instrument of your ascension, you may withdraw at any time into a unique chrysalis forged of your own cultivation base. This liquefies your essence, temporarily rendering you vulnerable, but allows you to burn up your stockpiled Energy to rejuvenate and enhance anything your cultivation base touches upon.
Each time this power is triggered, it continues until you have burned all your Energy and returned to a semblance of mortality. No amount of cultivation or self-modification can ever prevent you from considering or exercising this ability.
Above & Beyond (All-Encompassing Capstone – 12 CP)
There can be no improvement without transformation. For any formal mode of self-improvement or regimented process of progression, given sufficient resources, investment, research, and experimentation, you may devise a new and improved version: mitigating or removing drawbacks, enhancing or creating benefits, or even segueing into new directions of development entirely.
These optimizations are fully real and replicable, and are not hardcapped in potential effectiveness. However, the cost to implement them – and not just to discover them – scales with the degree of absolute improvement they represent.
Worldly Thaumaturgy
The world is deeper than it seems, the material reality we experience only the exposed face in a far more tangled tapestry. The power of Essence ebbs invisibly beneath the surface of the physical world, flowing in trickles or pooling in drops, even gathering and surging in vast geomantic arteries and chambers. Like water currents below the surface of a frozen lake, the metaphysical aspects and elemental affinities of this free-flowing Essence both influence the the stolid physical world and are influenced by it in return.
In this way, although she’s limited by her resources and her manpower as well as her raw skill, a thaumaturge can achieve all manner of surprising results with just the correct arrangements, combinations, and patterns of material – the transmutation of base elements into other and higher forms, the assembly of impossibly complex mechanisms, the distillation of mystical elixirs and powders, the mechanical extraction and conversion of power from the veins of the earth, even the forging of artifacts or the cultivation of the environment, and more.
Rarefied further still than simple Essence is the stuff of Enlightenment that accrues in all spiritual entities and at the foundations of the world, the directing qualities which allow Essence to conform to lasting patterns, resonate with other patterns, and be shaped by will and law alone. The souls of men are born as broken, blind, smothered things, neither able to grow in Essence or reach out in Enlightenment and touch directly upon the stuff of creation, but they yet retain the power of reason to apprehend those greater forces which preside over the world.
Where spiritual beings exist, whether as coagulated elementals or more sophisticated domains, a thaumaturge can learn to parley with them or exploit their intrinsic nature and properties. Even a human’s stunted soul imparts dregs of belief-aspect on the Essence flowing through them, refining it into the stuff of Prayer that all Essence-users prize for the ease with which they can respire it; even the lowliest humans have something to offer, to draw out the strength of the least powers or commune with the higher.
Thus a thaumaturge might speak with the lingering dead, beckon demons to her side, entreat blessings and curses from gods and monsters, and more. Of the most foundational principles and transcendent patterns, Enlightened interactions profound enough to lay down the behavior of worlds or so intricate as to rise like order from chaos and minutiae, no Thaumaturgy alone will suffice to move them – but merely apprehending their properties is also a form of power, a way to move with circumstance or stretch one’s comprehension across the skein of the pattern in which one abides.
By drawing oneself into a larger Enlightened pattern, even greater feats than these mereologies are possible, the higher and vaster thaumaturgies informally called sorcery. To one with a distinct Essence, this is as simple in theory as making the mental connection that a square is a rectangle, but as difficult as inventing geometry from scratch to someone who has never been initiated in the relevant concepts. More thaumaturges still will live and die weak, and while a strong Essence can evoke many powers in passing, it can only be stretched so far as a foundation for ongoing works of magic.
Thus great sorcerors are ever on the search for thaumaturgic foundations outside of themselves – organizing Cults to drive their magic on winds of faith, building or locating Artefacts to serve as foci, setting Followers to the performance of great rituals, tapping the free upwellings of Essence called Demesnes, binding or contracting mystical Familiars and Allies, or supping on the Whispers of terrible occult powers. Even a long enough Lineage of masters and disciples will become such a foundation, erected on a bedrock of significance.
BREDE DISCIPLINES
Ken of Kin (Universal Access)
Your soul is immediately opened to channeling power as the Brede once did; even without psychic intensity or another form of wonder to wield, you can still channel the likes of thin stamina and willpower, finding outlet pores suitable for more basic actions and refining their efficiency and finesse as you would for the arcane.
Opening the soul of another is no more complicated than soliciting them to breathe manually.
Biting The Hand (Booster)
Every time you kill another creature, your Brede-soul cannibalizes their own to grow. This does not grant power storage or generation, but does permit the development of complexity, opening or refining pores related to the various capabilities of your victims.
Those you kill do not need to have explicit experience with Brede Disciplines in order for this power to function.
Strange Loops (Special)
The mark of higher consciousness is to act on more than reflex. Any raw power you can channel, you can process and reprocess in more sophisticated and intelligent ways – shunting it forward in time, crystallizing and storing it for later use, channeling it autonomously, or more.
Awakening the soul of another to the same is no more complicated than meaningfully elevating their metacognition.
Ant Devours Grasshopper (Limit Breaker)
An input is an output is a ragged artery. Every outlet pore you possess to channel a specific type of energy also acts as an inlet pore of identical quality for that energy, allowing you to take it in in greater quantities at a time; every inlet pore you possess for a specific form of energy also acts as a segment of identical quality in a reservoir of that energy, allowing you to stably store it in greater quantities at a time.
In The Mouth of Madness (Capstone)
At any time, you may invert and collapse the polarity – but not the fundamental capabilities – of a quantity of power you hold. Such inverted power is inherently noxious, annihilating the stuff of its original form on contact, but is both undiminished and amplified for its rarefication: it can always be usefully channeled into action, even in circumstances when its original form would be totally neutralized or categorically irrelevant.
MOTIVE WINGS
Defying Gravity (Universal Access)
Your essential spirit is intrinsically hardened against the weight of the world – neither the standards of society nor the cold laws of physics can ever totally blind you to who you are and who you’re supposed to be, and your Motive Wings can manifest and survive unprotected for so long as your hope and belief in yourself hold out.
Anyone you can rally to believe in themself, you may teach to shore up their spirit and draw out their Wings as well.
Seasonal Redesign (Booster)
Much as anyone else can project their Motive Wings, you can manifest a simple HALO device, inseparable from your spirit and indestructible while you still live. Each time you hit a truly significant personal milestone, your HALO will evolve in form and stature, only growing in magnificence and style over time; while using your HALO device, the power of all your Motive Wings is amplified in proportion to the glory of your crown.
Such milestones include, but are not limited to, the shedding of one Wing and the evolution of your others.
Pinion Spiral (Special)
When shedding Motive Wings, instead of discarding them completely, they are transformed into Orbital Wings – the outermost helix of your ascending power. Orbital Wings cease to evolve in sophistication and sheer might as you advance, but do continue to grow, or even to excel, in one crucial respect: their range and scope of action. In time even the humble Voltaic Wing might swell to encircle a solar system, or the Grenadier’s Wing fling a string of lights into the dark.
To Scorn All Machinery (Limit Breaker)
Uniquely among Wing-bearers, you may express your Wings as physical devices in the world; a form that can be shaped and touched. This creates vulnerabilities while performed, but also opportunities: your Wings can be directly repaired and upgraded. Lesser wings may be overhauled mechanically, optimized or redesigned or stuffed to the gills with add-ons; for greater wings, much the same, even if the process is necessarily more arcane. Reforge the Phoenix Wing under the light of a supernova, and set the world ablaze.
Titan’s Calculus (Capstone)
Existence is the action functional between optimism and death. Cut symmetry to heel, and live. Do what you know is right, even when it’s foolish; flout reason, and break the cage of law.
In contested outcomes involving yourself, the absolute efficacy of all your most unreasonable actions is increased in proportion to your willpower. In all contested outcomes involving yourself, the reasonable actions of your foes are decreased in efficacy in proportion to your persuasiveness. Your foes do not have to be people, living beings, or discrete entities in order for you to oppose them thusly.
Alternate Capstone by caliburdeath: Titan’s Calculus V3: Your personal convictions can shape the landscape of conflict. When you engage in conflict, whether to improve your chances against a stronger foe, to deescalate violence, or otherwise, you may generate a metaphysical layer of reality between yourself and an opponent. As you clash with force or wit in the physical world, in this abstract realm another battle plays out, where your weapons are not swords, spells, or spies, but your worldview, your willpower, and the strength of your ideals. You experience this battle simultaneously with the material conflict, in a way that is does not split your attention.
THE IRON SEQUENCE
Offerings To The Void (Universal Access)
You can freely forsake anything in your possession, no matter how indelibly bound to yourself it otherwise may be – this includes not just territory and wealth, but health and powers and personality, the constituents of your self. Nothing can stop you from exercising this ability, and cast-offs correctly formatted may automatically be given as sacrifices to the Iron Sequence.
With but a token sacrifice to another person, you can brand an understanding of the Iron Sequence upon their mind and allow them to use it in turn.
Enforced Restitution (Booster)
Your losses are repaid in gild. All that which you are truly deprived of without recompense – the waning of blood and life, treasure and power, world and self and love – grants you a proportional quantity of Iron Coin to match, the intangible currency of equivalent exchange. Iron Coin can be used as a valid sacrifice of any kind, substituting for anything the Sequence will devour, or even be spent to proportionally amplify the power of all your existing Marks.
Lord of the Sequences (Special)
The Marks of your Sequence are not their signifier, but the Sequence itself, a self-declaring sigil. To copy your runes is to attract your attention, and any instance of your Marks may be invested thereby with the boons of your Sequence, divided among Marks as you see fit. Even after your bodily death, so long as one active Mark remains, what life and selfhood you consign to the Sequence will linger on within, directing your power and anchored to existence.
Crucifixion (Limit Breaker)
The more a sacrifice to the Iron Sequence can be said to be yours, freely given, the lesser the tarnish to stain the rewards of your diligence. Even a month’s wages fairly earned, once consigned to the Sequence, may produce almost neutral powers, and deeper sacrifices purer still. Forsake your own life and love and self, and attain powers vastly more beneficial and creative than hungry and destructive, in complete contradiction to all the rules of the universe.
Procession (Capstone)
The burden of power is consequence. For every meaningful long-term commitment you take on, the ease of sustaining your commitment – and your rewards for doing so – are elevated in proportion to its intended permanence and the significance of its costs. Self-augmentation practices are the most obviously impacted, but this power extends even to the likes of interpersonal contracts and promises as well as to deeper lifestyle changes and projects.
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[TheLastOne]
Alchemy:
Something like Full Metal Alchemist’s Alchemy.
It’s a very flexible power for shaping the physical world, but it also has a spiritual existence that we only saw the edges of. We’ve seen potent alchemy used to forcefully teleport people, turn shadow into substance, create demiplanes, rip out and imprison souls, animate constructs (with and without souls of their own) and create life.
Alchemy is actually super similiar to Unbeing, but with some important differences.
Alchemy can transform value, but can’t create or destroy it.
Unbeing destroys value, and harness the process of destruction to drive itself.
Alchemy tends to be a transitory act that results in a new stable state. Only the most impress acts of alchemy result in an ongoing alchemical effect.
Unbeing is a proccess that once started, is incredibly hard to stop before it’s played itself out. Only the most impressive examples of unbeing could create a limited sacrifice that results in a new stable state.
Alchemy is a force of balance, and is limited by that balance. You get what you pay for. You might be able to make someone stronger with alchemy, give them better muscles, redundant organs. Alchemy can even get spiritual, so you probably could give them a stronger life force. Making things ‘better’ in a sense is possible, as long as the ‘better’ doesn’t change the ‘value.’ A stone and a stone sculpture have the same value. Life is the same way. But it would be by rearranging and transforming thing into new states that MAKE SENSE, and are limited by normal reasonable limitation. It would be hard to figure out how to make someone stronger, because you’re working within limitations. You’re designing a better body, with all the limitations of engineering.
Unbeing is a unbalancing force, and can achieve potentially unlimited effects through that distablization. You can simply make someone stronger by aggregating them with new life and soul and being, to an arbitrary extent.
I originally said that I didn’t see much crossover between Unbeing and Alchemy. But on further thought, I’m pretty sure the creation of a Philosophers Stone would actually be done by using Unbeing and Alchemy together, rather then through pure alchemy. You shouldn’t be able to just keep adding value to something, and ‘value’ is specific rather then general purpose, but a Philosopher’s Stone breaks all those rules.
It would be made by ‘breaking’ someone with unbeing, such that their ‘value’ warps and distorts, becomes abstract. A good amount of it would be lost at that stage, but it becomes ‘liquid’, value that could be poured into any shape. Then that liquid value is extracted into the Red Stone, and the person finishes their decay into nothing. You lost a bunch of value, but now you have extracted pure value that can become anything, and it’s no longer tied to the vessel condemned to unbeing.
Playing around with breaking something with Unbeing, distorting it, and then extracting that distorted value probably would be pretty common for alchemists, actually. Without spending pieces of your own life/soul, and without access to special materials, it would be the easiest way to make something impressive.
Making a philosphers stone was something hard and special in full metal alchemist, but the pathway to do so would actually be pretty obvious here. And not just philosophers stones. Lots of qualities of life would be useful to extract and repurpose, but that would be extremely hard through pure alchemy, but easy once you add in some unbeing.
I could see alchemists getting an unsavory reputation, because of how well the two could marry.
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[OhNoMySanitea]
Anima
Within many forms of life is an animating force, present in all things capable of independent action. Any such being can be born with a natural surplus of Anima, or potentially train to increase their production of Anima, which some enterprising people learn to inject into the world around them to produce the very life that Anima springs from.
In effect, proper use of Anima allows one to give objects spirits, who can display all manner of abilities in relation to what they are the spirit of. It must be said that Anima does not itself grant the user many abilities and advantages beyond that of creating spirits, though still some. Instead, a user must bond with the spirits they create and help and guide them as they develop, ultimately leaving the user with a powerful spirit loyal to them. This is helped by the natural feelings of affection and loyalty a spirit will feel towards its creator. This isn’t any kind of mind control, and is in no way absolute, but it’s enough that just being rather neutral and generally leaving the spirits to their own devices will see the spirits you create view you with a fair amount of respect and fondness, and actual kindness would see them extremely devoted.
Anima has a few limits and complexities, in exchange for the potential to relatively easily create any number of self-improving and independent, yet loyal, spirits with any number and manner of abilities.
Firstly, spirits naturally are born with a mind roughly equivalent to a young child, though will usually mature quite rapidly, and must actually be taught about anything that doesn’t directly pertain to any of their abilities, which they have a natural talent and sense for.
Second, while the mind is by default that of a child, the actual raw power it wields to start is proportional to the might, scale, and significance of that which it is the spirit of, with the spirit of a legendary dragon-slaying blade having far greater powers than a similarly aged spirit of a common soldier’s sword. Importantly, spirits imbued into truly mighty things tend to have more inhuman mindsets by default, due to the sheer scales they often work at, and the tendency for spirits to have natures appropriate to what they are imbued into. If you had the sheer amount of Anima necessary to grant a spirit to the whole of a raging wildfire, you’d be left with little more than a wild animal, overwhelmed by its unbridled desire to burn and consume, and even if it survived long enough to grow and develop and mature, it would be no less interested in consuming all around it, merely gaining a sharp cunning and restraint to pursue its goals more effectively. Thus it is generally in one’s best interest to raise a spirit from small beginnings, like a candle or fireplace, and let them develop from there.
Third and finally, Anima cannot be infused into things that already possess anima. This prevents one from infusing multiple spirits into a single object, infusing spirits directly into already living things, and also what prevents spirits, beings of pure Anima given purpose and definition, from possessing such things, which they might ordinarily learn to do to objects that lack anima.
EDIT: The abilities of a spirit work on a system of investment, as do all functions of a spirit. As Anima is the supernatural essence of ‘doing’ and action, a spirit can direct their Anima to ‘do’ things in accordance with it’s nature wherever it is present, whether that be extinguishing a flame or melting a foe’s armor to slag on their body. Such effects are continuous and persistant so long as the spirit leaves their Anima there doing the task, a fire burning and armor continuing to heat up, and cannot be used for other purposes until withdrawn from whatever task it was performing. This extends to a spirits senses, a spirit doesn’t see or hear or feel as a human would, instead having a general broad awareness of the state of the world around it proportional to the amount of their Anima is present in a space. A spirit spread through a mansion would have less awareness in any one spot than an equally powerful spirit of one thing in that mansion, like a suit of armor.
As for the spirits themselves, their potential powers are mighty and broad, but tend to follow a trend of sorts.
Universal Access: Gasp of Air – 4 Chain Parts
While anima technically infuses the entirety of a being’s self, a fact animists take full advantage of, in most embodied beings it can be found most prominently in the breath, such that that is the vector by which anima is transferred. You possess enough of a surplus of Anima to make learning its core tricks fairly intuitive and natural. No matter what should happen, you will always, always be able to breathe, regardless of form, condition, or circumstance, the very nature of anima as a force of motion and action refusing to be trapped. Smothered by a pillow you would never suffocate. Throat slit or crushed and you would still draw breath, and even at the bottom of the ocean or in the vacuum of space, your lungs would continue to fill with air that doesn’t even exist.
By leading someone through specific breathing exercises and meditation while immersed in your anima, you can teach any non-spirit being capable of independent action to consciously exhale and direct anima as you do, even causing them to produce the same characteristic and necessary excess of it if for some reason they don’t already.
Booster: Incubator – 8 Chain Parts
I get it, sometimes you get tired of raising literal children, even if they do grow up incredibly fast. You can now choose to ‘mature’ a chunk of Anima at any time, for as long as you desire. This Anima is tucked away so to speak in some untouchable tank, so as to not impede further Anima production. When this Anima is then put into an appropriate vessel to make a spirit, that spirit is born with all the maturity and raw power as if you’d spent time caring for it wholeheartedly equal to one day for every hour spent maturing the anima. This doesn’t train them in use of their powers, they’re just have the raw power they would at that age and are of a healthy mindset as if given a very good upbringing. I suppose if you wanted you could turn “a healthy mindset” into whatever one you desire, but why would you ever want anything but a healthy, happy, spirit?
Special: The Next Generation – 6 Chain Parts
Normally, a spirit could no more breathe Anima into something to create another spirit than you could create a newborn child by ripping your liver out and throwing it on the ground. With this however, your spirits are able to reach a sixth stage so to speak, learning to harmlessly release Anima from their corpus to create a new spirit more or less as an embodied being would. As this ability is passed on ad nauseum to each generation, just one powerful spirit could, with enough time, cause entire landscapes to become fully animate with individual spirits for every tree and rock.
Limit Breaker: Phantom Chimerism – 10 Chain Parts
You ignore the largest limitation of Animism,being that your Anima can freely mingle with other Anima. The possibilities with such a restriction lifted are perhaps beyond counting. You could mix different spirits together for composite effects beyond the remit of a singular spirit, such as putting a spirit of fire into a blade that already houses a spirit of that sword, so as to have a sword that can cut supernaturally well and expel fire, or more bizarrely have it cut with fire itself. You might direct an existing spirit into a living being so as to let the spirit grant its abilities to that being. You might even directly imbue a being with a fresh spirit, such that it is a spirit of them, though should you be considering applying this to yourself this does present the issue of having your body inhabited by a separate thinking being with control over your bodily functions.
All-Encompassing Capstone: Transcendent Animation – 12 Chain Parts
Your powers are transcendent, and restrictions on them begin to loosen noticeably. Anima can normally only be imbued into physical things, something actually present in the world. With this, you could imbue Anima into the metaphysical, into your powers, your skills, and perhaps in time souls themselves (if you had Phantom Chimerism) or grander aspects of reality like entire Concepts or Power Sources if you could muster enough Anima. This extends to all powers, wherein the limitations on what ways a power can be applied loosen, moreso with training and practice. This doesn’t outright increase the raw might, nor does it allow you to do wholly new things, it just allows you to use your existing powers in ways they previously just couldn’t. With this, Worldblood could be turned to also enhance mental or spiritual characteristics, and a Halfmad could turn their madness to making a False Wizardry spell. That is to say the function of Worldblood is “Enhances the physical characteristics of things imbued with it” which you could reduce to just “Enhances the characteristics of things imbued with it” but couldn’t wholly alter it to “Worldblood gives individually thematically appropriate superpowers that scale with the quantity of Worldblood”
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[BobtheNORMALguy]
Aura:
-Aura is produced by living beings it appears as somewhere between a gas and liquid, color is generally random but always pleasing to the user.
-The ability to use Aura like Halfmads can’t be taught and instead seems to appear randomly among various populations. (Not actually random people who can use it are born just before or after major disasters)
-Its main ability is to analyze and then repair broken things (objects, people, the environment, etc.) though it becomes less and less effective the tougher or more powerful it is then the user.
-This actually only works on things that actually are broken in some way can’t fix what isn’t damaged after all. Yes this means Aura can’t start enhancing you without your subject being damaged/injured in some way this is entirely intentional.
-Think of it as trying to turn something into a ideal state. Human to perfectly healthy human for their height, weight, age, etc. though only masters can actually remove things like birth defects or genetic diseases.
-Its secondary ability is that it can passively enhance the user based on what has been scanned. Examples being like someone with tougher bones will allow your Aura to very slowly enhance yours to match or repairing rubber making you more flexible.
-Repeated scanning will actually speed up this process though diminishing returns do exist.
-Generally speaking it starts with the most notable or powerful traits first before moving onto lesser ones. Like with the repair function its less and less effective the tougher or more powerful it is then the user.
-This means powerful enough Worldblood users traits for example effectively can’t be copied without working up towards their level.
-Masters of Aura are capable of shaping theirs to mimic scanned items or more active abilities like fire breathing.
-Items start off indistinct with repeated scanning and/or training allowing you to make it more detailed and durable.
-Technically any active ability can mimicked with Aura but abilities with high enough complexity might be beyond any amount of skill. Or at the very least not without an absurd amount of effort for that one ability.
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[FlameOfTheVoid]
Nullity:
The power of negation, anti-magic and denial. Fields, beams and wawes that negate the expressions of other power sources. Magic resistance and canceling. Ultimatley a spiteful power, giving nothing but the ability to bring others down. Any development in other Power Sources chokes down the power of Nulity, as you become that to wich it is oposed to. It grows through usage, by nulifying the abilities of others. Masters of Nulity erase the spells of archmages and strike down gods, but poses no power beyond that of Nulity.
Weight of mundanity
The weight of Nulity allows the world to cling to the „truth“. You are much more capabe than would othervise be possible in the skill of infusing weapons and other implements with Nulity. While others may infuse their sword with an ability to slice trough magic for a few hours, your enchantment would last practicaly indefinitley. You can even grant others the abiity to use Nulity by infusing them as you would an inanimate object. Free them from their dreams.
Crabs in a bucket
Look at them sticking out, like a nail. Showing off their strenghth and special tricks. But you know they are weak behind all those special effects. And knowledge is your greatest strength. Knowledge about your enemy increases the power of Nulity you wield ageanst them. Knowing their daily routine can increase the strength by 50% across the board, while knowing the details of a specific ability can increase it by several dozen times when countering it. Beat them down.
Erase their dreams
Even after you break their delusions, they still cling to those dreams. No more. When you fulliy Nullify someone, erasing every supernatural and/or exceptional quality they posses, you may also Nulify everything they have done with them. This effect is not absolute, being just an extremely strong Nulity field focused on their works, and does not spread past the first generation of artifacts, descendants, students and such. Show them they did nothing.
Erode their world
The people are not the only challenge to your „rationality“. This world itself lies to you and twists the natural order. Strikie back! You can use Nulity on more than just supernatural abilities, beings and objects. You can use it on anything, although it is increasingly harder to use it on things that are more fundamental andor „normal“. After all, there is no diffrence between a work of flying artifice and a floating island, between the scales of a dragon and the skin of a human. Not for you.
Also, your ability with Nullity no longer degrades when your other Power Sources grow. I assure you, this is not at all hypocritical. Moving on!
Idiot Ball
Look at them, with their fancy tricks, looking down on you, thinking you are nothing. It is they who will be nothing! When facing an opponent with overwhelming supernatural advantage over you, you recive an immmense advantage and their is weakend. This manifests in the shape of an „Idiot Ball Class Mental Interference Field“. Your opponents will tend to make a large amount of stupid mistakes, and will almost always use their abilities extremely suboptimaly, if they even remember they have them. This ability is a mental influence, and can be resisted by certan advanced methods, but not using anything native to the World. (WARNING: Power Sources native to the World may no longer count as such with certan Chain Parts Perks, allowing resistance.) For the purpose of this perk, your ability with Nullity does not count in the supernatural advantage calculations.
Vitae:
Vitae. Lifeblood. The innate ability of all living beings to wield their Lifeforce as a tool and a weapon. There are two common ways of using it: Internal and Parasitic.
Internal users of vitae awaken the ability to control it with effort, training and meditation. They grow their power through martial arts and meditation, control over their bloodflow and the mystycal biofeedback art of the Immortal Heart.
Parasitic users take the Vitae from others, commonly in the form of blood. The ability can be gained by bathing in vitae-rich blood or given by an advanced user (making either a slave automaticaly transfering a portion of drained Vitae to their maker or an equal).
Most Vitae skills are based in temporary enchantment of the body, infusing vitae into flesh, blood and bone to grant enhanched strength, speed and coordination,or even changing its shape, with infused Vitae eventualy returning to their Vitae pool ( with a lot of Vitae and effort, these can be made permanent). There are some ranged skills and an extremely capable, practicaly instinctive regeneration ability all users have acess to, but these actualy expand Vitae, wich is generated very slowly, and is expanded sligthly just throught the act of living.
A Vitae pool is ones Lifespan. Losing all of it leads to death. Increasing it lengthens your life expectancy and grants youth to the old and decript.
It can be condensed into a liquid outside the body, or into a crystal called Vitalite. These are used as currency in certain places. You can literarly pay your debts with your life.
Themes: Life, Lifespan, Blood, Monks, Vampires, Flesh, Regeneration, Biology Enhanchment.
Flow of Life
You are aware of the most efficient methods to awaken and train Vitae, and are extremely talented in every usage of it. You can grant anyone the capability to use it by giving them a drop from your pool, even a golem or a robot, and this will not make them Parasitic users if you do not want to. In the case of a being with a limitless lifespan, gaining Vitae will not shorten it, but they will not have an unlimited pool either. They will have incredibly fast Vitae generation, through. As an additional bonus, should you lose all your Vitae, you will have one day to gain some before you die.
In the Blood
Your Vitae is incredibly potent, giving you 10 times greater lifespan, increasing enhanchment benefits by 50 % and the power (not Vitae) gained by (willingly) draining away your Vitae by 100 %. This means ranged skills and regeneration benefits, but not Parasites draining you, and that willing transfusions to heal or empower the body benefit, but not pure Vitae transfusions (as you could otherwise produce unlimited Vitae with two users).
All Life is Mine
You keep control over your Vitae until you willingly reliquish it. This gives you acces to a number of unusual abilities. You can control your flesh and blood even when they are no longer in contact with your body, use Liquid Vitae and Vitalite you make like they are still a part of your Vitae pool or a part of your body, and tear apart a Parasite that drained away your Vitae from the inside.
The ability of a Parasite to „infect“ forgin Vitae with their will to take control of it is greatly expanded. You can „digest“ Vitae in a fraction of a fraction of normal time. By feeding a (normal) victim a drop of your Blood, you could take control of their entire pool and body in a few hours without even focusing.
You can develop other tricks and abilities based in this fact.
Blood magic
Your Vitae is so much more than mere lifeforce. You can develop obviously magical effects far beyond the normal capabilities of Vitae, but still fitting within its themes. They cost more than normal usage of Vitae, and the cost grows with the potency and scale of the effect, but this offers unparalleled versatility. Healing spells, crimson blades and whips that inflict tumors instead of wounds, draining of stamina or other energies…
Endless life
A talented user of Vitae could theoreticaly live forever. You are already capable of it. Time and age will not lessen you in any way. Your pool of Vitae is no longer eroded just by living. Your body and mind will not grow infirm. Your skills and abilities will not lessen with time and disuse. The Fog Of Ages will never take you, for time cannot take away your ability to remember something. You can still be slain or crippled by the actions of others, but never will you fall to the passing of the Ages.
Elementalism:
Across the world, in various areas rich in elemental energies , or during significant elemental events, ambient elemental energies condens into Elementals. They can be made out of anything that could vaugely be considered an „element“ They tend to mindlesly rampage and spread their element around until they are slain.Upon death an Elemental condenses into an Elemental Nexus, a sphere of crystalised Elemental energy just a bit smaller than a human head. They can be apsorbed by a Elementalist, giving them a weakend form of the Elementals abilities.
An Elemetalist can only wield a single element. They grow in power through apsorbing it from Elemental Nexi. The element they wield can be changed, but this is a lengthy and difficult process that leaves them with a strenght of a beginner once more.
They can sense, create and control their element. Elementalisam is primary a physycal art, and even the most esoterisc Elements limit their conceptual manipulation to simple addition and removal. A rare shadow user can form two-dimensional blades, but cannot travel from shadow to shadow. A (even more rare) user of will can increase and decrease it, but not subvert it.
Example elements: fire, ice, plants, sulphur, iron, molten iron, chaos, vacuum, paper, shadow, will, snow
Catalyst
You are able to store any non-sentient examples of an Element you come in contact with (or in contact to its container or something directly connected to the example in case of the weirder elements) in a metaphysycal storage space inside you with a few seconds of concetration. You can condense Elemental energies inside into Elementals, and this process is much more efficient than the natural one, taking much less material. Greater amounts used will result in more powerful elementals. You have absolutly no control over them. Be careful not to be squished.
Element eater
You are now comletley immmune to damage caused by your elementa. Instead of dealing damage, examples of your elements are apsorbed and used to increase your power. You can do this actively as well, your apsorption capability growing with your power. Apsorbing an element is not as efficient as apsorbing a Nexus, but is much more convinent.
Master of the elements
You can now separate large chunks of your own power and transform them into elementals under your control. This permanently removes the piece of your power bound within the elemental, and you would have to reclaim it normaly if you want it back , meaning nexus absorption, altrough this has 100% efficiency as the power is already yours. Creating an elemental does not stop you from growing in power, it just uses it as a material.
You can give the Elementals you create simple orders or control them as your own limbs. You can borow their (elemental) senses and even posses them.
High elementalist
You can now posses multiple elements. Normaly, they will not interact, and you can only use one at a time. With effort and research you can to combine some elements, sacrificing them for and pooling their power into the new exotic element. You can regain elements used in merging.
Conceptual power
You are capable (with significant effort) of developing conceptual effects in any sufficiently powerful ability you posses. The strength of the effect is proportional to the strength of the original ability without influences from ths perk. You need to posses a clear mental association between the ability and the effect, and you cannot „cheat“ this. Strech it too far and it will not work. An expert blacksmith could perhaps make a sufficiently powerful fireball forge raw ore into a sword, but he knew the process of forging intimately. This ability is primary based on your mind, not any higer conceptual realm.
Corruption:
Power of taint, infection and mutation. Countless strains of corruptive energy, each changed by every wielder of it, holding fragments of their thoughts, personality and beliefs and tainting the next user with them. Every user has their own strain, imposing their desires on the infected. Every user is infected, desires of previus users of the strain tainting them. A victim becomes a master, a master was always a victim. The Corruption spreads and mutates like a virus, changed by the minds that use it. It is a power that twists what is already there instead of providing somthing new – but this can be streched a bit. A biological body can mutate in countless ways, often becoming unrecognisable. Abilities of other power sources can be twisted with the themes of a strain. Corruption is gradual, and not always obvious. Diseases and cults are common, but it can manifest as the secret arts of an order of ascetic monks, offering to teach (give) their body control techiques (mutations) to those that take their sacred oaths (are infected), or as a linage of extremly law-abiding monarchs with an ability to force those they touch to follow the laws of the kingdom.
Oxymoron
You posses a wisp of a completly new, „pure“ strain of Corruption, touched only by your own mind. This removes any threat of unwanted influence from your own Corruption strain. You also gain the abilty to perfectly and flawlesly transform any corruptive force into your own strain of Corruption by infecting it with it. This effect does allow normal resistance to Corruption effects, the perfect and flawless part only means that if you suceed, it will always be a perfect sucess, with no unwanted influence or nasty suprises.
Counterspell
An extremly common usage of Corruption is inversion, rewriting of the oposing forces into allied ones. This usualy takes too much time to be useful in combat, but you are capable of doing it extremly quickly. Catch a fireball and throw it back as a ball of freezing energy. Make a magic sword lower the users skill instead of increasing it as he swings it. You are capable, and will always be capable, of directly using Corruption counterspells in combat. This means that the speed with wich you can cast your inversion spells will scale to your combat speed, always remaining a useful option.
Unconquerable mind
Your mind is absolutley protected from unwanted supernatural interference. Neither your own powers or those of others are capable of changing it without your permission, explicitly given with Free Will.
You may give partial permissions, wich is useful if you wish to pretend an ability is effective or if some form of mental influence is a requirement or a cost of an ability you posess. A portion of your mind will remain unaffected, and it can purge your mind of any influence whenewer it wants.
You can only allow others to control you out of your own Free Will. Nobody can force you to give them permission.
Original Sin
Corruption under your control is freed from the limitations of its strain. You are able to use it to cause any form of change or mutation Corruption is capable of. This will not make it any harder to control and direct, and does not remove any abilities your strain already has. A pacifist can cause blinding rage and transform bodies into weapons of slaughter. A hedonist could remove senses and emotions. You are free to twist the world into whatewer you want.
Choose your Path
You are immediatley made aware whenewer you would commit an action that goes ageanst your moral code, even when it wold not be obvious or even apparent with an lengthy investigation. Any plots to manipulate you into doing something you would find abhorrent are imediatley obvious.
You are able to easily notice any inconsistencies in ethical and belief systems of others and are an extremly talented manipulator, especialy skilled in breaking the worldwiews of your victims.
Inner Worlds:
Attached to the soul of a user of this Power Source is a Cosmic Egg, a lump of raw Creative force. By focusing, this egg can be hatched into an Inner World. The user has immense control over everything in it: spacetime, matter, energy, and even the very Laws of reality. The Laws do not extend into conceptual control. It is easy to ignore the sqare-cube law, and impossible materials can be made casually, but just ordering someone or something to „be healed“ or „be repaired“ is impossible. The worlds created do not posses any Power Source except Inner Worlds, and even lack Existential Inertia, causing pieces of them to be rejected by other worlds. This effect can be supressed by the owner of the world, but this ability is limited and does not grow. The inner world can grow without limits, creating matter, space and Laws ex nihilo, but the amount of influence it has outside itself will remain the same forever. Users attempting to use their worlds in combat usually specialise in quality or quantity, extruding individual beings or tools of great potency or many lesser ones. It is possible to enter your world, even in death, altrough leaving it as only a soul can be a problem. It can also be tricky to leave it in a universe without absolute coordinates.
Cosmic Egg
You can form unnatached Cosmic eggs with nothing but will and time. These can be attached to any soul, or easily modified into potent sources of any mundane energy.
Heavenly Law
You can extrude Laws alone, without anything else attached. They can influence reality around you with immense versatility, but are still limited in scale and raw potency by your Influence. This is an excellent source of „weird hax abilities“ – you are basicaly an minor reality warper.
Well of Power
Any Power Source you posses can be present in your Inner world. Any inhabitants will be able to use it, and any modifications to the cosmology will manifest. This can be partialy or fully supressed. If the Power Sources normally cause no change to the worlds they are present in, they still cause them when infused into your Inner World. Spells you know may be written into rocks or in the shapes of clouds and wells of your own spiritual power might dot the landscape.
Incursion
You posses an incredibly owerpowerd cheat ability – you are actualy capable of increasing your capacity to suport pieces of your world outside of it through training! This is a gradual but noticable process, your capacity increasing lineary. You have broken a fundemental limit, and this makes you capable of, with enough effort, breaking trough other similar limits (“caps”) on your capabilities.
Nega-World
You are incredibly resistant to damage and negative effects caused by Worlds. This includes such things as enviromental threats, Inner World extrusions, reality warping and other abilities based in some form of authority over the world, tribulations sent by the world and fall damage. This does not apply at all to anything done by individual beings, such as humans, other animals, plants or users of Inner Worlds that are not using extrusions on you. If something will fell you, it will be a being, not a force of nature.
Chaos:
Change, freedom, defining your existance, rejection of limits and transformation into an eldritch horror.
Beyond the world lies the „sea“ of Primordial Chaos, undefined and everchanging. At certain points, it „burns“ or „drips“ into the world, forming areas or events that are closer to Chaos than to the order of the World. Beings and items exposed to the „energies“ of Chaos are both eroded and magnified. As things based in the order of the World, exposure to Chaos erodes them on every level. A blade might be filled with holes or warped into something strange and disturbing. A person can lose limbs, memories or ability to rhyme. But Chaos is also capable of, and tends towards, eroding and breaking limits both factual and metaphorical. A sword can become impossibly sharp, or gain some other ablity apropriate to its nature and purpose and/or the nature of Chaos, such as cutting holes to Chaos or eroding the existance of the things it strikes. As superfical parts of something exposed to the „sea“ are eroded, its core and purpose can be empowered by it. Chaos abhors limits, and eroding them is a common enchantment. A living being can gain a body that can be trained to impossible levels, or find a skill important to their existance to be capable of the same. A sapient being is capable of gaining benefits with immensley reduced risk, with proper training and self awareness. A person that wants to use Chaos safely must be aware exactly who they are and cannot decieve themselves about their nature. Wishing to be difrent is perfectly fine – it fits with the nature of the „sea“ – but any self deception will increase the danger. As things such as your face and species crumble away, a sapient mind is capable of defining themselves and holding to that wich they truly are, allowing it to be nurished by the „currents“. Chaos does not just erode limits, of course, but gaining other enchantments deliberatly is usually more risky. Natures of nearby beings and items can become mixed in the „sea“. Almost nobody who bathed in chaos more than once keeps their species, and their new forms often interact with the world in unusual ways. It is possible – but usually seen as foolish – to store a part of the „sea“ inside ones existance, providing the user a link to Chaos that can be used to reach it anywhere. Areas can be deliberatly „covered“ with the „energies“, turning them into strange and warped locations. Even should your will and capability for introspection be lacking, great power can be gained – but at great risk to your selfhood. To clarify, you will almost certanly turn into a monster. Even if you use Chaos properly. But even in the greatest extremes of Chaos usage, if you are very careful and skilled, you can make it you as a eldritch existance, not a mass of random concepts and bits of metapsyhology that “washed ashore“ after you jumped in. Or you could become a random mass immediatley, if you just jump in without thinking.
At the shore
No matter where you are, you may always access Chaos. This can manifest in different ways based on your actions and exposure to Chaos. With nothing but a normal biological body and no meaningful skills, you could detect nearby rifts, or form them by digging for a while or blowing something up with explosives. A skilled swordsman could form a rift by repeatedly slashing the same spot for a few minutes, and if his blade, body or skills were exposed to Chaos even once, he would only need a few seconds.
Filter feeding
You posses both a immense affinity to the nurturing effects and an immense resistance to the eroding effects of Chaos. This makes you more resistant to losing things to the “currents” and allows you to benefit from Chaos faster. You may stay in the “sea” safely far longer than you normally could, and any beneficial or wanted effects are not lessened by your resistance.
Self appraisal
You are completely aware of both your current condition and capabilities as well as any changes to any portion of your existence. You are capable of easily processing this information and it will never distract or mentally impair you. This is helpful in determining changes caused by Chaos exposure, training, and many other things.You can toggle this off completely or partially, and may modify the way you receive this information from constant awareness to mental notes, messages in customised voices or anything similar.
Targeted delivery
When you are in contact with Chaos, you may choose which parts of your existence are exposed to the “currents” . This allows you to drastically reduce risk, target specific traits or even completely ignore the existence of a rift and just walk across safely. This does not reduce the risk of eroding positive or magnifying negative traits you choose to expose, or prevent active usage of Chaos by someone else from hurting you (beams and Chaos-infused weapons count as active, flooding the room with Chaos is passive, as it is just forming a rift and not something directed.).
Freedom
Any force, item or effect which restricts your freedom of thought or action is constantly eroded and weakened. The strength of this effect is variable. It raises based on how much something restricts you and how important the things restricted are, and drastically lowers when the restrictions are directly caused by yourself. The bars of a cell would break in half a day, but if you accidentally locked yourself in, it would take more than a week. An effect that locks you in a certain mindset and prevents you from thinking of anything else would break within a minute, but the time needed to recover from Acting as Mythos would at most be halved, and even then only if the effect was utterly anathematic to your personality. This perk is explicitly capable of fixing restrictions to thought, behavior and actions caused by Chaos.
Metal and Flesh:
Every sapient being possessing a body can aces two similar but opposing forces, that may be drawn upon to modify it. The paths are power formed when a being grasps great amount of control over their body, that can be used to modify it and empower those modifications. Both paths take about the same amount of time and effort for same amount of capability. They are, obviously, incompatible with each other.
The path of Flesh is accessed trough awareness of your body and training your control over it. It allows you to control your own biology, replacing or adding organs, later transforming your entire body into a mass of protean cells that can be changed much more easily, and even forming supernaturaly capable organs. A few examples: wings that allow flight even trough they are too small, supernaturaly strong muscles, venom, poision, armor and senses, talons that act like they are much sharper than they are,…
The path of Metal is accessed trough rejection of your body. Parts of the body are replaced by prosthetics powered by the path. The user must make their own parts – the power comes from controlling their form. Items forged for this purpose can obtain supernatural durability and efficiency when implanted. Tools and weapons can be made that combine with the body of the user and benefit from their advancment on the path. A crude prosthetic made of clocwork can be perfectly functional even without a power source. Tools can be far more precise and useful than they should be. An electric generator can be used to fire lightning under control of the user. A bit farther on the path, the user is capable of replacing their brain without any damage to their mind.
Andvancment along the paths is done trough transforming and improving the body of the user. For Flesh, the organs, flesh and even individual cells are infused with the will of the owner and can be transformed faster and further, into more useful and potent forms. For Metal, tools and materials are infused and used to reforge the body into something more potent. Both can be done an unlimited number of times, altrough each step on the path takes more time and/or effort.
Reforge the body
You know and are capable of teaching the methods used to step on both paths. You are more capable of controlling automatic processes of your body than you were before, and gain some skill in various crafting methods. You may change paths by implanting cybernetics or living tissue into yourself and focusing for a few hours. Changing paths resets your progress with both paths.
Adaptation
When exposed to something harmful, your capability to change your body to adapt to it grows massively. For users of Flesh this comes in the form of biological adaptation. You find it easier to grow and change organs, to regenerate and change into something resistant and find your adaptations acting like you are a few steps higer on the path when it comes to enhanched capability. For Metal, you find yourself capable of modifying and repairing yourself much faster when damaged, and are capable of using extreme and harmful conditions (for example, a volcano) while making your parts to make them act like they were several steps higer when it comes to resistance to those conditions and related properties.
Hivemind
You can make creatures and robots separate from your body that still count as it for the purpose of your path abilities. Any means you use to transfer information between these and you are immensly faster, more efficient and longer ranged. For example: phermones capable of transfering thoughts and sensory information almost in real time over a larger range than would be plausible can be used by someone only a few steps on the path of Flesh if they have this perk.
Biomechanical
Normally, a user of this Power Source can use only one path. Path of Flesh is walked by taking control over your organic body, while path of Metal is walked by replacing that organic body with things you have control over. Metaphysycaly, they are opposite directions, and atempting to walk both will just keep you wandering around the starting point. This perk allows you to benefit from and walk both paths at the same time. Implants of Metal that are a part of you can be infused with and made a part of your flesh. Your flesh can be turned into something closer to a machine and you can even use it in crafting items channeling Metal. This provides not only twice the benefits with each step, but also acess to a lot of strange tricks.
Self Modification
Any modification you make to your own body using primarly your own abilities will not lessen you in any way, to the point of being able to train a mechanical limb and being capable of moving easily as a bloated mass of flesh and random organs. This explicitly does not allow you to walk both paths at once, as acess to the power of a path is a metaphysycal change gained by performing a physycal one, and the paths are opposite directions, the first step in one counting as negative one step in the other.
Several examples of using Metal and Flesh:
-Flesh users get ridiculous regeneration and a capability to have any part of the body serve as a brain (extension of the protean cells). Metal gets increased durability.
Somebody cuts a Flesh user in half, the halves flow together as water and the Flesh guy is fine.
Somebody cuts a Metal user in half ( this is harder, as they are more durable). There is a wire linking the thing it uses as a brain and a tesla coil. A lightning bolt from the coil strikes an unused brain- thing in their arm, transferring their mind to it. Their arm flies off( rocket fist!). It has super-efficient tools built in, and quickly builds a new body (still at the same Step, as it was rushed).
-Cybernetics already power themselves, so a Metal user could get to the point of not needing sustenance. Flesh is capable of same as an extension to regeneration. Sustenance is drawn from the path, and the output is based on how many steps the user took, so Worldblood or other ways of increasing nutritional needs could still force the user to eat or make batteries or something.
Being:
Existance can be thought of as an infinetly tall mountain. Or a tower. Those that have more knowledge, skill and power posess greater metaphysycal weight. To wield Being is to be aware of and capable of using the weight of your existance. Everything you are benefits this power. Pasivley, becoming an expert at a skill can very sligtly raise your overall talent with everything. Becoming an archmage or a god coud make you noticably talented in a Power Source you were completley usless in as a child. The fact that you are greater places pressure on the universe. Activley, it is possible to focus this pressure to assist in your actions. Two archmages casting the same spell with same skill and power can get noticably diffrent results if one knows twice as many spells. An atack can strike with lesser power when launched on someone who stands higer on the mountain of existance. It is possible to learn to sense and estimate the strength of the existential pressure of others.
Endless climb
You are always able to find a way to grow, be it in knowledge, skill, power, wisdom or anything else that you are capable of increasing. You can always instictivley determine the best way to train something. You can grant acess to Being to others by willing it and teaching them anything.
Extra weight
You gain three times as much metaphysical weight from every trait you possess. Your skills, abilities and powers no longer degrade due to lack of practice.
Higer ground
Your pressure grants you a large amount of passive resistances to pretty much anything harmful, and you can gain new ones by exposing yourself to harmful things. These resistances are comparativley tiny and grow lineary with your pressure. It is usualy more useful to focus your pressure on defence than to rely on these, but the benefits of passive resistance to everything is substantial. This can be toggled.
No caps
The more you grow, the more are you capable of growth. Your metaphysycal weight raises the caps on your skills and atributes. This will not allow you to simply keep training a single skill or atribute – you need, metaphoricaly, three skills at 100 to be capable of raising them to 150, and completley mastering a dozen skills allows you to raise your strength and speed far above your normal caps.
Power fantasy
Your existance twists and bends probability. You are far more likely to find oportunities to increase your personal power. This ability grows with your overall power. You could eventualy find yourself finding ancient spelbooks practicaly everywhere and unknowingly helping literal crowds of skilled teachers. This can be turned off.
Soul Spirits:
A soul does not exist inside the body. It is immaterial and not something defined by a specific location, but it is linked to the body. So if there could be a single link to the material world, why not several? And does a link require a body at all? No.
Pieces of ones soul can form additional links to the material world, creating spiritual forms that allow them to influence it. While they are still in every way a piece of the original being, manifesting and being controlled trough only a fragment of their soul causes them to act differently, expressing the originating personality fragment more than the others.
As they are formed from something abstract and mental, the abilities of spirits are almost always abstract and unusual. They express the underlying ideas and qualia of their existence in a way that, while always making sense to their origin, usually baffles and confuses anyone else. The ability of a spirit is not immediately known to them or their origin, and experimentation is needed.
Every spirit is unique. They manifest in shapes that are often linked to their fragment of a soul, often in ways that make sense only to that soul. They are, and always will be a fragment of their origin, and can be controlled like a limb. However, they are also an existence of their own, and it is not unusual for spirit users to talk or even argue with their Spirits. This is nothing more than an inner monologue or conflict projected onto the material world. This only happens because spirits represent a different perspective of their origin, with their originating trait exaggarated.
It is possible, and very common to have multiple spirits, but each must originate from an important piece of the spirit users personality, and 12 or more is usually seen as a lot. (More is certainly possible. There is no actual cap.)
The ways trough which Spirits grow their abilities are almost as variable as spirits themselves.
If the origin body dies, the Spirits can remain active. If a Spirit is destroyed, it can eventually be reformed as long as there is a body or a Spirit connected to the same soul in existence. There are rare geniuses that have, after the death of their origin, after a lot of time and effort, formed a ridiculously powerful spirit using the link of their origin – that is, a spirit linked to their entire soul ( this does not technically require the original body to die).
Examples of spirits:
Work in progress perks:
Preview
Can know what a spirit formed from any trait would be. Works on other people, spirits count as people they are.
Expanded shard
Gain significantly more power when gaining power. Easier to become more versatile.
Spirits of Power
Lore says “threads of Power Sources in your soul”. Can make those into Spirits. They are kind of generic for Spirits, and do not anchor you to life, since they are more separated from you than regular spirits. Obviously cant form Spirit Spirit. Maybe if you form full soul Spirit.
Fusion
Merge your Spirits, merge with your Spirit. If you already have a Spirit for this or something like it, its ability is boosted.
Personal theme
Can change cosmetic appearance of abilities. Anything done that fits with your personality is boosted. Things that fit more and that fit with with more core parts are boosted more. Things that fit all core parts of your personality completely are boosted most.
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[Nervaqus987]
Cultivation:
Throughout the World, there are nearly innumerable sources of power and methods of wielding it. From the nigh limitless fonts of Worldblood to the abyssal power of Unbeing, those who live upon the World have ever sought methods to bend the World to their will. Spiritual energy flows across the World, born from the metabolic processes that keeps reality functioning, and those who have learned to harness this energy and nurture it within themselves are know as cultivators.
The cultivation of spiritual energy is a tedious and time consuming task, requiring many hours of the day to be devoted to meditation and breathing exercises. However in return, great power can be accumulated and one’s lifespan and vitality will be greatly increased. There are limits to how much spiritual energy can be store in the body and thus limits to how strong one can become and how long one can live. As a result, many techniques and arts have been created to allow one to develop themselves and store ever greater amounts of spiritual energy.
There are, however, dangers to the cultivation of spiritual energy. It responds readily, almost eagerly to the emotions of the wielder. A firm and steady hand is required, or else in times of great passion one’s spiritual energy will rampage throughout the body. Known as a qi deviation, the most minor of such may result in a burst blood vessel, the worst can cause one’s organs to rupture and explode. At higher levels of cultivation, one’s obsessions can cause cause the formation of a Heart Devil, a kind of spiritual cancer. The Heart Devil will torment the unfortunate cultivator and cause no end of grief, disturbing them in the midst of their cultivation and daily lives, disrupt the delicate balance of Qi in the body, and particularly developed ones may even grapple with the cultivator for control over their body.
The first stage of development is known as the Qi Condensation Stage, itself further subdivided into nine levels. In truth, it is not something that was created by human wisdom, but is rather the natural state one attains for having imbibed the spiritual energy of the World in the form of Qi. Each of the nine sub levels represents certain levels of saturation of Qi in the body and at the ninth level one’s body is completely saturated and trying to absorb more will merely result in the Qi overflowing and flying away. One who has reached this level can live for a hundred and fifty years and will maintain a vigorous vitality long into their twilight years.
The second Stage is called Foundation Establishment. By using the special methods proscribed in cultivation formula, one can condense their Qi to greater extents and cause it to transition from a gas to a liquid within the body’s meridians. It and all further levels are divided into the Early Phase, Middle Phase, Late Phase, and Perfected Phase. The greater amounts of Qi within the body allows for feats of mystical power appropriate to the cultivation formula used, such as controlling fire or water and flying through the sky. Upon reaching this level, one can live for three hundred years.
The Third Stage is called Core Formation. Building off of what came before, a cultivator will focus all of their Qi into their dantian compressing and transforming it until it becomes a solid mass of power. This golden core, despite its immense power is no larger than a grain of rice and is inscribed with numerous runes born of the cultivation formula one has practiced. In terms of power, one has far surpassed the Foundation Establishment Stage. In addition to everything they had before, a cultivator can release nearly imperceptible pulses of spiritual energy to map out the world around them over great distances in a manner not unlike sonar. Additionally, they can survive without food or water or sleep, sustaining their life entirely on Qi. Attaining the golden core allows for well over six hundred years of life.
The Forth Stage is called Nascent Soul. Between the Third and Forth Stages is an enormous gap that many cultivators will never be able to cross. The golden core resonates with the soul of the cultivator and transforms into a small, newborn soul in the shape of the cultivator. The cultivator’s original soul seeps into and dwells within the Nascent Soul, safe from many dangers. Aside from greatly increasing a cultivator’s already formidable powers, they attain many new esoteric abilities. A cultivator can teleport through the power of their Nascent Soul and can leave their body behind and possess a new one, either fleeing destruction or seeking a new vessel. Their spiritual senses grow many times sharper. The Nascent Soul grants tremendous vitality, allowing for a life of a thousand years.
The Fifth Stage is called Primordial Spirit. The Nascent Soul evolves and grows in size until it matches the physical body with a commiserate growth in power becoming known as a Primordial Spirit. The minor spatial abilities that allowed for teleporation in the Nascent Soul Stage blossom and mature upon reaching this Stage and allow for ever greater manipulations of space. The Primordial Spirit is strong enough to completely support one’s life on its own without the need for a body. Those who attain a Primordial Spirit are blessed with a lifespan of ten thousand years.
The Sixth Stage is called Dacheng. Great Success. It is achieved when one has cultivated their body and Primordial Spirit to the limits and the two begin to harmonize. The spiritual senses of the cultivator expand and improve, allowing them to observe vast swathes of territory around them. Their control over space begins to dip into time as well. Although mighty, there are very few Dacheng Stage cultivators in existence for within a hundred years of reaching this point a tribulation of lightning will descend that often spells their destruction.
Those who reach the Seventh Stage are called Immortals. If one manages to survive the great tribulation that befalls them, their body and Primordial Spirit merge into one and this perfect unity grants them unending life and vitality. All that came before is magnified by the fusing of their body and Primordial Spirit. Although they cannot be called “invincible” by any means, they are immortal in the sense that they will never age.
The Eighth Stage is the realm of Golden Immortals. Of the precious few that become Immortals, even fewer reach this stage. Their eternal life dulls their edge and they no longer feel pressured to advance. But those who continue to strive for greater heights and continue their practice may reach this lofty realm. Their body and their power takes on a golden hue and their control over time continues to advance.
The Ninth and final Stage is called Immortal Emperor. They are crowned with glory.Those sovereign few who reach this lofty height stand at the pinnacle of cultivation and are some of the most power beings in the World. They are among the greatest masters of time and space and only the most supreme of gods or the greatest of archmages or the most terrible Primordial Beings are their equal.
Cauldron of Plenty: Costs 4 Chain Parts
Behind or perhaps within your existence is a dimensional refinery. With a few moments of time, you can pour in any sort of matter or energy you can hold onto into this refinery. There it will be broken down and transformed into the purest spiritual energy. There is no differentiation to this energy, it is the simplest and yet most fundamental spiritual energy. With another few moments of time, portions of this energy can be crystallized and released into your waiting hands as the purest type of spirit stone imaginable and suitable to any sort of cultivation. You may freely choose crystallize any amount of spiritual energy in your refinery and choose to either create exceptionally high grade spirit stones or large numbers of lower grade, but still 100% pure, spirit stones. With a thought, you may have your refinery process spiritual energy into a special type of seed. If a person swallows this seed, then it will form a dantian and meridians of the highest caliber within their body even if they were lacking them entirely. Similarly, it can repair or upgrade an existing dantian and meridians, no matter the damage they have endured.
Unparalleled Genius: Costs 6 Chain Parts
Cultivation is a difficult task and there are many subtleties and complexities to the cultivation formula throughout the World that can baffle and hold back would be masters for years, decades, or even centuries. The absorbing of spiritual energy and the refinement of it into Qi matching one’s cultivation formula is another difficult task that stalls progress. Not so for you. Comprehension comes quickly and easily to you. You have a thorough understanding of any cultivation formula or techniques you read and can achieve in months and years what would take others years and decades. Your ability to absorb and process spiritual energy is leagues better than any of your peers, allowing you to achieve twice the results with half the effort of others. With a fraction of the time others would require, you can combine disparate cultivation formula, improve arts, and even create new formula from first principles if need be.
[Blank]: Costs 8 Chain Parts
N/A
Kṣitigarbha : Costs 10 Chain Parts
The greatest fear of cultivators is the Heart Devil and its lesser form, qi deviation. To avoid these, cultivators go to extreme lengths from those who isolate themselves and stay aloft from the World so that they will not care, to those who indulge in any and every emotion so that no one thing will be their ruin. You need fear none of this, for your emotions shall never dominate your powers. You cannot lose control of your powers under the sway of emotions nor can any force send your emotions spiraling out of control. As such you will never suffer qi deviation nor shall a Heart Devil ever form for you.
Beyond all Limits: Costs 12 Chain Parts.
The nature of things is to be limited. Be it Rank or Cultivation you have only as much power as you have. To reach beyond your grasp is folly and lessons learned are harsh indeed. And yet…..You can exert power beyond what you should be capable of. Particularly when facing opponents whose power should be beyond your own, you can erupt with power to match or even exceed their own. Perhaps it is your speed or maybe your reserves of Qi or maybe your are simply comprehensively stronger than you should be. As a cultivator in the Core Formation Stage, for example, you can fight back against and even defeat a mighty cultivator of the Nascent Soul Stage.
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[larslolxz]
EIDEL PHYSIQUE UPGRADES
Healthy Body – Universal Access
Your abstract ‘life’ is reified, turned into an energy in and of itself—lifeforce. Capable of fueling all the functions of life, it awakens your Eidel Physique, and even in absence of any other forms of supernatural energy, your lifeforce can be used by your Eidel Physique to create mystical organs that perform functions of life with supernatural effectiveness.
You can create means to share your lifeforce with others, be it by sharing of your self or by use of tools; this awakens an Eidel Physique. Such an Eidel Physique can trivially develop the means to process the body’s energy into lifeforce such as yours, at which point it can be shared further.
Watchmaker’s Design – Booster
Your physique and metaphysique are constantly, automatically and intelligently optimized. On small and large scales, efficiency is improved, interactions between different factors of yourself are optimized, well-designed control systems are introduced, critical functions are made more robust, and local maxima are bypassed.
This takes your desires and activities into account, your body not merely optimizing itself generally, but optimizing itself for things you do often, and never in ways you would consider undesirable. This is never to the extent of becoming a noticeable detriment in other areas. Where possible, its optimization of your self might give rise to synergies between various parts of your physiology, which might have been possible without it but likely not nearly as potent or easy to use.
Worldly Existence – Special
Your Eidel Physique is not restricted to your material body. Through contact, it can spread itself to other things, including but not limited to tools, your environment, and even other people. You can freely restrict and direct this.
What you incorporate this way is made a part of you, and will grow magical organs as you do, in order to enhance its function, including means for you to control it, to the same extent you could control a similar organ within yourself.
The expansion of your Eidel Physique is only restricted by the amount of energy you have to spend, as well as the possibilities allowed by your integrated energies. Should you possess only lifeforce, it will spread at the pace of biology; other energies might make this significantly faster.
Losing contact is harmless, both for you and what you use this on, and reconnecting is effortless. It is possible for things to grow to use sources of energy that are not you. It is possible for other things to (attempt to) stymie your incorporation—perhaps with their own Eidel Physiques, or other supernatural means.
Biofeedback – Limit Breaker
You possess an unparalleled awareness of your own physique and metaphysique; the functions and operations of all your organs and tissues, physical and magical, are clear to you.
Additionally, you may freely control their development and operation, with the only constraints being the speed at which such development can occur, the limits of the laws of physics you are subject to, and your personal understanding.
You may still allow your Eidel Physique to develop automatically, or merely cut off certain avenues of development in order to study what develops instead.
As you can freely control the development of your physique, the ordinarily preservative nature of this source is no limit to you; it is only a little more difficult to create organs that externalize magic than organs that preserve it, and you can also make your body let go of any amount of mystical energy you please.
Virtuous Cycle – All-Encompassing Capstone
All forms of energy you possess slowly but steadily generate more of themselves, up to the limit you can hold without harm. Unless you choose otherwise, any energy introduced to your self that reaches past this limit rapidly disappears, minimizing harm. This includes waste energies, such as excess heat.
Any energy introduced to you that is inherently harmful, you can nevertheless safely hold a small amount of, relative to your other energies.
Energies of which an infinite amount can be safely held generate up to a limit, determined by the maximum amount you have ever held or the same rough ‘small amount’ for inherently harmful energies, whichever is higher.
This will not perform ‘phase changes’ for you, or otherwise automatically render energy you possess more potent than it already is.
TerrorCooper
Since We’re getting a look at alternate Power Sources, I’mma gonna ask a couple questions;
1. How might one submit an alternate Power Source for examination and (if it passes such) presentation here?
2. Have you ever considered creating alternate Starting Locations based on the Power Sources listed on this page?
admin
1. You could just post it in the comments here if you wanted?
2. Nope.
Wissende
I understand if you don’t want to since you didn’t write them, but could you explain the upgrades for the Hard Science by Subrosian_Smithy? I understand some of them like Peer Review and Emperor of Sand but Observer Effect and Hidden Sector in particular are beyond me.
Also, what would you consider an example of a dark Pulse power versus a light Pulse power?
admin
Briefest possible summaries, based on my understanding:
Observer Effect: You can use IRL physics in worlds where that shouldn’t work, on stuff not made out of physics. You have a guaranteed minimum ability to perceive and manipulate the world, and can bootstrap this ability up if you need to.
Hidden Sector: You are guaranteed to be able to make anything that can exist, given sufficient effort, instead of being limited to making anything that can be made.
Pulse Powers: See Force Powers.
OhNoMySanitea
Just wanted to ask a few questions about the Beyond Limits option in Chain of Isekai?
One, the Beyond Limits option at the end, can that be taken multiple times, up to the three you have MP for?
Two Would you say it’s reasonable to create upgrades for a power source you made for Beyond Limits, assuming they’re roughly comparable to what you’d see from the upgrades in the CYOA itself, to buy if you had leftover chain parts.
admin
Comments from new users need to be approved manually before they show up. This keeps the bots out.
Yes, and yes.
MrCogs
Question on Indulgent Cultivation – is there a reason to subtract attributes rather than just adding more? It sounds like the stat multiplier could be higher for excising an existing attribute, but I’m still not sure I’d go for it in-universe.
admin
Removing attributes unmoors attributes under them, allowing redistribution for a greater overall multiplier.
OK47
Is Motive Wings a separate power system from a Cyoa of yours like Divine Breath or is it from somewhere else because I do not know what it does?
Same with the likes of Iron Sequence.
Ok47
I like to rephrase this,
How do Motive Wings and Iron Sequence work without perks?
Assuming you’re the one who created them liêm Divine Breath.
admin
I designed those systems, yes. Copying over their original descriptions:
…In the year 20XX, the invention of the mysterious HALO device allowed humanity to manifest an essential element of spirit, the Motive Wings. Equipped with an active HALO, a person could manifest eight Wings, each replicating a basic mechanical function. A person’s Wings are fixed and particular to them, and encompass such things as the Eagle’s Wing, allowing flight with the same parameters as a common eagle, the Voltaic Wing, providing electricity sufficient to power several homes, and the Grenadier’s Wing, allowing the gradual manifestation of timed explosive charges. It was soon found a person of stronger spirit and greater will could shed some of their Wings to evolve those that remained. The simple Helicopter Wing could become the Jet Wing could become the Thruster Wing, a source of free acceleration sufficient to propel large spacecraft between planets. Humanity prospered with this new wealth of technological resources, and expanded throughout the solar system, until…
The cursed people of the Hollow Kingdom brought an equally hollow system, the Iron Sequence. Blood, life, treasure, power, world, self, love- these are the prices the Iron Sequence may demand. At each step, another element from this selection must be offered up, and the prior offerings must be payed again a hundredfold. A single coin, a hundred coins and a drop of blood, ten thousand coins and a cup of blood and a whisper of affection, etc. At each step, users of the Iron Sequence receive a power of their choice, a Mark proportionate to their sacrifice, increased by the number of steps they have taken- at the final step, sevenfold the value of their offerings. Any power taken from the Iron Sequence will be hungry and destructive more than it is creative and beneficial.
Matthew
To add onto the author’s comment, the two you mentioned and the Disciplines and Physique sets are originally from Into the Cardboard Realm, a cyoa by Savestate posted on qq but which hasn’t seemed to have made its way here. If I’m summarizing their descriptions right, the Disciplines are about temporarily absorbing magic from the world you can’t keep for long but you can control the way they exit out the metaphysical “pores” of your body, generating effects (the casting is easy, learning a specific effect is herculean); the Physique absorbs magic like a nutrient, enhancing the body and theoretically allowing for external effects with extensive training and high stamina costs.