Wyld-Shaping Technique
Cost: 20m, 1wp; Mins: Lore 5, Essence 3; Type: Simple (Dramatic Action)
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious, Shaping
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Any Two Lore Excellencies, Chaos-Repelling Pattern
In the First Age, Lawgivers used the Wyld-Shaping Technique to conquer the Wyld and expand Creation. They stood at the edge of the world and forced shape into the teeth of the howling storm. This Charm forces a region of chaos to take form as the Exalt commands.
Wyld-Shaping Technique is an extended dramatic action. The dice pool used equals (the Solar's Intelligence + Lore). Each roll requires five hours of effort, and the character pays the Charm's cost with each roll. This roll has a base difficulty of 1 in regions of Pure Chaos, 3 in the Deep Wyld, 5 in the Middlemarches and 10 in the Bordermarches of the Wyld.
The Lawgiver can spend accumulated successes at any point to complete part of her construction. This functions as follows.
Demesne: To forge a demesne, the Solar must first create the land and then spend successes equal to its demesne level.
Land: To create a stable region—such as land—the Solar must spend successes equal to its Resources value. She can spend up to five successes at a time. This does mean that creating fertile land and mineral resources requires more effort per acre than blasted plains, desolate marshes and lifeless ocean. The Solar can use Wyld-Shaping Technique in this region as if it were the Middlemarches of the Wyld, but all other effects consider it a Tainted Land—touched by Wyld energy, but a part of Creation.
Magical Things: To create a manse or artifact, the Solar applies the successes on this roll directly as Craft successes in manse or artifact construction. This Charm cannot speed the construction process more than tenfold, but the character is specifically permitted to supplement this process with Craft Charms such as Craftsman Needs No Tools.
People: To create extras, the Solar spends successes equal to the number of Background dots necessary to have them as followers. To create useful Essence 1 servants, the Solar spends one success per servant. Increase the required successes by one if the character is creating a coherent military unit, social group or government out of the chaos. The Solar can spend up to five successes at a time.
Wealth: To create portable wealth, the Solar must spend successes equal to its Resources value. She can spend up to five successes at a time.
Things made by this Charm are not real in and of themselves. Their reality stems entirely from Creation—from the reality of the Lawgivers, the Imperial Mountain and the Loom of Fate. As long as the created things continue to interact with Creation or the Exalted, as through the magical trade networks established in the First Age to tame the Wyld, they survive.
If something created by this Charm fails to interact extensively with the things of Creation during a story, it begins to lose its reality. Roll its creator's Essence against either difficulty 1 or, if the Solar's creation does not interact with real things that story at all, difficulty 2. After three failures without any extensive interaction with Creation or an Exalt, something created by this Charm fades away entirely.
Creatures made using Wyld-Shaping Technique are outside Creation's processes of life and death. They do not reincarnate in Creation or as a real creature unless Heaven orders their pattern woven into the Loom of Fate. Nor do they form ghosts unless the Neverborn intervene to recreate their Essence pattern as such. They fade away upon their deaths and are no longer valid targets for Charms or other effects unless otherwise stated.
Nightmare-Carving Murmur
The same as an Abyssal Exalted Charm. Adds Mirror Keyword.
Prerequisite Charms: Any Two Lore Excellencies, Dream-Slaying Defense
As Lawgivers give form to the chaos of the Wyld, so may Abyssals impose the horrors of their imagination on the Underworld. This Charm is an extended dramatic action using a dice pool of the Abyssal's (Intelligence + Lore). Each roll requires five hours of work, and the character must pay the Charm's cost with each roll. The base difficulty is 3 in the Labyrinth and 10 in the Underworld. Accumulated successes may be spent at any time in increments up to five successes on any of the following effects, shaping an area no farther than a number of miles equal to the Abyssal's Essence from the epicenter of the Exalt:
Demesne: The deathknight drills into the deepest inchoate madness of the Neverborn, allowing their Essence to bleed up from beneath and coagulate into an Abyssal demesne with a rating equal to the successes spent.
Land: The Exalt alters the Underworld's geography as desired, provided that the changes make the area more inherently desolate, inhospitable, frightening or dangerous. The number of successes required depends on the Resources value of the new land. Ore-rich volcanoes bubbling with the smoldering quicksilver blood of the Neverborn, for example, would cost more successes to create than barren fog-shrouded plains.
Magical Things: The Abyssal applies successes from this Charm directly to the creation rolls for Abyssal manses or destructive artifacts as defined by World-Slaying Arsenal Epiphany and is explicitly permitted to supplement this process with Craft Charms such as Soul-Forging Fury.
Wealth: The deathknight cracks open fissures revealing long-forgotten grave goods conforming to his desires with a Resources value equal to the successes spent.
Objects created with this Charm crumble into Oblivion upon their destruction and follow the same material state as ghosts if removed from the Underworld. Such items also disintegrate into oily, putrid smoke when touched by the light of Creation's sun.
Any use of this Charm offends the Neverborn, who object to their destroyers creating anything. The Abyssal gains one Resonance point for every dice roll in the extended action. If the character's Resonance total reaches 10, he suffers an immediate Resonance eruption.