Wyld-Shaping Technique
From Flight From Darkness
We're using Holden's new version, though it may update again if it gets retooled next Errata. If you bought two Lore Excellencies, feel free to switch one of 'em out for a different charm.
[edit] Wyld-Shaping Technique
Keywords: Combo-OK, Mirror (Nightmare-Carving Murmur), Obvious, Shaping
Prerequisite Charms: Chaos-Repelling Pattern
Replace the text of the Charm with the following:
As masters of the Old Realm, the Solar Exalted used the Wyld-Shaping Technique to conquer chaos 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 the Wyld 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 7 in the Bordermarches of the Wyld.
When the Lawgiver has accumulated a sufficient number of successes, she must spend them all at once, ending the Charm. Unspent successes are wasted. Successes may be spent in the following manner:
Land: The primary purpose of Wyld-Shaping Technique is to expand the borders of Creation. A single use of Wyld-Shaping Technique will restructure one waypoint within the Wyld, creating a new landscape roughly 30 miles in diameter. The quality of the created land depends on the number of successes spent. One success will create a near-worthless land: blasted heath, barren desert, lifeless ocean. Three successes permit the creation of useful land: arable farmland, swampland with some herbal resources, desert with sufficient water to support settlement and some mineral resources, forests stocked with game. Five successes create valuable land: ideal farmland, forests full of valuable wood, hills or mountains thick with rich mineral veins, oceans teeming with fish or rare coral beds.
Five-success landscapes sometimes contain veins of jade. Orichalcum and moonsilver never occur naturally in Wyld-Shaped lands, but gold and silver suitable for refinement into magical materials are a possibility. Wyld-Shaping Technique may not create landscapes containing soulsteel or starmetal.
By adding one additional success, the Solar may prepare a created landscape for basic habitation. Depending on the landscape in question, this may mean a collection of sturdy but humble cottages, a fully-furnished and uninhabited town, or a sprawling farmstead complete with barn, corrals, and tools, ready to begin working the land. More ambitious accommodations require construction and improvement by imported residents.
Landscapes made with Wyld-Shaping Technique must be congruent with their surroundings if created within the Bordermarches, Middlemarches, or Deep Wyld. Within the East, for example, a Solar would need to create heavily wooded or vegetation-rich lands; he could not march deep into the Eastern forests and create thirty miles of sandy desert. This does not preclude the possibility of incongruous landscapes, it simply means that the Solars must use previous iterations of Wyld-Shaping Technique to gradually shift the landscape toward something that will accept his desired topography. For example, young Solars in the First Age often forged high mountains ranges in the North with Wyld-Shaping Technique as a prelude to creating deep, sheltered valleys in which they could shape wondrous and fertile gardens. This restriction vanishes in Pure Chaos, where the Solar may create whatever he likes, but the created land will still be subject to the powerful emanations of the nearby Elemental Pole—unless the Solar possesses other stabilizing measures, he should not expect his arid far-Eastern desert to remain barren for very long.
Wyld-Shaping Technique may not be used to produce shadowlands.
Exotic Wonders: Three to five successes will permit the Solar to create a unique wonder. These items are rarely useful in and of themselves, but are invaluable as components for artifact crafting, and Wyld-Shaping Technique enables Solars to create wonders that could be obtained in no other way. The number of successes required to create a wonder is set at the Storyteller’s discretion, based on the impossibility of the object. Frozen lightning, colorless flame, singing shells and flowers in hues the eye cannot see are all examples of three-success prodigies. Five successes tend to produce the intangible-made-tangible. Five successes will produce happiness captured in a small lacquered box, the scent of sorrow, or a harlot’s lost innocence, all delivered in a form suitable for artifact crafting. This Charm cannot recreate anything the Solar can obtain by any other means, no matter how rare or singular; essentially, some artifacts require ‘a (specific) impossible wonder’ as an exotic component; these things may only be obtained with Wyld-Shaping Technique. If a Solar needs a behemoth’s bones to forge an artifact, he must de-bone a behemoth. If he needs the blood of a Dragon-Blooded general, he must go looking for a Dragon-Blooded general.
Wealth: The Solar may create wealth by expending two successes per Resources dot of treasure desired. This is always created in a non-useful form—cowrie shells, mounds of silver dinars (at a level of purity insufficient for conversion into moonsilver), or heaping mounds of jewels are all examples of wealth that might be produced. This function will not create a jeweled dagger, unless it is of sufficiently poor make to be un suitable for use as a weapon, nor will it ever create jade currency.
Land, exotic wonders, and wealth created with Wyld-Shaping Technique are not quite fully real in and of themselves. Their reality stems 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 things of Creation, as through the magical trade networks established in the Old Realm 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 reality at all during the story, difficulty 2. After three consecutive failures during which the creation does not interact with things of reality extensively, wonders and wealth cease to exist. Land becomes a Wyld-infected zone of the severity it held before being Wyld-Shaped. Exotic wonders forged into artifacts are always considered to be interacting with reality by virtue of being integrated into an artifact.
Raksha who find themselves within Wyld-Shaped landscape which has not interacted with any Creation-born for one season and which currently contains no Creation-born may launch a Shaping attack against the landscape as though it were a waypoint. Success will cause the landscape to automatically fail its next stability roll. Activating Wyld-Shaping Technique sends enormous ripples out through the local Wyld, automatically alerting all Fair Folk within five journeys that the Charm is being used, and where.
[edit] Wyld Cauldron Technology
Keywords: Mirror (Enduring Dead Dreams)
Replace the text of the Charm with the following:
This Charm enhances the character’s Wyld-Shaping Technique, expanding the palette of things he may create:
Demesnes: To forge a demesne, the Solar must first accumulate successes sufficient to create the land it will occupy. He must then spend one success per desired dot rating of the demesne, up to level-3. The fourth and fifth dots of a demesne’s rating cost two successes each. By default, this will create a demesne appropriate to the landscape, always an elemental demesne. Solars may spend an extra success to create a Solar-aspected demesne, but only if the underlying landscape is a five-success landscape. Alternately, two extra successes may be added to produce Sidereal or Lunar-aspected demesnes, but only in landscapes worth three or more successes.
People: The Solar may create useful Essence 1 mortals whole-cloth from the Wyld, generating one individual per success. An additional success renders a created mortal heroic. Created mortals may not possess any mutations—exotic modifications are the province of training Charms or Craft (Genesis). The Solar defines the mortal’s Motivation.
Individuals created with Wyld Cauldron Technology are not subject to withering away when out of contact with things of Creation, but are not fully integrated into Creation’s cycles of life and death, either. Their soul is an artificial thing forged of compressed and calcified chaos, and will attempt to return to that state upon death—they cannot leave behind a ghost or reincarnate unless Heaven takes steps to specifically incorporate the individual into the cycle of reincarnation. Wyld-Shaped heroic individuals are potentially eligible for Exaltation, although the Solars of the Old Realm were never able to confirm or debunk this fact to their satisfaction. Exaltation immediately completes the soul of a Wyld-Shaped hero, ensuring that it will continue on beyond death as normal.
Land/Wealth: The Solar may create real land and wealth with Wyld-Shaping Technique, not subject to withering when out of contact with reality. Doing so doubles the required success cost of the created land or wealth.
