It's just... idk man. People are weird. Being a person is weird. Society is weird. The universe is weird. Rather than having to "normalize" everything, just accept that some people are weird. So are you. Nothing is normal. the rules are all made up. I once saw a Klingon pushing a baby stroller down the street in toronto. The world is a weird place, man. Just roll with it.
Remind me to make a longer post about this later, but I think there's an interesting similarity in the way nonbinary (or genderqueer people in general) talk about the nuances of their gender and how people really big into specific music scenes talk about the nuances of the genres they listen to. Like there's the description you give other people in your community, and the "normie" description you give to people who aren't as familiar. And "genre" and "gender" are both constructs in similar ways too. Just my little binary observation tho.
I'll expand more on this later. But anyway, start asking people what genre they are and what gender of music they listen to.
here's that longer post, but keep in mind i'm halfway through a bottle of soju rn
so as a binary trans person, i often had a difficult time understanding the really specific genders and gender identities i'll see. obviously i'll still support them, but i had trouble understanding. and that's just because my gender journey has been different.
sometimes (in less than positive circles) i'll see bad faith arguments against people with these genders like "the census isn't going to mark you down as 'catgender' lmao" which is annoying because i've never seen anyone say that?
the thesis of this post started to prickle in my head when i saw genderqueer mutuals of mine reblogging that post that was like "what is the gender identity you describe yourself as around cis people, and what's the specific one you actually identify as?" reading through people's responses and the way they described the nuances of their genders made me go
"oh shit, it's all music"
because if i'm listening to altar of plagues and my coworker asks what kind of music i'm listening to, i'm just going to say "metal". and if my grandma asks, i'll just say "rock". but if i'm talking to another person who i know is familiar with metal, that's when i feel like i wouldn't be wasting my breath going into specifics. because i know they'd know how describing a band as "black metal" is different than describing one as "power metal" or whatever.
that's what a lot of bad faith arguments around nonbinary genders don't seem to realize. they're not for the cishet majority to understand. i'd even argue that they're not for binary trans people to understand either, considering it took me this long to understand.
but it seems like when people talk about their gender through the lens of anything that goes beyond just male, female, or even strictly nonbinary, it comes from a place of wanting to discuss the nuances of gender identity.
like here's an interaction between two hip-hop heads that has never happened:
person 1: i like memphis rap -- specifically horrorcore.
person 2: okay, i have no followup questions. let's talk about something that has nothing to do with rap or music.
like if someone is coming out as cloudgender to you, it's because they think you're someone who can hang and talk about what that means. what does "cloudgender" mean to you? is it the constantly-shifting state? the association with the weather? the moodiness? the same way two people could have a 6 hour heated discussion about the differences between delta blues and hill country blues, but if you played a charley patton song back to back with an rl burnside song, some people who aren't familiar with blues won't be able to tell the difference. you might as well play the same song twice. so if someone identifies as a demigirl in some circles but to you they just say they're nonbinary or even just "female", they clocked you as a gender normie lol.
and just like gender, genre "doesn't exist", but it still has societal impact. a lot of the blues i listen to wouldn't sound out of place next to country artists. where are the lines? race? class? culture? all of the above? and this becomes muddier when you look at marketing. being plastered with a specific genre can be the kiss of death for your mainstream career, or the thing that pushes you to the top. it's a social construct, but we are social people.
anyway, i hope this makes sense. as a binary trans person i'm not sure where i fit in this analogy. maybe it's like i listened to a bunch of specific subgenres and went like "yeah these all scratch the same itch for me". but if people find meaning within the nichest of niche genres, i think that's amazing. you are an onion and you just kept peeling. when i see people with identities like bloodgender or flowergender, i see someone with a much more nuanced and complex relationship with their gender than i ever could have. i see poetry. i see music.
Notes on Playing Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine
I posted this in the Discord and several people seemed to think it was insightful, so I figured it worth putting here. Both for ease of future reference, and so others can find it.
It's easy to fumble Chuubo's
my first couple times playing it I accidentally brought in logic from other games and made stuff not work
Failure modes I've personally seen are like:
using XP Actions incorrectly, usually going vaguely by their names instead of their writeups;
being afraid to use the 'fading' effect of XP Actions, causing scenes to go on forever and start going in circles;
forgetting that quest flavor is something you have the authority/power to declare;
trying to make every XP Action or quest flavor action a full in-depth scene; sometimes they're a thing that just happens, like, a sentence or two;
being too afraid to use out-genre XP Actions--they're a big part of how Issues work, and Issues only work properly if they're going up fairly often, so you actually need out-genre XP Actions to happen with some regularity; and
pacing issues.
re: the last one, Chuubo's assumes:
1/session stuff happens once every three-ish chapters;
corellary: the game expects a session to span about three chapters, most of the time;
1/book stuff happens once every dozen or so chapters; and
a big quest takes about a book to finish, give or take.
if you stray too far from any of those the game goes slightly wrong.
For my online game where we play a little bit at a time a lot of days so sessions are often a single chapter long, I've been counting the end of every third chapter as the end of a session, to make 1/session stuff (like how often you can trigger Sickly) run at the proper speed
and more importantly to control Issue decrease rate, since Issues fall at the end of a 'session.'
If you're doing short sessions--ending the session every chapter and lowering Issues per session like the book says--it's basically impossible to accumulate Issues.
Even if you let 1/session powers trigger literally every session, for short sessions, which isn't too big a deal
it's still best to have Issues decline at a rate of about once every three chapters, which means if you increase an Issue every three chapters, it stays steady; if you increase it faster, it rises; and if you increase it slower, it falls.
this is all a bit disorganized since it’s pasted with minor edits from a Discord conversation, but I hope it’s useful to someone anyway!
Hubris, my fifth fan Arc for Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, as a single post
At this moment, I have five of these Arcs done, and this is the last. There’s three more coming in the future but there will be some delay before they appear. Here’s the orange Arc!
Hubris is a miraculous Knight Arc for former villains seeking atonement, terrible wizards and mad scientists that keep making everything worse, and generally anyone who has done or is about to do something really impressive but regrettable and that can never be fixed, forgiven, or forgotten.
This Arc offers the following powers:
Driven
What Have I Done?
Painful Lessons
Break the Rules (at Arc 1+)
A Sorcerer’s Confidence (at Arc 2+)
Atonement (at Arc 2+)
Playing God (at Arc 3+)
Easily Forgiven (at Arc 4+)
Redemption (at Arc 5)
While pursuing a Hubris Arc, you also have the special power Heroic. You may want to consider renaming it to Infamous or Wanted, as mentioned here—more so than even the previous Arcs, characters on Hubris are likely to be... questionable, in their heroism.
Arc Concepts
For quest miracle purposes, among other things, a Knight Arc should have a Role, a Failing, and one or more Truths. You'll need to decide the first two, and one of the last, to begin this Arc.
Your Role is the identity under which you've made your mistakes, and under which you continue to make mistakes, though you may be trying to atone. It's something like 'eccentric scholar', 'repentant villain', or 'terrible wizard'.
Your Failing is the thing that drove you to make mistakes in the past, and will lead to you making more in the future. Sometimes it's something as simple as 'curiosity' or 'love of science'; sometimes it's a probably-unattainable goal, like 'I will bring my family back to life' or 'I will remake the world in my image' or something.
Your Truths are the irreparable mistakes you've made, the unforgivable atrocities you've committed, the regrettable ways you've changed the world. You'll start the Arc with one: something terrible you did because of your Failing, perhaps, or the regret which justifies your Failing.
Driven
Arc 0+
Type: Level 2 Bond
Cost: —
When you begin this Arc, you gain your Arc Failing—that goal or personality trait that drives you forward on the Arc—as a level 2 Bond. This has the following effects:
Invoke Driven when you can rely on it as motivation to overcome an Obstacle or win a conflict and you can add your Bond rating (2) to your Intention level.
Invoke Driven when you're using it as motivation for a miraculous action and you can add your Bond rating (2) as Strike.
Invoke Driven when it causes you to act recklessly and gets you into trouble and, if the trouble was significant enough, the HG may give you up to your Bond rating (2) in Will or MP.
You can rely on Driven in place of food, water, sleep, or even air—the Obstacles for continuing to act despite those difficulties remain unchanged, but it becomes feasible to keep going as long as you're pursuing your Bond.
What Have I Done?
Arc 0+
Type: Chthonic Action
Cost: 0 MP and a Deadly Wound
Before you begin this Arc, or sometime soon after, you'll have done something you truly regret, something you can never fix. Invoke What Have I Done? and take a Deadly Wound from the guilt, trauma, or consequences of it, and it becomes written into the world itself. You can use this power only once.
Your sin becomes a Convention, a campaign-wide level 2 Affliction that details its lasting consequences. The HG can use it to justify small miracles that cause continuing problems, the Convention's Auctoritas shields it from being interfered with by careless wishes, and its presence as a law of the world means it will eventually reassert itself or find some new way to express itself if it is somehow 'permanently' corrected. As long as you're a Main Character, the Convention endures. Should you leave the game or abandon the character, the HG may (or may not, at their option) let the Convention fade to a mere setting detail, addressable like any other with miracles and quests, after 0-2 Books.
Arc 1+. As you progress along this Arc, your capacity for unforgivable error only grows. You can invoke What Have I Done? again, as many times as it takes to reach (your Hubris Arc level + 1) total such Conventions. Keep track of which Conventions come from this power, as these regrets are your Knight Arc's Truths.
Painful Lessons
Arc 0+
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost: +0 MP
Failure is instructive, and you've learned (a little) from your biggest mistakes. You can invoke Painful Lessons to get a +1 Tool bonus for doing anything basically similar to, or clearly related to, one of your Arc Truths from What Have I Done? You may combine this with other miracles that use Intentions, even miracles from other Arcs.
Arc 2. At Arc 2, this becomes a +2 Tool bonus.
Painful Lessons (Powered Up)
Arc 1+
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost:
4 MP at Arc 1-2
2 MP at Arc 3
1 MP at Arc 4
0 MP at Arc 5
For each of your Truths, each of your regrets, you acquire a new miraculous power. This can be almost anything that fits the theme of the Truth: something you perfected while working on your doomed project, something you learned from the disaster, some corrupt power you acquired from the backlash, or some ability you salvaged from the ruins.
It is not a Major miracle, so its effects are typically local in scale, but it can be flexible and impressive, and generally does not require a mundane Intention to 'target' it or use it effectively.
Pick a Skill appropriate to your Role, ideally something that often requires special equipment or takes a lot of time. If you don't have an appropriate Skill, you can choose one you don't have and optionally move 1-2 points from other Skills into it.
Invoke Break the Rules and
Affected mundane actions, in a contest with miracles, do not automatically lose. They use Break the Rules' miracle level and Strike, instead.
Slow actions can be done faster: things that would require days of work take hours, those that would take hours take only minutes, and things that should take minutes only need seconds.
You can waive requirements for specialized tools, equipment, or environments, relying on your natural abilities and improvised tools without facing an Obstacle for it.
Magical Skills are valid rule-breaking Skills, here. For the most part, Connections, Shine, and Cool are not. Superior Skills are allowed, but note that they may not benefit as much from this power as others; in many cases, Superior Skills are already able to do something faster, or with less equipment or preparation, than their more mundane equivalent.
Arc 3. Starting at Arc 3, the third feature of Break the Rules—the ability to waive requirements for specialized equipment for your rule-breaking Skill—simply becomes part of your version of the Skill, and you no longer need to activate this power to claim that benefit.
A Sorcerer's Confidence
Arc 2+
Type: Chthonic Action
Cost:
1 MP—propose, and enforce, a theory based on what you "know" from your Truths
2 MP—propose, and enforce, a theory based on what you "know" from your Role
When you propose a theory about something that you—in the person of your Role, or as the one responsible for your Truths—"should" know, you can invoke Sorcerer's Confidence to force the world to play along.
Your theory becomes a temporary Affliction, with level equal to your Arc rating, that states that you must experience a world in which that theory is correct. It will create coincidences and minor miracles to ensure you aren't proven incorrect, deflect active attempts at disproof with an Auctoritas (and usually Obstacle) equal to its level, and reward you with potential Will or MP when your folly gets you into trouble.
The Affliction lingers for the duration of the chapter, then fades. If necessary, you can effectively end it early by activating the power a second time and proposing a contradictory theory—as long as neither has sufficient Strike to overcome the other, the two clashing Afflictions will cancel out and remain inactive until they fade.
You can waive your “breath” of MP—the +1 MP you get at the start of each chapter—to carry one such Affliction into the new chapter. You can even repeat this across multiple chapters to sustain one of these Afflictions for longer. Other Afflictions from this power fade as normal.
Science, Faith, and Sorcery. If you invoke this as part of a Science, Faith, and Sorcery XP Action, you immediately recover 1 MP.
Atonement
Arc 2+
Type: Special
Cost: —
You may take the Never Say Die! Action any time you can meet its condition. If you can frame the action—”Fight to the last drop of strength in your body!”—as something you're doing to try to atone for your Arc Truths, you earn 1 MP, up to a maximum of your starting MP, and each additional group XP that you earn from this Action also earns you an additional MP.
You can't directly combine this with Heroic; only one or the other can affect a given action. However, if you have two XP Actions available, it is valid to use Frantic or Heroic to trigger (Be in) Trouble, and then after declaring that you are overwhelmed and outmatched, use Atonement to trigger Never Say Die!
Playing God
Arc 3+
Type: Imperial Miracle, Ritual
Cost (Arc 3-4):
0 MP—do nearly anything, as a wish, once per book
4 MP—do so again later in the same book
Cost (Arc 5):
0 MP—do nearly anything, as a wish, once per book
2 MP—do so again later in the same book
At most once per chapter, by some methodology appropriate to your Arc Role and driven by your Failing, you can accomplish nearly anything as a wish. This can be nearly any wish you want as long as you can provide at least a flimsy justification for how it might work and how your Role might enable you to accomplish it.
There is one major limitation: if the wish does not substantially draw on skills you've acquired from your past mistakes—that is, if it isn't somehow connected to one of your What Have I Done? Truths—it is very likely to go terribly wrong. If you're still looking for more opportunities to make terrible mistakes to fill out your list of Truths, though, this is an easy way to get there!
Easily Forgiven
Arc 4+
Type: Chthonic Action
Cost: 4 MP
If you've spent 3+ Chapters in a Region without causing disaster for its inhabitants, or you've recently saved its inhabitants from disaster, you may invoke Easily Forgiven to claim a Power Perk, Well-Liked in (Region) (CMWGE, p. 401). This requires a Perk slot, but you may choose to discard one of your Perks when you invoke this power to make room.
Even once your popularity fades (due to discarding the granted Perk) the people of the Region will tend not to have lingering grudges from before you gained the Perk, with the exception of those individuals you have personally, specifically wronged.
It's no good to have no motivation at all to progress through this Arc, so here's the offer: if you make it this far, all the way up to Arc level 5, one of your sins will be forgiven.
When you acquire this power, you can rewrite one and only one of the Conventions created by What Have I Done? into its opposite or resolution. You can make that one thing right again. It remains one of your Arc Truths and still works with the associated powers and quest miracles, but it's no longer a tragedy, no longer a regret.
If necessary, if merely rewriting a Convention isn't sufficient on its own to fix what you've done, this also functions as a wish,
"I wish I could make this right."
which will allow you to use the rules of a wish to correct the lingering damage of whatever it was you did.
You can't fix everything. This power only functions once, even though you might have as many as six disasters to atone for by this point.
Haunted, my fourth fan Arc for Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, as a single post
Onward to the silver Arc, Haunted. This one was only in three separate posts, not four, but it’s still probably useful to combine those into one for future reference.
Haunted is a miraculous Emptiness Arc, intended for characters who aren't normal, who somehow aren't human, and who are shunned or hunted or endangered because of that. It's an arc for vampires and ghosts, rogue robots, supposedly soulless creatures, and fake people.
Some of these characters might angst about what they are, or wish they were human, but this isn't an Arc about regaining humanity, and many characters that would fit this Arc are totally fine with their status and just wish people would let them be.
This Arc offers the following abilities:
Not Human
Effortless Magic
Of The Unknown
There's Nobody Here (at Arc 1+)
Cool Bonus (at Arc 1+)
Magic Boost (at Arc 1+)
Behind the Scenes (at Arc 2+)
Uncanny Movement (at Arc 2+)
Mysterious Watcher (at Arc 2+)
Heartless (at Arc 3+, with an option to acquire it early.)
While pursing a Haunted Arc, you also have the special power Heroic.
Not Human
Arc 0+
Type: Special (adjust Skill points)
Cost: —
If you're on this Arc, you're not a normal human. There's something different about you, something that either defines you as nonhuman or at least provides plausible evidence for it.
Choose a Superior Skill to represent it, something that defines your inhuman nature like
(Superior) Claimed by the Sea
(Superior) Vampire
(Superior) Walking Fields Spirit
or something that merely hints at it, like
(Superior) Affinity for (an Element)
Superior Immortality
Superior Vitality
If you choose a Skill you didn't already have, you get 1 point in it for free and may optionally move up to 2 more points from other Skills into it.
If you choose a Skill you had at 1 or 2, it is increased by +1.
If you choose a Skill you had at 3 or more, move points beyond the first 2 into other Skills, then add +1 to bring it to 3.
If you abandon this Arc before reaching Arc level 1, you lose the free +1.
Arc 3. You gain one point in the Skill (max 5).
Effortless Magic
Arc 0+
Type: Special (adjust Skill points)[, Miraculous Action]
Cost: 0 MP—use miraculous Will with your magic.
Whatever you are, on this Arc, it's defined not just by a Superior Skill, but also by at least one Magical Skill. When you begin the Arc you have the option to shift up to three points from other Skills into one or more appropriate Magical Skills, and you must end up with at least one.
You also gain access to miraculous Will (p. 67, CMWGE), which you can only use to enhance your Magical Skills—wielding magic comes more naturally to you than it does to normal people.
You gain a free point in a Magical Skill (max 5) when you reach Arc 2, and another when you reach Arc 4.
Of The Unknown
Arc 0+
Type: Chthonic Action[, Automatic, Special (Perk)]
Cost: —
You're something, or part of something, that is hidden from ordinary people. As long as you make at least some minimal effort at subtlety, there is an Obstacle 2 to people recognizing that you're anything out of the ordinary, and even if they do recognize something is up, there's an Obstacle 2 later to remembering what they saw without excusing it as an error or delusion.
This Obstacle also protects things associated with your inhumanity from being recognized—other such beings, the actions and presence of those who hunt them, and Magical Skills that are unique to such creatures or their hunters.
If lowered or removed by events, and you prefer it to remain, this Obstacle will restore itself by a point at the start of every story and the closure of every relevant Issue. Intentionally or obviously revealing yourself to someone removes the Obstacle, but only for them, and only with regards to whatever you've made them aware of.
If you are obviously nonhuman and none of your Magical Skills provide you with a magical technique to appear human, you may take a free Technique Perk that allows one of your Magical Skills to do so at Obstacle 2. It's expected that this will be integrated fully into that Magical Skill by the time you replace the Perk.
There's Nobody Here
Arc 1+
Type: Chthonic Action
Cost (Arc 1):
0 MP—1/chapter, become an invalid target or subject for an effect
2 MP—do so again in the same chapter
Cost (Arc 2+):
0 MP—1/chapter, become an invalid target or subject for an effect
1 MP—do so again in the same chapter
Invoke There's Nobody Here, and you can make yourself an invalid target for anything that specifically targets 'an individual', 'a person', 'somebody', or 'a living thing', anything that directly affects your mind, spirit, emotions, or memories, or anything that could detect any of those things or determine whether you are being sincere or truthful.
In effect, when you use this power you declare yourself in some sense an inanimate thing—merely a soulless, unconscious part of the environment—and anything that doesn't work on empty terrain and lifeless objects fails to work on you.
Normally this is an instantaneous effect, protecting you once from a single attack or power, but if the thing you're resisting is sustained or ongoing, the defense lingers for just as long.
Cool Bonus
Arc 1+
Type: Special (Perk)
Cost: —
A wishing heart? An immortal soul? Feelings? Whatever it is that you supposedly have a deficiency of, in your inhumanity, it’s apparently one of the things that makes normal people clumsy, awkward, and foolish. You stand a little aloof from such weakness.
If you have a spare Perk slot for it, you receive a free level 1 Cool Perk.
Arc 3. If you have a level 1 Cool Perk, it upgrades to level 2.
Arc 5. If you have a level 1 or 2 Cool Perk, it upgrades to level 3.
Magic Boost
Arc 1+
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost (Arc 1):
2 MP—1/chapter, boost your magic
4 MP—do so again in the same chapter
Cost (Arc 2):
1 MP—1/chapter, boost your magic
2 MP—do so again in the same chapter
4 MP—do so again in the same scene
Cost (Arc 3):
0 MP—1/chapter, boost your magic
1 MP—do so again in the same chapter
2 MP—do so again in the same scene
Cost (Arc 4):
0 MP—1/chapter, boost your magic
1 MP—do so again in the same chapter
Cost (Arc 5):
0 MP—boost your magic
Use Magic Boost when you use a magical technique (from one of your Magical Skills) and the potential scale and power of the technique is heightened to near-miraculous levels. For most magic, which has roughly person-scale effects, this becomes roughly vehicle-scale at Intention 2+, building-scale at 3+, and potentially neighborhood-scale at 6+. If you only manage an Intention of level 1 or less, this effort is wasted.
Magic that doesn’t make sense to scale up in terms of size may still improve in power—discuss this with the HG, but a rough doubling or tripling of power at each of Intention levels 2, 3, and 6 is probably about right.
Actions enhanced with Magic Boost benefit from miraculous Will—you can think of this power as including Effortless Magic in its effect.
Behind the Scenes
Arc 2+
Type: Affliction, based on your Trust Issue
Cost: —
You're of a hidden world, and have connections to other things of that world and things connected to that world, that normal people might not know about. Perhaps it's not always safe, not always wise, but you can sometimes rely on those connections for aid.
Any time you have 1+ points in the Trust Issue, the following rules apply:
You can take actions to have done things in your hidden world in the past, waiving the Obstacles for retroactive action, as long as doing so doesn't create an unresolvable paradox. Usually, taking advantage of this involves forming an Intention to arrange a favor, make some kind of deal or trade, acquire some information or something of value, or similar, with the HG interpreting the results just like any other Intention.
The HG can invoke Behind the Scenes to describe flashbacks to moments in your past, among your hidden world; or have things from your hidden world show up, unexpectedly, in play.
Any time facts introduced by either of the above cause you meaningful trouble, the HG may give you up to your Trust in Will or MP.
Optionally, you may base this on your highest black Issue overall, including Hollow and Isolation and any custom black Issues you might have.
If you complete a story without gaining the Trust Issue, you may start the next story with Trust 1, and for the remainder of that story you do not have to lower it below that level unless it becomes resolved.
If an NPC has this power, and the HG doesn’t want to track Issues for NPCs, then this is instead based on the Hero Issue of the PC most involved in their story, or the one they most often interact with.
Uncanny Movement
Arc 2+
Type: Chthonic Action, Unreal
Cost (Arc 2):
0 MP—1/chapter, take an Unreal mundane action
2 MP—take another such action in the same chapter
4 MP—take another such action in the same scene
Cost (Arc 3):
0 MP—1/chapter, take an Unreal mundane action
1 MP—take another such action in the same chapter
2 MP—take another such action in the same scene
Cost (Arc 4):
0 MP—1/chapter, take an Unreal mundane action
1 MP—take another such action in the same chapter
Cost (Arc 5):
0 MP—1-2x/scene, take an Unreal mundane action
1 MP—take another such action in the same scene
Invoke Uncanny Movement to shroud one of your mundane actions in unreality, and you can waive Obstacles to that that action by explaining to the world that you're not really here, that this isn't really happening.
You can use this to:
walk on air as if it were solid ground;
walk up walls or on ceilings, as if gravity pointed in another direction;
walk through solid objects as if they weren't there;
speak to someone, and be heard by them, without actually making a noise;
teleport short distances, mid-action, as if you were a recording that skipped several frames;
grab hold of a blade, reach into a fire, or step off a cliff, but suffer no harm;
walk casually through some kind of security system, like motion sensors or those lasers you see in movies, without tripping any alarms;
take your action 'instantly', in a subjective moment of stopped time where everyone else can only helplessly watch; or
any other similarly eerie, glitchy, or unnatural-looking effects the HG approves.
The action also becomes Unreal: direct effects on others are generally limited to Surface Wounds and temporary distractions, new information acquired by these actions tends to be undramatic, and any definite proof that the action ever happened tends to fade away after a while. This doesn't mean the action is ineffectual: it is still an Intention, after all, with the usual option to claim effective and productive results if the level is high enough.
Mysterious Watcher
Arc 2+
Type: Chthonic Action, XP Action
Cost: —
When something dramatically important happens to someone else involved in your story—generally meaning someone connected to a quest you're on or an Issue you have, someone you have a Connection to, or someone who is mentioned by name in one of your Bonds or Afflictions—you can declare that, somehow, you were watching, and as long as it's at all plausible, you were.
If you are caught watching, an Obstacle and Auctoritas equal to your Arc protect your anonymity and resist any attempts to interact with you or catch you at that moment—people may see a mysterious figure observing them, or feel that they are being watched, or find evidence that someone was there, but actually proving it was you is difficult.
You can use this power to retroactively have observed past events, provided this doesn’t contradict any established information about your actual location or activities at that time or give you any information that would have definitely caused you to act differently in the time since then. It’s up to the HG when to allow this.
This power functions as an XP Action. It requires one of your XP Actions for the chapter, earns you an XP normally, and typically causes you to fade into the background once the scene completes. Alternately, if it makes sense to invoke this power as part of or simultaneously with another legal XP Action, you may do so, and it will no longer require a (second) XP Action of its own.
There's Nobody Here (Powered Up)
Arc 3+
Type: Chthonic Action, Unreal
Cost (Arc 3-4):
2 MP — 1/book, vanish as if you were never there
4 MP — vanish a second or later time in the same book
Cost (Arc 5):
1 MP — 1/book, vanish as if you were never there
2 MP — vanish a second or later time in the same book
Invoke the powered up form of There's Nobody Here, and you vanish from the scene, declaring that you were never really there to begin with. Any evidence of your former presence in the scene fades over time, and any major effects you had on the environment or situation that can't be explained as illusory or easily blamed on someone or something else are retroactively subdued.
Afterward, you turn out to be anywhere it would have been remotely plausible for you to be instead, and any proof of your sudden arrival or evidence you weren't there the whole time is also rendered Unreal. Technically, you can use this power simply as a means of teleportation, though the cost is high if that's all you're getting out of it.
You are considered spiritually present in the scene after your departure, for the purposes of others targeting you with miraculous effects, but anything that uses that link to you must overcome a level 3 Auctoritas. If you used this power in response to being targeted with a miracle, this also opposes that miracle.
Heartless
Arc 3+
Type: Special
Cost: —
This is not a good power. This is not even a terribly useful power. That you have it may be suspected (and may have been suspected, even before you reached this level and actually acquired it) by anyone aware of your Hidden World, and your having it may give them cause to distrust you. You might not want this power at all, but, regardless, once you've reached Arc level 3 in Haunted, you have it:
Once per chapter, you can break the rule that emotes have to be honest. You're on the honor system here, that you'll only do it once per chapter at most—you don't have to actually tell anyone when you're using this power.
In addition, from this point forward there is no other means to tell when your emotions are real or fake, either. You can still display emotions, you may or may not still feel them, but no Intention or miracle can tell whether or not you're faking it.
Effects that affect emotions still work on you normally unless you defend against them with There's Nobody Here or similar effects, or perhaps mitigate them with an unemotional Wound. All this power does is make it impossible to know which (if any) of your emotions are real.
Acquiring this power early. Some Haunted concepts may want to pick up this power earlier on, or even right form the start. Before Arc 3, you can acquire this power as a Perk for an appropriate quest, such as a 35+ XP Emptiness 1 quest. If you have such a Perk when you reach Arc level 3 in Haunted, you may discard it and take an additional quest reward for the quest that completed your previous Arc. If you're starting a totally new character on a low level of Haunted, the HG may allow you to begin play with that Perk, particularly if other players are also getting to start with freebie Perks.
Behind the Scenes (Powered Up)
Arc 4+
Type: Imperial Miracle, Ritual Action
Cost:
4 MP at Arc 4
2 MP at Arc 5
Invoke this power and, in a Ritual, describe an ally, contact, or acquaintance from your hidden world.
Normally, the Ritual works like this: you outline very roughly what you're looking for as you begin, and then each player in turn suggests details of the new ally's appearance, personality, nature, or powers; circumstances in which you met; favors you might owe each other; etc., going around the table repeatedly until at least half the players are satisfied with the character described.
You can veto other players' contributions, and the HG can veto yours, but it is recommended to include at least token aspects even of vetoed suggestions in the final character.
As the ritual completes, this power comes into effect in the form of the wish,
"I wish I knew that person, and would encounter them again soon."
Defiant, my third fan Arc for Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, as a single post
Here’s the next one, again redone as a single post. This time it’s the green Arc, with one power (Servitors) having been rewritten since the original post:
Defiant is a miraculous Otherworldly Arc. It's intended for characters who are part of, or are empowered by, the same element or force they fight against. It's for characters who have super-powered 'evil modes' or hard-to-control berserk power-ups. If you're on this Arc, you're tempted with freedom, power, and a connection to something greater than you, but you risk losing yourself to it.
This Arc offers the following abilities:
Sinister Presence
The Scent of Danger
Devil's Bargain
Transformation (at Arc 1+)
Intensity (at Arc 1+)
Dark Powers (at Arc 1+)
[Element]-Walking (at Arc 2+)
Boundary (at Arc 2+)
Servitors or Anti-Element (at Arc 2+)
The Road to Dawn (at Arc 2)
Depending on the path you take, there’s two possible sets of powers at Arc 3+
Resolve (at Arc 3+)
Synthesis (at Arc 3+)
Instant Transformation (at Arc 5)
or
Divine Health (at Arc 3+)
Spies (at Arc 3+)
Final Form (at Arc 5)
In addition, while you are pursuing the Arc Defiant, you have the special power Heroic.
Arc Terminology
Element or Estate: The source of your power, the thing that's trying to corrupt or recruit you, and the likely origin of many of the threats the Heroic trait sends your way. For this Arc, it's useful to figure out your Element's general aesthetic, as if it were its own little self-contained world—it's best to have some idea of what creatures or servants of your Element are like, what it's like to be in a place aligned to or overwhelmed with the Element, what the raw stuff of the Element looks like when used in magic, and so on. It is also useful to have in mind what sorts of things might be hostile to, harmful to, or protective against your Element.
Mood: An emotion, mental state, or pattern of behavior that your Element evokes, and that threatens to overwhelm you when you draw too much on its powers. The prototypical examples this Arc is built around are things like desperate hunger, blinding rage, and single-minded focus, but anything that could influence your actions in ways you might regret should work.
Sinister Presence
Arc 0+
Type: Affliction, based on your Vice
Cost: —
Your Element and its associated Mood have, to some degree, infected you. If you're diligent, you can suppress and control it to the point that nobody would notice, but if your self-control falters it can start to show.
Any time you have 1+ points in a Vice Issue, the following rules apply:
The HG can invoke Sinister Presence as a justification to attract the attention of things interested in, friendly to, or hostile to your Element, and to have them notice or suspect that you have some sort of connection to it.
The HG can invoke Sinister Presence as a justification for someone believing, perhaps mistakenly, that you are currently experiencing your Mood, and to have your little unconscious behaviors and mannerisms appear to be influenced by your Mood. This shouldn't happen all the time, but if you spend a lot of time with this effect active people will tend to think of you as someone who shows that Mood a lot.
The HG can invoke Sinister Presence to defend you against miracles that would block your connection to your Element or suppress your Mood—to succeed, such miracles require Strike ≥ your highest Vice.
Any time that your apparent connection to your Element or the apparent presence of your Mood causes you meaningful trouble, the HG may give you up to your highest Vice in Will or MP.
You may optionally allow Sinister Presence to trigger on Sickness as well as Vice.
If you complete a story without gaining the Vice Issue, you may start the next story with Vice 1, and for the remainder of that story you do not have to lower it below that level unless it becomes resolved.
If an NPC has this power, and the HG doesn't want to track Issues for NPCs, then this is instead based on the highest Trust, Hollow, or Isolation Issue of the PC most involved in their story, or the one they most often interact with.
You can sense strong concentrations of your Element, as well as similarly strong concentrations of substances, forces, or powers that are antithetical to your Element.
Your sense of your Element is pretty vague, like a scent or a feeling: you can tell when a lot of it is present, or when very little of it is, but you have to be practically within arm's reach of a person or object to pinpoint it as the source.
Your sense of things that oppose your Element, however, is much more precise, more like sight or hearing—if your Element is Darkness, you can see who and what around you are strongly tied to Light; if your Element is the power of the Bleak Academy, you can sense hearts by their Wish-power and see when well-loved things are warded against the Outside; and if your Element is the glamours of the fae, perhaps iron acquires a sickening, offensive wrongness that you can feel from all the way across a room.
Note that enemies of your Element aren't necessarily your enemies, at least as long as your Sinister Presence is kept in check. If you're being hunted by faeries that want to kidnap you to fairyland to be their next queen, you might find the presence of cold iron comforting even though this power makes it a little unpleasant to look at.
Devil's Bargain
Arc 0+
Type: Chthonic Action, Ritual Power, Bleak
Cost:
4 MP, 1 Deadly Wound (Arc 0-2)
2 MP, 1 Deadly Wound (Arc 3-4)
0 MP, 1 Deadly Wound (Arc 5)
Even from the very beginning of this Arc, you have the option to give in. Pay the MP, surrender a little of yourself to your Element in the form of a Deadly Wound, and do a Ritual: then, for a short time, you can do nearly anything.
You're flooded with the power of your Element, overcome with the full force of your Mood, and manifest whatever power you need to overcome the obstacle in front of you. It's up to the HG what, exactly, it does, but usually it invokes one or more of this Arc's powers as if you had a much higher Arc level and as much MP as necessary. If needed, it can even evoke one of the Arc's quest miracles on the spot.
Once the immediate problem is resolved, though, there is a cost. For a short time—the length of a scene, at most—you lose yourself to your Element and Mood and the HG takes over your character as an NPC, wielding those same powers in an uncontrolled fashion. If you-as-an-NPC does something you can't accept, you can take a Serious Wound to reject that action and forbid the HG from having you do anything similar for the rest of the scene, or a Deadly Wound to immediately seize control of your character again—at least, as long as you would still have Health Levels left afterward.
This power is a Bleak effect, susceptible to Making Answer to the Bleak (pp. 476-480, CMWGE). Your enemies could, theoretically, rely on those rules to defend themselves, and your friends and allies can do the same to avoid collateral damage or try to snap you out of your NPC status.
Transformation
Arc 1+
Type: Chthonic Action
Cost (Arc 1):
0 MP—1/book, transform
4 MP—transform later in the same book
Cost (Arc 2):
0 MP—1/book, transform
2 MP—transform later in the same book
Cost (Arc 3+):
0 MP—1/book, transform
1 MP—transform later in the same book
Once you reach Arc 1, you gain the power of Transformation. When you first acquire this power, name some alternate form, super mode, or berserk state you can enter and pick 1-3 level 2 Superior Skills that describe it. It should be a form that evokes your Element and Mood, and can range all the way from 'you, but a little cooler looking' or 'magical girl transformation', all the way to 'you turn into a monster or werewolf'
Note that the quantity of Superior Skills is a matter of detail, not power level, here—someone with the two Skills 'Superior Strength' and 'Superior Speed' is not significantly more or less powerful than someone with one 'Superior Strong Fast Guy' Skill at the same level.
The transformation is always a dramatic, highly obvious process, though it takes only a moment. While active, you experience the effects of Intensity (see below) and gain the form's Superior Skills. It lasts for a scene unless you force it back early with a supreme act of will (and, usually, a level 6+ Intention.) When the transformation does end, if you have any undamaged Normal Health Levels, you immediately suffer a Surface Wound from the strain of the change or the corrosive power of your Element.
Arc 3+. Starting at Arc level 3, the Superior Skills you acquire in your transformed state are increased to match your Arc level. You can choose not to manifest your full power when you transform, allowing you to choose between 2 and your current Arc level for each Superior Skill at the moment of transformation—this might be important if, e.g. one of them is something like (Superior) On Fire, and you want to stick to the bonfire-like On Fire 3 at Arc 4-5 rather than immediately causing mass destruction whenever you transform. This can also be useful for keeping some Superior Skills within defined levels, e.g. for something like Superior Spiritual Energy (p. 262, CMWGE) which only goes up to 4 and doesn't have a level 5 version, or for cases where the highest levels seem strange or out-of-place for your transformation.
Intensity
Arc 1+
Type: Imperial Miracle, Automatic
Cost: —
Whenever you're transformed (via Transformation, above) your Mood fills you. It's not totally overwhelming, probably, but it can influence your actions, and others can perceive and attempt to exploit it.
This manifests as an immediate, temporary, local Region Property, something like
(your name) must be experiencing intense (your Mood)
or
(your name) must act in accordance with (your Mood)
You can rephrase this somewhat when you first acquire the power, but the basic idea should be the same—while transformed, your Mood has power over you, and others are aware of it and can try to use it to gain an advantage against you.
Dark Powers
Arc 1+
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost:
4 MP at Arc 1
2 MP at Arc 2
1 MP at Arc 3+
With Dark Powers, you can wield the raw substance of your Element as a weapon and tool. While this power is sustained, you can do the following with your Element:
armor yourself with it;
shape it into a weapon or tool in your hands;
surround yourself with a wall, bubble, or aura of it;
project bolts, blobs, or streams of it away from you;
flood your surroundings with it;
use it to fly, e.g. by manifesting wings of it or firing streams of it like rocket exhaust;
sculpt a quantity of it within arm's reach; or
any similarly direct expressions of elemental power the HG agrees are possible.
What you cannot do is manipulate your Element from afar, directly banish or destroy it, or command creatures aligned with it. Anything beyond arm's reach or so requires a mundane action to 'aim'.
Normally, you are limited to wielding a person-sized or, at most, vehicle-sized quantity of your Element. When you're transformed, this increases to a roughly house-sized amount.
Arc 4. From Arc 4 on, the limits on this power's scale and some of the limits on control are relaxed. At that point, you can wield a house-sized amount of your Element in your untransformed state, and a neighborhood-scale amount while transformed. Long-range uses (such as attacks) also become miraculously guided, no longer needing an action to 'aim'. Banishing or destroying the Element is still not allowed, and your ability to control it at range is limited to things like the aforementioned guided attacks.
[Element]-Walking
Arc 2+
Type: Imperial Miracle
Cost (Arcs 2-3):
0 MP — use your Element to travel, 1/book
4 MP — do so a second or later time per book
Cost (Arc 4):
0 MP — use your Element to travel through space
0 MP — 1/book, use your Element to travel through time/dimensions/etc.
4 MP — do so a second or later time per book
Invoke [Element]-Walking to create a way through your Element that can take you somewhere else, potentially just another location or even—if your game's metaphysics make this a coherent idea—to another world, or time, or state of reality.
As long as your starting location and your intended destination are both places where your Element can exist—they're not places antithetical to your Element, or warded against it, or similar—and you know at least roughly where you're going, a portal opens for you. You can take people with you, but if your Element is dangerous they likely suffer at least a Surface Wound from the trip, potentially worse if it's a longer trip.
This is basically instant for simple travel, and becomes free to use for such purposes starting at Arc level 4. Travel to other times, worlds, modes of reality, etc. takes longer, typically requiring 0-2 Chapters navigating the corridors and mazes and hazards of your Element to get there.
If the power takes you to somewhere strange like the past, a potential future, inside someone's memories, or to a fictional world, this is treated as a wish and uses the rules for such to determine what you can do there and what lasting effects you can have on the 'real' or 'outside' world.
Boundary
Arc 2+
Type: Chthonic Action
Cost:
4 MP at Arc 2
2 MP at Arc 4
1 MP at Arc 5
When you invoke Boundary, time seems to stop and your Element pulls you and those present in the scene with you into a temporary parallel world of finite size. You choose the size, ranging from 'everyone in the scene' all the way down to just you, but the effect is more or less a spherical radius—you can't selectively 'leave out' nearby people and still include people that are further away.
The general terrain of the boundary resembles the location it was summoned in, but fine details are often missing, the aesthetics of the Element are more present, often there is more of the Element around, in general, and there's either a solid boundary of some sort around the space, an endless raging storm of the Element, or just... nothing. This bounded space is separated from everywhere else by an Auctoritas equal to your Arc level, and mundane actions to enter or leave the space by any other means—with a Magical Skill that has teleportation techniques, for example—also face a minimum Obstacle equal to your Arc level.
Within the this place you can use Dark Powers freely, with no MP cost. The boundary fades when you will it to, when you lose your last remaining Health Level, or when the scene within the boundary ends, whichever comes first. At that point, everyone present in the boundary is returned to where they were before and normal time resumes. To outside observers the whole process from the summoning of the boundary to its fading takes only moments.
Servitors
Arc 2+
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost:
2 MP at Arc 2
1 MP at Arc 3
0 MP at Arc 4+
Your connection with your Element gives you the authority to summon and command some of its less impressive representatives. These are minor NPCs —basically living constructs of your Element—and while they may have some unusual features due to being made of your element, in general they're individually no more dangerous or powerful than unskilled mundane humans. You can command them with Intentions or just leave them to their own devices, in which case they try to protect you and otherwise act in a manner appropriate to your Mood.
They exist only while the miracle is sustained, departing or vanishing when it ends. You can summon and command about a dozen of them at once, and quickly replace those that have been defeated as long as you’re still sustaining the miracle.
Arc 3+. At higher levels, you’re entitled to stronger servitors. Starting at Arc 3, they can be considered to have one or more Superior Skills describing their capabilities at level [your Defiant Arc level - 2]: 1 at Arc 3, 2 at Arc 4, and 3 at Arc 5. Since you can’t use their abilities directly, but instead wield them with intentions, this will usually manifest in the form of the HG giving you a +1 Tool bonus to Intentions commanding them and/or waiving small Obstacles to their success.
The Road to Dawn
Arc 2
Type: Special (Quest Reward)
Cost: 35+-XP Quest
So you've made it to Arc level 2? You have a choice to make. Continue on your current path, your connection to your Element growing deeper and your elemental powers growing stronger... or find another path, draw on some opposing power and try to maintain a careful balance between them.
Sometime before you complete the Arc and begin the next, as the reward for an appropriate 35+-XP quest, you can exchange the Servitors power, removing it and this power from your character sheet, and gain Anti-Element in its place. This option is only present while you're at exactly Arc level 2—once you're Arc 3+, it's too late, and The Road to Dawn is permanently removed from your character sheet.
Anti-Element
Arc 2+, via The Road to Dawn
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost: +1 MP—wield your Anti-Element
If you choose to take the option given by The Road to Dawn, sacrificing your command of your Element's Servitors, you gain this power in exchange:
By paying one extra MP when you invoke Dark Powers, you can use a version based on your Anti-Element instead of your Element—some other substance or power that directly or metaphorically opposes your Element, your Mood, or both.
Anti-Element always benefits from the increased scale Dark Powers gets while you're transformed, but you can't use Anti-Element while transformed. Anti-Element also remains full price within Boundary; only the original Element gets to be used freely.
Each power listed from here on requires you to have one of either Anti-Element or Servitors, listed along with its Arc level requirement.
Resolve
Arc 3+, with Anti-Element
Type: Chthonic Action
Cost:
0 MP—reduce the severity of mental/spiritual Wounds, 1/chapter
1 MP—use this ability a second time or later in the same chapter
When you're about to take a Wound to mitigate the effects of a mental or spiritual attack—something that threatens your mind or identity, rather than your physical body—you can invoke Resolve to reduce the severity by one category, or totally negate an incoming Surface Wound.
Synthesis
Arc 3+, with Anti-Element
Type: Chthonic Action, Ritual Power
Cost:
4 MP, 1 Deadly Wound at Arc 3
4 MP at Arc 4+
If you combine your Dark Powers and your Anti-Element, they don't necessarily have to cancel each other out. Do it right—invoke Synthesis—and you can supercharge both, allowing you to perform feats more powerful or more complex than what you could do with either one alone.
This is a shapeless deus ex machina, similar to Devil's Bargain, letting you do nearly anything you can describe as the result of a moment of wielding nearly unlimited Elemental and anti-Elemental power to overcome an immediate problem or obstacle, or nearly any threat not directly associated with either your Element or anti-Element. This is not a Bleak power: if it invokes a wish-like effect it generally runs on wish rules, rather than the Bleak rules of Devil's Bargain.
Divine Health
Arc 3+, with Servitors
Type: Special (Health)
Cost: —
You receive an additional Divine Health Level. This normally means you have a total of three Divine Health Levels, unless you acquire more from some other source.
Spies
Arc 3+, with Servitors
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost (Arc 3):
1 MP — use your servants to spy, 1/book
2 MP — do so a second or later time in the same book
4 MP — do so a second or later time in the same chapter
Cost (Arc 4):
0 MP — use your servants to spy, 1/book
1 MP — do so a second or later time in the same book
4 MP — do so a second or later time in the same chapter
Cost (Arc 5):
0 MP — use your servants to spy, 1/book
1 MP — do so a second or later time in the same book
2 MP — do so a second or later time in the same chapter
You can dispatch your Elemental servants to spy or gather information for you. Name a location or a person and spend the MP, and you get a vague vision or description of the scene, what is happening there, and where it is relative to you. This power technically takes the form of one or more of your servitors manifesting in the area to spy for you, but they're miraculously stealthy such that any action to notice or interact with them must overcome this effect.
Additionally, you can activate this power retroactively when you learn new information to declare that you were already aware of it, due to previous spying. This fails (but does not refund any spent MP) if the HG feels this creates a paradox, but as long as it doesn't contradict anything that's appeared in play, you can even use this information to retroactively adjust plans and preparations you've made.
Instant Transformation
Arc 5, with Anti-Element
Type: Chthonic Action, Automatic
Cost: —
At this level, Transformation becomes totally effortless. It never costs MP to invoke, you can transform fully or partially at will, you can maintain the transformation indefinitely, and you can always choose whether or not to apply the effects of Intensity.
Included in this is the ability to adjust all of the transformation's Superior Skills up or down at will, from 0-5, as well as the option to manifest 'partial' Superior Skills. For example, if you're a werecat and your transformation gives you Superior Cat, which includes night vision, you could just manifest cat eyes and Superior Night-Vision for an action instead of the full suite of cat features. The HG may rule that this has a lower maximum, if appropriate: Superior Cat can probably only grant your Superior Night-Vision 3, at most, because even at Superior Cat 5 you probably only get 3 Edge and ignore level 2-3 Obstacles related to it being too dark to see.
Final Form
Arc 5, with Servitors
Type: Chthonic Action, Automatic, Bleak
Cost: —
When you lose your last Divine Health Level, you may choose to trigger Final Form. This gives you a free activation of Devil's Bargain without requiring a Ritual, specifically in the form of supercharging your Transformation. You're granted effectively unlimited power, at least in the context of the scene, to defeat the ones who wounded you.
This is still a Bleak effect, so it is conceivable that you might lose—but, probably, unless your opponents are heroes and the moment is suitably climactic, the best they can probably hope for is merely survival and escape, not your defeat.
Outlaw, my second fan Arc for Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, as a single post
Just posted Heroic Shepherd. Next up is Heroic Bindings, Outlaw.
Outlaw is a miraculous Bindings Arc. It's suitable for characters who fight against some vast, dangerous, and probably hostile force. It's for people who have some legendary weapon, secret technique, or awesome skill that makes them a unique threat to that enemy, one that cannot be ignored.
This Arc offers the following abilities:
Armament
Hey, Listen!
Hidden Danger
The Key to Victory (at Arc 1+)
Special Attacks (at Arc 1+)
Evil's Bane (at Arc 1+)
Solemn Vow (at Arc 2+)
Arsenal (at Arc 2+)
Agility (at Arc 2+)
Enemy of my Enemy (at Arc 3+)
Perfect Defense (at Arc 3+)
A Legendary Weapon (at Arc 4+)
In addition, while you are pursuing the Arc Outlaw, you have the special power Heroic.
Arc Terminology
Other: your "Other" is something hostile to you, something dangerous in general, something that doesn't really belong in the ordinary world. It's probably the source of many of the enemies and hazards your Heroic trait throws at you. It could be a broad category of thing, like 'ghosts' or 'monsters' or 'secret government organizations', or a specific but seemingly limitless opponent such as 'The Bleak Academy' or the forces of some demon empire. Whatever it is, your job is to oppose it.
Armament
Arc 0+
Type: Chthonic Action, Special (Accessory or Superior Skill, Tool)[, Imperial Miracle]
Cost: 4 MP—acquire your iconic weapon or power for the first time, or replace it if it's lost
Some time after you begin this Arc, when you have a free Perk slot, you may activate this power to acquire a unique, iconic weapon or special power that is especially effective for one-on-one combat against your Other.
If it's a weapon, this is an Accessory Perk, and it will have some feature that keeps you from losing it; something like:
it's nigh-indestructible, and you're sure to find it again eventually if you lose it;
it appears undamaged in your hand when you will it, and vanishes when dismissed;
it's physically a part of your body;
it's an enhancement you imbue into a mundane, replaceable weapon; or
something else you and the HG agree on.
and one other feature that makes it especially useful, like:
it can affect intangible opponents;
it easily pierces mundane armor;
it can project some kind of energy bolt;
it never runs out of ammunition;
it glows when your Other is near; or
something else you and the HG agree on.
If it's a power, it's a level 2 Superior Skill Perk representing a special martial arts style, superhuman ability and a combat focus for an otherwise essentially mundane skill, or a minor super power of some sort. This, also, has some special feature beyond what is normal for the Superior Skill you choose; some unusual use of the Skill that, for you, doesn't face an Obstacle.
Finally, whether it's an Accessory or a Superior Skill, it's optimized for use against your Other: such uses benefit from a +1 Tool bonus.
If you somehow lose the Perk, you can use this power again to reacquire it. This takes effect as a wish, of the form,
"I wish I would get my Armament back, or get a new one to replace it."
As this is a wish, exactly how long this takes and what complications it entails may vary, but you will eventually have an Armament again.
Abandoning the Arc. If you stop pursuing Outlaw while you’re still Arc 0, you might lose your Armament. If you do keep it, it loses its Tool bonus against the Other and its special feature.
Hey, Listen!
Arc 0+
Type: Miraculous Action[, Automatic]
Cost:
2 MP at Arc 0
1 MP at Arc 1+
You have some sort of informant, mentor, talking pet, annoying mascot fairy, or weird flash of intuition that can give you information about your Other or help you notice Other-related things you missed.
You can activate this power manually to ask a simple question about your Other, either a broad general question about it or something more specific about something of the Other that's immediately present. The answers are at most a couple sentences long, tend to be a bit general and vague, and aren't reliable at piercing well-kept secrets, but any information it does provide should be truthful. If the HG isn't sure about the answer, you and the rest of the group may suggest possibilities for the HG to choose.
The power will attempt to activate itself when the HG thinks there's something important and Other-related that you should be informed of. You get a faint sense of what it's about, and the option to spend MP: if you accept, the power spends the MP and provides the usual results; if you refuse, the power fizzles.
Hidden Danger
Arc 0+
Type: Imperial Miracle
Cost (Arc 0-1):
0 MP—1/book, reveal your Other's involvement
4 MP—do so at a later time in the same book
Cost (Arc 2-3):
0 MP—1/book, reveal your Other's involvement
2 MP—do so at a later time in the same book
4 MP—do so at a later time in the same chapter
Cost (Arc 4+):
0 MP—1/book, reveal your Other's involvement
1 MP—do so at a later time in the same book
2 MP—do so at a later time in the same chapter
Invoke this miracle to discover how your Other is responsible for some unexplained or seemingly mundane problem. This works a bit like a wish, of the form,
"I wish I would find out how my Other is responsible for this."
If there is a definite reason for it to not be your Other—e.g. if your Other being the cause of the problem would be wildly out of character, if the cause of the problem is definitely something that's not your Other, or if nobody has any idea how your Other could be involved here, then the answer the wish eventually finds is, "It's not." However, if it is at all plausible that your Other could be at fault, the HG is encouraged to play along.
The intended use of this power is to convert nuisances and mundane problems into Other-associated mischief that you can fight—your friend's recent fatigue turns out to be due to a demonic energy-draining plot, a favorite restaurant closing is because your Other has opened a competing restaurant nearby for some scheme, you couldn't find your phone because it was stolen by a yokai, that stranger that seemed hostile to you was actually just stressed because of the ghost haunting them, et cetera.
For minor cases of Other involvement, the HG may include a free automatic invocation of Hey, Listen to give you the information immediately and directly. Otherwise, you will generally stumble upon it in 0-2 Chapters.
The Key to Victory
Arc 1+
Type: Imperial Miracle
Cost (Arcs 1-2):
0 MP—1/book, find a way to attempt some obstacle or opponent
4 MP—do so a later time in the same book
Cost (Arcs 3+):
0 MP—1/book, find a way to attempt some obstacle or opponent
2 MP—do so a later time in the same book
4 MP—do so a later time in the same chapter
When faced with a seemingly impossible obstacle or a seemingly unbeatable opponent, you may invoke this power as a wish,
"I wish I could find something that would let me at least attempt this."
This does not ensure victory, but it does mean that soon (usually within 0-2 chapters) you'll find some ally, tool, weakness, key, or clue to one such thing that will make overcoming the obstacle more feasible. Often, particularly if the obstacle is not terribly plot-important, the answer is an object that can be found nearby, acquired by overcoming some minor challenge or short side-adventure. If the issue is just a locked door, you might simply find a key hidden nearby.
In an intense fight where there's no time to wait for this power to take effect, it may act more quickly in making your opponent reveal a weak spot you can attack, cause an ally to coincidentally arrive just in time to help you out, or otherwise provide you with some immediate aid. It is still, generally, up to you to actually win the fight.
Special Attacks
Arc 1+
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost (Arcs 1-2):
0 MP—1-2/x per scene, perform an impressive combat feat
1 MP—starting mid-scene, do so a third time or later in the scene
2 MP—starting mid-scene, use special attacks at will
4 MP—use special attacks at will for the rest of the scene
Cost (Arcs 3+):
0 MP—1-2/x per scene, perform an impressive combat feat
1 MP—starting mid-scene, use special attacks at will
2 MP—use special attacks at will for the rest of the scene
Wielding your Armament, you can perform impressive feats of combat ability. These enhance an attack (or, with HG permission, other combat-oriented action) with a +1 Tool bonus. If you're using your armament to attack your Other, this stacks with the Tool bonus for Armament, giving it a total Tool bonus of +2. Each special attack also includes a brief, flashy enhancement—the attack carries you forward at high speed toward your target, flames surround your weapon as you strike, you can throw your weapon and recall it to your hand, you can project a melee attack as a sort of energy blast, etc. Something like that!
Special attacks are still fundamentally individual scale, so if the special feature is an area effect it's something like 'attack everyone within reach' or 'create an explosion a yard or two wide' or similar, and the strength of a special attack is within an order of magnitude of what you could do by just attacking normally. The HG may allow special attacks a point or two of Edge against normal opposition when using something two or three times as powerful as a normal attack would make a difference, but keep in mind that you may have Edge already simply from using your armament and this effect may not be sufficient to push it up another point.
Define two or three special attacks when you acquire this power. If you only choose two, you can choose a third sometime in the future between chapters.
Arc 2+. You can learn additional special attacks as your Arc level increases. Any time between chapters, you may learn one or more special attacks, to a maximum of twice your Arc level in total special attacks.
Arc 4+. At Arc 4, when you’ve acquired A Legendary Weapon, your special attacks scale up to match—rather than individual scale, they become group-scale, and, at Arc 5, army- or kaiju-scale.
Evil's Bane
Arc 1+
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost:
4 MP at Arc 1-2
2 MP at Arc 3
1 MP at Arc 4
0 MP at Arc 5
There is something you can do that your Other hates or fears; some miraculous power unique to you or to the wielder of your armament. When you first acquire Evil's Bane, define what this is. Is it...
that you can prevent a regenerating or reincarnating Other from recovering;
that you can counter, break, or deflect Other-aligned magic;
that you can lend others the ability to harm or affect your Other;
that you can ward areas against your Other's presence and influence;
that you can heal wounds or damage inflicted by your Other; or
something else, similar to the above, that you and the HG agree on?
This is not a Major miracle and not a chthonic action, so it generally can't do large scale or extreme range effects, and healing is mostly limited to NPCs whose Wounds aren't tracked and to injuries on player characters that haven't been represented as Wounds. Nevertheless, it's invariably something your Other will find, at least, intensely frustrating to deal with.
Solemn Vow
Arc 2+
Type: Chthonic Action
Cost:
0 MP—1/book, bind yourself to a promise
2 MP—do so another time in the same book
4 MP—do so another time in the same chapter
Invoke Solemn Vow when you clearly communicate a promise to do something, or to prevent something from happening, and you gain a level 2 Bond to that effect until you fulfill the promise or reach the end of the book, whichever comes first. You can't just make a promise to yourself—someone has to witness the promise, though they do not need to be your ally or the subject of the promise.
As this is a level 2 Bond:
you can add +2 to your Intention level when faced with Obstacles on affected Intentions;
you can add +2 to your Strike for affected miracles;
if trying to keep your word gets you in trouble, the HG can award you 1-2 Will or MP; and
if you realize you've broken your word, you suffer a Serious or Deadly Wound and lose the Bond. The severity of the Wound is your choice, but in principle it should be a Serious Wound if you failed by mistake and a Deadly Wound if you deliberately broke your word.
Starting at Arc 2, you gain the ability to acquire additional armaments, or additional modes for your armament. There must be a theme to these options, which restricts you to a finite number of total variations; pick something like,
each is based on a Region you've spent time in;
each is based on a Main Character you've befriended;
each is based on a major opponent you've defeated;
each is based on something from a predetermined, finite set, like the zodiac signs or the seven deadly sins; or
some other, similar restriction you and the HG agree on.
Your original armament is a "basic" or "neutral" version; it might fit into the theme you chose, above, or be a sort of default form of the armament that isn't tied to something like a character or Region. For each additional armament you acquire beyond that basic one, choose two of the following enhancements:
it can bypass a specific kind of mundane defense; e.g. it's armor piercing, or it can cut ghosts;
it can parry or defend against a specific type of attack, energy, or magical skill that normally couldn't be blocked by this type of weapon;
it's attuned to, and enhances its attacks with, a specific element or force;
it gives you a constant, passive benefit when held/readied, such as resistance to heat or the ability to breathe underwater;
it's superior to your basic armament, e.g. it's longer, heavier, sharper, etc.;
it's a totally different type of weapon or skill than the basic armament;
it has some useful feature the basic version lacks, such as a hook, spike, or chain; or
something else you and the HG agree on.
If you've done some difficult task to justify it, such as defeating an opponent or completing some sort of quest, you might acquire the upgrade immediately. Otherwise, acquiring an additional armament functions as a wish,
"I wish I would encounter some challenge that would let me acquire this upgrade."
If the HG isn't sure what sort of challenge would be appropriate, and nobody has any better ideas, a 15-XP quest will generally suffice.
Agility
Arc 2+
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost:
+2 MP at Arc 2
+1 MP at Arc 3-4
+0 MP at Arc 5
When you form an Intention, you may invoke Agility to imbue it with heightened speed and grace, and a limited sort of enhanced strength. This has the following effects:
you may ignore level 1-2 skill penalties for being too slow or too clumsy, or for not striking something with enough force;
you can move faster, more gracefully, and more skillfully than any miracle that loses a conflict with this one, allowing you to, e.g., dodge and parry miraculous attacks; and
if your Intention is opposed directly by a miracle that would prevent you from succeeding because you're too slow, too clumsy, or not striking something hard enough, and this miracle wins a conflict with it, your Intention may overcome the miracle's effects
While using Agility, you can run at least twice as fast as normal, jump several times your height, and strike things with enough force to crack stone or dent metal. If you could already do any of these things, the power always at least doubles your speed, jump distance, and striking force.
Arc 4. Starting at Arc 4, Agility's enhancements are heightened further; speed, jump distances, and striking force are roughly doubled compared to before, you can run along vertical surfaces, maneuver in mid-air, hover briefly in place, brace yourself against nothing for a moment in mid-air (and even "double jump"), partially control your falls, and simply fly short distances. Normally you can only defy gravity for a few seconds at a time, and need to land on solid ground for a moment to refresh the effect, but the HG may allow unlimited flight in places with extremely heavy winds, zero gravity, or no ground to land on.
Perfect Defense
Arc 3+
Type: Miraculous Action, Major
Cost:
4 MP at Arc 3-4
2 MP at Arc 5
Invoke Perfect Defense to overcome an incoming attack, harmful effect, enemy interference, or the sudden appearance of a barrier or obstacle. It's reactive, not proactive—there needs to be some kind of incoming threat for you to counter, to invoke this power.
Once invoked, Perfect Defense lets you do something like your Special Attacks, Agility, or a combination of both, but with the sudden overwhelming force of a Major miracle: it automatically wins against non-miraculous opposition, can include almost arbitrarily high speed, grace, and force, and can bend the rules on what your armament's capable of doing.
In addition to avoiding, deflecting, or destroying an incoming attack, as long as you can describe it as part of the same general action you also turn the attack back on its source, or include an attack on your attacker as part of your defense, backed by this same miracle.
Despite being a Major effect, this is relatively local in scale, limited to affecting things that are present in the scene with you. Finally, you cannot use Perfect Defense to totally defeat something which, that chapter, you have used (Be in) Trouble or Never Say Die! in response to—if you are 'overwhelmed and outmatched' by an opponent, this means you might still be able to counter their attacks but you can't use the counterattack portion of this miracle to defeat them; if you are 'overwhelmed and outmatched' by a single attack or event, you can't use Perfect Defense to stop it at all.
Enemy of My Enemy
Arc 3+
Type: Imperial Miracle
Cost:
2 MP at Arc 3-4
1 MP at Arc 5
Invoke Enemy of My Enemy when in danger from your Other, and you benefit from an immediate wish,
"I wish another enemy of my Other would show up and help me."
If there's someone you've fought side-by-side with against the Other, or someone you've previously rescued from the Other, and it's plausible for them to arrive at that moment, that's probably what happens. If not, you or the other players may suggest other enemies of your Other who might be able to arrive just in time. Finally, failing even that, the HG should consider introducing someone or something new to the story which is opposed to the Other and capable of defying it.
Note that this power does not guarantee your rescuer will be friendly to you, just that they'll help you against the Other. As long as they hate the Other more than they hate you, even a dangerous antagonist can be summoned in this way.
A Legendary Weapon
Arc 4+
Type: Special (Power Up)
Cost: —
Starting at Arc 4, your iconic weapon or skill improves. If Armament took the form of a level 2 Superior Skill for you, it becomes a level 3 Superior Skill. If it took the form of an Accessory, it gets a similar upgrade in terms of narrative scale, something like changing it from 'a weapon for one-on-one combat' to 'a weapon for fighting groups of foes'.
Arc 5. When you reach Arc 5, the Superior Skill rises to level 4, or the Accessory goes descriptively from 'a weapon for fighting groups' to 'a weapon for defeating armies or kaiju'.
Evil's Bane (Powered Up)
Arc 5
Type: Miraculous Action, Major
Cost:
2 MP—1/book
4 MP—later in the same book
At Arc 5, you acquire an additional means of defying your Other, but this time it is a Major miracle—it can affect a whole Region, or work at great ranges, or overcome the defenses of even the most potent Others. Is it...
a special "finishing move" virtually guaranteed to eliminate even kaiju-scale Others after they've been stunned or put off-balance;
the ability to seal a Region that you've cleared of Other influences so that they cannot return;
a power to open portals between your world and the Other's, to take the fight to them;
a Major version of one of the options listed under Evil's Bane; or
Princess, my first fan Arc for Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, as a single post
The last three Arcs are on hold temporarily while I actually do a game of Chuubo’s and test the current Arcs some. In the meantime, for ease of use, I thought it might be helpful to combine the existing multi-post Arcs into individual posts.
Here’s Heroic Shepherd, Princess.
Princess is a miraculous Shepherd Arc. It’s for characters who are treasured by others, often getting in trouble and having to be rescued and protected by their friends and champions, but who also possess a great power and potential of their own.
Don’t be fooled by the name, boys can be princesses too!
The Arc offers the following abilities:
Shine
Precious
Call for Aid
Pure Light (at Arc 1+)
Regalia (at Arc 1+)
Perk Bonus (at Arc 2+)
Sign of Favor (at Arc 2+)
Watch Out (at Arc 2+)
Support Magic (at Arc 3+)
Power of the Heart (at Arc 4+)
In addition, while you are pursuing the Arc Princess, you have the special power Heroic.
Arc Terminology
Craft: your "Craft" is the thing you use to inspire, befriend, and guide your Treasures—by default, something like 'empathy' or 'responsibility'. You're allowed more than one Craft, which is important if you're also the sort of person to create physical treasures and works of art.
Treasure: something is a "Treasure" for you if
it's a player with a Bond that mentions you by name;
it's a player character with a Connection to you of level 3+;
it's an NPC connected to you by the Perk, "It's OK, I'm here." (pg. 430, CMWGE); or
at Arc 1+, it’s an Accessory that’s part of your Regalia (an Arc 1+ power).
Retainer: your “Retainers” are those player characters and NPCs connected to you as Treasures; specifically, everything from the above definitions except Accessory Perks.
Retinue: the collective term for all of your Retainers.
Shine
Arc 0+
Type: Special (adjust Skill points), Shine
Cost: —
As the Princess, you are charismatic, inspiring, and lovable. When you begin pursuing this Arc, if you don't already have Shine, you can move 1-2 points from other Skills into Shine. If you abandon Princess before reaching Arc level 1, you may move the points back out again.
Once after reaching each of Arc levels 1, 3, and 5, you may add one permanent point to Shine, to a maximum of Shine 5.
Precious
Arc 0+
Type: Chthonic Action, Automatic
Cost: —
Princesses are kidnapped, threatened, taken hostage, placed in danger; only very rarely are they seriously harmed or killed. Any action that would kill you or inflict serious, lasting harm on you must overcome a level 2 Obstacle and Auctoritas. Attempts to kidnap, imprison, or temporarily disable you are unhindered, however, as are transformations and other curses that include some kind of escape clause*.
This power is not a surprise; the HG should play NPCs as being intuitively aware that it is better and easier to capture or temporarily disable you than to try to seriously harm you. Since a sufficiently twisted antagonist can also use your Shine for their own benefit, many will even prefer to keep you around.
* Bleak effects that do not kill you outright count as having an 'escape clause', in the form of Making Answer to the Bleak (pg. 476, CMWGE), so they are unhindered by this power.
Call for Aid
Arc 0+
Type: Imperial Miracle
Cost (Arc 0-1):
1 MP—1/book, call for one of your Retainers
2 MP—use this power a second or later time per book
4 MP—use this power a second or later time per chapter
Cost (Arc 2+):
0 MP—1/book, call for one of your Retainers
1 MP—use this power a second or later time per book
2 MP—use this power a second or later time per chapter
You're rarely without your heroes for long. Name one or more of your Retainers and invoke this power, and it functions as a wish similar to Creature of Fable's Entice,
"I wish they would come and find me here."
This is usually a subtle wish, providing coincidences, clues, and NPC aid to lead your heroes to you rather than opening portals or magically transporting people. It is not guaranteed to bring them to you quickly, though the HG should try to aim for their arrival within 0-2 Chapters and, if you are in imminent danger, always soon enough to attempt to save you.
Pure Light
Arc 1+
Type: Miraculous Action[, Chthonic Action*]
Cost:
1 MP at Arc 1-2
0 MP at Arc 3+
There is a power unique to you, or perhaps shared by a few others like you. It manifests as something intangible and temporary you can summon—something like light, mist, flame, clouds of tiny particles, etc. The substance probably glows, and is most likely bright white, many-hued like a rainbow, or some soothing pastel color, though this isn't required.
When you invoke this miracle, you summon a quantity of it around yourself or somewhere within arm's reach. It's enough of the substance to cover you or a you-sized target in a halo of it, or condense into something like a basketball-sized blob which you can push or throw with a mundane action to affect more distant targets.
The substance is short-lived, dispersing and fading away a few seconds after you stop maintaining the miracle. When you first acquire this power, it has two special properties, and the HG should let you invent or discover additional properties with a 35+-XP quest each.
Choose your properties from this list, or discuss additional options with the HG:
it has a level 1 Auctoritas against the influence of Bleak powers and the Outside, and extends it to anything it covers.
its touch heals superficial physical wounds, including—if sustained for a few minutes, at least—many types of physical Surface Wounds.
its touch causes pain and very minor damage—no worse than a Surface Wound, usually—to something antithetical to your power, such as ghosts or wielders of dark magic.
you can harden it into a brittle solid, to form barriers, restraints, or simple objects—tough enough to stop a punch, and insulating enough to protect from a small fire, but likely to shatter against more intense things.
it repairs cosmetic damage to objects—reversing corrosion and decay, removing tarnish, erasing scratches, etc., though it cannot fix something that's truly broken.
it's physically hot, like concentrated sunlight—if you held it in place for a while you could give someone a sunburn or ignite a very dry, flammable object, and if you use it more diffusely you could keep someone warm in the winter;
it's physically cold, enough to protect someone from summer heat, chill drinks, or, if concentrated and maintained for minutes, cause frostbite or freeze small quantities of ice
anything else you and the HG can agree on, of similar power levels
* The act of summoning your pseudo-Element is miraculous, and can be contested as such, but several of the properties of the pseudo-Element, such as its ability to grant an Auctoritas or heal wounds, are chthonic effects.
Regalia
Arc 1+
Type: Special (Perk)
Cost: —
Accessory Power Type: Miraculous Action [ level = Arc level ]
Accessory Power Cost:
4 MP at Arc 1-2
2 MP at Arc 3
1 MP at Arc 4
0 MP at Arc 5
If you have a spare Perk slot for it, you receive a free Accessory Perk: you have, or will soon find, create, or be given, a piece of Regalia—some object associated with your role, your pseudo-Element, or something else that makes you important and unique. From then on, you may use this Arc's Quest miracles to create new regalia or infuse existing Accessories with your pseudo-Element so that they become regalia.
Each of these Accessories has a single power, an impressive and flexible miracle that you can use it to invoke, often aesthetically and thematically tied to your Pure Light pseudo-Element but functioning in a different or even opposite way—if you have a pseudo-Element that heals or repairs things, you'll tend to acquire destructive regalia; if your pseudo-Element dispels illusions, your regalia might have powers of disguise or deception; if your element creates barriers, your regalia might open portals; etc.
Note that while the powers of your regalia are miraculous, you must still wield them with mundane actions—if you're briefly separated from your regalia or otherwise mundanely prevented from using them, you won't be able to activate their miracles. Since they are represented by Accessory Perks, however, you may mitigate attempts to steal or destroy them by taking Wounds, or recover or repair one that's been lost or destroyed by taking the loss as a Serious Wound and allowing it to 'heal'.
Arc 2+. You may refine your regalia over time, increasing their miracle’s level to match your Arc level. In addition, starting at Arc level 3 you may reduce the cost to 2 MP, then 1 MP at Arc level 4, and finally 0 MP at Arc level 5.
Perk Bonus
Arc 2+
Type: Special (Perk)
Cost: —
At Arc level 2, you receive a bonus Perk slot pre-filled with "It's OK, I'm here." (pg. 430, CMWGE).
You receive another bonus Perk slot pre-filled with the same perk (but for a different NPC) at Arc level 4.
If, for some reason, you are separated from all your Retainers long-term, e.g. if some tragedy occurs and they all die, or if you're stranded in some place they can't possibly reach, or similar, the HG may give you a free "It's OK, I'm here." Perk, optionally in a temporary bonus Perk slot, to ensure that you have at least one.
Sign of Favor
Arc 2+
Type: Chthonic Action
Cost:
0 MP—starting mid-scene, grant your favor to a Retainer
1 MP—starting mid-scene, grant your favor to another Retainer
2 MP—grant your favor to a Retainer immediately
Invoking this miracle, you imbue your pseudo-Element into one of your Retainer who are present in the scene—armoring them with it, strengthening them with it, giving them some special power or advantage.
This takes effect as an Affliction, of level equal to your Arc level, that lasts at least until the end of the scene and maybe a little bit longer. Each Retainer has one such Affliction triggered by this power, which you define the first time you invoke it on them.
The default assumption for this Arc is that these Afflictions will tend to combine the thematics of the Retainer's skills and personality and how they're connected to you with the thematics and nature of your pseudo-Element. The Affliction makes something about your Retainer wondrous, and its Auctoritas ideally allows them to defy (and defend you from) miraculous opponents.
Arc 4+. When you invoke this power, you can trigger multiple Retainers' Afflictions simultaneously, provided all of them are present in the scene.
When you are in the presence of one of your Retainers, and they're in immediate danger—something that would harm them equivalent to a Serious or Deadly Wound is about to happen—Watch Out invokes itself automatically to warn you of the danger. It warns you preemptively, giving you just enough time to react to the threat, shout a warning, or provide some sort of defense. The information provided by this miracle is generally the direction of the incoming threat, a brief vision of the worst-case scenario if you do nothing, and fairly precise awareness of exactly when disaster would strike.
A warning like that generally gives 1 Edge or a +1 Tool bonus to mundane defenses. People that know you and trust your warnings—generally, members of your Retinue who have seen you use this ability before—may get a slightly higher bonus, such as 2 Edge.
Arc 5. At Arc 5, this power can also manifest automatically as a Major miracle to warn you of more far-off threats to your Retainers. It still only triggers when you're in the presence of one of your Retainers, but it can give you advance warning of danger days, weeks, or months in advance, showing you a brief vision of possible disaster and who or what is at fault, and giving you a rough estimate of how long you have until it happens. This isn't guaranteed to catch everything far in advance; it mostly picks up on plots against your Retainers, illnesses or curses they've picked up that haven't shown symptoms yet, new enemies they've made, etc.
Neither the base form of this power nor its Arc 5 upgrade will warn you of any danger or hostile intent aimed at you, only at your Retainers.
Starting at Arc level 3, you gain the ability to summon your pseudo-Element at full power. This is no longer limited to small scale and minimal range, instead limited to 'about the size of a house' and 'somewhere in the same scene', and its effects are more significant:
if the normal version granted an Auctoritas, now the Auctoritas's level is equal to your Arc level;
if it could heal superficial wounds, now it can heal those instantly and, with time, it can treat more significant wounds.
if it could cause minor damage, now it burn things with an intensity like fire or acid;
if it could form brittle barriers, now they're as durable as solid steel;
if it could repair minor damage to objects, now it can fix anything that's not totally destroyed;
et cetera, scaling up any other powers similarly
If you spend 2 MP (or 1 MP at Arc 5), you can affect things at up to neighborhood scale.
Limitations on Healing. While the wounds the powered up form of Pure Light can heal can be much more severe than the basic version, mechanically it still cannot heal Serious or Deadly Wounds. Specifically, while the apparent physical injury from such Wounds can be healed, the lost Health Levels and the temporary Wound powers usually remain until the Wound properly recovers—descriptively, the character may no longer be physically hurt, but some psychic or spiritual trauma lingers.
Support Magic
Arc 3+
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost (Arc 3):
1 MP—1/chapter, use helpful magic
2 MP—use helpful magic an additional time
Cost (Arc 4):
0 MP—1/chapter, use helpful magic
1 MP—use helpful magic an additional time
Cost (Arc 5):
0 MP—1-2x/scene, use helpful magic
1 MP—use helpful magic an additional time
As your supernatural power grows, you can learn to use it for things other than directly throwing around your pseudo-Element. When you first gain this power, choose three 'support spells' that you can cast. You can learn additional spells for a Recharge Token or 15+-XP Quest each.
A support spell is a simple, direct miracle that:
harmlessly creates something useful, such as food and drink, simple tools, or clothing;
detects and identifies some category of thing, such as living beings, treasure, traps and hazards, or things of the Outside;
gives one or more allies a temporary, useful ability such as levitation, invisibility, the ability to see in the dark, or greatly enhanced strength;
defeats a specific sort of obstacle, e.g. by opening locks, dispelling illusions, or calming animals;
protects allies or an area from an environmental hazard—creating a bubble of breathable air that repels liquids and harmful gas, shielding an area against the corrosive forces of the Outside, or drawing a circle that ghosts and demons can't cross; or
anything else you and the HG agree might fit, of comparable power to the above—it shouldn't be something that can be used to attack enemies directly, at least not easily, and ideally it should be something you can use to aid or support your Treasures.
Power of the Heart
Arc 4+
Type: Chthonic Action
0 MP—1/book, demonstrate a deus ex machina power
2 MP—do the same, a second or later time per book
4 MP—do the same, a second or later time per chapter
You can invoke Power of the Heart to supercharge your pseudo-Element. This is a shapeless deus ex machina power, capable of manifesting as a Tool bonus, a Major miracle, a Wish, or whatever else it needs. The core of it is like a wish of the form,
"I wish I could use my pseudo-Element for this."
The usual function is to provide you with a temporary new use for Pure Light and a single free invocation of the same, potentially powered up to a Major miracle if necessary to accomplish your goal, but it can also provide Support Magic, empower one of your Treasures, or loan you other powers such as Chosen One's Shield or Blast. The power-up may last for just a single use, a scene, a Chapter, or a whole Book—this depends on what you're trying to do with it, and how long the HG expects that to take.
the world's smallest carnivore is called the "least weasel" 😭😭 i'm dying but like if it's the smallest carnivore then it sure is the least amount of weasel you can have 😭😭😭
Hubris (Part 2), a fan Arc for Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine
Here, after some delay, is the rest of the Hubris Arc. I'll be finishing this one in this post, it shouldn't need a part 3 or 4 like some of my earlier arcs.
A Sorcerer's Confidence
Arc 2+
Type: Chthonic Action
Cost:
1 MP—propose, and enforce, a theory based on what you "know" from your Truths
2 MP—propose, and enforce, a theory based on what you "know" from your Role
When you propose a theory about something that you—in the person of your Role, or as the one responsible for your Truths—"should" know, you can invoke Sorcerer's Confidence to force the world to play along.
Your theory becomes a temporary Affliction, with level equal to your Arc rating, that states that you must experience a world in which that theory is correct. It will create coincidences and minor miracles to ensure you aren't proven incorrect, deflect active attempts at disproof with an Auctoritas (and usually Obstacle) equal to its level, and reward you with potential Will or MP when your folly gets you into trouble.
The Affliction lingers for the duration of the chapter, then fades. If necessary, you can effectively end it early by activating the power a second time and proposing a contradictory theory—as long as neither has sufficient Strike to overcome the other, the two clashing Afflictions will cancel out and remain inactive until they fade.
You can waive your “breath” of MP—the +1 MP you get at the start of each chapter—to carry one such Affliction into the new chapter. You can even repeat this across multiple chapters to sustain one of these Afflictions for longer. Other Afflictions from this power fade as normal.
Science, Faith, and Sorcery. If you invoke this as part of a Science, Faith, and Sorcery XP Action, you immediately recover 1 MP.
Atonement
Arc 2+
Type: Special
Cost: —
You may take the Never Say Die! Action any time you can meet its condition. If you can frame the action—"Fight to the last drop of strength in your body!"—as something you're doing to try to atone for your Arc Truths, you earn 1 MP, up to a maximum of your starting MP, and each additional group XP that you earn from this Action also earns you an additional MP.
You can't directly combine this with Heroic; only one or the other can affect a given action. However, if you have two XP Actions available, it is valid to use Frantic or Heroic to trigger (Be in) Trouble, and then after declaring that you are overwhelmed and outmatched, use Atonement to trigger Never Say Die!
Playing God
Arc 3+
Type: Imperial Miracle, Ritual
Cost (Arc 3-4):
0 MP—do nearly anything, as a wish, once per book
4 MP—do so again later in the same book
Cost (Arc 5):
0 MP—do nearly anything, as a wish, once per book
2 MP—do so again later in the same book
At most once per chapter, by some methodology appropriate to your Arc Role and driven by your Failing, you can accomplish nearly anything as a wish. This can be nearly any wish you want as long as you can provide at least a flimsy justification for how it might work and how your Role might enable you to accomplish it.
There is one major limitation: if the wish does not substantially draw on skills you've acquired from your past mistakes—that is, if it isn't somehow connected to one of your What Have I Done? Truths—it is very likely to go terribly wrong. If you're still looking for more opportunities to make terrible mistakes to fill out your list of Truths, though, this is an easy way to get there!
Easily Forgiven
Arc 4+
Type: Chthonic Action
Cost: 4 MP
If you've spent 3+ Chapters in a Region without causing disaster for its inhabitants, or you've recently saved its inhabitants from disaster, you may invoke Easily Forgiven to claim a Power Perk, Well-Liked in (Region) (CMWGE, p. 401). This requires a Perk slot, but you may choose to discard one of your Perks when you invoke this power to make room.
Even once your popularity fades (due to discarding the granted Perk) the people of the Region will tend not to have lingering grudges from before you gained the Perk, with the exception of those individuals you have personally, specifically wronged.
It's no good to have no motivation at all to progress through this Arc, so here's the offer: if you make it this far, all the way up to Arc level 5, one of your sins will be forgiven.
When you acquire this power, you can rewrite one and only one of the Conventions created by What Have I Done? into its opposite or resolution. You can make that one thing right again. It remains one of your Arc Truths and still works with the associated powers and quest miracles, but it's no longer a tragedy, no longer a regret.
If necessary, if merely rewriting a Convention isn't sufficient on its own to fix what you've done, this also functions as a wish,
"I wish I could make this right."
which will allow you to use the rules of a wish to correct the lingering damage of whatever it was you did.
You can't fix everything. This power only functions once, even though you might have as many as six disasters to atone for by this point.
Hubris (Part 1), a fan Arc for Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine
I had thought my next one would be the red Arc, but then I stumbled into inspiration for orange instead.
So:
Here is the beginning of Hubris, a miraculous Knight Arc for former villains seeking atonement, terrible wizards and mad scientists that keep making everything worse, and generally anyone who has done or is about to do something really impressive but regrettable and that can never be fixed, forgiven, or forgotten.
Edits:
added an option to sustain one Affliction from A Sorcerer’s Confidence across multiple chapters
made part of Break the Rules permanent at Arc 3
This Arc offers the following powers:
Driven
What Have I Done?
Painful Lessons
Break the Rules (at Arc 1+)
A Sorcerer’s Confidence (at Arc 2+)
Atonement (at Arc 2+)
Playing God (at Arc 3+)
Easily Forgiven (at Arc 4+)
Redemption (at Arc 5)
While pursuing a Hubris Arc, you also have the special power Heroic. You may want to consider renaming it to Infamous or Wanted, as mentioned here—more so than even the previous Arcs, characters on Hubris are likely to be... questionable, in their heroism.
Arc Concepts
For quest miracle purposes, among other things, a Knight Arc should have a Role, a Failing, and one or more Truths. You'll need to decide the first two, and one of the last, to begin this Arc.
Your Role is the identity under which you've made your mistakes, and under which you continue to make mistakes, though you may be trying to atone. It's something like 'eccentric scholar', 'repentant villain', or 'terrible wizard'.
Your Failing is the thing that drove you to make mistakes in the past, and will lead to you making more in the future. Sometimes it's something as simple as 'curiosity' or 'love of science'; sometimes it's a probably-unattainable goal, like 'I will bring my family back to life' or 'I will remake the world in my image' or something.
Your Truths are the irreparable mistakes you've made, the unforgivable atrocities you've committed, the regrettable ways you've changed the world. You'll start the Arc with one: something terrible you did because of your Failing, perhaps, or the regret which justifies your Failing.
Driven
Arc 0+
Type: Level 2 Bond
Cost: —
When you begin this Arc, you gain your Arc Failing—that goal or personality trait that drives you forward on the Arc—as a level 2 Bond. This has the following effects:
Invoke Driven when you can rely on it as motivation to overcome an Obstacle or win a conflict and you can add your Bond rating (2) to your Intention level.
Invoke Driven when you're using it as motivation for a miraculous action and you can add your Bond rating (2) as Strike.
Invoke Driven when it causes you to act recklessly and gets you into trouble and, if the trouble was significant enough, the HG may give you up to your Bond rating (2) in Will or MP.
You can rely on Driven in place of food, water, sleep, or even air—the Obstacles for continuing to act despite those difficulties remain unchanged, but it becomes feasible to keep going as long as you're pursuing your Bond.
What Have I Done?
Arc 0+
Type: Chthonic Action
Cost: 0 MP and a Deadly Wound
Before you begin this Arc, or sometime soon after, you'll have done something you truly regret, something you can never fix. Invoke What Have I Done? and take a Deadly Wound from the guilt, trauma, or consequences of it, and it becomes written into the world itself. You can use this power only once.
Your sin becomes a Convention, a campaign-wide level 2 Affliction that details its lasting consequences. The HG can use it to justify small miracles that cause continuing problems, the Convention's Auctoritas shields it from being interfered with by careless wishes, and its presence as a law of the world means it will eventually reassert itself or find some new way to express itself if it is somehow 'permanently' corrected. As long as you're a Main Character, the Convention endures. Should you leave the game or abandon the character, the HG may (or may not, at their option) let the Convention fade to a mere setting detail, addressable like any other with miracles and quests, after 0-2 Books.
Arc 1+. As you progress along this Arc, your capacity for unforgivable error only grows. You can invoke What Have I Done? again, as many times as it takes to reach (your Hubris Arc level + 1) total such Conventions. Keep track of which Conventions come from this power, as these regrets are your Knight Arc's Truths.
Painful Lessons
Arc 0+
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost: +0 MP
Failure is instructive, and you've learned (a little) from your biggest mistakes. You can invoke Painful Lessons to get a +1 Tool bonus for doing anything basically similar to, or clearly related to, one of your Arc Truths from What Have I Done? You may combine this with other miracles that use Intentions, even miracles from other Arcs.
Arc 2. At Arc 2, this becomes a +2 Tool bonus.
Painful Lessons (Powered Up)
Arc 1+
Type: Miraculous Action
Cost:
4 MP at Arc 1-2
2 MP at Arc 3
1 MP at Arc 4
0 MP at Arc 5
For each of your Truths, each of your regrets, you acquire a new miraculous power. This can be almost anything that fits the theme of the Truth: something you perfected while working on your doomed project, something you learned from the disaster, some corrupt power you acquired from the backlash, or some ability you salvaged from the ruins.
It is not a Major miracle, so its effects are typically local in scale, but it can be flexible and impressive, and generally does not require a mundane Intention to use 'target' it or use it effectively.
Pick a Skill appropriate to your Role, ideally something that often requires special equipment or takes a lot of time. If you don't have an appropriate Skill, you can choose one you don't have and optionally move 1-2 points from other Skills into it.
Invoke Break the Rules and
Affected mundane actions, in a contest with miracles, do not automatically lose. They use Break the Rules' miracle level and Strike, instead.
Slow actions can be done faster: things that would require days of work take hours, those that would take hours take only minutes, and things that should take minutes only need seconds.
You can waive requirements for specialized tools, equipment, or environments, relying on your natural abilities and improvised tools without facing an Obstacle for it.
Magical Skills are valid rule-breaking Skills, here. For the most part, Connections, Shine, and Cool are not. Superior Skills are allowed, but note that they may not benefit as much from this power as others; in many cases, Superior Skills are already able to do something faster, or with less equipment or preparation, than their more mundane equivalent.
Arc 3. Starting at Arc 3, the third feature of Break the Rules—the ability to waive requirements for specialized equipment for your rule-breaking Skill—simply becomes part of your version of the Skill, and you no longer need to activate this power to claim that benefit.
