The Cosmology of Arcadia
Arcadia is a world literally alive. It is a place where every mortal concept has it's incarnation, where animals talk and streams, mountains and forests are home to beautiful women intimately linked to the well being the terrain.
Types of Spirits
- Anima: talking animals, including extinct and mythic animals.
- Elementals and Nymphs: incarnations of natural phenomena, such as fire, air and earth, or specific non-mobile natural features, such as trees and mountains.
- Fae: generally humanoid beings who can be seen as incarnations of concepts or traits.[/b]
Other Spirit classes
- Totems: individual spirits who are generally some of the most powerful. Totem is a status. Each totem is the champion of a group, generally Werewolf tribes.
- Divines: Spirits which are actively worshiped. May answer petitions, but are not champions of groups.
- Celestine: Spirits which serve Divines, ie, the angels of the Patriarch are celestines.
The magic of the changing breeds is highly dependent upon spirits. While learning a gift from another member of the changing breeds is always possible, the origin of all gifts is spirits, and it can sometimes be easier to go to a spirit for a gift than get it from another werewolf. Spirits will still usually want gifts or favours, however.
Creating fetishes and talismans requires the interaction of a spirit. To imbue a fetish or talisman with the desired power, a spirit must be sought out which is related to the power--water elementals or naiads for ever-filling bowls, fire elementals for blazing swords, spirits of trickery or mischief for limitless debit cards, and so on. The spirit must agree to imbue the item. Doing so requires the spirit to give a part of themselves to the item, and so they often ask favours or offerings. In the case of a talisman, once the item is used up, any Gnosis which was invested in it by the spirit returns to that spirit at the next sunrise or sunset on Arcadia. Fetishes retain the Spirit's Gnosis until they are destroyed, and for this reason Spirits are very reluctant to imbue fetishes.
Each die of effect requires the spirit to place 1 Gnosis into the item. For example, a sword (Dam 3) which deals aggravated damage to supernatural creatures would require 1 point of Gnosis from a spirit related to war or pain for each die of aggravated damage desired. If it is desired for the Agg to be in addition to the sword's normal lethal damage, an extra point of Gnosis must be invested. In the case of a "limitless credit card" which essentially conjures fake money for purchases, each point of Gnosis invested by a spirit of trickery would allow the user to act as though they had one dot of Finances.
Some effects don't mimic a stat, such as a bowl which conjures fresh, clean water (1 Gn.). For these effects, use the following list as a guideline:
(insert list).
Ok, so this cuts out chair and blade-of-grass spirits, binds Werethings and Fae a bit more, and retains the overall in-game magic system of werethings. Yes things are still a bit sketchy, but basically when you want to make a fetish, you go to Arcadia, find a paradigm-appropriate fae, and say "hey, gimme some of your magic so I can do this thing" and it acts like trying to get stuff in a barter system. It's MTP, but there will be more guidelines when this goes from being a rough sketch to actual rules, and the MTP is basically "can I convince this guy to do this thing for me," and leans on the social interaction system.
It raises the question of whether Werewolf PCs can learn PC Fae arts, which I guess is nicely solved by making PC Fae half-human changelings, but I'm not necessarily opposed to, and if the power systems get balanced and made more similar, shouldn't really be an issue.
Actually, that raises another question that I need to answer at some point anyway- How miscible are the splats? In OWoD, the answer is pretty much "They're not, and we're ripping up your character sheet for even attempting it." But in this, well, I get to decide that, and I think the answer should be "somewhat." I mean, Werewolves can't become mages because they already have awakened spirits, but there's no reason a werewolf couldn't learn hedge magic (Assuming things get balanced). Vampirism... I don't know. I feel like it should be another way of altering your spirit (see below). I do kind of like the idea that becoming a vampire basically kills your spirit, but I also like the idea of vampiric werethings. I'm considering Werething gifts all being tagged Creation/Stasis/Destruction, and whether you can use one depends on your spiritual ties, so maybe vampire werewolves can use Destruction gifts, also maybe V.Werewolves with Animalism regain their ability to shapechange.
The First Vampire
Eons ago in the prehistoric forests of the Material world, a man thought himself the best hunter to grace the planet. He believed he could run down, kill or trap any beast, no matter how fast, how strong, or how cunning.
But, he also knew that death came for all things, and that he could hardly claim himself to be the greatest hunter if one would eventually claim him. So he sought a way to deny death his skin.
He studied with witches and shamans, and spoke with spirits of decay and rebirth. He stalked the darkest paths of Arcadia and found spirits no sane mortal would entreat. In the end, the hunter had trapped his arcane prey, and created a ritual which would allow him to elude the greatest hunter of all, Death.
The night after he enacted his ritual, he found that he hungered. No meat or fermented drink would sate, but the raw flesh of the auroch he slew tasted sweeter than ever before.
It was after he eliminated his ravenous feast and found that it had rotted as it passed through him that he began to suspect the cost of his ritual. The wise ones had warned him that all great rituals had great prices, but he'd laughed it off. As he slew another beast, looking to slake his hunger, he took an experimental taste of the blood from his spear, and the hunger deep within him quieted just a hint. After he drained the corpse of blood into his mouth, he found that the hunger dulled, as if he'd eaten a filling meal but not the one he truly wanted.
He quickly found that the blood of his former kin was the only thing that truly satisfied his hunger now. The hunter was not one for sentiment, but did now wonder what he'd made of himself. When he tried to overcome his hunger through willpower, he found that it just weakened him, to the point where every step was a labour.
He succumbed to the consequence of his arrogance, and became a hunter of those he once called brothers. Some sought him out and requested that he teach them his ritual, and for those he found worthy, he assented--after he drained them of their precious lifeblood.
The ritual has become the Embrace. With each generation, the ritual wanes in power as it is applied inexpertly by those who only learned an already inexact form.
Vampires can survive on the blood of animals, but it is a life plagued by the thirst for human blood. A vampire who has drank any blood cannot spend willpower to ignore their thirst, and animal blood is weak compared to human blood. All vampiric powers cost double when paid for in animal blood, and vampires spend two points of blood fueling their undead forms each night if they've consumed any animal blood. A vampire with animal and human blood in their pool may choose which they are using to fuel powers or subsist.
Supernatural blood is comparatively potent. Each point of Supernatural blood used to pay for vampiric abilities counts as two points for the effect, but is only a single point for point-per-turn maximums. Supernatural blood flows through a vampire quickly, however, and a vampire with any supernatural blood in their pool spends two points of supernatural blood to sustain themselves (if they only have 1 point of supernatural blood in their pool, they need spend only that one point). Supernatural blood is always spent first, and a vampire with supernatural blood in their pool cannot choose to spend another form of blood instead.
Vampires and the Changing Breeds
Vampires are strongly Static creatures. Any change applied to them is quickly undone by the magic of the Embracing ritual. They are almost wholly removed from Creation, unable to procreate save through powerful magic or the Embrace, and have a unique relationship with Destruction, difficult to kill save through powerful or specific magic or rituals, but strong forces of destruction and death themselves.
Because they have had their ties to Creation severed, many members of the changing breeds see vampires as unnatural (as opposed to supernatural). Members of the changing breeds sympathetic to Stasis may be willing to work with vampires.
Because they are effectively walking corpses sustained through a particularly wasteful form of hunting, some members of the changing breeds believe vampires to be incarnations Destruction. The fact that the spirits The Hunter spoke to to learn the secrets for his ritual would be rather unsavory sorts does not help this association. Changing breeds who are opposed to destruction and partial to this belief oppose vampires as well.
A very small minority of changing breeds see the transformative nature of the Embrace and believe vampires to be at least loosely tied to Creation, but these changing breeds are few and far between.
City Striders and Guttersnipes are the most likely of the werewolf tribes to work with vampires, reverent as they are of Beath. Of the other changing breeds, the hyena-spirited Aasdier do not shy away from vampires, tolerant as they are of spiritual entities associated with death, pain, disease and other unsavoury subjects, and the triatic, spider-spirited Weavers have no problem with vampires either. The fell Tunnel-Loppers who worship Cur Deiraeadh have a certain respect for vampires and will frequently work with them.
Should a vampire embrace a changing breed, the victim loses their ability to change forms from that they were embraced in, and loses the ability to use Creation gifts, or the Creation version of gifts with multiple ties. If the embraced changing breed learns the vampiric discipline of Animalism, they regain the ability to take their other forms. If an embraced changing breed learns the discipline of Discord, they may spend blood points in place of gnosis to use Creation gifts.
Vampires, Spirits, Arcadia and Magic
The vampiric spirit is a twisted thing tied to their body. While this is similar to the spiritual nature of the changing breeds, the vampire is a thing of the Material realm, not Arcadia. A vampire has a difficult time entering Arcadia, as they cannot project their spirit, and have no inherent way of traveling there bodily. A vampire taken to Arcadia is stranded there until they are brought back or find a way back.
As vampires essentially do not have a dual nature, they cannot be mages. They cannot tie their spirit to a familiar, give it it's own will and motive force or put pieces of it in objects. In essence, they are their own fetter and their spirit is indivisible. If, through an act of great magic, a vampire manages to separate their spirit to gain use of true magic, they cease to be a vampire.
Likewise, a mage cannot be a vampire. The mage's spirit is separate from their body and cannot be bound to it in the Embrace except through destroying their avatar, which usually will destroy their spirit and kill them. Theoretically, The Hunter could perform the First Embrace on a mage and draw their spirit back to their body, but doing so would destroy their avatar, and remove from them the ability to use all but hedge magic.
