Mist: Rank 0

Rank 0 Mist

(Difficulty 15)

"The Dissolution of Doubt"

Effects at this rank of Mist unmake what is already unreal—causes a thing that is not to remain not, an illusion to unravel, a lie to demonstrate it false and not part of the is.

To use this rank of Mist you must name an apparent thing that you believe unreal. It need not be formally an illusion or a lie: it suffices that it be a thing which presents itself as existing, or longs towards existing, but is currently inclined towards falsehood and certainly no closer to reality than the would have been.

Success returns the MP or available free action; failure (whether because the thing you targeted was real or because your roll did not suffice) consumes them. If you have targeted a "hesitant" or "legendary form" that sought to become real, then you may opt to roll damage instead of recovering your MP or action; if your target was either illusory or never there at all, then the GM eliminates it from play. In this fashion, much as you may use Praxis to confirm the existence of a thing you believe so, you may use Mist to falsify an idea you believe to be untrue.

The fairy term for this effects is to see the mist; the fairy, wondering if a thing is real, catches sight of the shrouding of mist around it, and knows it is not so. Darkness sprites have a facility and intimacy with the Mist, and receive a +1 on this roll.

Elemental spirits of rank 0 Mist include the reason catchers, the city wells, and some argue the darkness sprites themselves. These are creatures that specialize either in the dissolution and containment of illusion, or the simplification and reduction of the forms of the world.

Character Splat: Sprites (General)

The sprites are the fairies of raw life—the vitality that is in the world that causes things to be rather than be not, to move rather than to slumber in stillness, to dance and burn with life rather than fade away into the great gray doldrums that preceded light and faith and existence.

They are the creatures of action, being, and becoming: of the world as a forum for action, a place of transformative doing that makes one thing into another. They are the power source for magic and the world itself—it is their raw energy that sustains the great sea of experience, the fairy courts, human civilization, and the world and sound. To be a sprite is to share an essence with the Sun that gives life to the world, the numinous entities that caused the world to coalesce from nothing, and the "field of sparks"—the quasi-sentient nodes of energy and power in the underlying metaphysical substrate that fairy theologians hold as the source of existence.

Fairies represents the raw power of magic in a scene—the stuff most commonly provided by the sprites—with tokens. Power tokens are magic that seeks to answer need and bring things into harmony: the more of these tokens a scene contains, the more magic infuses everything with its power and draws things together towards a sublime ending. Spells and effects often require a certain number of power tokens to function: they do not consume these tokens, but rather charge up from them, so that, e.g., a flight spell might require three such tokens in a scene, while transforming a city block into a gleaming citadel of faerie might require eight.

Power tokens come at a certain cost. The magic is always seeking expression, and this search does not always yield to conscious will. When someone first enters a scene containing many power tokens, the magic may ground itself out through them; when a scene containing many such tokens breaks up, it may ground itself out through everyone therein. Sprites are immune to this "flowburn," but anyone else might be injured, transformed, or dazed.

Mist tokens, conversely, are a kind of magic that shrouds the world in myth and mystery. It's magic that questions, magic that leaves questions, magic that challenges the conceptions of the mind while infusing the great background of experience with power. Mist tokens function much like power tokens save that where the Mist draws down details become unreal: the world becomes as a dream or a religious experience. Only the very large things, such as emotions, the sun, the sea, love, glory, friendship, hate, and dreaming can emerge from a Mist-charged scene as real as they were inside it. Characters may be flowburned (strictly speaking, "Mistburned") by Mist tokens as well, but the effect is different: not injury but unreality, not dizziness but a waking dream, and a transformation that is more likely spiritual than physical.

The three kinds of sprite, then, are:

• Darkness sprites, who source the Mist;
• Nicknobs, or worldkin sprites, who shape and refine power; and
• Spark sprites, the purest manifestation of magic, vitality, and life.

Each is immune to flowburn and Mistburn. Each is concerned most prominently with the raw power of magic: spark sprites, who are an endless source of power tokens; darkness sprites, who dwell in Mist; and the worldkin sprites, the nicknobs, who manage the flows of power through the world.

TENTATIVE: one or more elements of this post is particularly open to later change.
[nicknobs.]

Metaphysics: Numinous Generalities

What Is

...

Numinous Generalities

Sprites in particular are given to the introduction into what is of "numinous generalities" — things that "are" in some sense, and specifically in the sense that they are in what is, but which have no clear or specific meaning. Some standard examples are

• a reason to live;
• will;
• the power to choose;
• goodness, or, the influence of goodness on something;
• destiny;
• a transformative power of love;
• hope; and
• spirit

These dictate behavior and can be drawn upon to shape outcomes, but they are difficult to grapple with and amenable to multiple understandings. The power of numinous generalities is that they project the capability to create, use, and manipulate objects and tools into the domain of the ineffable: when there is no action that could be taken that could create hope in someone, a sprite may create hope directly. When there is no way to know what the right thing to do is, a sprite can directly input an influence of goodness on the world. In short, most magic achieves something specific but is limited to wreaking effects on the world and hoping that this accomplishes some intangible aim. The magic of numinous generalities directly accomplishes the intangible aim, at the price of non-specificity.

It is the power that the spark sprites have to create such numinous generalities from themselves; they infuse the ether with raw meaning and unformed power and then they themselves are the source of will, or a reason to live, or the messenger and agent of destiny.

It is the power of a darkness sprite to Mist away such forms, or more precisely, to deny that such concepts are anything more than belief. Thus the standard numinous generalities of a darkness sprite are:

• you don't have to be that way;
• you don't have to believe that;
• this isn't justice, you don't have to think this is justice;
• this isn't right, you don't have to think it's right;
• this can change, it's OK to change it;
• this can be let go of;
• this doesn't have to be.

Thus a spark sprite allows you to believe, through them. A darkness sprite can free you from a belief.

Waylings are able to partake of both natures. They may manifest the positive numinous generalities, and they do not have to base them on themselves — a wayling can give you a reason for living that is not them. They may also dispose of them, but only through action: they cannot simply Mist away a false idea of justice. Rather, if they want to free people from a belief, they must prove through their own actions and choices that that belief is unnecessary.

In all cases, these numinous generalities are created through Praxis, nominally though not necessarily through rank 2 Praxis ("As I Have Spoken, so may it be.") If for some reason a fairy not of the appropriate type wishes to create a numinous generality, the standard difficulty upgrade is +4.

Darkness Sprites (Update)

It is a power of the darkness sprites to Mist away the power and immediacy of certain abstract beliefs. They may introduce into the is a numinous generality, a true thing without specific meaning; its character is something like "this isn't just" or "you don't have to believe this" or "things don't have to be this way." They do not suffer the usual +4 penalty for creating such an abstract idea using Praxis.

Metaphysics: The Would-Have-Been

The Would-Have-Been

And underneath what is, like the deeper currents beneath the ocean's face, is the would have been.

The would have been, too, is made of forms.

They present themselves to the mind: look, here ought have been a cat; here, there could have been a table; here, but for that which intercedes, a person would have died.

The would have been is more personal than the is.

The forms shift; they are ambiguous; they are keyed, in respects, to the mind that watches. They are ghosts and shadows. But they are not unreal. Any fairy can touch upon the would have been, see into it, pull pieces of it closer to the surface or push them farther down.

Something is, beneath the is. Something is, that would have been.

We can say, roughly, that there are two large categories of things that fall into the would have been. The first is myth and story. These are great underdeep currents, powers that shoulder their way in and about the is, things constantly seeking to disturb reality with themselves. These are the things that wish to be and they impinge on the mind as things that we feel, see, believe, but know at the same time they are not true.

These are the closet monsters; these are the triumphs of righteousness; these are the perfect towns that exist somewhere in the country, the perfect lives, the perfect people. These are the killer bees. These are Elvis, still alive, and just a little over at the gas pump next to your own.

And then there are the actions of the fey that fail to be true.

When a fairy seeks to act, and is prevented, then their action falls into the would have been. The fore-echo of their intention still lingers in the world. The thing they would have achieved still hangs about them like an aura in the air. It lives. It is like a snarling cat, retreating with reluctance from the good food of the world.

The marks it leaves as it departs the real become a portion of what is.

Then last there is a spare small scattering of forms that emerge on their own into the would have been. It is always possible, after all, to come upon a person and realize, "They would have been a car!" Or to find an apple tree and say, "This would have been an orange!"

Here, there would have been a building---if the project hadn't failed.

This cup! It would have broken, if the floor hadn't been so soft.

These things are unique in their behavior; they have no characteristic quality; they do not organize themselves into rivers of myth or partake in the actions of the fey. They are simply padding in the would have been---things that came close to happening but did not; things too strong for the might have been.

And the meaning of all of this is simple: that the forms of the world, and the actions of the fey, conduct themselves with a certain mindfulness to the thrumming currents of the would have been below. They are shaped by them, buffeted by them, mindful of them: though they are not the same, what is knows what could have been.

It can be denied truth, but not existence.

It lives and piles up in echoes within the substance of the Mist.

Character Splat: Darkness Sprites

Darkness Sprite

The darkness sprite is most typically observed as a soap-bubble distortion of shape within a shadow or darkness. Its surface is the source of ripple-like sensations. One may witness light that has the appearance of gleaming eyes yet cannot be located when looked for—a motif without manifestation. If driven to emerge into the light, it attains a tentative air and moves with some embarrassment; its shape is tenuous and permeated with oscillations, and tendrils like antennae taste the world and feel about as if for danger.

That said, the other common appearance for the darkness sprite is nothing like what was described above. These sprites have an appallingly humanoid appearance, some not even deigning to appear pale, gaunt, or smallen; they are like young men or women, sometimes children, distinguished only by a peculiar deepness and blankness in their eyes and their presence at such times as one would expect not human company but fairy visitation.

The abnormal darkness sprite has a fairy appearance but with some of the overt distinguishing characteristics of the spherical darkness or deep-eyed children above; these creatures are doubtless tainted by or bordering upon other fairy types, and thus distinguish themselves by a character of darknessing or darknessishness rather than the full character of the darkness sprite.

One must be cautioned against presuming the malignity of these sprites. They are, while not notably beneficent spirits, no more inclined to mischief or malevolence than the average of their kind and perhaps, in truth, burdened by their distinctive experience with a greater awareness of responsibility and the costs of suffering than other fairies might be. One must consider the darkness of their appearance not a sign of moral failing but of magical negativity: they are prone to consume or direct light rather than scatter it about, they receive energy rather than give it, but they are as efficacious in absorbing, mitigating, or neutralizing curses and banes as their brighter cousins are at bestowing blessings.

Thus we may say, befriend such darkness sprites as ye may encounter, but do not invite them into rituals which have an intent to raise power, as this will in no wise do ye good.

— A Catalogue of Faerie, by Tracey Oengein

Darkness sprites are keepers of the great silences and mysteries of the world. It's their job to clean up the loose magic in the world, the petty and unproductive disorder, and leave instead the echoing vastness of Nature, Being, and Truth.

It is their duty to stop—to eat, more precisely—random surges of power, follies of magic, and disruptions of the mundane. But they do not devour, and sometimes even augment, the spiritual openness that is magic at its best. They protect people from random manticores but leave behind not simple mundanity but a quiet transformative potential.

And, too, theirs is the duty to swallow—when they can—the mundane things that ought not be. To let the darkness rise around unbearable things, and consume them in that darkness before the light returns. They are that which leaves the world clean.

Into them spins what is unnecessary, and it is gone.

These are the standard invocations of a darkness sprite—the powers they rely on to do their work:

• I am a void into which power falls
• I am a devouring spirit
• I take this into me; I accept it.

Example: "I am a void into which power falls. I can decaffeinate her coffee from here."

Darkness sprites have a +1 bonus on Mist rolls. They are never burned by the power tokens that represent loose magical energy, and on a Praxis roll of 23+ they can remove 1-5 such tokens from a scene.

Famous darkness sprites include the West Wind's hound; Professor Evans of the High Academy; and the Central Darkness that lives beneath Providence, RI.

You should play a darkness sprite if . . .
You want to think about what happens to things that aren't part of the world any longer. If you want to fight curses and misfortunes. If you want to be a creature of the shadowy borderland, but don't want to be dispassionate like a monitor fairy watch-fey would be. If you think that your group needs a cool head and someone to draw off the consequences of excess. If you like the idea of being a power of cold, dark, sobriety, loneliness, quiet, stillness, openness, and release. If you'd rather bring an end to pain than a beginning to happiness.