This is an RPG concept I have floating around. It's been wanting me to actually do something with it. So I will be sticking pieces of the rules and setting up. Expect clusters of daily posts separated by days, weeks, months, or years of downtime.
This rank of Invoke allows for the reflexive unleashing of emotion, reaction, and power on the world. This is the proper rank of effect for catching something thrown at you, sharing a first kiss, shouting down an enemy, and calling upon your fairy nature to act upon the world.
Rank 1 Invoke is a primal mode of action. It manifests a single impulse; it has no place in it for higher-order goals; it has no guarantee of success. Instead, rolling an 18+ guarantees that you've put your full strength, speed, heart, or whatever into it; rolling anything less means that you hesitated, goofed, or just weren't at your best.
The calling for this rank of Invoke is a description of your character or their current mental state—something, presumably, relevant to what you're intending to do. For instance, suppose someone throws a ball at your character's head. You want to catch it. You could invoke any of the following callings:
Calling: "I'm athletic."
Calling: "I'm not putting up with that today."
Calling: "It's groovy, it's groovy."
Calling: "I guard what is given me."
Calling: "Not for nothing have I trained among the ball-throwing mountain yeti for seven years!"
Before following this up with
Action: "I grab the ball out of the air."
Inchoate and Formal Actions
Many of the actions you take during a game of Fairies are inchoate—they have no specific system motivation or form. For instance, your character might go around doing daily chores and looking up information on the web while amidst a telephone conversation with someone else: most of the time, most of what you're doing there (and certainly 99% of the individual sentences you say on the phone) have no game mechanics associated with them.
If the GM asks you to roll for something you're doing, or otherwise makes it mechanical, then it's become a formal action. Most of the time, if an action goes from inchoate to formal, it's a rank 1 Invoke effect: if you roll 18+, you put your best foot forward, and if you roll 17-, you . . . don't.
What if putting your best foot forward isn't enough?
That usually means you actually want to be consciously taking an action of a higher rank or a different Attribute. Either accept failure or talk to the GM about what you should be doing instead.
Fairy Power
Each fairy type has a set of callings that are suited to invoking their magical nature. When you want to reflexively do something magical, you use such a calling. The action is then something that you can cause to happen through a relatively unfocused and primal application of that power. This will probably still be a little more sophisticated and complicated, when it comes to describing it, than most Invoke 1 actions, simply because English doesn't have basic kinesthetic vocabulary for fairy magic actions.
For example, for summerkin, the standard callings are:
I am things turning out all right;
I am things being OK;
I am a power of safety;
I move with this, flow with this, make its motion my own;
I help these things move together.
And an example rank 1 invocation is:
Calling: "I am things turning out all right."
Action: "The plane may be plummeting furiously towards a nuclear silo, but seriously, don't panic. We'll figure something out!"
[details of how to use rank 2 of the Invoke Attribute go here.]
. . .
Spells
A spell is magic in structured form. Thus a blizzard spell, which conjures up a blizzard or some element of winter, is a spell — but so is a knife that can cut anything, a martial arts stance that is as immovable as a mountain, a smile that can win any heart, and a rune that you can draw to engage various effects.
Each spell is symbolic. That is, it does not have one specific effect; rather, it has a symbolic meaning that a fairy can channel to various ends. The blizzard spell is also a spell that can ice over a walkway, conjure snow into a friend or enemy's pants, and bring a crisp stillness to the air. An immovable martial arts stance is generally just used for fighting without being knocked out of place, but if it's, say, Mountain Style Kung Fu, then you'll explain your specific moves and the GM will judge their quality based on mountain imagery — "he exhausts himself fighting me, it's like punching a mountain" or "I'm using the Oxygen Exhaustion substyle — the longer she fights me, the harder it is to breathe!" That means that it's also OK to have very generic spells like the ability to draw things and have them come to life (that's what drawing is symbolically all about), or a flexible healing spell that can handle anything from physical and mental wounds to spackling a wall.
Characters have access to a number of spells equal to their Invoke Attribute, and can change which spells these are over time. There's a couple of ways in which you can create and temporarily maintain new spells in play, which doesn't fall under this rule — even somebody with Invoke 0 can do magical research and make a spell to solve some specific problem — and sometimes if circumstances allow you can draw on the spells of other fairies around you. However, your "arsenal" of spells, the effects you'll use repeatedly, is that set you maintain based on your Invoke.
Invoking a spell requires rank 2 Invocation, so the standard difficulty is 19. Each has a set of callings associated with it, e.g.,
Chalk of Living Forms:
What I draw is made manifest;
This chalk embodies the tendency of true things to define themselves with form.
"What I draw is made manifest; I summon up an army from the chalk figures on the ground."
Endless Mountain Stance:
I am vast, like the mountains;
I am unmoving, like the mountains;
I am strong as the stones.
"I am vast, like the mountains. Your water style crashes against me and fades away!"
Knife that Cuts Anything:
This knife, it severs;
This knife, it wounds;
This knife, it divides two forms.
"This knife, it severs. I cut the wall apart."
Knife that Embodies Good:
This knife is virtue;
This knife is the triumph of the good and right;
This knife brings an end to sorrow.
"This knife is the triumph of the good and right. I stab the vending machine slot and it gives me the drink I paid for."
Rune of the Raven:
I draw raven's rune on [something] [to imbue it with raven's power];
I find wisdom with raven's rune;
I call ravens with raven's rune;
I free the mind to fly on raven's wings.
"I draw raven's rune on this textbook so that my homework can learn subtlety."
Snow Spell:
I weave the spell into coldness;
I weave the spell into wetness;
I weave the spell into winter;
I weave the spell into slipping on ice;
I weave the spell into bundling up warm;
I weave the spell into the icicle and the avalanche;
I weave the spell into the concealing blizzard.
"I weave the spell into the concealing blizzard; I step into it and I am gone from their sight."
Winning Smile:
I enchant with my smile;
I brighten with my smile;
I change the flow of events with my smile;
I radiate warmth and gladness. Ting!
"I enchant with my smile, and the hungry wolf realizes that it isn't so hungry after all. Then we frolic!"
To invoke a spell, use one of its callings. Then name your action — something you are doing by calling on that power. Finally, make an Invoke roll (against, typically, the standard difficulty of 19.)
The GM first judges your calling. If you're using a standard calling for the spell then this is not an issue. If you're needing to embroider things a bit, because none of the standard callings quite fit, then it's up to the GM to decide whether the calling works at all. The usual answer is yes, but if it's no, then you have wasted your action — at best, the whole thing flows into the might have been.
Then the GM determines whether your action is reasonable or excessive. If you push the boundaries of your spell too far, your action can fail on those grounds: essentially, you call up the power, and channel it towards your end, but your end is not accomplished. It's also possible for someone to interrupt you, e.g. with the Mist Attribute, to block an action that the GM would otherwise have allowed.
If you succeed on the roll, and the GM allows your action, and nothing actively intervenes, then your action instantly becomes a part of what is. If you fail on the roll, but everything else checks out, or if you succeed on the roll but the GM decides that it doesn't work (possibly due to another player's intervention), then it becomes part of the would have been. If you fail and it wouldn't have worked anyway, it falls into the might have been.
So if you are using your snow spell in a fairly standard fashion — to cover the campus with ice — and you succeed on the roll, your invocation succeeds. You've covered the campus with ice. If you fail the roll or if someone counters your spell in some fashion, then you don't quite manage it — you would have covered the campus with ice. If you're trying to use your snow spell to warm things up ("heat transfer, don't you know") and the GM finds that excessive, and you roll an 18 to boot — well, practically nothing happens at all. Maybe you might have been able to heat things up, you know, maybe, if you were a better mage?
If you need to change your selection of spells, you have two options. One is to seek the GM's permission to trade out one spell you know for another you want to master or create, and wait until something the GM considers to be a good time — often, "between stories." The other is to find or create a new spell in the course of the game; at this point, you can abandon one of your old spells in the new spell's favor. Developing new spells and maintaining access to spells that are outside your typical portfolio are under the aegis of the Magic Attribute and are a certain specialty of the watch-fey.
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.
Effects at this rank of Praxis transform a conceptualization — a description you have of something you are seeing or experiencing — into the is. That is, you take something that you can see, which may or may not be a wholly accurate or reasonable portrayal, and transform it into something trans-subjective or even objective: something which everyone can see, something which is real. You illumine something in the world and make its suchness stand out: that's the fairy glamour of rank 0 Praxis.
The thing you are cultivating must not be patently false; or rather, if it is thus false, then it is treated as falsified by another's action. Thus, you say: "I see a monster in my closet!" The world responds, saying, no, that is just socks; your action fails. Similarly, if you attempt to name someone a murderer because they are your suspect, or if you insist that someone who loathes you is charmed by you because you think you're charming; . . .
But here already, we tread close to the line.
It is the GM's duty to treat falsification of this sort as a weighty matter; to speak up for the world's truth only when the world vehemently objects. It stands to reason, if one looks at the world around you, that there is an objective truth but that it is diffuse, quiet, shy: it steps in when it must to say, "No, you cannot actually fly; yes, you are actually sleepy; no, Florida is not a portion of Canada." But much of the time, it leaves subjective matters to quibble amongst one another: is one person stronger than another? Well, what is strength?
With just that discretion that objective reality exerts, in stepping in only once strength has been defined down to "this much force, this much muscle fiber, this many falls out of five, or seven," the GM must be careful to allow even most skew notions to prosper, using the Naming of Things.
The purpose of the Naming of Things is thus four fold.
The first is, to make the suchness of a thing stronger; to highlight it, to make it burn with its truth. And in the contrary side of this same coin, and second, it is to test that suchness. For if you are to put your weight on a stair step over an endless void, it is best to lean one foot upon it first; and to Name a Thing is also to verify that reality will not intervene. The third purpose is to secure the reality of an ambiguous proposition, that you may lean upon it later. The last is, assuming success upon your roll, to inject a thing straightaway into the would have been.
"I see a monster in my closet;" and then, when the world objects, you have failed; but still, there would have been a monster, there is something there that you have seen. And this is something that may be drawn upon at a later time in magic.
It is incumbent on the player, of course, to be honest; it always is. But this honesty may be slanted somewhat for fun. It is all right to develop interesting things for your character to see in the situation around them, and both the player and the character may skew the situation slightly to make best use of the Naming of Things and Forms.
To use this level of Praxis, then, make a declaration defining what you see. This should be relatively modest: 50 words at the most, with 15 more typical. This, like all Praxis, is a 3-round action, so you'll need to spend the next 3 rounds engaging with your declaration — defining it further, interacting with it, in any case doing something to honor its presence in the world (literally, or with acknowledgement, or even by struggling against it.) At the end of this three-round action, make your Praxis roll. If you succeed on the roll, and neither reality nor another character has intervened, you have manifested what you see as real within the is. If you succeed, but reality and/or another character intervenes, it manifests instead within the tenuous would have been: there, but for reality! There, in a sense. There, lurking, waiting to exist. Failing the roll and denying reality, or failing the roll and being opposed, means that your desire falls straightaway into the might have been.
Thus if you believe that you can cook a decent meal, and you fail the roll, and someone meddles in the kitchen to boot — then no. No, what you are experiencing in that belief is an illusion brought on by error and compounded by self-deceit; your conception dissolves and cannot take root within the is. Conversely, if you see that someone is enjoying themselves at dance class, and you succeed at the roll, and nothing operates to prevent you: lo! That enjoyment is part of the is, it shines out like a star.
Here's an example:
Declaration: "He's acting suspicious. There's something he's not telling us!"
Praxis: he's acting suspicious! There's something he's not telling you!
Fairies usually call this effect sharpening, limning, illuminating, or numinizing. It's surprisingly handy as a social tool: if you're right, for instance, that somebody's acting suspicious, then as soon as you've limned it, it becomes something everybody and particularly your fairy peers can see. It's also extremely helpful when you're in a study group — the ability to limn a principle of mathematics or an intention of a poet is extremely useful for teaching and inspiring others, as long as you aren't both wrong and so subtly wrong that reality won't step in. Of course, if you are, then you can screw up everything and everyone from first principles, so there you are.
Waylings and nicknobs can waive their roll for rank 0 Praxis, succeeding unless opposed and failing utterly if reality or someone else intervenes. Waylings may accomplish this through a persuasive power of limning; nicknobs have the inner peace to only manifest those forms that ought to be. The elemental spirits with the character of Naming include various ephemeral spirits of beauty and the small gods or small angels that live inside or outside each thing and keep it the way it ought to be. The former are unstable creatures resembling firework fairies, save only that their lifespan is smaller and their origins less human; the latter are a matter of metaphysical dispute, as some fairies believe that there is no thing but with its guardian host of angels and others suspect that it takes either keen observation or a confluence of peculiar effects to imbue an item or experience with a guardian entity or god.
Effects at this rank of Praxis manifest qualities in yourself. For instance, you might use rank 1 Praxis to become strong, or truthful, or disciplined, or pretty, or wise for a scene. The new quality will tend to suffice for the immediate needs that prompted the action — if you need to move something or impress someone, and you make yourself strong, you will generally become strong enough to move that thing or impress that person. If your purpose in becoming pretty is to deflect suspicion or fit into a social group, then you'll be pretty enough — if being pretty is enough — to do so. However at this rank of Praxis, achieving your goals is not the effect, and so the GM has the option to put limits in place. A fey may only use Praxis rank 1 to become as strong, wise, smart, fast, or skilled as the GM allows, and that means that smashing mountains with your fists, racing jet planes, and instantly resolving the philosophical questions of the age is probably out of line. Most fairies in most games of Fairies cap out at the legendary hero level, with anything beyond that no longer falling under the aegis of ordinary words like strong or smart or wise.
Rank 1 Praxis is always personal. You may want strength to defeat some other person: you may want to be faster than an enemy, as smart as a friend, cleverer than a fox. And you can invoke Praxis to these ends — but your glamourie is not binding upon them. You become strong, and you may even try to be "stronger than he is," but he is under no obligation to comply. You may become "cleverer than a fox" — but that doesn't mean that a fox can't come along and outclever you. It makes you better, that's all, and usually enough better, but sometimes you're dealing with someone who is better yet.
To use rank 1 Praxis, start by declaring the quality you are cultivating in yourself. This should take 1-4 words (for the quality) plus whatever you have to say to indicate that you're using Praxis at this level, e.g., "I'm cultivating my quality of insight," or "I want to be faster than the wind."
Spend the next three rounds cultivating this quality in yourself, and optionally throwing yourself against whatever problem necessitated this use of Praxis. On the third round, make a Praxis roll with a base difficulty of 18.
For example, if someone is trapped under a car, you could do the following:
Declaration (in round 1): I need to be stronger.
Round 1: I'm struggling with the car.
Round 2: I have to lift this!
Round 3: I'm tapping hidden reservoirs of strength!
Praxis roll (in round 3): Nineteen!
If you succeed at the Praxis roll, and if nobody has interfered and sabotage your efforts, you have become something more. The strength or beauty or wisdom or cleverness or insight or speed or whatever else you were reaching for becomes part of what is. If somebody else was doing something that relied on your being weak or ugly or foolish or whatever fault you've overcome, then you've successfully interfered with their action. If you need to use strength or beauty or wisdom or whatever, you can now call upon it with an Invocation or just assume that it's there. In short, the power you reached towards inside your soul has arrived.
Here's another example:
Declaration: "I'm going to be dazzling."
Praxis: you become dazzling.
And another:
Declaration: "I'm going to surpass myself on this test."
Praxis: you surpass yourself on this test.
If you fail on the roll, or if someone sabotages your efforts at cultivation, then your new desired quality or attribute goes into the would have been. If both happen, then it goes into the might have been.
So in that first example, if you'd aced the roll but someone got in your way, then you would have been dazzling — except for their interference. In the second example, if you fail the roll, then you pushed yourself hard, but you didn't really do any better than ever. In that same second example, if both happen — if you fail the roll and someone acts to keep you from doing better than usual on the test — then the attempt at doing better just kind of founders and gets lost in the shuffle of things.
The fairy term for rank 1 Praxis is glamouring yourself or donning a glamour. Because it's the same thing that humans do when they push themselves or cultivate themselves with an act of will, not every exertion of this sort is actively magical. For instance, you could say: "I'm going to stick to my guns this time!" You're usually painfully shy or passive or a doormat or whatever, but no — this time you're going to be stronger. And that's donning a glamour, in the sense that you're pulling a shroud of a new nature over yourself and living in it, but it's also not necessarily magical at all.
But the boundary between magic and mundanity here is fuzzy, and the reason is just this: the magical power that can make a fairy much stronger and faster, or actively prettier without a makeover, or force wisdom from a foolish head, is just what happens when that mortal will gets echoed and taken up and amplified by the fairy in your soul. It starts with the hard effort of change and self-improvement, and then suddenly your power kicks in and it's magic. Suddenly instead of just using mundane effort, you're maintaining something in an arcane flow.
It's easier in some ways, but it's hard in others, and it generally both accelerates and influences the transformation into a fairy in your soul. If you're constantly glamouring yourself to be wiser, you'll turn into a fairy faster, and you're more likely to end up wise. If you're constantly glamouring yourself for kindness, strength, and speed, then you're likely to end up a strong, fast, kind fairy and to quickly convert the remnants of your mortal soul. That's not a good thing and it's not a bad thing, it's just a thing, but most schools discourage excessive glamour of this sort out of a sense that it makes you "grow up too fast."
Spark sprites have a +3 bonus on rank 1 Praxis. The elemental spirits of this sort of effect include the hollow Dutch wood-nymphs, phantasms, and arguably kindle-ghosts and "cards." The kindle-ghosts and cards are two sorts of amnesiac spirit, the first a nonspecific ghost and the second a helper spirit sometimes associated with the fey; kindle-ghosts don't know whose ghost they are while cards experience a sense of having been something else before. For most of history it was assumed that kindle-ghosts had forgotten their human life due to some trauma and that cards were remnants of something (e.g., random fairy magic that escaped when a human successfully destroyed the fairy part of their soul, or the ghosts of elementals, or fairies destroyed by some specific effect.) In the 1800s, Dr. Szoren proposed that they were instead elemental spirits of glamourie that autopoietically adopted a guise as a person or human. In his theory the kindle-ghosts had no memory of their past because they had never actually lived a human life, but rather were just the kind of experience that one would expect from someone who had; the cards, similarly, believed themselves amnesiac because their existence had the tang of better than that caused them to infer that they were better than something specific. This was the dominant understanding until 1971, when a Svartheim graduate student noticed a formal implication in Dr. Szoren's math that suggested that the very same was true of humanity and the fey. Now there is a sizable scholarly debate on the matter; things have shaken out such that the fairy community denies Dr. Szoren's theories and methods but accepts his basic conclusions on kindle-ghosts and cards, with a few camps of scholars arguing that kindle-ghosts and cards have a prior existence and a few others believing that humanity and the fey are in fact self-created from nothingness with an erroneous belief in a natural process that created them.
Effects at this rank of Praxis call forth the substance of your desire and your intention into the is.
Start the effect with a declaration of what you shall achieve.
Typically this is several sentences—about 7-40 words, using about 15 seconds of real time (not counting hesitation, panic, uncertainty, and "um," so let's call it "up to a minute.") This is usually made in character, which is to say, you use the same declaration in real life that your character silently affirms. If this is impossible for some reason—e.g., your character is declaring an image that you don't have the time or skill to quickly draw, or your character doesn't quite know what they're doing but you do—then you can spend a few more sentences clarifying.
In any case, though, the core is something that your character is focusing their mind and intention and actions to achieve, and something of a mundane character. (That specifically means that you're not trying to manipulate the abstract magical environment like power tokens, diodes, and so forth—it's OK if you want to achieve something magical like enspelling someone or squeezing through a passage smaller than your head or whatnot.) You then spend the next three rounds acting on this intention and make a roll; if nothing interferes, and if you succeed, then your declaration joins the is.
The effects of Praxis are limited to the component in which you act, plus the surrounding generic continuum. It's OK if it diffuses somewhat to affect others, but when you're acting on somebody far away who isn't connected to you with the scene rules above it doesn't have the clear character of the is.
In a similar fashion, actions, in order to interfere with you, have to have a path (connection or diode) to the component in which you act. Nobody in Rome gets to do something that randomly messes with your action in Santa Ynez, at least, not unless they're already magically a "part" of what's going on.
Should you fail the roll, or should someone interfere with your action, then the magic of your declaration falls into the would have been. It remains with you, echoing, but does not manifest. If you both fail the roll and are interfered with, or if the interference is of a particularly perverse or effective character (see the rules for certain Mist effects), then your declaration becomes part of the might have been instead.
Here's an example:
Declaration: "I'm going to ace this math test."
Praxis: you ace the math test.
What if you fail the roll? Then you don't ace the test; you just would have aced the test. If . . . something had been different. If you'd been better at magic, or if you'd studied differently, or something. The matter is ambiguous. If someone sabotages your efforts and you fail the roll, then it's more like, wow, you really told yourself you were going to ace that test, didn't you? But in the end that was just a dream, a myth, a fantasy that dissipated on the morning. That's when reality sinks into your stomach like a cold hard stone and you find yourself weeping mathlessly into your milk. Or acelessly. Maybe even testlessly if this terrible conjunction of misfortunes has caused you to be unable to take the test at all.
You can use Praxis for more important things than simply acing math tests, if one accepts that education can pale beside other things in worth. For example, if you're suddenly stuck piloting a plane because the pilot has gone into deliria, you might try something like:
Declaration: "I'm going to land this plane safely. On a cumulus cloud!"
Praxis: you do exactly this. The problems that may follow on the heels of this endeavor are really nobody's fault but your own.
The skill that you may or may not have in piloting is irrelevant to the case, and so is the inherent improbability of the landing you have planned. These things color what you choose to do, what you decide on doing, and ultimately whether you're going to succumb to Mist—but the only major advantage of feasible action is that it helps you remain true to the world and who you are. And again if you succeed, and if you are not opposed, then your declaration becomes an element of the real.
That said—and bearing in mind that this is a description of modality and not of fallibility—you do have to be able to act to bring your declaration to pass. The rule of Praxis is that your intention is a thing you are trying to achieve. So you can certainly ace a math test even if you have no skill at math—but to do so you must enact a plan or series of uncoordinated actions in service to that intention. You may land a plane on a cloud, even though clouds are typically gaseous and fairies unpracticed in piloting planes, but you have to set out to achieve this goal and take a series of sensible actions to that end. If necessary or desirable, either to yourself or to the GM (or to the other players, but mostly only if you or the GM wish to satisfy their curiosity), you should make a short statement in each round (again, 1-2 sentences) explaining what you are doing towards your declaration.
This would look something as follows:
Declaration: "I'm going to land this plane safely. On a cumulus cloud!"
Action #1: "I am frantically scanning instruments and pulling on things."
Action #2: "I can see a cloud. I'm moving in!"
Action #3: "I'm strengthening the cloud with glamour so that I have a place to land."
In rare cases, factual issues may raise their head at this juncture. For instance, the GM may say, in action #2, that no clouds are present. Or remind the player, in action #1, that they are not actually in a plane. If something like this happens, the player may then yield the action (as if preemptively failing the roll); try a new strategy; or request that the GM provide a reasonable alternative path to fulfilling either their original declaration or something closely related.
The fairy term for the result of such an action is a trod: a point of certainty in the vastness of the world. You are not creating a nexus, flow, connection, token, Mist, or anything of the sort: you are creating a single trod, a point of certainty on which to stand, a thing—if you succeed—that you have successfully done. This becomes part of the fabric of your component, fading with time only insofar as time renders the success itself irrelevant.
There are no fairy types that have a bonus on rank 2 Praxis, but Knacks often offer +1. For example a studious fairy could ace a test with an 18, and a terrifying wolf could scare someone with the same roll. Nexuses sometimes oppose the formation of contrary trods; in this case, the character must overcome the nexus' quality in order to succeed. Failure is counted just as if the character was successfully opposed; thus, in the unusual case of a nexus with quality 18, the character would either succeed (19+) and plant their trod in the is, or fail (18-) and have their action instantaneously banished into the might have been.
Elemental Spirits of Rank 2 Praxis include worgs, poltergeists, and pictsies, specializing respectively in "you are devoured in the woods;" "that object is broken;" and "this person has become mazed, disoriented, or lost." These creatures are not required to specify their actions insofar as their very existence is the enaction of their declared prophecy; should they take form and engage in other activities, this benefit ceases and they must perform actions to produce results in a normal fashion.
To live in a world of fairies is to live in a world where shards of purpose and story impinge inescapably on your consciousness: where the indivisible and ineffable continuum of existence is host to patterns (ideas of "what happened" and "what is present") that are so thoroughly alive as to force themselves on others' experience.
To put it another way, there are experiences that are shared by all—
Greenness, ineluctable; the presence of a cat; the riot on a certain day on a certain time in a certain place; the height of a specific person; the fashioning of a dress; the experience of what it is to sleep and then wake up—
That are certainly limited in scope, for the blind do not see green, but which are in some sense universal to whomever apprehends them.
This is not a world where the age-old question, "How may I know that anyone else perceives anything at all like what I perceive? What if when I look upon a cat, my friends and neighbors see an elephant, only, an elephant that relates to them in some fashion like a cat?" applies.
Rather, though there are some places where these curtains of form fall away before the great all, there is also the occasional point of certainty.
This is a cat.
Its cat-nature is perceived in different ways by those you may know to be blind, or not blind; to love the cat, or see the cat as a stranger; to have an allergy to the cat or not to have such an allergy; but fundamentally, and consensually, to be a cat.
And that is and must be an illusion, for a practitioner who studies deep Zen insights or daydreams away the cat's existence or presence or is otherwise reducing the forms of experience into a vast and unbounded sea can free themselves of that greenness; that cat; that riot; that height; that labor of fashioning; that experience—
But yet in addition to that boundless ocean, there is a shard of form.
There is the undifferentiated truth, and there is the concept and reality of the presence of the cat.
This idea—
In Fairies—
is expressed in reference to what is. What is denotes those things that stand out from experience as expressible to and understood by all, shards of truth that impinge on the mind's conceptualizations.
If there is a table in a room, in what is, then that means that we need not endlessly dispute the implications of its being mostly empty space; we need not reductionistically consider whether it would remain a table with three legs, two, one, or no legs at all; we need not think about what would happen if we replaced the table piece by piece, or took it away like thieves in the night and replaced it with a table identical in every fashion; we need not wonder what tableness would be there if the people who used that room were unable to apprehend its tableness, were constrained by brain damage or some peculiar power of intangibility to be unable to recognize it, were forced by that circumstance never to sit at it, never to eat at it, never to walk around it but always respectively over and through—
If the table is part of what is, then these questions are irrelevant, because its placement in the registry of what is is sufficient to answer the question, "Is there a table?"
And this is something we shall use, repeatedly, to give weight and strength to the arguments of the fairies; to their actions and Attributes in the world. It is because of what is that a fairy may be said to accomplish things using their Praxis Attribute, for instance: the fairy decides that they shall go to a certain place, hunt a certain enemy, create a specific spell, manifest a blizzard, ace a certain test, or otherwise enact some prophecy—
And if they can place that in what is, then it is done.
If they can place it in what is, then the undifferentiated vastness of experience yields in an instant to the presence of that form; and only the power others have to rework that form through analysis, embellishment, and acts of reckless interpretation can cause any reduction in the power of it.
Interpretation?
For yes.
More than anything else, the shards of what is are not things or events but they are words or pictures. They are visions that reveal themselves to a sense or multiple senses or to the narrative constructive sense that is the audience in the mind. It is literally the solidity and visibility of a table—or it is the statement, the words, the sentence, "there is a table." One of these things, and each of them susceptible to new interpretations.
That is the what is:
Sentences and pictures that stand like the spars of endless shipwrecks in the vastness of the world, or rocks that jut forth from a stream.
